January 2014 - test-drb@ccmp.vtda.org

TU58 tape formatter (was Re: rebuilding DC100A cartridges?)

by shadoooo＠gmail.com

Hello. I have a VAX730 with both TU58 drives destroyed (capstan melted, need replacements). I also have a bunch of cassettes, but unfortunately all seem to have problems with the bend and/or bad spots on the tape. Possibly I would try to replace the broken bands (if I find a source) and/or replace the magnetic tape when damaged (I was thinking to try with audio cassette tape, don' t know if metal oxide high density tape could be good for it). Anybody has some information about the coercivity of original DEC TU58 tape? One problem indeed is the need of reformatting the tape, but: if I can emulate the TU58 drive using a serial, would it be possible to send raw commands to the drive using the serial and a PC? Andrea PS-If possible, some good-condition cassette would be very useful to me too. I'm located in Italy.

6 years, 6 months

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Does anyone have docs for a Ventel brand MD212-plus modem?

by ethan.dicks＠gmail.com

Hi, All, A friend of mine just returned a modem he got from me decades ago, a Ventel MD212-plus. It's an early-1980s non-AT-command-set autodialling modem. The settings are adjusted via a pair of 10-pin DIP switches accessible from the back. I've checked the web and bitsavers. So far, all I've found is some old Usenet articles and a couple of pictures, but no manual or jumper guide. One "feature" is that it lacks a modular jack to plug into the phone system. Fortunately, my friend kept the proprietary DA15 cable. I've never seen that choice of connectors on any other modem. Does anyone have any Ventel docs? Thanks, -ethan

8 years, 4 months

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Digital archiving tools

by wmaddox＠pacbell.net

Many of us maintain large collections of bits that we'd like to preserve over a long time, and distribute, replicate, and migrate via unreliable storage media and networks. As disk sizes (and archive sizes) have increased, the probability of corruption undetected or uncorrected by the mechanisms normally built into disk drives, network protocols, and filesystems has increased to a level that warrants great concern. I would be interested to know if there exists an archive format that has the following desirable properties: 1) It is well-documented, and relatively simple, to facilitate its implementation on many platforms present and future. 2) It supports some degree of incremental updating, but need not be particularly efficient about it. An explicit compaction operation is preferable to an overly complex format. It is adequate to use append-only strategies appropriate for write-once media. 3) Insertion and extraction of files, copying of the archives, and other archive-manipulation utilities support end-to-end verification that identical bits have been stably recorded to the media, bypassing or defeating platform-level or hardware-level caching mechanisms. Where this is not possible, the limits must be carefully delineated, with some basis for determining the properties of the platform and certifying reliability properties where possible. 4) The format should provide for superior error detection capability, designed to avoid common failure modes with mechanisms typically used in hardware. For example, use a document-level cryptographic checksum rather than a block-level CRC. 5) The format should include a high degree of internal redundancy and recoverability, say, along the lines of a virtual RAID-array. Just as biological organisms constantly correct DNA transcription errors, the idea is to have a format that is robust across long-term exposure to imperfect copying and transmission channels. Does anything like this exist? --Bill

8 years, 7 months

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Scraping DEC Equipment

by dm561＠torfree.net

----- Original Message ----- > Date: Sun, 22 May 2011 22:56:32 -0500 > From: Daniel Seagraves <dseagrav at lunar-tokyo.net> > Subject: Re: Scraping DEC Equipment > To: "General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts" > <cctalk at classiccmp.org> > Message-ID: <C7A98127-DFF4-41B1-A6AF-5DFCA234D286 at lunar-tokyo.net> > Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii > > I need a tractor feed assembly for a LA100, are the ones on the 120 > compatible? ----- Reply: Apparently not, but I might have one for an LA100. mike

9 years

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Tektronix 4404 servcie manuals needed

by g-wright＠att.net

I would like to get a Tek 4404 computer going but lack any service manuals. The system turns on but has no curser on the screen. Has good power from the Power supply and heater is on in the CRT. Has a row of LEDs on the mother board. Does anyone know how to read these. - Thanks, Jerry

9 years

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Servant .953

by roger.holmes＠microspot.co.uk

On 7 May 2010, at 08:25, cctalk-request at classiccmp.org wrote: > > Message: 2 > Date: Thu, 06 May 2010 16:06:37 -0700 > From: Al Kossow <aek at bitsavers.org> > Subject: Re: Servant .953 > To: cctalk at classiccmp.org > Message-ID: <4BE34B7D.6060902 at bitsavers.org> > Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed > > On 5/6/10 2:23 PM, Fred Cisin wrote: >>> Al Kossow wrote: >>>> I am interviewing Andy Hertzfeld tomorrow, and had hoped to talk about >>>> Servant, but I can't find a copy of it around anywhere tonight. > > A huge thank you to Nigel Williams who forwarded a working copy of .951 five > minutes before Bill and Andy arrived. We spent an hour talking about MacPaint > and Quickdraw (Apple has finally given CHM approval to make the sources available) > then another hour on Alice, Dali Clock, Servant, Hypercard, and Magic Cap. Could you please clarify, the QuickDraw source is available for what purpose? Could developers modify it any include it in heir commercial 64 bit Intel applications for instance? Is the source Pascal, Assembler, C or something else? Roger Holmes, Director of Microspot who has a Carbon application which compiles with over 10,000 warnings about deprecated QuickDraw calls.

9 years

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Any word on the Multics revival front?

by madcrow.maxwell＠gmail.com

When Multics was officially released as free software a couple of years ago, there was a flurry of activity aimed at getting some sort of emulator up and running to run it. Did anything ever come of that or did folks just lose interest (or find out that the needed GE/Honeywell hardware was too poorly-documented to write an emulator of) Mike

9 years, 2 months

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Source for IBM logic probe tips

by h.j.stegeman＠hccnet.nl

Hi, Who can help me with a source (not IBM) for logic probe tips used with IBM MST and SLT backplanes. See: http://home.hccnet.nl/h.j.stegeman/IBM_logic_probes.jpg Prefably the lower one (P/N 453826). Thanks for your replies. Regards Henk

10 years, 2 months

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Replacement for Google's broken Usenet group search

by aek＠bitsavers.org

They seem to have broken it sufficiently now that nothing is returned after the end of October. Is there anyone indexing Usenet that has a clue? It seems like all that is left is for-pay services for searching alt.binaries.

10 years, 3 months

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Stardent 19" workstation monitor

by vcf＠siconic.com

I have a monitor for a Stardent workstation. It's a re-badge Sony, model number 130-0001-01. Free for pickup, or 1.2 * cost of shipping to recoup time and trouble if you want it shipped. Please respond soon if you are interested as it will be going off for scrap in a week if there are no takers. -- Sellam Ismail Vintage Computer Festival ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ International Man of Intrigue and Danger http://www.vintage.org [ Old computing resources for business || Buy/Sell/Trade Vintage Computers ] [ and academia at www.VintageTech.com || at http://marketplace.vintage.org ]

10 years, 9 months

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DECwriter III LA120 ribbons?

by bob＠jfcl.com

Does anybody have a source or replacement for LA120 DECwriter III ribbons? I've actually got about 8 "new old stock" ones, still shrink wrapped, but all that I've tried are pretty much dried out despite the shrink wrap. They barely make a mark on the paper, even with the little print impression lever cranked all the way up. Thanks, Bob

10 years, 11 months

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Apple Lisa, for those that asked

by sales＠elecplus.com

The Apple Lisa is complete, does not appear to be screen burned. Includes hard drive and floppy drive and keyboard. Somewhat yellowed due to age. Does NOT power on, no repairs attempted. (Is there someplace else to turn it on, besides the white square button above the keyboard jack?) Cindy Croxton Electronics Plus 1613 Water Street Kerrville, TX 78028 (830)792-3400 phone (830)792-3404 fax AOL IM elcpls _____ No virus found in this message. Checked by AVG - www.avg.com Version: 2013.0.2805 / Virus Database: 2634/5952 - Release Date: 12/11/12

11 years, 1 month

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6809 SBC

by lynchaj＠yahoo.com

http://classiccmp.org/pipermail/cctalk/2010-January/282022.html It always suprised me that hre BBC micro used the 6502 rather than the 6809. By the time the Beeb was designed, Acorn had made a 6809 processor board for their System machines, so they must have had experience with the chip. THe Beeb is nice, but a Beeb with a 6809 processor would have been something else :-) -tony Hi! When I designed the N8VEM 6809 host processor it is loosely based on an article I read for the BBC computer called "Dragon in the tube". I am not very familiar with the UK microcomputers but apparently 6809 "coprocessors" were fairly common peripherals on their Z80 and 6502 designs. I used a similar concept for the N8VEM to allow its Z80 SBC to access the 6809 as a "host processor" peripheral on the ECB. One of the builders was able to get CUBIX running on the N8VEM 6809 host processor using the Z80 as its "IO processor". However, I can see how the implementation can get confusing because it is either a Z80 based system with a 6809 coprocessor or a 6809 based system with a Z80 IO processor. In reality it doesn't really matter but it's a matter of perspective. The N8VEM 6809 CUBIX implementation allows the use of ECB peripherals like IDE, video, floppy, serial, parallel, etc but it requires the Z80 to serve all the IO based on 6809 commands. I added the 6809 IO mezzanine board (power, ACIA, PTM, 2 VIAs, expansion bus) to give builders the option of using the 6809 host processor as a stand alone computer or to add separate IO to the N8VEM system when connected to the bus. The idea being to let the 6809 host processor interact with the outside world using its own IO and only involve the Z80 when absolutely necessary. The hardware seems to work OK but we'll see where the software goes. I think with CUBIX the 6809 N8VEM system becomes a lot more practical. The IO mezzanine fits on top of the 6809 host processor. You can see some photos here. These are out of date but give a good idea. Recently I fitted an improved serial cable and the nylon standoff hardware. Also the PTM seems to be working and that's good. http://n8vem-sbc.pbworks.com/browse/#view=ViewFolder&param=m6809 I have many 6809 host processor and IO mezzanine PCBs so if anyone is interested please let me know. This would be a great opportunity for anyone who would like to do some 6809 hardware and software hacking. I think the N8VEM 6809 host processor is the only system I am aware of other than Dave's homebrew that is running CUBIX. There maybe some other homebrew systems out there too I can't find them after some searching. Thanks and have nice day! Andrew Lynch

11 years, 1 month

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WTD - 40-track (360K) 5.25in floppy drive

by classiccmp＠philpem.me.uk

Hi guys, I'm trying to get my hands on a 5.25in double-sided 40 tracks per side "360K" floppy drive with the Shugart or IBM PC 34-pin connector (either edge connector or pin header is fine). Does anyone have a spare they'd like to part with? Slight preference for Teac or Mitsubishi, but anything will do at this point. I've checked Ebay, there are tons in the US (complete with "seller does not ship internationally, don't even ask"), but the only ones I've seen >from UK sellers are parts scalpers wanting stupid money for them (?149 "sold untested with no guarantee"? really?). A BBC Micro 40-track drive would also be fine -- as long as it's native 40-track, not 40/80 track switchable or double-stepping (an 80-track drive mated to a PCB which double-steps the head). Cumana, Viglen and a few other companies made these, they were extremely common a few years ago. I'm on the verge of getting DiscFerret write support working (at least for UNIX PC disks) but the sodding thing won't read anything my 80-track drives have written! I'd rather not borrow the 3B1's drive - the DiscFerret is experimental and a benchtop lashup is hardly an ideal scenario. Thanks, -- Phil. classiccmp at philpem.me.uk http://www.philpem.me.uk/

11 years, 2 months

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SCSI2SD

by aek＠bitsavers.org

Just saw this on Erik's web site, and hadn't seen it mentioned here http://www.codesrc.com/mediawiki/index.php?title=SCSI2SD Currently getting around 900kb/sec R/W

11 years, 3 months

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minimum temps for running old hardware?

by jules.richardson99＠gmail.com

We're all reasonably aware of the tendency for vintage hardware to get a little flaky if it's too hot - but what about the other side? I expect that the electronics aren't particularly troubled by the cold, but what about tape units, floppy drives, hard drives, magnetic media? When is it too cold for them to work reliably? cheers Jules

11 years, 3 months

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Easiest way to get MAINDEC diags onto a PDP-8 (sans paper tape)

by cramcram＠gmail.com

Hi, I've been bringing up a PDP-8a system over the past few months. It has 2 x TU56 (TC08 controller), 3 x RK05J and a 3rd party RX01 dual floppy. The processor itself is an 8e board set w/EAE and 32K core. As for media I have 7 RK05 packs, one floppy and about 60-75 dectapes. My first attempt at booting was with the RK05. It took a ton of cleaning (and capacitor replacement/reforming) to bring up the 8, followed by cleaning one of the RK05 drives. (BTW, this stuff apparently was in the equvalent of a barn for at least 20 years by what I could see). Anyway I cleaned 2 of the RK05 packs that seemed most likely to be bootable media but no joy. The drive just seeks to cylinder 0 and sits there, although I think a data transfer *might* have occured. I suspect that all of the RK05 packs were for individual user backup. Apparently from the documentation I have this system at one time had a RL01 attached. Next I worked on the better looking of the two TU56's. I've got one drive shuttling okay; the other half has no torque in one direction; I suspect I need to replace yet another AC motor run capacitor. The TC08 checked out okay and I replaced all of the das blinken lights with new bulbs, it looks really cool. Then the big test. I picked out a tape that had a listing with it indicating that it was a system tape of some sort (Focal, editor, etc.) I toggled in the TC08 boot code (since my M8317 has the wrong boot roms for it) and hit run. The tape wound back to the beginning, reversed, seemed to transfer many blocks of data and then just spins in a loop. So the next step would obviously be to run some TC08/TU56 diagnostics but I don't have any way of loading them. If I had an RK05 pack with OS8 + diags on it that would work but I don't see that happening. Perhaps another alternative would be to get the equivalent on RX01 floppies from someone, but I don't even know if the floppy system works yet. So for now I think figuring out how to make a combo terminal emulator/raw data file thingy might be the best way to go. I'm thinking of putting a beagleboard to use for this unless anyone out there has a simpler/quicker solution. Suggestions anyone? Thanks, Marc

11 years, 3 months

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accepting pre-orders for the S-100 Z80 CPU V2 board

by LYNCHAJ＠YAHOO.COM

Hi! We are about to do another run of our popular S-100 Bus Z80 CPU V2 board. This board can run in systems (with bus termination etc.) at up to 10MHz. Apart from all the then common features found on many older S100 Z80 boards (and being completely S-100 IEEE-696 compliant), it had an extremely clever and powerful ability to allow the Z80 to address up to 1 MG of RAM in 16K "windows" within the Z80's address space. This is described here:- http://www.s100computers.com/My%20System%20Pages/Z80%20Board/Z80%20CPU%20Boa rd.htm Its primary importance is that it can be used to address greater than 64K of RAM for CPM3 and that it can be used to load/examine 8086 code at the top of the 1MG address space. The new "V2" version of the board now has the ability to (under software control) dynamically switch between two 4K blocks of code in its onboard 28C64 EEPROM (or EPROM) yet still only occupy 4K in the Z80's 64K memory space. This in effect almost doubles the size of a possible Z80 monitor. The extra code (currently being written) will include things like directly downloading binary files from a PC into the Z80's 64K (or 8086's 1M) address space. In addition, the S-100 Z80 CPU V2 has the ability to use an external CPU clock from an external source (S-100 bus pin 66 aka NDEF3). This is essential for CPU to video synchronization for MSX compatibility particularly in games. There will be a corresponding ability to export a CPU clock signal on the next version of the S-100 VDP board although this could come from any S-100 board. Current owners of the V1 board can just switch the IC's to this new bare board. The S-100 Z80 CPU V2 PCBs will be $20 each as per the usual arrangement. Shipping in the US is $3 for a single PCB and $2 for each additional PCB. Shipping internationally is $12.75 for a single PCB and $3 for each additional PCB. This is for the bare basics USPS first class postage with no tracking or insurance. The builder assumes all risk of delivery as per usual arrangement. My preference is to sell these PCBs to vintage computer/home brew computer/classic computer hobbyists first but if there are any remaining boards I will put them on eBay. Please send a PayPal to LYNCHAJ at YAHOO.COM with the subject "S-100 Z80 CPU V2 board" and I will reserve your board(s). I need about 20 pre-orders to warrant a manufacturing run. I will post more information as it becomes available. Thanks and have a nice day! Andrew Lynch

11 years, 4 months

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Papertape Source (was: Re: Request for purchase of ASR-33)

by bobvines00＠gmail.com

On Sat, 11 Jan 2014 16:14:31 -0800, "Mark J. Blair" <nf6x at nf6x.net> wrote: [snip] > > * I'm having trouble finding 1" wide paper tape for my machine. It came with a small bit of black paper tape, and I see a single expensive roll of dark-colored 1" tape on eBay. I'd like to get a few rolls of plain old oiled paper tape in 1" width with a 2" core. There are several listings for narrower tape on eBay, but I'm not seeing the 1" width that I need. I'm looking forward to filling that chad box... > > * Last, but not least, I will naturally need a suitable computer such as a PDP-8 to go with it! :) > [snip] > > -- > Mark J. Blair, NF6X <nf6x at nf6x.net> > http://www.nf6x.net/ Mark, Try westnc.com at http://www.westnc.com/paper-tape-rolls.html#tty for papertape. They have both oiled & unoiled 1-inch paper tape, but recommend the oiled tape for ASR 33s. A 1/4 case of oiled papertape (7 each 1000-foot rolls) may be affordable to you at $92 plus shipping. (And they have rolls of paper for the Teletype's printer too at $112 for a case of 12 rolls, plus shipping.) Good luck on finding a PDP-8 to go with it though. :) Bob

11 years, 4 months

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AT&T UNIX PC - default interrupt/break key

by classiccmp＠philpem.me.uk

Does anyone know what the default BREAK/Interrupt key combination is on the AT&T 3B1 / 7300 UNIX PC? I was expecting Ctrl-C, but that doesn't seem to do anything. (I'm trying to kill off a long-running task which I've lost patience in ever completing!) Thanks, -- Phil. classiccmp at philpem.me.uk http://www.philpem.me.uk/

11 years, 4 months

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Happy 30th MacIntosh

by c.murray.mccullough＠gmail.com

I look back with great fondness in regards to the original MacIntosh. It was 'ahead' of its time. Great marketing didn't hinder it either! Murray :)

11 years, 4 months

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Who built the first minicomputers?

by steve＠tronola.com

Think DEC built the first minis? Not so fast... I'm pleased to announce that we have just published a new, carefully researched article on Tronola.com which explores this very question: http://tronola.com/html/who_built_the_first_minicomput.html Enjoy! Steve Lafferty http://www.tronola.com

11 years, 4 months

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Would anyone like a Mac IIx?

by lproven＠gmail.com

My great kit clearout continues... http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/271387473908 -- Liam Proven * Profile: http://lproven.livejournal.com/profile Email: lproven at cix.co.uk * GMail/G+/Twitter/Flickr/Facebook: lproven MSN: lproven at hotmail.com * Skype/AIM/Yahoo/LinkedIn: liamproven Tel: +44 20-8685-0498 * Cell: +44 7939-087884

11 years, 4 months

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windows 98 updates

by rmx44＠aim.com

looking to run one of my computers on 98se and am looking to find the updates for 98se the archived updates and not the unofficial service pack but the updates all the way up to july 2006 if anyone knows where to get them let me know

11 years, 4 months

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New ChiClassicComp RSS Feed

by silent700＠gmail.com

The slowly-growing document archive at Chicago Classic Computing now has an RSS feed! Now you can receive notice of newly-posted scans on your desktop, in your pocket or on whatever device you've hacked TCP/IP and RSS onto. The address is: http://chiclassiccomp.org/docs/content/rss.xml Thanks much legalize for his script and AEK and others for their help getting it going on our site. -- jht

11 years, 4 months

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Vintage Computer Meeting in Switzerland

by vermeulen.oscar＠gmail.com

Hi, Just to announce the second Vintagebytes.ch retrocomputer meeting in Lucerne, Switzerland: We meet on February 12th again with a presentation on replica's (KIM-I, Apple I, PDP-8 ) and subsequently, we will host a KIM-I repair fest. Well, two of us bring our sickly KIMs along, and there will be a third working one too. Three KIMs in a room - that's a KIM party. Feel free to bring any other vintage machine along too of course. More details are on our web site http://vintagebytes.ch/ . We look forward to meeting up with any of you living in the area! Cheers, Oscar.

11 years, 4 months

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Change of venue

by isking＠uw.edu

Hello everyone, FYI as of today I am no longer associated with the Living Computer Museum. Cheers -- Ian -- Ian S. King, MSCS ('06, Washington) Ph.D. Student The Information School University of Washington Madness takes its toll - please have exact change.

11 years, 4 months

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compiling a Sun emulator

by dgriffi＠cs.csubak.edu

I'm trying to get TME[1], a Sun emulator, compiled and I'm running into trouble. First, the Makefile is set to interpret all warnings as errors, so I can't get past the complaint about libtme/module.c assigning a value to a variable but not doing anything with it. I disabled this in configure.in, but when I rebuild the configure script with aclocal && automake -a -c -f && autoconf, I get a complaint like this: thoth:/usr/local/src/tme-0.8$ make cd . && /bin/bash /usr/local/src/tme-0.8/missing --run automake-1.11 --gnu Makefile.am:7: `pkglibdir' is not a legitimate directory for `DATA' make: *** [Makefile.in] Error 1 Any ideas? [1] http://people.csail.mit.edu/fredette/tme/ -- David Griffith dgriffi at cs.csubak.edu

11 years, 4 months

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SCSI2SD

by jfoust＠threedee.com

At 02:19 PM 1/30/2014, Ethan Dicks wrote: >I'd also like to find a supply of inexpensive MicroSD cards smaller >than 4GB. The best I found from a few minutes of trolling eBay was >lots of 10 and 25 for around $2-3 each for 128MB or 256MB. I'd rather >find a lot of 25-50 for $1-$2 each. I certainly don't need to go out >and get a stack of 4GB MicroSD for $5-$6 retail if I'm not going to >use 90% of the capacity. How hard would be be for these SCSI to SD adapters to behave as if they were several drives, thereby giving you a chance to use all of that capacity? At those prices, though, it's hard to quibble. At 12:31 PM 1/30/2014, Zane Healy wrote: >I wonder how well it would work in a PDP-11, VAX, or Amiga 3000. SCSI is SCSI, right? I kid, I kid. - John

11 years, 4 months

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Problems untarring on a UNIX PC (SysV)

by classiccmp＠philpem.me.uk

Hi folks, I'm trying to transfer some files from my PC to an AT&T UNIX PC. I've got Kermit up and running at 19200 Baud (after applying a kernel patch to increase the serial port poll rate) but the UNIX PC seems to be having trouble creating the directories from the tarball. On my Linux box I use this command inside kermit: CSEND {tar cf - file1 file2 ...} And on the UNIX PC: CRECEIVE {tar xf -} This works fine if I send files, but not directories: the UNIX PC's terminal is covered in messages like "CORE/diag/sys: cannot create". Does anyone know what I need to do to make GNU tar 1.26 produce a tar file the UNIX PC (some variant of SysV as I recall) can unpack? Thanks, -- Phil. classiccmp at philpem.me.uk http://www.philpem.me.uk/

11 years, 4 months

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BOUNTY: HP-UX 11i v1 TCOE

by doc＠vaxen.net

Yes, it's a bit off topic, but I've beat my brains out trying to get HP to even talk about providing media. We are licensed for HP-UX 11i v1 (11.11) TCOE on several C8000 PA-RISC boxes but we don't have install media. The original media kit p/n is B6821AA, and the C8000 requires Dec 2004 or later media to boot. Concurrent 11i v1 application media (p/n 5014-1459) would be nice, but not a necessity. This is for my employer, so it's not a freebie. Please contact me off-list if you can help. Doc

11 years, 4 months

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SCSI2SD

by jfoust＠threedee.com

At 02:49 PM 1/30/2014, Jonathan Katz wrote: >Volume economics. Let's broker a mass deal? If we (cctech/cctalk >population) order like 100 among all of us, there has to be some kind >of volume discount. I can think of at least 4-5 machines of my own >that I can use this tech in. There's a far larger market for this than this mailing list. I don't know why more hardware hackers don't give away their designs. Let the far east build 'em for you. - John

11 years, 4 months

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A New Year and a large cleanup - 2

by quapla＠xs4all.nl

As the collection of stuff I'm letting go seems a bit too much for people to take in one go, I have divided the whole into lots. A lot will be marked 'reserved' only if it is a firm reservation. Lot's do not have to be collected immediately, if needed, it can be set aside for a few months. However, in such case, 10% of the accepted offer is required as a security. Stuff can be shipped, local pickup is preferred and the stuff is located in the Netherlands. The lot list can be found at www.groenenberg.net/download/1170/ Ed -- Dit is een HTML vrije email / This is an HTML free email. Zeg NEE tegen de 'slimme' meter.

11 years, 4 months

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"Deciphering dissent" at Bletchley Park. TNMOC trustees' statement. | The National Museum of Computing

by dave.g4ugm＠gmail.com

http://www.tnmoc.org/news/news-releases/deciphering-discontent-statement-tn… Dave G4UGM

11 years, 4 months

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Programming the Newton

by evan＠snarc.net

Anyone here ever program for the original Apple Newton? If so, then I'd like to interview you for an article. Must be tonight or tomorrow morning/afternoon. Send me a private email... evan at snarc.net ... thanks.

11 years, 4 months

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ASR33 parity (was: Re: "stop bits")

by bqt＠update.uu.se

On 2014-01-29 10:00, Kyle Owen<kylevowen at gmail.com> wrote: >> > >> >I don't remember ever seeing a Model 33 with parity. And weren't >> >telegrams sent in 5 level code? If not at the end, then surely before >> >ASCII appeared. And of course before either, there was Morse code, which >> >doesn't come with parity either. >> > >> >All parity can do is convert garbled characters into missing characters. >> > Neither is good. Telegraph operators probably relied on having good >> >signal quality, ensuring adequate bit error rate values, at which point >> >parity is not particularly needed. And with Morse, you're probably relying >> >on skilled operators -- ECC performed by trained brain cells. > > Wikipedia seems to indicate that the Model 33 ASR sent 7-bit ASCII with > even parity. I've found that in many of the programs on my PDP-8/E, even > parity is required, which I presume stems from the Model 33 ASR days. Eh? What? There was an option for 8-bit clean communication in the ASR33, as well as other parity choices. But by default an ASR33 have *MARK* parity. And all older PDP-8 software that I've ever seen also assumes MARK parity. If you try running older PDP-8 software with your terminal set to even parity, it will not work. If you are ever near an ASR33 with a paper punch, you can easily verify that it is doing mark parity by just enabling the punch, and check what codes you get there as you type, with the ASR33 in local mode. Johnny

11 years, 4 months

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Pentium I boards

by elson＠pico-systems.com

On 01/27/2014 07:52 PM, Derrick wrote: >> i wonder if anyone out there might have an old pentium 1 board since i >> have a few pentium 1 processors and even an amd k6-2 but i want to be >> able to use the processors and maybe build up a nice old windows 95 box >> or something nice. if anyone might have any just let me know I have a Pentium Classic 100 MHz board that was working last time I fired it up, which was quite some time ago. But, other than replacing the CMOS battery, it ought to be OK. It is an Intel brand motherboard. Jon

11 years, 4 months

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DEC Data Retrieval

by bqt＠update.uu.se

On 2014-01-28 18:59, Zane Healy<healyzh at aracnet.com> wrote: > > On Jan 28, 2014, at 5:31 PM, Paul Koning<paulkoning at comcast.net> wrote: > >> >But BRU produces something structurally different from VMS save sets, doesn?t it? > It's been so long since I've looked at any of this, I honestly don't remember. I was thinking that RSX-11 backups would be readable by at least some versions of VMS. No. VMS BACKUP cannot read RSX BRU format savesets. But you can (could) run BRU on VMS... >> >RSTS Backup actually generates VMS save sets, the same format. > That's good to know. Right. Different PDP-11 OSes use different formats, so it's not really meaningful to ask about "PDP-11 backup". You need to specify which backup format you are talking about. I think I know of at least four. RSX used to use something called DSC (which stood for Disc Save and Compress), which was eventually replaced by BRU. I assume RSTS/E had some backup format in the older days. With RSTS/E V9 (I think it was), a new backup utility was created, which is the VMS compatible one. I'm not aware if RT-11 also had some backup tool, but I would assume so. Johnny

11 years, 4 months

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1541 Alignment disk

by n2dvm＠arrl.net

>Message: 6 >Date: Sun, 19 Jan 2014 14:39:21 -0800 >From: Chuck Guzis <cclist at sydex.com> >To: General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts > <cctalk at classiccmp.org> >Subject: Re: 1541 Alignment disk >Message-ID: <52DC5419.7020309 at sydex.com> >Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed > >On 01/19/2014 12:45 PM, geneb wrote: > > > I'm pretty sure Dan is after an analog alignment disk. There was a > > vendor mentioned here a couple of weeks ago, but I don't recall their name. > >Accurite: > >http://www.accurite.com/AAD.html > >--Chuck Ok, which disk would I purchase then?

11 years, 4 months

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Fax (was Re: Nine technologies that have faded into history)

by spacewar＠gmail.com

On Jan 29, 2014 9:36 AM, "Paul Koning" <paulkoning at comcast.net> wrote: > > > On Jan 28, 2014, at 10:55 PM, tom <thomas.w.cranston at gmail.com> wrote: > > >> ... > > Legal - In some parts of the world documents faxed are considered legal, as if the had been hand delivered. > > The USA is such a place. I don't recall the exact wording, but basically any setup that scans a physical document, transfers a representation over a telecommunication system, and recreates it as s physical document again meets the US legal definition of facsimile. There doesn't have to be a "fax machine" as you would normally consider it, and Internet email should qualify for the telecommunication, but if the document doesn't start and end in physical form, it isn't a fax. In other words, if I sign a paper contract, scan it, email it to someone, and they print it, it has been faxed. But if I start with a PDF file, sign it in a graphics program, and email that, it has not been faxed because it did not originate as a physical document. If the PDF was originally a scan of a paper document, but I fill it in digitally, then email it, that's not a fax because the electronic document is not an accurate, unaltered representation of a physical document. [I'm not a lawyer, so take this with a suitably large grain of salt.]

11 years, 4 months

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Nine technologies that have faded into history

by trash80＠internode.on.net

(Apologies if this appears twice - original sent to wrong address which may or may not arrive :-) May be of interest to some list members - appeared in The Age today. <http://www.theage.com.au/it-pro/business-it/nine-technologies-that-have-fad ed-into-history-20140128-hva22.html> ++++++++++ Kevin Parker ++++++++++

11 years, 4 months

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ASR33 parity (was: Re: "stop bits")

by bqt＠update.uu.se

On 2014-01-29 14:13, Kyle Owen<kylevowen at gmail.com> wrote: > > On Wed, Jan 29, 2014 at 1:51 PM, Johnny Billquist<bqt at update.uu.se> wrote: > >> > >> >Eh? What? There was an option for 8-bit clean communication in the ASR33, >> >as well as other parity choices. But by default an ASR33 have*MARK* parity. >> >And all older PDP-8 software that I've ever seen also assumes MARK parity. >> >If you try running older PDP-8 software with your terminal set to even >> >parity, it will not work. >> > >> >If you are ever near an ASR33 with a paper punch, you can easily verify >> >that it is doing mark parity by just enabling the punch, and check what >> >codes you get there as you type, with the ASR33 in local mode. >> > >> > Johnny >> > > I punched this tape on a Model 33 ASR in local mode and it seems to have > even parity. Bonus points for deciphering it!:) > > http://i.imgur.com/R3GPWIS.jpg Indeed. So you have the parity option installed in your ASR33. I punched a bit of paper tape on an ASR33 only two weeks ago, which did not. Unfortunately I didn't keep the paper, but that one certainly did not have a parity option installed, so it was pretty obvious what the "default" for parity is on an ASR33... I'm tempted to decode it, but don't have the time right now... > I'll try some more software with mark parity, but I believe CHECKMO II (the > chess game) really wants even parity. Please do. I would be surprised. But who knows. But I know OS/8 inside and out (pretty much), and believe me. Older software really do use MARK parity in general. (And, like I said, I verified the ASR33 only two weeks ago. Besides, the ASR33 manuals are online, and you can check it there too. I've read them in the past, and they also say that it is mark parity.) Johnny

11 years, 4 months

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"Deciphering dissent" at Bletchley Park. TNMOC trustees'statement. | The National Museum of Computing

by robert.jarratt＠ntlworld.com

There is a link to the official BP response on The Register. Sorry not easily able to send link from here Rob -----Original Message----- From: "Dave Caroline" <dave.thearchivist at gmail.com> Sent: ?29/?01/?2014 17:05 To: "General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts" <cctalk at classiccmp.org> Subject: Re: "Deciphering dissent" at Bletchley Park. TNMOC trustees'statement. | The National Museum of Computing In this context Trustees are the people who make sure a charity/museum follows its objects ( statements of what the entities primary purpose is). They are sometimes independent of the entity or may combine with being a director/officer of the entity. Dave Caroline On 29/01/2014, Pontus Pihlgren <pontus at update.uu.se> wrote: > You can colour me stupid if you like. But I thought that statement is > from the TNMOC trustees. > > And for a non-Brit, what is a trustee in this context? > > /P > > On Wed, Jan 29, 2014 at 10:21:12PM +0800, Simon Fryer wrote: >> That is the official statement. >> >> >> On 29 January 2014 18:25, Pontus Pihlgren <pontus at update.uu.se> wrote: >> >> > The picture painted of The Bletchley Park Trust is not very flatering, >> > have they made an official statement? >> > >> > /P >> > >> > On Wed, Jan 29, 2014 at 07:57:18AM +0000, Dave Wade wrote: >> > > >> > http://www.tnmoc.org/news/news-releases/deciphering-discontent-statement-tn… >> > > >> > > Dave >> > > G4UGM >> > >> >> >> >> -- >> Simon >> >> -- >> ------------------------------------------------------------------------ >> "Well, an engineer is not concerned with the truth; that is left to >> philosophers and theologians: the prime concern of an engineer is >> the utility of the final product." >> Lectures on the Electrical Properties of Materials, L.Solymar, D.Walsh >

11 years, 4 months

3
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DEC Data Retrieval

by bqt＠update.uu.se

On 2014-01-29 10:00, Paul Koning<paulkoning at comcast.net> wrote: > > On Jan 29, 2014, at 1:39 AM, Johnny Billquist<bqt at Update.UU.SE> wrote: > >> >Right. Different PDP-11 OSes use different formats, so it's not really meaningful to ask about "PDP-11 backup". You need to specify which backup format you are talking about. >> >I think I know of at least four. >> > >> >RSX used to use something called DSC (which stood for Disc Save and Compress), which was eventually replaced by BRU. > There was an irreverent reading for DSC: ?disk smash and corrupt?. Ayup. I usually pretend I've never heard of DSC. :-) > I forgot what IAS (and RSX11-D) used. DSC possibly. Yes. As far as I can remember. I'm also pretty sure IAS got BRU by the end. >> >I assume RSTS/E had some backup format in the older days. With RSTS/E V9 (I think it was), a new backup utility was created, which is the VMS compatible one. > V9 sounds right. It was coincident with support for streaming tape drives, which needed asynchronous (queued) I/O to work properly, and that in turn meant serious work on the backup program. The designer decided to adopt the VMS backup format as a good one to use (because of things like XOR block redundancy and CRC data integrity checks). Makes sense, and it's a nice idea to use the same format. In a way, it would have been nice if RSX had done the same. BRU, while good in many ways, is a hairy piece of code. It could have used another rewrite... > Before then there was a crude program also called Backup (but entirely unrelated) that could do partial backups. And an entirely different program called SAVRES (save/restore) that would do whole disk backup but could, I think, do partial restores. And going back even further, there was ROLLIN ? that?s just a full disk image copy, to another identical disk, or DECtape(s) (or perhaps also magtape, I don?t remember). None of those older programs were compatible with any other OS. SAVRES and ROLLIN rings bells, now that you mention them. Thanks. :-) >> >I'm not aware if RT-11 also had some backup tool, but I would assume so. > There?s always PIP, of course. Of course. But that implies some structure on the tape that (at least under RSX) is outside the control of PIP. But yes, DOS-11 is the plain format for files on tapes used by RT-11, as far as I know. Johnny

11 years, 4 months

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NEC uPD7201 misfeature, and V.14 (was Re: NEC uPD7201C Datasheet, Pinout?)

by spacewar＠gmail.com

The NEC uPD7201(A) and Intel 8274 have a misfeature that makes them almost unusable with modems that employ synchronous modulation (which is almost all common PSTN modems at bit rates of 1200 bps or higher, except bell 202 and V.23), except when an error control (e.g. MNP or V.42) used between the modems and flow control is used between the modem and the 7201/8274. The problem is that due to rate mismatches between the hosts, and between the host and the modem's sychronous modulation, the receiving end modem may receive data at a slightly higher rate than it can be sent over the asynchronous serial line to receiving host. In order to deal with this, the receiving modem is allowed to send the characters to the receiving host with a stop bit that is shorter than usual. The stop bits can be as short as 7/8 of a bit time, or (optionally for an extended signalling range, which I've never actually uses) as short as 3/4 of a bit time. This stop bit shaving is part of the ITU-T V.14 standard. Most UARTs don't have any problem with it, as they typically only sample the start bit at the middle of the expected bit time. However, the 7201/8274 looks at at least one sample in the bit time, and will consider a shaved stop bit to be a framing error, which IIRC causes the loss of at least the next character and usually multiple consecutive characters. This was a huge problem with 1200 bps and 2400 bps modems on the AT&T 7300 and 3B1 "Unix PC" before the error control protocols (MNP or V.42) became commonly available in modems. I learned far more than I (n)ever wanted to know about V.14 when I worked at Telebit, especially when I was in charge of adding Appletalk Remote Access Protocol (ARAP) support to the NetBlazer router. ARAP used MNP 3 and V.42bis compession (a non-standard configuration) on the Macintosh, and required that any error control (MNP or V.42) and compession be disabled in the modem. This was done because Apple engineers found at the time that hardware flow control between the Macintosh and commodity modems was unreliable, due to limitations of both. We were implementing a multiline ARAP server on the NetBlazer router and didn't have enough CPU power to do compession for more than a few lines. Since we only officially supported use of our own modems on the NetBlazer, the solution was for us to implement the unusual combination of MNP 3 and V.42bis in our modems (T1600, T3000, and WorldBlazer), and rely on reliable flow control between the router and the modem. Running V.42bis compression used nearly all of the available CPU cycles of the modem. We also had to deal with another aspect of V.14, stop bit deletion, which happens when the async data to be transmitted is overspeed with regard to the modulation. It allows the transmiting modem to completely discard the stop bit of up to one out of eight consecutive characters (one of four for dxtended rate), and the receiving side has to reinsert them. Our modem used an SCC channel of the MC68302 to send clocked asynchronous characters to the DSP bit pump (when not using V.42 error control, and V.42 is not used when dping MNP 3). Unfortunately the SCC channel doesn't know about V.14 stop bit deletion (or the corresponding reinsertion on receive), so the SCC has to be used in "raw" mode rather than clocked asynchronous mode, which means that the control CPU has to run a software UART to convert the character stream to a suitable raw bit stream for the SCC. A softwate UART is a piece of cake, you might say, and normally you'd be right. Unfortunately the modem engineers had written the world's fanciest, all-singing, all-dancing software UART, which took nearly all of the CPU time of the control processor. Which was normally fine, since you never used V.42bis compression over an asynchronous data stream over the synchronous modulation. Except, of course, when you're running V.42bis compression over MNP 3 error control to support ARAP. I offered to write a more efficient software UART, using under 10% of the CPU instead of over 70%, and the modem engineers claimed that it couldn't be done. The fundamental problem was that their software UART was in fact doing everything a single bit at a time. To do it efficiently, you do as much as possible a byte at a time, using a few kilobytes of data tables to assist. Another problem was that the modem control code was written as a series of tasks that all were called in round-robin sequence all of the time, whether there was anything to do or not. There was no easy way to determine CPU utilization because you couldn't do it as the complement of the idle time because there was no idle time to measure. Even when it was doing nothing it was running full-tilt. I'm told that eventually Apple switched from their wacky proprietary ARAP protocol to PPP, with the modem doing normal V.42 error control and V.42bis compression, but by then I had moved on to other projects that were less Sisyphean. Somewhat by coincidence, before working for Telebit I worked at Apple doing QA for (among other things) the Macintosh MNP 3 and V.42 drivers used by Appletalk Remote Access, then known by the codename "976". Eric

11 years, 4 months

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Units (was Re: "stop bits"; was: NEC uPD7201 misfeature)

by spacewar＠gmail.com

On Jan 29, 2014 11:36 AM, "Paul Koning" <paulkoning at comcast.net> wrote: > Or "pounds" for mass. That one seems controversial, depending on which standards organization or reference you consider definitive. The slug is the Imperial unit of mass, but the US pound is ambiguous, and the avoirdupois pound is definitely a unit of mass. All the more reason to ditch the pound for kilograms and newtons. > Or "kilograms" for force. Atrocious!

11 years, 4 months

1
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APEX / XPL0

by john＠yoyodyne-propulsion.net

Anyone got a copy of APEX / XPL0 for the Apple ][? I don't know why I didn't have it back in the day, it would have been perfect for what I was trying to do. It probably cost a bunch of money and I was a kid... -- Yoyodyne Propulsion Systems: "The Future Begins Tomorrow" Visit us at: http://www.yoyodyne-propulsion.net -------- "It's easy to win. Anybody can win." -- Philip K. Dick, A Scanner Darkly

11 years, 4 months

4
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Recovering OS/8 Device Handlers

by rick＠rickmurphy.net

At 02:32 PM 1/28/2014, Kyle Owen wrote: > >From the OS/8 Software Support Manual, I can see that the handlers > should >be located within blocks 16 through 25, octal. Should I be attempting to >dump those blocks and try to reverse engineer it that way, or is there a >way in OS/8 to directly dump each individual handler? I don't remember any way to do this "directly", but you can write a tiny program that does a FETCH on a handler, which then loads it into memory. Now you can open a file and write a copy of that handler to disk. Reverse engineering it would mean looking at the handler table that RESORC displays and using that to determine what block on the disk contains each handler. -Rick

11 years, 4 months

1
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Helios for Transputer

by kylevowen＠gmail.com

Hi all, I am attempting to get Helios running on a 64-core T805-based Transputer array. This is a one-of-a-kind system with a custom case. It uses a single-board 486DX with 8MB of RAM on an ISA card for the host system. The PC front end runs Windows 3.1 or MS-DOS 6. There are eight T805s on eight custom cards. It doesn't use TRAMs, but I have a feeling these are wired like such on the board. Pictures of the system can be found here: http://imgur.com/a/fCA3C I've been getting all of my Helios editions from http://www.classiccmp.org/transputer/helios.htm. I first tried version 1.1, and after copying the contents over to the hard drive from a single floppy disk, running the server results in an error: ns : Incompatible version of Rmap 6e627573 ns : error is fatal, exiting. I finally got 1.31 working on the system by downloading another DOS executable of the server and playing with some configurations. I also used ispy and mtest to see the structure of the system, which uses several C004 cross links. Unfortunately, ispy only reports a single T805-25 processor connected to the host at address 0x150. Does anyone have any ideas as to why the other 63 T805s and several C004s aren't showing up? Thanks in advance, Kyle

11 years, 4 months

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Using two RL02 drives on OS/8? (cont'd)

by charlesmorris800＠centurytel.net

On Tue, 28 Jan 2014 01:55:51 -0600, you wrote: >From: Rick Murphy <rick at rickmurphy.net> >To: cctalk at classiccmp.org >Subject: Re: Using two RL02 drives on OS/8? (cont'd) >Message-ID: <201401280235.s0S2Z0Es004934 at rickmurphy.net> >Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"; format=flowed > >At 04:13 PM 1/27/2014, Charles wrote: > >>More info. OS/8 is running on Drive 0. I am able to use RLFRMT (or >>RL2FMT) to format the pack in Drive 1 (and it does not access or >>overwrite Drive 0)... so at least SOME part of OS/8 recognizes that >>there are two RL02 drives! > >Those programs access the drive hardware directly and don't use OS/8 >for anything. > > >>BUILD defaults to DSK=SYS if SYS is not changed. BUILD showed >>initially DSK=RL20:R2A0 which is indeed the same as SYS. >> >>However, if a SYS command is issued during BUILD, according to the >>manual when issuing the BOOT command it is supposed to ask if you want >>a new DSK or not. This does not happen - it just says "SYS BUILT" and >>goes back to the dot prompt. >> >>I found that I can manually type DSK=RL21:R2A1 in BUILD and it accepts >>that without error. Then a "SAVE SYS BUILD 0-7577, 10000-17577=0;200" >>per the manual. >>At that point, rubbing BUILD again shows DSK=RL21:R2A1. OK so far. >> >>But when I ask OS/8 for the directories of each partition on RL21: >>(R2A1, R2B1, R2C1, R2D1) what is displayed is the corresponding >>directory of RL20: (R2A0, R2B0, R2C0, R2D0)! The Drive 1 light never >>flashes. > >You can't change DSK to a device that doesn't have an active handler. > >And, your unit convention is wrong - OS/8's device name mapping scheme >is a pain, so you have to be careful how you reference things. > >What you should have in BUILD for this configuration is the following >drivers: >R0AB which gives devices R20A and R20B >R0CD which gives devices R20C and R20D >R01E which gives devices R20E and R21E >R1AB which gives devices R21A and R21B >R1CD which gives devices R21C and R21D > >If you don't have those, you'll have to LOAD them into build. > >So, you need to insert the drivers for drive one: >$ RUN SYS BUILD > >$ IN R1AB:R21A >$ IN R1AB:R21B >$ IN R1CD:R21C >$ IN R1CD:R21D >$ IN R01E:R21E > >If you have enough driver slots, of course. Now device R21A: will go to >the right place. >The unit number is hard coded into the drivers so you need to use a >driver binary built for the right unit number. > -Rick Thanks for the info, Rick! That sheds considerable light on my puzzlement. Although I won't have enough slots to use the "wedgies" (the small E partitions), 80% of two RL02's is more than enough! However. Where do I find the R0AB, R0CD, R1AB, R1CD drivers? They don't appear to be on the diagpack2.rk05 image where all the "good" OS/8 stuff seems to be. All I see there is: RL0 .BH 2 4-JAN-81 RL1 .BH 2 4-JAN-81 RL20 .BH 2 4-JAN-81 RL21 .BH 2 4-JAN-81 RL2E .BH 2 4-JAN-81 RL2SY .BH 2 4-JAN-81 RLC .BH 2 4-JAN-81 RLSY .BH 2 4-JAN-81 Of those, RLSY, RL0, RL1 and RLC are for an RL01 drive; RL2SY, RL20, RL21 (which I have installed) and RL2E (which I omitted as noted above) are for RL02. Also the only OS/8 Extensions manual I can locate is the one that shows how to install and boot an RL01, not a pair of RL02's.... I think most of the RL02's ended up on PDP-11 systems ;) -Charles

11 years, 4 months

2
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BYTE collection available

by jlw＠jlw.com

Could I interest anyone in my collection of BYTE magazines, dating from issue #16 (DEC 76) to Vol 12 No 2 (FEB 87), missing Vol 11 No 11, for pickup in the San Francisco Bay area in California? -- Jeff Woolsey {woolsey,jlw}(a){jlw,jxh}.com first.last(a){gmail,hp,jlw}.com Spum bad keming. Nature abhors a straight antenna, a clean lens, and unused storage capacity. "Delete! Delete! OK!" -Dr. Bronner on disk space management "Card sorting, Joel." -me, re Solitaire

11 years, 4 months

2
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DEC Data Retrieval

by healyzh＠aracnet.com

I have some compatibility questions. Has OpenVMS lost the ability to restore older VAX/VMS save sets, and can it restore those from a PDP-11? Zane -- healyzh at aracnet.com http://www.zanesphotography.com http://www.flickr.com/photos/zanes-photography/ https://www.facebook.com/ZanesPhotography

11 years, 4 months

5
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BYTE collection available

by gerard.timbert＠free.fr

Quote : >> Could I interest anyone in my collection of BYTE magazines, dating from issue #16 (DEC 76) to Vol 12 No 2 (FEB 87), missing Vol 11 No 11, for pickup in the San Francisco Bay area in California? << Hello, Did this collection find a good home ?? Else, maybe I can offer one. Regards, Gerard --- Ce courrier ?lectronique ne contient aucun virus ou logiciel malveillant parce que la protection avast! Antivirus est active. http://www.avast.com

11 years, 4 months

2
1
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Recovering OS/8 Device Handlers

by kylevowen＠gmail.com

All this talk about RL01/02s and RK05s has reminded me that it would be nice to get the device handler for my dual Xebec hard sector floppy drives connected to my -8/M. I have only a couple of bootable disks with a couple of versions of OS/8. A lot of them are corrupted from best I can tell. I've developed a way to dump all of the readable blocks from disk over the serial port, which, as you can imagine, does take a while. I've also developed a little program that can parse the data into RIM format to be disassembled. >From the OS/8 Software Support Manual, I can see that the handlers should be located within blocks 16 through 25, octal. Should I be attempting to dump those blocks and try to reverse engineer it that way, or is there a way in OS/8 to directly dump each individual handler? Any tips would be much appreciated. Thanks, Kyle

11 years, 4 months

1
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Prime?

by jon＠jonworld.com

On Fri, Jan 24, 2014 at 11:52 PM, Dennis Boone <drb at msu.edu> wrote: > > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superminicomputer > > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minisupercomputer > > Oi! Prime does not Cray! Does anyone even have any running Prime gear anymore?

11 years, 4 months

5
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running SunOS 4.1.4 under emulation

by dgriffi＠cs.csubak.edu

I quit fiddling around with TME and went to QEMU like I should have in the first place. Following this page exactly: http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/QEMU/SunOS_4.1.4, I got barfage that looked like this: Extracting the sunos 4.1.4 sun4m 'uucp' media file. Extracting the sunos 4.1.4 sun4m 'Games' media file. Extracting the sunos 4.1.4 sun4m 'Versatec' media file. /usr/etc/install/tar/export/exec/sun4_sunos_4_1_4/versatec: cannot extract file. add_services: 'tar xpfb /usr/etc/install/tar/export/exec/sun4_sunos_4_1_4/versatec 32k 2>> /etc/install/suninstall.log' failed. Please check local media device /usr/etc/install/tar/export/exec/sun4_sunos_4_1_4/versatec Press <return> to continue You have sunos 4.1.4 sun4m release media volume -1 mounted Please mount sunos 4.1.4 sun4m release media volume 1 Press <return> to continue I upgraded QEMU. That didn't fix the problem. Then I looked at my SunOS 4.1.4 iso. The file export/exec/sun4_sunos_4_1_4/versatec is a corrupted tar. I can manually exclude that package, but I'd like to have something that really works all the way, particularly for when I get my hands on my real Sun hardware again. Does anyone know where I can find a known-good ISO? The md5sum of my iso is this: 927fa22042a70bf21a80be9393b15770 sunos_4.1.4_install.iso Second question... With the resulting install of SunOS 4.1.4, I'm having trouble getting the emulation talking to the outside world. Through trial-and-error, I figured out that QEMU is assigning the guest the IP of 192.9.200.1 and the host as 192.9.200.2. Plugging these into what I see at the wikibooks.org page, I get results that seem like things went okay, but pings and telnets timeout. What did I miss? -- David Griffith dgriffi at cs.csubak.edu

11 years, 4 months

2
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RL02 drives with PDP-8 vs. PDP-11?

by nf6x＠nf6x.net

The thread on using two RL02 drives with OS8 made me think about this, but I didn't want to confuse that thread with my tangential topic. Is there any difference in RL02 drives and/or disk packs for PDP-8 systems vs. PDP-11 systems (other than the obviously different controller cards for OMNIBUS/UNIBUS/etc.)? If so, how do I evaluate and identify the specialized bits and pieces? I ask this because I have a few RL02 drives waiting for my PDP-11/44 project, as well as a pile of RL02 disk packs. If there are differences for PDP-8 vs. PDP-11 applications, i.e. due to different word sizes, then I'll need to keep my eyes open for mismatched parts in my pile. Conversely, if and when I get a PDP-8 system with an RL02 controller card, I'll wonder whether I can use any of the pieces I already have. I seem to recall reading in recent months about some DEC drive and/or disk pack that would have different hard sector notches or some such thing for PDP-8 vs. PDP-11 applications, but I don't recall which type of drive it was. -- Mark J. Blair, NF6X <nf6x at nf6x.net> http://www.nf6x.net/

11 years, 4 months

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minimum temps for running old hardware?

by mtapley＠swri.edu

On Jan 27, 2014, at 7:17 PM, Grumpy ol? Fred wrote: > "REAL computers make their own heat." Hah! Another proposal for computer classification! Microcomputer : can keep a bread-box warm. Minicomputer: can keep a basement warm. Server: can keep a warehouse warm. Supercomputer: can keep a time zone warm. Fred, you da man!

11 years, 4 months

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RL02 drives with PDP-8 vs. PDP-11?

by bqt＠update.uu.se

On 2014-01-27 23:55, Ian King<IanK at LivingComputerMuseum.org wrote: > RK05 drives are hard-sectored, as you mention. RL02s are not, and the > same packs will work on either. The only hard constraint is RL01 vs. RL02 > - you can't use an RL02 pack in an RL01 or vice versa. -- Ian K7PDP True, with a caveat. You can modify an RL02 drive to be capable of reading both RL01 and RL02 packs, but it requires a hardware hack. When I worked at DEC, we had such a drive. However, an RL02 drive cannot reliably write RL01 packs. Johnny

11 years, 4 months

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pentium 1 boards

by rmx44＠aim.com

i wonder if anyone out there might have an old pentium 1 board since i have a few pentium 1 processors and even an amd k6-2 but i want to be able to use the processors and maybe build up a nice old windows 95 box or something nice. if anyone might have any just let me know

11 years, 4 months

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Antic episode 7 now out!

by dm561＠torfree.net

----- Original Message ----- Date: Mon, 27 Jan 2014 15:44:33 +0000 From: Liam Proven <lproven at gmail.com> Subject: Re: Antic episode 7 now out! > ...If someone appears in one of those corners and top-posts everywhere, > they badge themselves as a clueless newbie who couldn't be bothered to go > to the minimal effort of learning how things work and how to participate. > This person is therefore very unlikely to be a useful member of that > community; in fact, they're more likely to worsen the signal:noise ratio > and thus contribute to its decline.... --- Reply: --- I happen to think that what actually "worsens the signal:noise ratio and contributes to a list's decline" is folks who feel the need to repeatedly comment publicly on hoary old topics like this one and insult people who have a different perspective, knowing full well that it will inevitably derail the original thread and generate a number of off-topic posts like this one. Some quite clever and useful people find top-posting more efficient; get used to it! And if your purpose really was to 'educate' the OP instead of just being rude and insulting in public, why not do it off-list.

11 years, 4 months

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Using two RL02 drives on OS/8? (cont'd)

by charlesmorris800＠centurytel.net

>It's working again! > >I made a new RL02 pack using vtserver on my other machine (11/23+), which takes a while to transmit 7.8 MB even at 19200 baud, put it in the 8/A drive 0, held my breath, flipped the boot switch... and got the "." prompt on the terminal :) > >So the problem that started this whole mess was an IDC connector that I had improperly crimped, inside one of the RL02 drives, so that I could run ribbon cable to the RL8A instead of buying the expensive BC80xx cable. Lesson learned. Bought a BC80J-20! > >That short circuit was somewhere in the write data lines, which apparently then wiped out the OS/8 pack so it wouldn't boot any more. > >Lastly, my incorrectly seated quad extender card was introducing errors even after fixing the cable problems, and I wasted several hours chasing that... I may invest in a hex-height extender card to avoid this problem in the future! > >On the other hand, I now have a serial interface on the desktop PC from which I can download programs direct to the 8/A. The next thing is to learn how to use Philipp Hachtmann's KL8E in FPGA to download through a laptop USB port at high speed. It looks like I can just change the few IOT instructions of the RIM and BIN loaders to match the card's switch settings. Trying to get Windows to put binary files out a USB port will be more fun, I'm sure. > >Meanwhile, back to the original problem! My build of OS/8 does not recognize that there are two RL02 drives in the system... which is how I think this thread got started in the first place quite some time ago :) > More info. OS/8 is running on Drive 0. I am able to use RLFRMT (or RL2FMT) to format the pack in Drive 1 (and it does not access or overwrite Drive 0)... so at least SOME part of OS/8 recognizes that there are two RL02 drives! BUILD defaults to DSK=SYS if SYS is not changed. BUILD showed initially DSK=RL20:R2A0 which is indeed the same as SYS. However, if a SYS command is issued during BUILD, according to the manual when issuing the BOOT command it is supposed to ask if you want a new DSK or not. This does not happen - it just says "SYS BUILT" and goes back to the dot prompt. I found that I can manually type DSK=RL21:R2A1 in BUILD and it accepts that without error. Then a "SAVE SYS BUILD 0-7577, 10000-17577=0;200" per the manual. At that point, rubbing BUILD again shows DSK=RL21:R2A1. OK so far. But when I ask OS/8 for the directories of each partition on RL21: (R2A1, R2B1, R2C1, R2D1) what is displayed is the corresponding directory of RL20: (R2A0, R2B0, R2C0, R2D0)! The Drive 1 light never flashes. RESORC shows the following: (6442) 37* (6542) 37 (6642) 37* (6742) 37* (6443) 37* (6543) 37* (6643) 37 (6743) 37 OS/8 V3T so it looks like there are eight different partitions in RESORC, although not all of them have an "*" (does that mean the same "active" as it does in BUILD)? I'm wondering if DSK is, in fact, *not* being changed to the other drive - but then why is there not an error when attempting to get a directory of, say, RL21:R2A1 if it still thinks I'm accessing RL20:R2A0? This has me stumped. Any OS/8 gurus, please help :)

11 years, 4 months

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NEC uPD7201C Datasheet, Pinout?

by holm＠freibergnet.de

Hi guys, I've looked trough my Z80 Stuff some minutes before b'cause a friend wanted an Z80A CPU, ok found it. In a Bag 6 uPD780-1 which are also Z80A's, I found two uPD7201C. I've googeled some time before that the uPD7201A is some Z80-SIO - alike, has an other Pinout for example and should be compatible to some Intel chip which is mostly a clone of the Z80-SIO also. (maybe to give the Intel world acess to a usable USART to this time) But: I can't find a datashet for the uPD7201C using google or the usual suspects, can someone help out here? I think possibly this isn't just a different letter, maybe it means that this is the Zilog compatible Version with the Zilog Pinout? Does anyone know something about it or has a datasheet? Next interesting thing are 10 pcs. of NS405-B18N, a sticker says that that are display processors, someone knows where tehy where used in? Kind 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

11 years, 4 months

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Disk read issues on track 0 with OSI 4P

by philip＠neoncluster.com

Hi all, I've been struggling with getting my Ohio Scientific + MPI floppy drive system working for almost 2 years now. It's been by far my longest 'on and off' project, and in the process I've all but rebuilt the entire drive. I have been using a program for the OSI called DISKREAD which basically just dumps what data it reads from the disk to the screen. Up until recently I wasn't having much luck seeing anything meaningful, but after some more playing around I was finally able to see some data from an OSI boot disk that indeed looked good. I was able to cross reference what I was seeing against a disk image I downloaded off the net, and from track 1 onwards the data looks identical. The problem is track 0. Track 0 contains the boot code. When I dump track 0 it just looks all screwed up, mostly lots of 00's and FF's and F1's and FD's etc etc...basically stuff that just looks wrong. It also seems that doing subsequent passes over track 0 dumps different data each time!!!! I was just wondering if anyone knows what would cause track 0 to read bad and inconsistently, where other tracks seem to read good and consistent? Thanks for for your time. Phil

11 years, 4 months

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Philips P850 for sale in the Netherlands

by hp-fix＠xs4all.nl

Not mine, but from a friend. He has for sale a Philips P850 Processor with manuals and some peripherals (tape reader and puncher) If anyone is interested please contact me off-list for further details. -Rik

11 years, 4 months

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Compaq CGA card, schematics?

by phil＠viscom.net

Dave, > If the internal screen is fine then the syncs are at or close to the > proper frequency, so any problems are going to be around the NTSC > modulator, which would be fun to debug without a scope... I do have a scope- poking about down in the chassis is difficult- I don't have an ISA extension card. The composite trace drops down to the back side of the card, comes up through a resistor, goes to the light-pen header, through another resistor and vanishes into the middle layer. I could start just prodding with my meter to see where it re-surfaces... but, well, yeah. A schematic would make that easier. The image on composite "tears" horizontally. I made a video of it, hooked up to my TV set in the living room: http://youtu.be/a4jcKiSwUos > On the other hand whilst I have never tried the Composite on CGA, but I > have tried comparable modes on several other computers, including my > rather old Atari STE, and a very modern Raspberry PI and it sounds like > its working (almost) just fine. The composite out on CGA cards always > was pretty useless, and "legible, just" pretty much describes any > 80-colum output on composite. Try 40 a column mode (2 or 3)... That's in 40-col mode, above. In 80-col it goes into a text mode rather like MDA, which I haven't scoped to see if it's not present at the jack, or if the TV refuses to display it. It's remarkably crisp, considering. On a regular TV set (older, cheaper, no-name set)- http://www.flickr.com/photos/philandrews/8657681921/ Above was trying to display this- http://www.flickr.com/photos/philandrews/8660917851/ Admittedly that was all unbalanced, but I'm sure it should be a little better than that. > (Oh and my experience is with PAL, NTSC would probably be worse.....) > If you have a TV with a SCART then the circuit below would work.. > http://www.electroschematics.com/377/ > but I guess you are in the US and and your TV will have CYMG inputs. > Actually that circuit would probably work with CYMG but the colours > would be wrong. Yeah, I should have said. I moved out here to the States a number of years ago now. My TV sets have all the usual "modern" inputs for here, CATV (NTSC modulated), Composite-in, YPbPr component, HDMI and the one in the bedroom has a VGA-in. > If have a modern LCD TV with a VGA input you could try something > similar, but leaving the syncs separate and feed it into the VGA. This > might sound daft but often LCD TVs will sync to normal TV on the VGA. IT > doesn't work with monitors, but it does with some TVs. As a quick and > dirty test you could just use 470 ohms on all leads and omit the "I" > line.... I can give that a try, but it's a band-aid to the symptom. I've got another machine with CGA out and the TV displays it nicely. I'd like to be able to use the composite-out because the machine has several games on that make use of the timing inconsistencies in NTSC to create a larger color palette than the standard 4. That would, however, be useful for other applications. It's been a while since I've seen a SCART connector..! > Dave > -- > Dave Wade G4UGM > Illegitimi Non Carborundum

11 years, 4 months

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cctalk Digest, Vol 125, Issue 13

by seefriek＠gmail.com

On 01/05/2014 10:01 AM, Liam Proven wrote: >So perhaps this explains the fondness and elitism about HP calculators >and RPN: that they are good for programmers. Probably 75% of the people I went to business school with (at a University not know for programming or technology, and there was no programming requirement) had HP-12C's, and most of the professors would pointedly not bother to accommodate those that cheaped out and got a non-RPN calc (usually some ridiculous TI graphing model). My brother went to a different business school a couple of years later; same thing. Even though I have stupid amounts of computing available to me, there are all sorts little financial calculations that are essentially muscle memory on my 12C. The 2 mortgage closings I've been to in my life featured lawyers double checking the financial details using HP calculators (one old school HP-37 or -38, one a tricked out HP-41 with the finance ROM). Lawyers, not programmers. My last 2 CFO's kept a 12C within arms length, and I've watched both pick them up and check the details of some deal. Not programmers. The love of my life in my 20s was a radiation physicist, and she and every single one of her colleagues carried an HP-41 with the nuclear medicine pack. Not a programmer amongst them. My current wife is a medical practice manager. Their lead radiologist has the same setup in his office, and he uses it to double check what the computers are telling him about exposures and such. Not something you want to screw up. Also not a programmer. I had to have my lot line professionally surveyed recently, and the guy who did it took all his measurements and then whipped out an HP calculator. Who knew there's a surveyor pack? He said that the surveying gear has all the smarts to do the calculations built in, but he liked to double check because he's found bugs in the gears calculations but never the HP, and he doesn't like to get screwed by filing incorrect reports. Need I say, not a programmer? I could go on. How about an alternative world view: people like RPN and HP calculators because they're the right tool for the right job. All anec-data, of course, much as you've offered. But I understand your personal perspective; when you're half-assing your way through a degree (or task, or career, whatever) you don't much care about and probably aren't much good at, you use tools that are the shortest short-cut to getting some task done, minimal effort, instead of taking time to learn tools that up your game. The world is full of second (third?) rate talent. But taking what you're doing seriously and learning the tools needed to exceed isn't always "elitism", it can just as well be professionalism. Just like it isn't "elitism" to make an effort to be accurate, factual and impartial in other professions, instead of sloppy, biased and condescending. YMMV. KJ

11 years, 4 months

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Odd Commodore 64 Question

by healyzh＠aracnet.com

Does anyone have any advice on how to take a photograph and display it on a Commodore 64? I have a rather crazy art project in mind. Zane -- healyzh at aracnet.com http://www.zanesphotography.com http://www.flickr.com/photos/zanes-photography/ https://www.facebook.com/ZanesPhotography

11 years, 4 months

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CBM 8032, nothing on screen

by brad＠bettercomputing.net

Got yet another PET today - a CBM 8032 with the black bezel. In my PET collection I'm trying to get, instead of each model, a representative of each body style - and there seems to be no shortage of that. Of the five I now have, each is different in some way. Anyway, I'm confident the 8032's mainboard is alive - it chirps on startup. But that's all it does. Nothing appears on the screen. I took the screen hood off - the tube lights up, so there's power and action. If I disconnect the data cable from the motherboard, I get a single dot in the center of the screen. I also have a SuperPET here, the only other unit with the larger monitor. So naturally I tried 'swapping' them - ie running the monitor leads from each to the other's motherboard and turning both on. However the SuperPET monitor doesn't come on either when connected to the 8032, and the 8032's monitor still doesn't come on even when connected to the SuperPET. Not sure what this portends - my expertise has been in the older models so far. Anyway, any advice would be appreciated.. I was hoping I'd get something by doing the swap, so I had an inlking as to what was wrong, but it appears that isn't going to happen here. Brad

11 years, 4 months

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DEC-PDP 11/34 (?) for sale in Memphis, TN

by tosteve＠yahoo.com

Carl has a large "Marquette MUSE system" system for sale in Memphis, TN. MUSE=Marquette Universal Storage for Electrocardiography. It's DEC-based, not sure of the specifics. See pics here: http://oldcomputers.net/temp/muse-1.jpg http://oldcomputers.net/temp/muse-2.jpg http://oldcomputers.net/temp/muse-3.jpg Pick-up required. Contact Carl if interested: Carl E. Osborne Jr. - carl at datamed.com ------------------------------------------------------------------ History: Marquette?s forte? was the acquisition and storage of cardiology records, specifically electrocardiographic data (ECG/EKG), using mainframe Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) PDP-11 computer systems. They were large ECG management systems that stored electrocardiograms on 300MB CDC 9448 hard drives.

11 years, 4 months

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Newspaper Article on the RICM

by michael.99.thompson＠gmail.com

There was a nice article on the RICM in today's Providence Journal newspaper. http://www.providencejournal.com/breaking-news/content/20140125-a-view-from… -- Michael Thompson

11 years, 4 months

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Two of my recent posts aren't showing up..

by drlegendre＠gmail.com

Am I doing something wrong? I've written two new topics in the last few days, and neither of them are showing up. However, my replies to existing threads seem to show up more reliably. Is this even visible? TIA for any info.

11 years, 4 months

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128K Mac oddness...

by derschjo＠gmail.com

So it being the 30th anniversary of the Mac and all, I thought I'd play with my 128K Macintosh a bit. I've had it running before, but never got it running anything interesting, so I thought I'd start with a few small games... and there, the trouble began. In a nutshell: I have a few 400K boot disks that I wrote years back (and they're still fine), these contain System 2.0 and System 3.2. All well and good -- I can boot and everything's grand (though a bit boring.) Likewise, I can format other 400K disks in either the external drive or the internal drive, and read/write from/to them without problems. UNTIL... I take one of the 400K disks I've formatted on the 128K Mac and attempt to copy some games from my Mac 512Ke to the disk. The 512Ke is happy to read/write the disk (using the same external drive I used with the 128K Mac) and everything's marvelous. But afterwards, when Finder on the 128K Mac attempts to open the disk, it bombs out with an address error ("Sorry, a system error occurred. ID = 02") and I'm forced to reboot. At this point, I've tried: - Using the internal rather than the external drive to read the disk (suspecting some manner of alignment issue with one or more of the drives) - Several different floppies (all DD, not HD, before you ask :)) - Formatting the floppy on the 512K Mac. - Copying files to a system disk, rather than a blank disk and then booting from said system disk - Booting the 512K Mac with various different System versions (3.2, 6.0.3) and doing the copy from there. - Both System 2.0 and System 3.2 All with the same results -- once the 512K Mac has modified the disk, the 128K Mac chokes on it (it will still *boot* from a modified System disk, but is unable to open it in the Finder without crashing.) At this point I'm stumped. I suppose it's possible my 128K Mac has a fault of some sort (a bit difficult to diagnose given my lack of ability to run a diagnostic...) but it seems to work fine otherwise. Is there some incompatibility between the filesystem portions of the toolbox ROMs in the 128K vs. the 512Ke that could cause problems here? My early-Macintosh-System-Fu is rather weak (I haven't used anything prior to System 6.X all that much) so perhaps I'm missing something obvious here... Thanks for any tips... - Josh

11 years, 4 months

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128K Mac oddness...

by brad＠bettercomputing.net

Sounds like possibly an alignment issue. ?I went through this with my 400k drive in my Lisa and my Plus. ?The Plus could only occasionally read what the Lisa wrote. ?Then I realized when I had had the Lisa drive apart for servicing I had forgotten all about alignment for the stepper motor. ?As it turned out, I got lucky.. I actually had pictures of it from before disassembly and was able to use the sticker on the motor to make a lucky guess. ?After that, everything was merry. Sent from Samsung Mobile <div>-------- Original message --------</div><div>From: azd30 <azd30 at telus.net> </div><div>Date:01/25/2014 8:16 AM (GMT-08:00) </div><div>To: "General Discussion: On-Topic Posts Only" <cctech at classiccmp.org> </div><div>Subject: Re: 128K Mac oddness... </div><div> </div>Don't know about floppies, but hd's have an interleave issue between some early Mac models. It usually makes them slow though. Try asking this on m68kla.org -- alex ----- Original Message ----- From: Josh Dersch <derschjo at gmail.com> To: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts <cctalk at classiccmp.org> Sent: Sat, 25 Jan 2014 00:00:54 -0700 (MST) Subject: 128K Mac oddness... So it being the 30th anniversary of the Mac and all, I thought I'd play with my 128K Macintosh a bit.? I've had it running beforeI, but never got it running anything interesting, so I thought I'd start with a few small games... and there, the trouble began. In a nutshell:? I have a few 400K boot disks that I wrote years back (and they're still fine), these contain System 2.0 and System 3.2.? All well and good -- I can boot and everything's grand (though a bit boring.) Likewise, I can format other 400K disks in either the external drive or the internal drive, and read/write from/to them without problems. UNTIL... I take one of the 400K disks I've formatted on the 128K Mac and attempt to copy some games from my Mac 512Ke to the disk.? The 512Ke is happy to read/write the disk (using the same external drive I used with the 128K Mac) and everything's marvelous.? But afterwards, when Finder on the 128K Mac attempts to open the disk, it bombs out with an address error ("Sorry, a system error occurred.?? ID = 02") and I'm forced to reboot. At this point, I've tried: - Using the internal rather than the external drive to read the disk (suspecting some manner of alignment issue with one or more of the drives) - Several different floppies (all DD, not HD, before you ask :)) - Formatting the floppy on the 512K Mac. - Copying files to a system disk, rather than a blank disk and then booting from said system disk - Booting the 512K Mac with various different System versions (3.2, 6.0.3) and doing the copy from there. - Both System 2.0 and System 3.2 All with the same results -- once the 512K Mac has modified the disk, the 128K Mac chokes on it (it will still *boot* from a modified System disk, but is unable to open it in the Finder without crashing.) At this point I'm stumped.? I suppose it's possible my 128K Mac has a fault of some sort (a bit difficult to diagnose given my lack of ability to run a diagnostic...) but it seems to work fine otherwise.? Is there some incompatibility between the filesystem portions of the toolbox ROMs in the 128K vs. the 512Ke that could cause problems here? My early-Macintosh-System-Fu is rather weak (I haven't used anything prior to System 6.X all that much) so perhaps I'm missing something obvious here... Thanks for any tips... - Josh

11 years, 4 months

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What to preserve from the pre-IP era

by aek＠bitsavers.org

Just throwing this out to see what other people think. I suspect we're at the tail end of the usage life of devices that don't speak IP. I'm mostly thinking about networking devices 80's > 00's So, what needs to be preserved? How much of this does CHM need to do? Is any other collecting institution already covering this? How much is within scope? We've been having curatorial discussions about this for years inside CHM, and have been doing some directed collecting since before the big exhibition was locked down in 2010, but it is a big topic and there were a lot of evolutionary dead-ends. What got me thinking about this is I've been working with someone who has storage units full of mid-80's IBM SNA stuff and it's taken me months to scan a fraction of it. I know there are huge swaths of telephony and networking that I've never even looked at. It's pretty overwhelming, actually, to get my head around from the software side.

11 years, 4 months

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Using two RL02 drives on OS/8? (cont'd)

by charlesmorris800＠centurytel.net

It's working again! I made a new RL02 pack using vtserver on my other machine (11/23+), which takes a while to transmit 7.8 MB even at 19200 baud, put it in the 8/A drive 0, held my breath, flipped the boot switch... and got the "." prompt on the terminal :) So the problem that started this whole mess was an IDC connector that I had improperly crimped, inside one of the RL02 drives, so that I could run ribbon cable to the RL8A instead of buying the expensive BC80xx cable. Lesson learned. Bought a BC80J-20! That short circuit was somewhere in the write data lines, which apparently then wiped out the OS/8 pack so it wouldn't boot any more. Lastly, my incorrectly seated quad extender card was introducing errors even after fixing the cable problems, and I wasted several hours chasing that... I may invest in a hex-height extender card to avoid this problem in the future! On the other hand, I now have a serial interface on the desktop PC >from which I can download programs direct to the 8/A. The next thing is to learn how to use Philipp Hachtmann's KL8E in FPGA to download through a laptop USB port at high speed. It looks like I can just change the few IOT instructions of the RIM and BIN loaders to match the card's switch settings. Trying to get Windows to put binary files out a USB port will be more fun, I'm sure. Meanwhile, back to the original problem! My build of OS/8 does not recognize that there are two RL02 drives in the system... which is how I think this thread got started in the first place quite some time ago :)

11 years, 4 months

2
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Fwd: [GreenKeys] Bletchley Park

by captainkirk359＠gmail.com

Somewhat off-topic, but this was brought up in the GreenKeys mailing list. The new CEO of the Bletchley Park Trust is sacking some of the circa 80 year old volunteers who had been working for Bletchley Park and the National Museum of Computing; apparently just for showing guests the NMOC and Colossus. In case the BBC link doesn't work, here's a link to the reposted version on YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d5n9eVVtKeA I've attached one of the more interesting and informative replies after the forwarded message. Regards, Christian ---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Craig Sawyers <c.sawyers at tech-enterprise.com> Date: 24 January 2014 18:55 Subject: [GreenKeys] Bletchley Park To: greenkeys at mailman.qth.net This has just been aired on BBC UK. Bletchley Park's new boss Ian Standen is sacking the 80-odd year old volunteers that have been working there for decades. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-25886961 Craig ______________________________________________________________ GreenKeys mailing list Home: http://mailman.qth.net/mailman/listinfo/greenkeys Help: http://mailman.qth.net/mmfaq.htm Post: mailto:GreenKeys at mailman.qth.net 2002-to-present greenkeys archive: http://mailman.qth.net/pipermail/greenkeys/ 1998-to-2001 greenkeys archive: http://mailman.qth.net/archive/greenkeys/greenkeys.html Randy Guttery's 2001-to-2009 GreenKeys Search Tool: http://comcents.com/tty/greenkeyssearch.html This list hosted by: http://www.qsl.net Please help support this email list: http://www.qsl.net/donate.html On 25 January 2014 04:57, Craig Sawyers <c.sawyers at tech-enterprise.com> wrote: > All the details are in the video segment - but I suspect that might not be > possible to get outside the UK. Basically it is one guy in tears because > after taking visitors around Colossus (which he was not allowed to do; see > below) he was called to Standen's office and dismissed. It showed another > guy who had been given his marching orders (remember these guys are unpaid > volunteers) clearing out the display cabinet of his own personal Churchill > memorabilia into cardboard boxes. Then there was an interview with Standen, > in which he said that to enhance the visitor experience the site had to move > with the times, and those who would not fall in line had to go. > > This is all down to a major league dispute between the Bletchley Park Trust, > who own the site, and the National Museum of Computing where Colossus and > Tunny and all the related equipment and galleries are. Basically the > relationship used to be pretty positive - the NMOC paid a rent, the ticket > price was split between the Trust and the NMOC and everything worked. Then > Standen, and ex-military guy, took over as the Trust's CEO and all hell > broke loose. The Trust now claim that the NMOC owe them ?200k in historic > debt; they claim part ownership of Colossus; they refuse to collect money on > the gate for NMOC so you have to pay extra to see Colossus, and the whole of > the NMOC is out of bounds to tour guides - I believe they are even > instructed not to mention its existence. > > The only mention of the NMOC on the Bletchley website is buried here > http://www.bletchleypark.org.uk/content/visit/whattosee/other.rhtm . What > it does not mention is that you cannot visit the site just to see Colossus > etc - you have to pay the site entry fee at the gate, and then as a result > of Byzantine politics pay extra to see everything to do with Colossus. > > The knock-on has had an effect on the Lorenz SZ42, which I restored to full > functionality around ten years ago. During a visit to Paderborn in Germany > five years ago for a Cipher Challenge, the Germans fired it up before I > arrived and blew up the mains transformer, which was kind of ironic. On > return I had that re-rewound. Then Tony Sale died, and shortly afterward > Standen took over as CEO. The problem is that formal ownership of the SZ42 > is still GCHQ, and custodianship vests in the CEO. But the location of the > machine is at NMOC. The continuing blood on the walls dispute essentially > locks me out of repairing the only functional SZ42 on the planet. > > It is a total mess, alas > > Craig > > > > ______________________________________________________________ > GreenKeys mailing list > Home: http://mailman.qth.net/mailman/listinfo/greenkeys > Help: http://mailman.qth.net/mmfaq.htm > Post: mailto:GreenKeys at mailman.qth.net > > 2002-to-present greenkeys archive: http://mailman.qth.net/pipermail/greenkeys/ > 1998-to-2001 greenkeys archive: http://mailman.qth.net/archive/greenkeys/greenkeys.html > Randy Guttery's 2001-to-2009 GreenKeys Search Tool: http://comcents.com/tty/greenkeyssearch.html > > This list hosted by: http://www.qsl.net > Please help support this email list: http://www.qsl.net/donate.html -- Christian M. Gauger-Cosgrove STCKON08DS0 Contact information available upon request.

11 years, 4 months

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DEC TU58 Baud Rate

by nf6x＠nf6x.net

The manuals for the TU58 DECtape II tape drive controller indicate that the transmit and receive baud rates can be set independently. Have any of y'all ever heard of an application that uses different transmit vs. receive baud rates with a TU58 drive, or is this independent baud rate capability just a coincidental feature that arose from the way the controller's UART was implemented? I'm thinking about a little embedded TU58 emulator project, and I'm wondering how important it is to support the independent baud rate feature. -- Mark J. Blair, NF6X <nf6x at nf6x.net> http://www.nf6x.net/

11 years, 4 months

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Prime?

by michael.99.thompson＠gmail.com

> > From: Christian Kennedy <chris at mainecoon.com> > Date: Sat, 25 Jan 2014 21:51:13 -0800 > Subject: Re: Prime? > > On 24 Jan 2014, at 10:11 PM, Jonathan Katz <jon at jonworld.com> wrote: > > > On Fri, Jan 24, 2014 at 11:52 PM, Dennis Boone <drb at msu.edu> wrote: > >>> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superminicomputer > >>> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minisupercomputer > >> > >> Oi! Prime does not Cray! > > > > Does anyone even have any running Prime gear anymore? > > Yup. Not that I fire the thing up terribly often. > > -- > Christian Kennedy Ph.D. > chris at mainecoon.com AF6AP | DB00000692 | PG00029419 > http://www.mainecoon.com PGP KeyID 108DAB97 > PGP fingerprint: 4E99 10B6 7253 B048 6685 6CBC 55E1 20A3 108D AB97 > "Mr. McKittrick, after careful consideration..." > The RICM had a Prime 2850 http://www.ricomputermuseum.org/Home/equipment/prime-computer-2850 and a Prime 9950 http://www.ricomputermuseum.org/Home/equipment/prime-computer-se50m Sometime you should drive south and do a survey of the equipment. -- Michael Thompson

11 years, 4 months

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Exidy Sorcerer

by terry＠webweavers.co.nz

This might be a blast from the past for some of you. Another video remake >from my collection. http://youtu.be/bEnsYJOjh2k Terry (Tez)

11 years, 4 months

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Using two RL02 drives on OS/8? (cont'd)

by charlesmorris800＠centurytel.net

>>On Sat, 21 Dec 2013 22:36:42 -0600, you wrote: >> >>>The last time I had a chance to tinker with my malfunctioning PDP-8/A >>>with two RL02's was way back in Feb. 2013... here is the most relevant >>>tail of the old thread: >>> >>>> The connections from the drive select outputs on the RL8A checked >>>> perfectly to the line receiver inputs on the RL logic board. While I >>>> appreciate Rick's taking the time to make me a selectable version of >>>> the RL02 oscillating seek.... he included a bug at no charge too ;) >>>> >>>> Specifically, the constant at 0230 (0100) selects the appropriate >>>> drive and resets it all right (0101 in AC). But - later on down the >>>> program, the SEEK (03) command is issued with another RLCB... however, >>>> the AC is forced to 0003 by the microprogrammed 7325. >>>> >>>> (As is probably apparent by now, the AC must have 0103 in it to select >>>> Drive 1). >>>> >>>> I edited the program to use a TAD 0231 and put the constant at 0231. >>>> So instead of the CLA CLL CML IAC RAL (load AC with 03 the hard way, >>>> an old-time DEC programmer's way to save one word when memory was a >>>> precious commodity) :) the AC now loads with 0103 and lo and behold, >>>> Drive 1 seeks merrily away! Restore the two constants to Drive 0 and >>>> THAT drive seeks. OK. >>>> >>>> However, all was not lost... during the couple of hours of chasing my >>>> tail wondering where the LSB of the drive select was going, I found >>>> that I had inserted the header into the RL logic board crookedly and >>>> bent two pins, one in the wrong hole and one shoved aside! :( >>>> >>>> Not only that, the line driver chip which provides the drive select >>>> signals had come from the factory with NO solder at all on its Vcc pin >>>> 16! >>>> =:^O >>>> Fixed that too. >>>> >>>> I think the OS/8 packs have been wiped out by now... various FAULT >>>> lights coming on, especially on the 2nd drive in the chain... going to >>>> build another system pack with VTserver which takes a good half-hour >>>> or more at 19200 baud. Hope the servo tracks are ok, otherwise I'll >>>> need to buy a couple of good packs! >>>OK. Last week I finally fired up the 8/A again. The problems had >>>actually gotten worse during the prolonged rest... I couldn't get >>>either drive to work this time (fault lights on both, as soon as the >>>Ready lights come on, even before any accesses). After much hair- >>>pulling and 'scope troubleshooting, I finally found (inside drive 1) >>>that I had improperly crimped one of the IDC connectors to the ribbon >>>cable, inside the bottom drive in the rack, where it was making a >>>variable resistance short between the two sector pulse drive lines! >>> >>>So, having fixed that, I verified that Rick's oscillating seek program >>>works on either drive without faulting. Enter the constants for drive >>>0, drive 0 seeks no matter whether the first or second drive in the >>>chain as long as the unit 0 plug is inserted. Same for drive 1. Both >>>are not being selected simultaneously. >>> >>>I also entered a short program to get the two status words, and that >>>reads the status of either drive correctly (idle, spin up, locked on >>>track 0, spin down, write protect button pushed). >>> >>>Now, the original problem is still there, that OS/8 won't boot and the >>>RL02 faults (with either the original OS/8 pack that may have been >>>wiped, AND the remade one). Doesn't matter which drive is used as >>>Drive 0, or whether the new or the original OS/8 pack... Hit the BOOT >>>switch and Drive 0 audibly moves its heads, the fault light flashes >>>briefly, then it goes back to being ready (and of course OS/8 is not >>>running). >>> >>>The interesting part is if both drives are loaded, then the fault >>>light on *both* drives flashes, then they both go ready again! >>>I haven't recently tried disconnecting the second drive cable and just >>>running with one drive, but that wasn't working before, either. >>> >>>I am not going to be able to sort this out (unless I use my ancient >>>Tek 7D01 logic analyzer triggered by the fault signal) without a >>>diagnostic pack... >>> >>>Does anyone have the diagnostic program set for PDP-8 and can put them >>>on an RL02 disc pack? I could either mail a disc to you, or I could >>>pay for one if a spare is available. >>>thanks for any help! >>>-Charles >> >>OK. Got a serial link to my PC going, and successfully downloaded various RL02 diagnostics from the "diagpack2.rk05" image. The seek test works, as does pack verify. However, either drive 0 or 1 flags an error on the read/write test promptly.: >> >>WD1 0235 >>WD2 0000 (the two status words from the RL02, and they are normal); >>ER 2001 (if I'm interpreting this right, this is the Error Register which is showing only an OPI - Operation Incomplete error); >>CB 0115 (<----------- what is this? ----------) >>CA 0000 (cylinder address) >>SA 0100 (sector address) >> >>As I posted on another thread, having instructions for these AJxxxx routines would really help, although I can figure much of it out from the RL02 manual, especially if I just use the defaults when prompted. >> >>What I think this is telling me is that the problem is somewhere on the controller card, as neither drive will write but both can read without errors. >> >>There is a "Diskless RL8A test" (AJRLAC) but I can't figure out how to use it. Anyone got instructions for this one? thanks :) > >Read over the RL8A Technical Manual, specifically the write section. > >CB = Command Register B, 0115 is Drive 1, memory field 1, Write >command. >CA = Command Register A (which also happens in this context to be >Cylinder Address :) Head 0, Direction Forward, Cylinder 0). > >So - the proper write command is being issued on the first >cylinder/sector address of the platter, but OPI (operation incomplete >in 200 ms) is the only flag returned. That tells me the fault is >likely somewhere in the write logic as it appears that nothing is >being written at all, not just incorrect data or at the wrong time >which would set other error flags. Will report more when I get another >chance to work on it! I think I found the problem (aside from the defective cable previously described), and "Y'all ain't gonna believe this"... I toggled in a couple of simple programs to write each register (Command A, Command B, Word Count, Sector Address) and read them back. On a few occasions I noticed the SA was not reading the same as written. And... the returned bit pattern changed when I moved the RL8A card! As it turns out, my quad extender card was not lined up perfectly in the chassis (which is hex-height, and so is the RL8A, but it only uses four of its six finger sets). I put the RL8A directly in the slot and re-ran the diskless controller test and it worked flawlessly. Also the read/write tests now work without all those errors too. I can't believe I spent hours and hours chasing this :P However, my OS/8 pack still won't boot. Interestingly, the same boot behavior is seen with the scratch packs that I used on the read/write tests (flip the boot switch, the heads move, the fault light flashes, drive goes back to being ready). So it looks like the OS has been wiped out and it's time to make another pack on the 11/23+ with vtserver. We'll see how that goes soon...

11 years, 4 months

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A nice article

by c.murray.mccullough＠gmail.com

Just what a ?carefully researched article? means I?m not sure; an historian does exactly that or should. But if we historians are not willing to stand-by our research & printed(electronic, oral & otherwise) works then why do it in the first place! If I say this is the evidence I have and did due diligence then I stand by what I have done. If it is ?corrected? in the future then so be it. But let us not avoid writing history ?at all costs? just because Will considers them ?the most dangerous words in historic research?. I?d rather have my opinions out there then not! But so has he. A conundrum indeed. This applies to the 30th ann. of the MacIntosh. We know its history but not the underlying reason it was created as S. Jobs is no longer here. I can surmise what was his intention but that's all. Does this negate what I do? Hardly! Murray :-)

11 years, 4 months

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Quick way to load bin loader into memory from OS8

by rickb＠bensene.com

BOOT /PT Rick Bensene The Old Calculator Museum http://oldcalculatormuseum.com -----Original Message----- From: Marc Howard [cramcram at gmail.com] Received: Saturday, 25 Jan 2014, 1:49PM To: General Discussion: On-Topic Posts Only [cctech at classiccmp.org] Subject: Quick way to load bin loader into memory from OS8 I seem to recall seeing that the BIN (and probably RIM) loaders can be loaded with a single command from OS8. What's the magic command? Thanks, Marc

11 years, 4 months

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Quick way to load bin loader into memory from OS8

by cramcram＠gmail.com

I seem to recall seeing that the BIN (and probably RIM) loaders can be loaded with a single command from OS8. What's the magic command? Thanks, Marc

11 years, 4 months

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ATD (MG 201) ISA card?

by jules.richardson99＠gmail.com

Picked up this critter yesterday, it's a short (~7") 8-bit ISA card made by ATD (which the FCC sticker tells me is Advanced Transducer Devices) with a female DB-25 and female DE9 connector on the rear edge. There's a 40-pin IC on it labeled 'printer', as well as a 24-pin IC labeled 'mono', and a 6845 CRT controller. Fair enough, and initially I'm thinking that it's just a reworked clone of an IBM MDA card - but also present on the board are two 48-pin ICs, which suggests there might be more to it than that; sure, I remember there being a lot of TTL logic on the IBM MDA board, but I'm surprised it needs two 48-pin ICs to condense it all. Unfortunately the pair of 48-pin chips are custom parts (as are the 'mono' and 'printer' ICs) - one's branded ATD1/BLOWD/802D8643LD and the other ATD2/WIND/8038637LDC. Does anyone remember this board and can tell me if it is something more than just MDA/parallel? There's no separate ROM chip, but I suppose it's entirely possible that it has some firmware embedded in one of the large ICs. cheers Jules

11 years, 4 months

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RK05

by wdonzelli＠gmail.com

It looks like I might have an extra RK05j available, but first, a question: Can a reasonable PDP-11/45 system be made using a single RK05? The system I have has been hacked up and modified so much from its gas chromatograph days that I feel like I can justify fooling around with it any way I like. It has no disk, but I am pretty sure I can slide an RK05 in the rack (it is a two rack system, with the second rack being a TU10). I do not think a second RK05 will fit, so that one will likely be available. Please ask off list. -- Will, 10512. Yes, it is a zip code.

11 years, 4 months

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Who built the first minicomputers?

by steve＠tronola.com

I appreciate all the hearty discussion in response to the article: http://www.tronola.com/html/who_built_the_first_minicomput.html There are some points that I would like to respond to: >It perpetuates the myth that there was such a thing as a "minicomputer" before the late 60's. There have been several threads now on the origin of the term... --- In no way did I mean to suggest that the TERM minicomputer was used contemporaneously with the machines which I found to be classifiable as minis. Rather, I am trying to clarify what that term has come to mean. From there, I proceeded to look for the first machines that fit that definition. Now, I certainly don't claim that the definition I propose is the very best one and would appreciate helpful comments on improving it. >There have been numerous attempts to redefine the boundaries based on [various criteria] ALL such redefinitions, that ignore the fundamental nature of being MARKETING terminology... ---Marketing people might have originated the term minicomputer but like all words, it is defined by the people who use it. We do in fact use it and others seem to know what we mean. My task was to clarify what people do mean by it. >Likewise, the use of the word "first" is fraught with danger without completely ARBITRARY further stipulations...But, the boundaries are undefined, or rather, everybody has a unique definition of the boundaries of their own. --- I totally agree that "first" would be meaningless without first defining what you are saying is first. Rather than using arbitrary criteria with which to define mini, I tried to find ones which could be justified and that many could agree upon. For each factor, I looked for good common-sense reasons that it needed to be so and stated those. If I am off base on some, I would appreciate feedback on what you think would be better. >Are we talking about working prototype? announcement? orders taken? first delivery? full retail availability? --- It was stated that first production ship date would determine priority. Please see the article for the justifications for that. I think you will find that this is what makes sense. >Should limited production machines be excluded? --- The requirement was simply that it must have been manufactured in quantity. Fortunately, the exact quantities shipped did not become an issue for minis. The lowest quantity machine was probably the LINC, of which some 50 or so were made. Thanks, Steve L. http://www.tronola.com/

11 years, 4 months

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Looking for a Chicago Lock key C2132 for a TI980B

by ethan.dicks＠gmail.com

Hi, All, Much like the famous XX2247 key for DEC gear, apparently the default key for a number of TI machines, including the TI980B, is a Chicago Lock cut to code C2132 (the code is typically stamped on the key). Does anyone have such a thing and can spare one? I have a TI980B and no key. Thanks for looking, -ethan

11 years, 4 months

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First Minicomputer

by elson＠pico-systems.com

The Bendix G-15 was conspicuously left out, although I think it meets all the requirements. it was the size of a refrigerator, weighed 800 Lbs, had several K of drum memory (not "RAM") had an IBM executive typewriter for I/O, and ran a version of Algol. Jon

11 years, 4 months

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Who built the first minicomputers?

by rickb＠bensene.com

What about the Bendix G15? Introduced in 1953. Definitely fits the criteria outlined in the article. Not that I agree with the article..like many others here feel, the term `first` in a historical context is too fraught with issues of definition. Rick Bensene -----Original Message----- From: Chuck Guzis [cclist at sydex.com] Received: Friday, 24 Jan 2014, 9:17AM To: General at bensene.com [General at bensene.com]; Discussion at bensene.com:On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts [cctalk at classiccmp.org] Subject: Re: Who built the first minicomputers? I'm surprised that the Packard-Bell PB250 wasn't considered. It could run from a standard US lighting circuit. Circa (IIRC) 1959. Not a drum machine, but used a recirculating magnetostrictive memory. It also seems that there may have been a few military computers that would satisfy your criteria. As Will has stated "first" is a very dangerous word and "minicomputer" is, in fact, a term of art. Like pornography, it's what it is because someone says so. --Chuck

11 years, 4 months

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1/10th speed PDP-11/40 simulator on ATmega2560

by ethan.dicks＠gmail.com

Found via Hack-a-Day just now... https://github.com/davecheney/avr11 It apparently can handle booting v6 UNIX on an emulated RK05 at about 10% the speed of real hardware. It requires a custom sheild to add a couple of 8-pin SPI RAM chips. Directions for that are said to be coming soon. -ethan

11 years, 4 months

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Booting my PDP-8A, so close yet..

by cramcram＠gmail.com

I've got a PDP-8A with RK05's and a TC08/TU56. I've verified the serial port is okay (via checkser), loaded focal with the rim loader and run both read and write tests on a RK05 pack. I've done a restrk05 with both diagpack2.rk05<http://www.pdp8online.com/pdp8cgi/os8_html?act=dir;fn=images/os8/diagpack2.…> and haygood-osv3r.rk05<http://www.pdp8online.com/pdp8cgi/os8_html?act=dir;fn=images/os8/haygood%2D…>. It seems to progress ok, counting up to the last cylinder and leaving the AC equal to 0 when done. However when I execute the two word bootstrap for the RK8E I hear the drive seek once and then stop at location 0031. I've also tried a restore with the TC08 but it never even gets to the point that the drive gets selected (the SR is 0 on entry). However if I punch in the TC08 bootstrap unit 0 does a rewind, then goes forward (with lots of das blinken lights), goes past quite a few blocks and then halts (this is on a tape that claims to have OS8 on it). The RK05 is most frustrating since it passes the rw tests (9 passes) but doesn't boot. I guess I'm going to be loading in some maindecs unless someone out there has any other ideas. Thanks, Marc

11 years, 4 months

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Alcon surgical laser S-100 board

by alexandre.tabajara＠gmail.com

Dear sirs, I'm looking for education, since I know nothing about S-100 I got some boards from an Alcon surgical laser, and they SEEMS TO BE clearly S-100-compatible. The CPU board uses an 8085, with ROM mapped from $1000 on. BIN avaiable upon request. Since I'm a complete n00b about S-100 systems, how can I positively identify this board as a S-100 compatible board, and what are the minimal connections I can use for, at least, make it tick? (now I understand the need to learn more about CPU emulators and how to integrate "blocks" of code to emulate an unknown computer easily) Thanks Alexandre Souza

11 years, 4 months

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Who built the first minicomputers?

by rickb＠bensene.com

Correction...the G15 was introduced in 1956. Rick Bensene -----Original Message----- From: Rick Bensene [rickb at bensene.com] Received: Friday, 24 Jan 2014, 10:18AM To: cctalk at classiccmp.org [cctalk at classiccmp.org] Subject: RE: Who built the first minicomputers? What about the Bendix G15? Introduced in 1953. Definitely fits the criteria outlined in the article. Not that I agree with the article..like many others here feel, the term `first` in a historical context is too fraught with issues of definition. Rick Bensene -----Original Message----- From: Chuck Guzis [cclist at sydex.com] Received: Friday, 24 Jan 2014, 9:17AM To: General at bensene.com [General at bensene.com]; Discussion at bensene.com:On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts [cctalk at classiccmp.org] Subject: Re: Who built the first minicomputers? I'm surprised that the Packard-Bell PB250 wasn't considered. It could run from a standard US lighting circuit. Circa (IIRC) 1959. Not a drum machine, but used a recirculating magnetostrictive memory. It also seems that there may have been a few military computers that would satisfy your criteria. As Will has stated "first" is a very dangerous word and "minicomputer" is, in fact, a term of art. Like pornography, it's what it is because someone says so. --Chuck

11 years, 4 months

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IBM 3179

by aek＠bitsavers.org

http://www.ebay.com/itm/380684482851 the seller is 'special' he had useless pictures, updated them at my request, then realized that there was a market for just the keyboards, pulled them off and now is selling them separately for $50 I'm sorry I even asked Anyway, if someone else is looking for one for $150, here's your chance.

11 years, 4 months

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NS405, NS455 (was Re: NEC uPD7201C Datasheet, Pinout?)

by spacewar＠gmail.com

On Jan 20, 2014 2:07 PM, "Holm Tiffe" <holm at freibergnet.de> wrote: > Next interesting thing are 10 pcs. of NS405-B18N, a sticker says that that > are display processors, someone knows where tehy where used in? To a first approximation, nowhere. Ciarcia used it in the TERM-MITE construction article in the Feb. 1984 issue of BYTE, reprinted in _Ciarcia's Circuit Cellar, Vol. 7_. There's also an NS455 variant, and alternate part numbers (e.g. NS32045). They have an enchanced 8048 core and a text-oriented CRT controller.

11 years, 4 months

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Generic monitor ROM...

by geneb＠deltasoft.com

Does anyone here know where I could find a "generic" monitor ROM that could be tweaked for the target system? I'm looking for something that would fit in a 4K EPROM. tnx. g. -- Proud owner of F-15C 80-0007 http://www.f15sim.com - The only one of its kind. http://www.diy-cockpits.org/coll - Go Collimated or Go Home. Some people collect things for a hobby. Geeks collect hobbies. ScarletDME - The red hot Data Management Environment A Multi-Value database for the masses, not the classes. http://scarlet.deltasoft.com - Get it _today_!

11 years, 4 months

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Vintage-computer.com

by barythrin＠gmail.com

The forums have a maintenance announcement up last time i checked an hour or so ago so hopefully some planned maintenance is going on. It didnt specify any eta but they're (or Erik) usually pretty quick to get things up.

11 years, 4 months

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MAINDEC diagnostic program instructions?

by charlesmorris800＠centurytel.net

I still can't boot OS/8 on my 8/A with RL02's. I now have the ability to download files from my PC to the console port (which goes a heck of a lot faster at 9600 baud than at 110!). For example, FOCAL-69 downloads in about 20 seconds. It works too, so I don't think the problem is with the 8/A itself. Anyhow, I have all the RL02 diagnostics from the diagpack2.rk05 image. So far, AJRLHA.BN (that's the "SEEK/FCTN" test) works without errors. I'm about to try the AJRLIA (read/write test) which should require losing the contents of a pack... What I'm looking for is a library of all the instructions for the diagnostic routines on that pack, since they are not all just "start at 0200 and follow the prompts". Is there such a thing, or do I have to try and find each one separately? At least just the AJxxxx diagnostics? thanks for any hints. -Charles

11 years, 4 months

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Syquest Drives - 200 vs 88

by silent700＠gmail.com

I was handed a pile of 88mb Syquest disks - ostenisibly Mac formatted - a while back and I decided to have a go at them tonight. The only Syquest drives I found in my pile were the original 44mb and the later 200mb (model 5200C.) Everything I can find on this drive (which isn't much) declares that is is backward *read* compatible with 44mb and 88mb cartridges. That's fine, reading is all I want to do. My test platform is Win7 x64 (boo hoo I know...but it's convenient and there is a working 'dd' I've used many times for hard disk imaging.) I first tested the drive with a 200mb pack I already had. It mounted the cart, presented it to the OS and allowed me to dd the cart to an image file which mounted in a Mac emulator. I declared the drive good. Trying 88mb carts results in consistent errors. The drive sounds like it's mounting it, clicks a bit, spins up and down and finally settled on a 5-green, 5-amber blink code. According to this chart: http://www.kassj.com/articles/sqtable.html that means "incompatible cartridge." My carts are all Syquest-branded. Beyond that (and the possible Mac formatting,) I know nothing else about them. The real rub is this - once it displays that error code, the drive _disappears_ from the SCSI chain. Neither the OS tools nor a SCSI explorer utility find it. Insert the 200mb cart and it's back again; not even a power-cycle needed. The drive does appear with a SCSI ID before inserting a cart; a mounted cart is not necessary for it to present itself. So, theories: - This drive isn't 88mb compatible after all - *All* my carts are bad - The carts were degaussed and thereby lost some sort of low-level formatting or other ID method that the drive uses to recognize them - There's some sort of mode jumper or switch (hardware/software) to kick it into 88mb compatibility mode, if such a thing exists. I have no manual for these drives - I need some sort of driver to enable reading 88mb carts; I don't think this is the case - most OSes should simply see them as removable media; it's the drive's job to sort out cart compatibility Any experience/insight/advice is appreciated here. Also offers of a 88mb Syquest drive :) -- jht

11 years, 4 months

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test-drb January 2014