test-drb January 2014

test-drb@ccmp.vtda.org

224 participants
263 discussions

by bpettitx＠comcast.net

On 01/17/2014 12:06 PM, allison wrote: <snip> > >Another Lucas company, Droids Inc,? had one on order.? Whatever happened to them anyway? Are you think "Droids works" makers of EditDroid and SoundDroid? > Nope. There was a Lucas company called Droids Inc. In San Rafael. I only visited them, but know they were still around a year later. Billy

10 years, 6 months

1541 Alignment disk

by billdeg＠buzz1.com

>From: "Daniel V. Mackey" <n2dvm at arrl.net> Subject: 1541 Alignment disk. >Does anyone have a Dysan Alignment disk for the 1541 or know where a disk can be found/purchased? >Thanks. ----- Have you tried the 1541-1571 drive alignment program by Free Spirit Software? PM me if you need assistance. Bill Vintagecomputer.net/contact.cfm

10 years, 6 months

MAINDEC Diagnostic Tape Documentation for the PDP-8/A?

by bobvines00＠gmail.com

Does anyone have documentation (printed or PDF) for any of the following MAINDEC diagnostic tapes for the PDP-8/A?: MAINDEC-08-DJKKA-B-D, PDP-8/A CPU TEST, dated Feb. 15, 1975 MAINDEC-08-DJDKA-C-PB1, DKC8-AA OPTION, TEST #1, dated 04/04/77 MAINDEC-08-DJKMA-B-PB1, KM8-A OPTION TEST #2, dated 11/08/76 (Or any others?) If you've got printed copies, could you either scan them or copy them for me? I'm more than willing to cover your copying & mailing costs. Or email the PDF copies (or URLs)? I'll send copies of everything to Al and David Gesswein for posting online. Thanks, Bob

10 years, 6 months

"The search for the lost Cray supercomputer OS"

by mta＠umich.edu

--On January 19, 2014 10:54:55 AM +0000 Dave <dave.g4ugm at gmail.com> wrote: > The folks where I worked at the Proudman Oceanographic Laboratory > (POL) > > http://www.pol.ac.uk/ > > which was based at Bidston Observatory > > http://www.bidstonhill.org.uk/heritage/trail08/ > > had access to the Cray at Daresbury via an Remote Job Entry system. > > http://tardis.dl.ac.uk/computing_history/cray-1s.html > > They used it for Oceanographic modelling. I seem to remember we had > an allocation of one hour of CPU time per week and we struggled to > use it. > (Is this the same Cray we are talking about here?) No, I don't think so. The Cray I'm talking about was housed in a building on Guilford Street in London. My job at the time was to hook it up to an HP machine running Ultrix so people could submit work to it interactively. In the process I may have been the first person to put IP protocol packets onto the ULCC network. At that time people in the UK were suspicious of TCP/IP. I think they became less suspicious when the found that the work I was doing didn't cause problems. Mike

10 years, 6 months

Search For Missing Cray OS

by bpettitx＠comcast.net

On 01/17/2014 12:06 PM, allison wrote: > One has to remember what the machines were used for. It was designed > to solve very large problems that create huge arrays. Oil mapping is > one thing that does that, the others explode. Two local machines that I remember was Apple, using Cray in their Esthetics Design Lab and another at Industrial Light and Magic to control the models in many of the scenes from Star Wars. Another Lucas company, Droids Inc, had one on order. Whatever happened to them anyway? The US Navy had at least one in Monterrey at the Fleet Weather Station. I can't find my notes, but I'm certain that GM had one or more in their design department in detroit. Billy

10 years, 6 months

eBay PDP-12

by ball.of.john＠gmail.com

>I can't know for sure, but here is a lower bound: 11 > >Clubs: >1 - Update Computer Club, Uppsala >2 - Retro-Computing Society of Rhode Island. > >Museums: >1 - Living Computer Museum, Seattle >3 - Computer History Museum, Mountain view (the may have more, but at least 3) > >Private collections: >3 - Undisclosed :) > Pontus. The Corestore has two PDP-12's as well. -John

10 years, 6 months

PDP-8/E MM8EJ G233 Troubles

by kylevowen＠gmail.com

Hi all, Recently, my PDP-8/E has been acting funny. I finally had some time tonight to run a memory test and found that all addresses matching the pattern XX5XX read back all zeros. Everything else tests fine. I swapped the XY driver board (G233) and found that the problem went away. I can't seem to locate a schematic online. My PDP-8/E preliminary maintenance manual only describes the G227, for the 4k core board. Can anyone help with a schematic, or judging from the symptom, point me to a particular area on the board? I've got a 'scope and should be able to diagnose it if I know where to start looking. Thanks, Kyle

10 years, 6 months

Downloading to PDP-8/A (was: Need help with Advantech PCL-740 serial card)

by charlesmorris800＠centurytel.net

Finally, I have a bidirectional 20 ma current loop between my old desktop PC and the 8/A :) There was another "gotcha"... although the power for both transmit and receive current loops comes from the M8316 in the 8/A, the line driver on the PCL-740 card is *not* isolated from ground even when set to passive mode! The 20 ma was there on mark all right, and no current on space, but the design of the M8316 card interface is such that isolation is required for both the + and - terminals. So I had to whip up a quick optoisolator-based board (although a small fast relay would work for 110 baud, I didn't have one handy and I may want to download large files at a faster rate). Anyway. Now I have a set of files (AJRL**.BN) and need to download them to the 8/A. First I have to toggle in the RIM loader, of course. But are these binary files in RIM or BIN mode? If the latter, can I use the PC to send the BIN loader over to the 8/A? thanks Charles

10 years, 6 months

xt1140 on MicroVAX 2000

by emu＠e-bbes.com

Hi all, anybody out here has the parameters for the TEST70 on a microVAX to format a Maxtor xt1140 disk? Actually just trying to test a disk for a friend, and all i have is the VAX ... Cheers

10 years, 6 months

Need help with Advantech PCL-740 serial card

by charlesmorris800＠centurytel.net

On Sat, 18 Jan 2014 12:00:01 -0600, you wrote: >>From: Jonathan Katz <jon at jonworld.com> >> >>On Sat, Jan 18, 2014 at 10:22 AM, Charles >><charlesmorris800 at centurytel.net> wrote: >>> I have an ancient (AMD K6, 300 MHz, Win XP) desktop PC that I am >>> trying to use to download RL02 diagnostics to my PDP-8/A via the TTY >>> console port (20 ma current loop). >> >>Not familiar with this at all, but two things. >> >>1) I remember being able to set IRQs on PCI slots in this era of >>systems. Maybe you need to play with that? >> >>2) Have you tried a protocol other than current loop on this ISA card >>(like RS-232) to another system to see if it works? > >I suspect you are right - that the card is somehow not signaling the PC that it is ready to accept data. But there are no IRQ conflicts (card is jumpered to 12 and Windows is unaware of anything else using 12, or address 0210-7). The existing serial ports are on 03F8, IRQ5 and so forth. Although the PCI slots do have a "plug & play/Auto" setting, I removed every card except this one and the problem is still there! > >Yes, I have tried RS-232. The problem is not the line drivers/receivers... no data is appearing at the UART's TxD pin regardless of which set of buffers it then goes to. And as I noted, I did hard-wire the RTS, CTS, DTR lines and they are being sensed, and do not appear to be telling the port to hold off. > >This card has a controller chip by Lattice and the UART (and a small amount of glue logic). No schematic information of course. > >Will keep trying. Thanks for the help. >>From: Jonathan Katz <jon at jonworld.com> >> >>On Sat, Jan 18, 2014 at 10:22 AM, Charles >><charlesmorris800 at centurytel.net> wrote: >>> I have an ancient (AMD K6, 300 MHz, Win XP) desktop PC that I am >>> trying to use to download RL02 diagnostics to my PDP-8/A via the TTY >>> console port (20 ma current loop). >> >>Not familiar with this at all, but two things. >> >>1) I remember being able to set IRQs on PCI slots in this era of >>systems. Maybe you need to play with that? >> >>2) Have you tried a protocol other than current loop on this ISA card >>(like RS-232) to another system to see if it works? > >I suspect you are right - that the card is somehow not signaling the PC that it is ready to accept data. But there are no IRQ conflicts (card is jumpered to 12 and Windows is unaware of anything else using 12, or address 0210-7). The existing serial ports are on 03F8, IRQ5 and so forth. Although the PCI slots do have a "plug & play/Auto" setting, I removed every card except this one and the problem is still there! > >Yes, I have tried RS-232. The problem is not the line drivers/receivers... no data is appearing at the UART's TxD pin regardless of which set of buffers it then goes to. And as I noted, I did hard-wire the RTS, CTS, DTR lines and they are being sensed, and do not appear to be telling the port to hold off. > >This card has a controller chip by Lattice and the UART (and a small amount of glue logic). No schematic information of course. > >Will keep trying. Thanks for the help. I got it working at last! Changed the card (and COM3 port) settings to IRQ5 and it sends and receives through a loopback test of the current loop interface. Tx and Rx lights are flickering, and my trusty Tek scope shows a nice 110 baud data stream in the current loop :) Yet another multi-hour casualty of Microsoft legacy software. No idea why it wouldn't work on IRQ12 with all other cards removed and the onboard hardware not using that interrupt. Sigh. Now to figure out how to download the RL diagnostics, which are binary files! Hopefully it will be as simple as COPY AJRLxx.BN/B COM3: but we shall see. ... and of course I need the BIN loader running on the 8/A (unless those files are in RIM format?) Anyone know? -Charles

10 years, 6 months

← Newer
1
...
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
...
27
Older →

Jump to page:

2024

2023

2022

2021

2020

2019

2018

2017

2016

2015

2014

2013

2012

2011

2010

2009

2008

2007

2006

2005

2004

2003

2002

2001

2000

1999

1998

1997

test-drb January 2014