test-drb December 2014

test-drb@ccmp.vtda.org

179 participants
207 discussions

by sales＠elecplus.com

Mainframes and other stuff Recycle center in NC is willing to save out "stuff" for people. No, no one can go in the back and scrounge. No, he does not want a lot of emails from people. Yes, he gets big blue and orange and beige 6 foot tall OLD mainframes in all the time. They squash them at the moment. Yes, he will package small orders, and will properly palletize larger orders. Local pick up will be available after the new year. So, if u can send me a picture with description and some part numbers, along with what you want to pay, I will consolidate things and make arrangements. Please don't ask for specific boards from DEC; they don't want to go into that much detail. QBUS will mean nothing to him. Big orange cabinet that says xxxxx is much more likely to get saved. They are moving to new warehouse 1st of the month, so all this will start happening after the 1st of the year. Cindy Croxton Electronics Plus 1613 Water Street Kerrville, TX 78028 830-792-3400 phone 830-792-3404 fax sales at elecplus.com AOL IM elcpls

5 years, 4 months

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.

5 years, 7 months

Jobs, McGowan and Olsen

by dm561＠torfree.net

An interesting 3 hours on PBS last night: - 'Steve Jobs - One Last Thing': No description necessary. - 'Long Distance Warrior': McGowan/MCI's David & Goliath battle with AT&T and disastrous merger with Worldcom. - 'Digital Man/Digital World': Ken Olsen/DEC's growth and ultimate decline. (No doubt everyone here except myself had already seen this one ;-) Interesting comparison of the different styles and personalities of three men who profoundly influenced the tech world of today and their companies. Thoroughly enjoyed it. m

6 years, 2 months

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

7 years, 5 months

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

7 years, 8 months

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

8 years, 1 month

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

8 years, 1 month

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.

8 years, 1 month

websites on the classiccmp server

by jwest＠classiccmp.org

8 years, 2 months

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

8 years, 3 months

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test-drb December 2014