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

Wanted - Tandy/RadioShack Prototype boards

by jnc＠mercury.lcs.mit.edu

> From: drlegendre > If you take a look at eBay Sold Items, in late September, a 276-190 > sold for $6 inclusive of US shipping. It only took one bid, so it seems > like the competition isn't too tight. If you decide to go for the one at TopLine, and want to make an offer that's lower than the listed price, mention this (and give the item # for reference). They're very business-like, and they want to move inventory, so if something's only going for $X on the open market, they will cheerfully take $X for it, even if they have it listed for $4X (unlike some eBay sellers, who persist in listing things for $4X, and won't budge - with the result that their stuff stays up forever, almost never selling). Noel

11 years, 5 months

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Wanted - Tandy/RadioShack Prototype boards

by dave.g4ugm＠gmail.com

Folks, Any one got any of these Radio Shack boards lurking that they would sell and ship to the UK? The 275-190 looks best, there is one on E-Bay now but at $20 plus $18 for shipping to the UK its getting very expensive.. . Actually looking at DigiKey that's cheap. $33 for a new board with no shipping. 276-180 276-152 276-190 Or actually any thing with a 22/44 way 0.156" connector. Dave G4UGM

11 years, 5 months

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Anyone have a spare Apple IIgs power supply?

by spacewar＠gmail.com

If anyone happens to have a spare Apple IIgs power supply that they'd be willing to sell for lower than eBay prices, I could really use one. On eBay, the power supply often sells for more than the whole computer. I will replace the failed capacitor in the power supply that I have, but unfortunately when it smoked and burst, it got smelly resinous crap all over the PCB, other components, and the inside of the power supply case, so I'd prefer to put in another power supply than constantly fill the house with fumes from this one. Thanks! Eric

11 years, 5 months

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Favourite text based word processing software

by billdeg＠buzz1.com

> Hello group > I'm toying with the idea of writing a simple word processing package along the lines of Wordstar for my Retrochallenge 2015/01 entry. <snip> > So a little more than a text-editor but only enough to support simple formatting and styles (bold, italic, underline for example). > > Ideally I'd like to implement a clean, logical design without many 'bells and whistles' concentrating on the core functionality. Mark, As a programmer I used to use QEDIT most of the time because it made it easy to edit by column as well as row, mark/move text, easy keystroke commands. The copy I have is saved as q.exe. It was better than notepad and I continued to use it well past it's era. Still hard to edit by column when your parsing text without being forced to use a spreadsheet program. Sounds like you're talking more of a word processor though. So, I'd put in my vote for something like IBM Personal Editor (PEDIT) which gave a person a lot of functionality with little RAM overhead. I never really liked WordStar or Word Perfect myself, but I used what I had available. As far as formatting to the printer goes, I suggest you include the capacity to enter printer codes manually so that you can use most any type of printer that accepts them. I remember inserting codes into programs that were used for a specific printer that way. If you have the manual and given you're talking simple print capabilities you would not need to supply drivers. Bill

11 years, 5 months

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cctech Digest, Vol 2, Issue 12

by cruff＠ruffspot.net

On Dec 12, 2014, at 11:00 AM, Chuck Guzis wrote; > Subject: SCSI tape question > Now, when I come to a filenark, I'm expecting that the filemark bit (bit > 7) will be set in the sense key. It doesn't happen, the result just > comes back as 0 bytes read and a normal (NO_SENSE) sense result. The > additional sense code and sense qualifier bytes are also 0. I wrote the SCSI tape drivers for the Unix based version of the NCAR Mass Storage System (MSS) Storage Manager servers, we moved a few petabytes of data through them. It made use of the SCSI generic interfaces of Irix, Solaris and Linux, but we couldn't trust the default OS tape drive driver behaviors would do the right thing for an archive. You should be able to detect file mark indications in either the variable length or fixed block read modes. When the tape (or drive controller buffer position for those that perform buffering) is positioned at the file mark, you will get a check condition response to the issuance of the read command, then you (or the SCSI generic driver) issue the read sense command (immediately after the read, no other intervening commands!) and the file mark bit will be set in the sense buffer. For the generic SCSI devices, you can typically tell the driver to perform an auto sense for check condition responses. Just make sure you have properly told the driver where to put the sense data. I suppose a drive could have a manufacturer specific mode that could hide file marks, but I've never seen one. We did make use of manufacturer specific procedures to place the read head beyond the detected EOT mark so we could recover tapes that had been accidentally overwritten in the middle of recorded data.

11 years, 5 months

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Wanted - Tandy/RadioShack Prototype boards

by jnc＠mercury.lcs.mit.edu

> From: Sean Caron > I can offer a seller endorsement; I've bought VAXen and VAX parts from > them quite a few times and they ship quick & are easy to work with... > they also are good about accepting reasonable offers on items. I have > no clue who that individual is but they have a huge stash of neat stuff > they are selling off... Oh, ComUsed/TopLine! Yes, they are really quite good, along all axes. I deal with them a great deal, it seems like I drive up to DC about once a month to pick up large/heavy items from them! :-) Their place is pretty amazing - it looks like something out of one of the seedy backwaters from a William Gibson book; on the inside, it's stacked to the rafters (literally!) with old stuff (albeit considerably better organized than the typical Gibson gomi collector's :-). Their business is buying and selling used computer stuff; e.g. they do a lot of business in used printers. Much of the large amount of PDP-11/VAX/DEC stuff they have/had came from the estate of a major DEC collector who died; somewhat to their amazement, I think, they've found that it sells well! I have the impression they've picked up other groups of stuff too, although none as large as that. They tend not to have complete systems of any size (some smallish LSI11's is about it), they don't have a lot of room; but the prices are usually hard to beat. Can definitely recommend them, along all axes. Noel

11 years, 5 months

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[rescue] Inside Solaris newsletter

by silent700＠gmail.com

On Fri, Oct 3, 2014 at 8:40 PM, Andrew Hoerter <amh at pobox.com> wrote: > I've followed up off-list, so hopefully my additional issues will be > available online at some point. I'm happy to say that the issues Andrew sent to me a few weeks back have made it through my scan queue, endured some archive.org index weirdness and are now online. There are now 52 issues of Inside Solaris to enjoy over your $holiday: https://archive.org/search.php?query=collection%3Ainsidesolaris&sort=-date (Some of the metadata was incomplete, causing them to present out of order. I just fixed it but the changes haven't indexed yet...perhaps soon...?) -j

11 years, 5 months

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No such thing as "the PDP" [was RE: Typesafety versus Worse is Better - was Re: Fwd: is there any word processing software for the pdp11?]

by radiotest＠juno.com

At 1247 AM 12/4/2014, Mark Wickens wrote: >I would argue that only the original PDP-1 could rightly be called "the PDP" Speaking of that pioneering machine, does anyone know if there are any plans by the CHM to try to make the MIT engineering prototype operable? I last saw it in use at MIT about 45 years ago, when it was housed adjacent to the TX-0 and the two were being used for speech synthesis experiments. From what I understand the operable machine on display at the CHM is a later C production version. Dale H. Cook, GR / HP Collector, Roanoke/Lynchburg, VA http://plymouthcolony.net/starcity/radios/index.html

11 years, 6 months

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BDV11 ROM programs?

by jnc＠mercury.lcs.mit.edu

> From: Pete Turnbull > you are aware that although there's 2KW of code in there, it's accessed > through a 256-byte (128 word) window in Bank 8 which has to be > programmed via the PCR? Yes, thanks. > There are 18 error halts, listed in the BDV11 manual, which I expect is > on bitsavers The Technical Manual is, but not the User Manual (which may not exist, the TM doesn't mention one); the TM doesn't cover the software (in the PROMs), just the hardware. > and on pp107-108 of the PDP-11 Microcomputer Interfaces Handbook 1980. Ah, didn't know that - thanks, that's useful. It's been a while since I looked at the BDV11 entry there; I was using the BDV11 entry in the Microcomputer Products Handbook. > The 25 error halts for the 11/23+ are listed on pp 611-613 of the > Microcomputers and Memories Handbook 1982, and also on pp 47-49 of the > PDP-11/23-PLUS System Manual (EK-1T23B-OP-001). Ditto (useful). > You've already discovered, I imagine, that there are gazillions of ways > to set up and use the sockets on a BDV11 Yup. Noel

11 years, 6 months

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BDV11 ROM programs?

by jnc＠mercury.lcs.mit.edu

Does anyone know of anything that documents the contents of the various BDV11 ROMs? In particular, I'm interested in learning what the various halt locations imply. Yes, I know, I could dump them, and disassemble them, but I'm hoping to avoid all that hard work... :-) There seem to be two different ROM sets; 23-046E2/23-045E2, which seem to be an earlier set, as they only understand 56KB of memory; and a later set, SG8326-339E2 and SG8330-340E2 (which might not be DEC standard, the numbers on them are 'odd' - although they might be 23-339E2/23-340E2, the boot ROMs from the 11/23+), which understand up to 4MB of memory. (Interestingly, the latter set are on Intel D2716s, EPROMs, unlike the earlier ones, which are plain PROMs.) Thanks in advance for any help! Noel

11 years, 6 months

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Seeking disruptive tech

by jnc＠mercury.lcs.mit.edu

> From: William Donzelli >> From: Brent Hilpert >> All of which kind of emphasizes Roy's point of disruptive >> technologies. So what are some candidates for the most-disruptive? > Fiber optics completely shook up the "long lines" telecom industry. > Continous casting completely shook up the steel industry. The diesel > electric locomotive completely shook up the rail industry. And on and > on... Interesting topic, albeit somewhat off-topic for the list. (My apologies for continuing it... :-) Some disruptive technologies are subsets of others; e.g. transistors are in some sense a subset of electrical (altough, as Chuck points out, they also draw on materials science). And how far back do you want to go? The discovery of metals certainly had a huge impact, albeit that it was many thousands of years ago now! But among the big ones for me are electricity, which almost has too many subsets to count (e.g. long distance communication, starting with the telegraph - read "The Victorian Internet" for a good look at how that changed the world), the printing press (information technologies in general have outside weight, since they affect so many other fields), the internal combustion engine (which has physically re-shaped entire civilizations, especially the US), with all its subset (e.g. the airplane)... too many to think of, almost! And it all started with sharp stones... :-) > From: Chuck Guzis cclist at sydex.com > And yet nobody seems to know about Lilienfeld. I am somewhat ashamed to admit that before today, I had not (that I can recall) heard of him. And I see there is no full-length book on him. A hole waiting to be filled, as it were... Noel

11 years, 6 months

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Paging Andreas Holz

by pontus＠Update.UU.SE

Hi Andreas: I need to talk to you regarding the VAX. If there are mailproblems on this end try pontus.pihlgren at gmail.com If anyone else knows that Andreas can't be reached, Please let me know. /Pontus

11 years, 6 months

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Strange i-con Unibus (?) board

by scaron＠umich.edu

On the back of Roe's question; didn't want to hijack his thread. I was browsing eBay and came across this very unusual looking Unibus card (?) http://www.ebay.com/itm/Vintage-Computer-Memory-Digital-DEC-logo-1216988-bo… I'm really curious what all those SIP hybrids are running down the one side of the board. I see it's got no less than 8 74181 ALUs so I figure this has got to be some kind of processor? Perhaps a prototype or simply an obscure hop-up processor for Unibus machines similar to some of which were marketed for Q-bus with i.e. MC68k, NS 32k, MIPS CPUs (KN210), etc. I tried to do a little research about i-con on the Web but I'm coming up blank. Anyone know what the heck this thing is? Just curious. Thanks, Sean

11 years, 6 months

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MTI storage array

by lenox.joseph＠gmail.com

My advisor was given an old HP83000 IC tester a few years ago and I got stuck with trying to figure out how to evaluate if it is worth trying to set up. To that end, I am investigating the HP C360 visualize workstation that came with it. It is booting, but there are entries in the fstab that imply that there were more hard drives. It came with this hard drive array: http://imgur.com/a/0JSZW I am having trouble even identifying the make and model, let alone finding some sort of manual. Anyone got an idea of what is going on here and possibly where I can source the correct cabling for it? The workstation has 2 scsi busses, an ultrawide single ended and a narrow single ended.

11 years, 6 months

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Seeking disruptive tech

by radiotest＠juno.com

At 07:00 PM 12/10/2014, Kyle Owen wrote: >Just picked up a 1960s TV-7D/U tube tester to check some of my tubes while I catalog them, but other days are spent tinkering with PDP-8/Es. I own a Hickok 533 and a few other testers, as well as a GR vacuum tube bridge, to ride herd on many vacuum tubes stocked for many vacuum tube instruments and antique radios. I don't get as sophisticated as working with 8s (though I did care for a couple of pdp-8/m systems 30 years ago), I just wrangle some electronics with dedicated microprocessors from the 8080/8085/Z80 family. Dale H. Cook, Roanoke/Lynchburg, VA Osborne 1 / Kaypro 4-84 / Kaypro 1 / Amstrad PPC-640 http://plymouthcolony.net/starcity/radios/index.html

11 years, 6 months

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List Still working?

by innfoclassics＠gmail.com

I just realized I haven't gotten a message from the list in over a month. wondering if I got dropped or the list is down? Paxton -- Paxton Hoag Astoria, OR USA

11 years, 6 months

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Weekly Classic Computer Trivia Question (20141205)

by dpi＠dustyoldcomputers.com

I have had my PDP-8 (no letter) since around 1985. As part of the deal I got a little over 200 DECtapes. Most of these are SCOTCH 3M branded in cardboard boxes and not DEC branded DECtapes in the clear blue plastic containers. I have been thinking about moving this data to a permanent storage location so I wondered how much space this would require. Turns out to be about 57 million bytes and that would be without bothering to do any compression. The trivia question is: Approximately how many DECtapes will fit on a single one terabyte drive? As there are several possible answers to this feel free to reply on the list. I will give my answer in a few days. Doug Ingraham

11 years, 6 months

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Wanted 22-way connectors was RE: No such thing as "the PDP

by dave.g4ugm＠gmail.com

Looking at the Wikipedia pages here, I find it amazing that computer design had moved so quickly between 1953/4 when the Ferranti Pegasus http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ferranti_Pegasus And IBM 704 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_704 were produced to the PDP-1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PDP-1 looking at the PDP-1 card here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PDP-1#mediaviewer/File:Dec_SYSTEM_BUILDING_BLOC KS_1103.jpg I notice it uses the same PCB connector as my EAI-TR10 Analogue computer. Now whilst I can find the sockets, I can't find any of the PCB mounting plugs, and I "need" one to make an extender card. I can make one up from PCB but it would be nice to have a real plug if any one has one they would be willing to part with. Dave G4UGM

11 years, 6 months

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Possible equipment available

by djg＠pdp8online.com

A Kenedy 9300 9 track tape drive, formatter, controller to emulate various military drives, Univac 2049 (Canadian USQ-69 like terminal) and ZIP emulator of tape drive may be available. The drive and terminal are large/heavy so shiping isn't practical. If you just need parts for yours I may be able to scavange. Its also possible that I won't be able to get anything. Equipment is in Maryland near DC. Contact me off list if you have interest.

11 years, 6 months

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Some Transputer Bits available.

by jkunz＠unixag-kl.fh-kl.de

Hi. I went dumpster diving some time back. I saw an old "white box" 286 PeeCee with a MFM disk and a strange ISA card. I riped them out of the box and took them home. I intended to reuse the MFM disk in my MicroVAX 2000. Then I noticed that the ISA card carries a IMST414 Transputer chip. It looked to me like this PeeCee was the "head" of a bigger Transputer system. (That I rescued out of that dumpster some years back.) So I went back to that dumpster and pulled the other ISA cards (disk, video, IO). I suspect that this ST-125 MFM disk contains some DOS software to drive the ISA card with the Transputer. Plug all this stuff into some generic old PeeCee and there you go... The Transputer card is 8 Bit ISA full size. It has the T414, a bunch of 74TTL glue logic, 16 SIMM sockets, four populated, a button and a small, round 5-pin connector on the slot bracket. It is labeled "Monoputer 2 v1.1 (C)Microway,Inc. 1988". I am willing to ship this inside .eu for a reasonable "shipping and handling fee". (Or in exchange to some SGI O2 RAM.) I don't wane make money on this. I want this to go into good hands, ideally someone that rescues and preserves any software from that MFM disk. -- tsch??, Jochen

11 years, 6 months

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Welcome to the Prefix wars

by t.gardner＠computer.org

On Monday, December 08, 2014 8:12 PM Fred Cisin [mailto:cisin at xenosoft.com] <snip> >In MS-DOS/PC-DOS 2.00 and above, FDISK reported hard disk capacity in honest binary Megabytes of 1,048,576 I looked for but could not find a screenshot of very early PCDOS FDISKs, the later ones I've found all include the statement 1 MB = 1,048,576 bytes so by that time Microsoft and IBM were indeed "honest" unlike Apple. FWIW, The MS-DOS Encyclopedia (c) 1988 which covers thru DOS 3.3 shows the "Display Partition Data" option as giving capacity in the number of cylinders, not a particularly useful measurement but not misleading. FORMAT and CHKDSK all report in decimal digits without commas. Would like to see a screenshot for an early FDISK Option 1 using binary prefixes before I concede that Microsoft/IBM DOS used but did not disclose binary prefixes before Apple <snip> >WHAT missing 490 KB??!? >I recall Seagate referring to the ST225 as "20 Megabyte" (~1985?) Unlike some other manufacturers, they rounded DOWN, not UP, AND they did not use excessive "significant digits". >(That also gave them a lot more slack than their less scrupulous competitors to cover bad sectors) ((In apthecary measures, there are THREE Scruples in every DRAM!)) The published Seagate specification for ST225 that I have states the formatted capacity = 21.4 MB comprising exactly 41,820 x 512 byte sectors = 21.411.840 bytes = 21.4 MB BTW the reason I picked the ST225 as an example rather than the ST412 is that Seagate specified the formatted ST412 with 32 x 256 byte sectors per track giving precisely 10.0 MB (10.027008 MB). IBM in the PC chose to go to 17 x 512 Bytes sectors per track thereby increasing the formatted capacity to 10.7 MB or 10.4 MiB. So a Seagate ST412 used with any of the several IBM PC compatible controllers actually had a dram more than Seagate specified, but in both cases more than 10.0; confusing perhaps but no basis for complaining. But they soon changed to 512 byte sectors and that dram went away. I really don't think Seagate was any more scrupulous than its competition in specifying its drives, as near as I can tell they rounded off, but even if they rounded down it was in the third or higher digit so we are talking about a relatively small number when compared to the confusion caused by binary prefixes. Tom

11 years, 6 months

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Looking for Sun-1 Keyboard

by earl＠baugh.org

Hey, I'm looking for a Sun-1 keyboard (between myself and another local collector we have 3 Sun-1's but only 2 Sun-1 keyboards). Does anyone happen to know anyone who might have and extra one they'd be willing to sell? Thanks. Earl

11 years, 6 months

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Looking for old "PC Connection" catalogs

by lists＠loomcom.com

This is a long shot, and an oddball request, but we're all hoarders here, right? I'm looking for "PC Connection" catalogs from 1989 through 1992. If you have any, please drop me a line. I'd be happy to pay a few bucks for each one, plus mailing costs of course. -Seth

11 years, 6 months

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Recaping a Macintosh Portable

by Wayne.Smith＠warnerbros.com

> Date: Sun, 7 Dec 2014 19:26:23 -0500 > From: Matt Patoray <mspproductions at gmail.com>> > To: "cctalk at classiccmp.org" <cctalk at classiccmp.org> > Subject: Recaping a Macintosh Portable > Message-ID: <A1A9E821-368F-422D-AAE8-B0BF138AFF7F at gmail.com> > Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii > > Hello all, > > I have a Mac portable that refuses to even attempt to boot. > > I get random junk on the screen that is different on every power up, no drive activity and no sound. > > I am thinking the onboard surface mount electrolytics are due for replacement. > > I was able to read the values off of most of the caps but I was not able to read the follow caps. C4, C5, C15 and C24. > > Does anyone know what value those caps are? > > Thanks, > > Matt > > Sent from my iPhone I believe that those four caps are all G4 1 50v - there is a close-up picture of C15 and C24 (on right) here: http://regmedia.co.uk/2010/11/08/port_unknown_large.jpg

11 years, 6 months

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Help with a busted MSV11-L?

by jnc＠mercury.lcs.mit.edu

> From: Johnny Billquist > If the MMU is off, you can consider the PAR registers as just plain ram. Ooooh, very clever! Wouldn't work on a /40, of course, but on a /23 with 22-bit addressing, they are full width! Thanks for the tip! Noel

11 years, 6 months

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Some Transputer Bits available.

by PeksaDO＠cardiff.ac.uk

I'm a bit late into the fray for this subject but '5 pins' does ring a bell. A 'link adapter port' which '... provides an interface to the outside world ... to allow the user to control an external network of Transputers ... has 5 lines (and a ground/grounds). The 5 lines are NotReset NotAnalyse NotError LinkIn LinkOut Doug.

11 years, 6 months

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Help with a busted MSV11-L?

by jnc＠mercury.lcs.mit.edu

> I'm trying to fix a broken MSV11-L card (M8059-KF). The symptom is that > it always reads back with the 020 bit set, but otherwise appears to be > fine. > ... > two octal 3-state-output latches (E57 and E64, an 'LS373 and an 'S373 > respectively). > ... > the two octal latches are both TI Malaysia parts (date code 8231) > ... > it's the data latch that's bad. So, I seem to have discovered a plague! I had another failed QBUS memory card, an MSV11-D this time (M8044-DB). It has the exact identical symptom, except with a different bit - 02000 this time, instead of 020. So, since the designs are very similar, I thought 'maybe another bad S373'. Well, they aren't quite as similar as it thought, but the culprit is indeed apparently ... a bad S373! (Although I have to caveat that; I suppose it could be the bus transceiver it's connected to.. but the output is always high, which make it seem like the the driver in the 'S373 has failed.) Anyway, this time it's a National Semiconductor part, and from a very different date code (7947). What is it with S373's? Is this just pure chance, that two from different makers, quite a while apart in time, were the culprit? Or is there some issue with S373's? (I note that MSV11-D's are apparently notorious for failing; perhaps because they use S373's a lot?) I do have another MSV11-D with a similar fault (the 01 bit this time); once I get it fault-isolated, I'll report if it, too, is caused by an S373 failure. It may take a while to get it fault-isolated, though - so far, I've been writing two- or three- instruction loops which have the picked bit set in all the words of the program! (Because I'm too lazy to write a longer program that sets up the memory mapping so the program can run out of 'good' memory, only poking the 'bad' memory to test it... :-) Also, it's kind of an fun challenge... :-) Noel

11 years, 6 months

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Welcome to the Prefix wars [WAS:RE: Weekly Classic Computer Trivia Question (20141205)]

by t.gardner＠computer.org

>On Saturday, December 06, 2014 8:21 PM Chuck Guzis wrote >On 12/06/2014 06:55 PM, Noel Chiappa wrote: >> From: Jerome H. Fine >> I would point out that one reason that memory may have stayed with 2 ** >> 30 is that memory is usually produced and sold in multiples of 2 ** 30 >> these days >> >> Main memory has pretty much _always_ been sold in blocks that were >> exact powers of two, for obvious reasons (at least, powers of two of >> the word size of the machine in question)... >Let's see; IBM 1620--basic memory size=20,000 digits, increments of >20,000 digits up to 60,000. IBM 705, 7080,... >What is curious is the marketing numbers used for the memory size. 65K, 131K, etc. I believe IBM was guilty of this in their S/360 marketing literature. >The numbers sound bigger. >--Chuck Welcome to the debate over who is responsible for the confusion in the use of binary versus decimal prefixes; it has been going on at Wikipedia since 2001, see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Binary_prefix and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_binary_prefixes Actually I think IBM was fairly rigorous in using decimal prefixes, K meaning 1,000, with annotation K=1024 when appropriate as in the Amdahl article on S/360 architecture. I doubt if it had anything to do with appearance. More importantly I am pretty sure that into the 1980s (perhaps later) in its product literature, product specs and operating system utilities IBM used decimal digits with no prefixes at all. IMO the mess really started with Apple's Macintosh which reported memory and disk capacity using K in a binary sense without any qualification. I can't prove a negative, but I think no OS prior to the Mac OS used any prefixes at all; they simply displayed or printed a decimal number to however many digits necessary, sometimes without commas. It will be interesting to see what this group recalls If u think about it, mixing decimal digits with binary prefixes makes little sense and probably has caused all sorts of problems and confusions such as the infamous 1.44 MB FD. I've always wondered why the programmer at Apple didn't use decimal prefixes and avoid all this nonsense. After all there isn't a lot of difference in coding between a binary shift followed by a decimal conversion as Apple did it and a decimal conversion followed by a decimal shift. Tom

11 years, 6 months

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Holiday Music Week on RetroBattlestations

by fozztexx＠fozztexx.com

It's Holiday Music Week on RetroBattlestations, where people submit videos of their old computers playing music! Play some music with your PDP on an AM radio, enter your favorite scores into Music Construction Set, or fire up a Christmas demo! You can choose any holiday music from the traditional or the not so traditional, but, in order to be eligible though, you have to submit a song that hasn't already been submitted. There's prizes of vinyl stickers and reddit gold, but like most every challenge on RetroBattlestations, it's more about showing off your computers and that they still work. You can get more details here: http://redd.it/2ogx2n And for anyone that hasn't seen it before, here's a mashup of most of last year's entries playing Linus & Lucy. http://youtu.be/aZOJQwVgRi4 -- Follow me on twitter: @FozzTexx Check out my blog: http://insentricity.com

11 years, 6 months

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Weekly Classic Computer Trivia Question (20141205)

by jnc＠mercury.lcs.mit.edu

> From: Jerome H. Fine > I would point out that one reason that memory may have stayed with 2 ** > 30 is that memory is usually produced and sold in multiples of 2 ** 30 > these days Main memory has pretty much _always_ been sold in blocks that were exact powers of two, for obvious reasons (at least, powers of two of the word size of the machine in question)... (Although occasionally, back when, one used to see things that were 1.5 times a power of two, e.g. on a 16-bit machine, 12KB, 96KB, etc - physical and cost constraints tended to produce those. I don't recall the last time I saw something that wasn't a power of two - probably those 96KB jobs.) With disk drives, on the other hand, one can get all sorts of arbitrary sizes, produced by the number of cylinders, numbers of heads, etc, etc. Noel

11 years, 6 months

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RGS 008A Docs?

by derschjo＠gmail.com

Anyone have any documentation on the RGS 008A? This is an early (1975) microcomputer kit based on the 8008, and was reviewed in the first issue of BYTE. Other than that article, there's not much information out there; anyone happen to have the manuals (or anything else) and be willing to scan them? Thanks, Josh

11 years, 6 months

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2 new old stock Memorex MRX IV 6250 BPI SuperReel Tape

by mazzinia＠tin.it

I'm not the seller, nor related with them in any way. This said, apparently these are new old stock (pics show sealed in plastic), and they ship internationally. http://www.ebay.it/itm/2-Nastri-Memorex-MRX-IV-6250-BPI-SuperReel-Tape-VAX-D EC-IBM-Vintage-/371205354623?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_101 <http://www.ebay.it/itm/2-Nastri-Memorex-MRX-IV-6250-BPI-SuperReel-Tape-VAX- DEC-IBM-Vintage-/371205354623?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_101&hash=item566d90347f> &hash=item566d90347f

11 years, 6 months

1
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Help with a busted MSV11-L?

by jnc＠mercury.lcs.mit.edu

PS: When buying replacement chips, since many are NOS, which manufacturers should be avoided, and which are good? I recall there was some discussion on here a while back about the topic of which vendors seemed to have the most problems with chips failing, but I can't find it (and a bit of Google searching couldn't turn up anything on the topic - all my searches turned up too much other stuff). And should I always install the replacements in sockets, or is it OK to just go ahead and solder them straight in? (The socket obviously doesn't cost much, and I'm less likely to damage the chip installing it like that, and of course if I get it in and it's U/S, it's easy to swap out from a socket, but I'm wondering if the use of a socket has any downside, electrically.) Again, thanks for any advice (and I won't be surprised if the last starts the usual debate... :-) Noel

11 years, 6 months

5
5
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The 9406-270 - OS and Other Products Installed

by Kevin＠RawFedDogs.net

Classic Computer Fans, I made it through an i5 OS install on my 9406-270 plus installed various products. I haven't done much past that other than switching the QCTLSBSD system value from QBASE to QCTL and performing an IPL. I'm now able to perform an unattended IPL and get from power on to a sign-on screen in just under nine minutes. Only one drive came up to choose from during the install process so everything is installed on it. A WRKDSKSTS shows drive 1 at 33% and drive 0 unused. Is it possible to add drive 0 to the system at this point? I'm not sure where to go from here. Some of the things I can think of that I'm sure need to be done at some point: - Learn how to apply PTFs - Create some user profiles - Configure and start TCP/IP - Explore backup options in case I have to reinstall or restore every 69 days. I'd be surprised if the internal tape drive is functional. - Learn all kinds of things I haven't even heard of yet And I'm sure the list goes on and on. I'm open to suggestions. -- Kevin http://www.RawFedDogs.net http://www.Lassie.xyz http://www.WacoAgilityGroup.org Bruceville, TX What's the definition of a legacy system? One that works! Errare humanum est, ignoscere caninum.

11 years, 6 months

2
2
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Origin or 1.44 MV FD label [WAS: RE: Weekly Classic Computer Trivia Question (20141205)]

by t.gardner＠computer.org

>-----Original Message----- >From: Fred Cisin [mailto:cisin at xenosoft.com] >Sent: Saturday, December 06, 2014 12:40 PM >To: General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts >Subject: Re: Weekly Classic Computer Trivia Question (20141205) >>On Sat, 6 Dec 2014, Johnny Billquist wrote: >> I should actually do my math before commenting. :-) It just happens, >> that by a funny accident, 1440*1024 is actually 1,474,560. >> >> But still. The actual size of the floppy wasn't decided because you >> pulled out 1440*1024, but because of the format of the darn thing. >> 1.44MB is just the closest "nice" number you can come up with after >> the fact as a way to talk about the capacity of the thing. >> >> It is not an exact number, but they seldom are, when we talk about >> storage. People like to round things off, to make it easier to talk about. >It is NOT a "nice" number. >Honest numbers would be either 1.47 or 1.4 There is no legitimate way to come up with 1.44 unless you cheat and MIX powers of 10 and powers of 2. __________________ It comes from a double capacity 720 KB FDD - which in this case are actually KiB and not kB However, in an incredible bit of marketing stupidity it was labeled 1.44 MB, since 2*720 KB/1000 = 1.44 MB Tom

11 years, 6 months

4
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Acceptable Ripple

by robert.jarratt＠ntlworld.com

Just checking a PSU in a MicroVAX 3100 Model 80. I am measuring about 10mV ripple on the 5V supply and 20mV ripple on the 12V supply. Does that seem reasonable? I am not sure if it is a scope artefact, but there appear to be large spikes at the top and bottom of each sawtooth. The machine appears to partially work, it seems to be getting some errors during the memory test, but I don't know if that is the spikes I am seeing or just a bad component somewhere. Regards Rob

11 years, 6 months

3
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Help with a busted MSV11-L?

by jnc＠mercury.lcs.mit.edu

>> From: Jon Elson >> The 2V level sounds like maybe NO chip is driving that node. A shorted >> output (or input) would likely pull one way or the other, 2V is about >> the resting point of a TTL input. > The way the two output data laches are wired, the output control on one > is wired with the negation of the output control on the other, so one > or the other ought to be trying to drive the line at all times. So > perhaps the one that _should_ be driving the line normally is the bad > one, then After thinking about this tip for a few minutes, it dawned on me that there's a simple way to see if the data latch is bad: read the CSR! That will try and drive that line from the other latch. So I did, and ... I can read 0 from that bit in the CSR! So it's the data latch that's bad. Thanks for the tip! Noel

11 years, 6 months

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Help with a busted MSV11-L?

by jnc＠mercury.lcs.mit.edu

> From: Jon Elson >> the anomalous voltage I see (2V) is after the output (i.e. to the >> QBUS) data latches, but before the bus transceiver > Output from the memory chips? Well, then, you may have to replace them > all, as one chip may be jamming the bus. No, "after the output .. data latches", which are between the memory chips and the bus transceiver. > Do any of the affected driver chips run hotter than the others? That's > the "finger test", you replace any anomalously hot chips first That's a useful idea, thanks, I'll try that. > The 2V level sounds like maybe NO chip is driving that node. A shorted > output (or input) would likely pull one way or the other, 2V is about > the resting point of a TTL input. Ah, more useful info. The way the two output data laches are wired, the output control on one is wired with the negation of the output control on the other, so one or the other ought to be trying to drive the line at all times. So perhaps the one that _should_ be driving the line normally is the bad one, then (since it's clearly not...) Thanks for the tip! Noel

11 years, 6 months

1
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Help with a busted MSV11-L?

by jnc＠mercury.lcs.mit.edu

> From: Jon Elson > Power the system off for 10 minutes, then power on and read various > locations. If data bit 4 shows 1's and 0's, then the reading is OK, and > it is the writing path that is stuck. I'm not sure this will work, as the anomalous voltage I see (2V) is after the output (i.e. to the QBUS) data latches, but before the bus transceiver: i.e. in the output (reading) path. So I know it's the output data path that has a problem, not the input. The only question is which of three chips on the output data path might be the cause of the problem; one of the two three-state latches (one for memory data, one for CSR data), or the bus transceiver. As far as I can tell, those are the only three devices attached to that conductor (where I see the constant 2V). Noel

11 years, 6 months

2
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Help with a busted MSV11-L?

by jnc＠mercury.lcs.mit.edu

Hi, all, I'm trying to fix a broken MSV11-L card (M8059-KF). The symptom is that it always reads back with the 020 bit set, but otherwise appears to be fine. (E.g. you can write a number in 0, and a different number in 020, and each reads back OK, with the exception that the 020 bit in each is always set; i.e. the addressing is working fine, as is the QBUS generally.) So poking around with my 'scope, I find that the latched D04 signal ("LAT D04 H") is always around 2V - not good! From the prints: http://www.mainecoon.com/classiccmp/MSV11-L/MSV11-L%20FMPS%20MP01238%20(M80… it appears to be generated on page 6 of the prints (page 10 of that file), as the wired-or output of two octal 3-state-output latches (E57 and E64, an 'LS373 and an 'S373 respectively). The only place it appears to go is to the quad bus transceiver (E62, an 8641), on page 2. My question is: any guesses as to which of the three is causing this? Or do I just have to start replacing them until I find the guilty party? :-) If so, what's the best order to do so in? FWIW, the two octal latches are both TI Malaysia parts (date code 8231), and the transceiver is a Motorola (date code 8249). Thanks in advance for any help! Noel

11 years, 6 months

2
1
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Jumper settings for Shugart 810 8" floppy drive

by dfnr2＠yahoo.com

Hi All, I have a couple of Shugart 810 drives I'd like to get working with an OSI system.? While swapping the drives around, I made some changes to the jumpers, but now I can't find the notes I made of the original configuration.? Does anyone have information on the function of the various jumpers on these drives?? I found some manuals online, but they don't seem to have the jumper info. Any information would be most welcome! Thanks, Dave

11 years, 6 months

2
1
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HP Interex & HP1000 Contributed Library

by jwest＠classiccmp.org

I'm not sure I ever posted this publicly, never went out of my way to do so in any case. The HP Interex and HP 1000 Contributed Library website (I think it was interex.org) went down quite a few years ago, and I managed to scarf a complete copy of the site after the pending turnoff was announced but before it went dark. This content is all at http://www.classiccmp.org/interex There are two folders: One is the proceedings, slideshows, etc. of all the HP Interex meetings and the other is the entire HP CSL for HP1000. As usual, please do not rape the content. If you need more than a few files here and there please contact me off-list to arrange a hard drive swap, etc. Best, J

11 years, 6 months

4
4
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OT: FTGH HP U320 Disk Caddies

by robert.jarratt＠ntlworld.com

Not vintage stuff, but I thought I would offer them to the list first. I have three of these caddies, marked 146.8 GB 10K Ultra320 SCSI. You can see one here: http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/HP-404708-001-146GB-10K-3-5-SCSI-Ultra-320-Hard-Di sk-Drive-in-ProLiant-Caddy-/251350220378 but bear in mind there is no disk, just the caddy. Located in the UK. Regards Rob

11 years, 6 months

1
0
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Intellec MDS available in Twin Cities MN

by drlegendre＠gmail.com

Hey folks, I really need some cash and some space, so it's time for my Intel Intellec MDS gear to find a new home. I inherited this kit some years ago, and know almost nothing about it - in fact, I'm even confused as to the correct model number; 'experts disagree', it's either an MDS-225 or MDS-800. It's a large white cube, about 20" on a side, with a CRT, one 8" floppy and a number of plug-in boards. There is also a blue Intel dual 8" drive, one seriously heavy-duty keyboard, a few cables and a bevy of 8" floppy discs. I also have an ICE pod for it, somewhere.. It has never been powered-up once since I've had it, though it was apparently 'working fine' when retired sometime in the early-mid 1990s. Cosmetics are very good, it's no ugly duckling by any stretch. Photos will appear as I'm able to move it to a location with sufficient light.

11 years, 6 months

4
6
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hp2K and interex

by jwest＠classiccmp.org

I did find this entry in the CSL1000 library to be of interest! BAS200 - HP 2000F BASIC FOR DOS-M/DOS III 2001 X172Keywords: 99.5- 10 BASIC So Hp2000/F was ported to DOS-M/DOS III? Wowsers. J

11 years, 6 months

3
2
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Strange i-con Unibus (?) board

by jnc＠mercury.lcs.mit.edu

> From: Sean Caron > I was browsing eBay and came across this very unusual looking Unibus > card Yeah, I was wondering about that too. It looks like it has a ton of memory over on that one side; I was thinking that perhaps it was an EUB memory card with ECC, or something? Anyway, I decided not to mess with it (even if it is pretty cheap - got enough fish to fry on my hands at the moment... :-). Noel

11 years, 6 months

1
0
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Still looking for Infotek MX-30 RAM

by derschjo＠gmail.com

About a year ago I posted about this; I have an HP 9830A upgraded with an Infotek MX-30 processor upgrade (there's a nice writeup on this page: http://www.hp9825.com/html/infotek.html), but I'm missing the RAM boards. Thought I'd poll again just in case anyone has some, as unlikely as that may be. Alternately, if anyone needs an MX-30 board set (sans memory) for a restoration, drop me a line and maybe we can work something out. Hate to sit on this forever and never get anything working... - Josh

11 years, 6 months

6
12
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The 9406-270 Has Arrived!!

by Kevin＠RawFedDogs.net

Fellow Classic Computer Enthusiasts, My 9406-270 has arrived. It was strapped to a small pallet with more bubble wrap around it than I think I've ever seen before. Somehow the pallet just fit in the back of my mini-van so the freight company was able to load it in there with a fork lift. I got it home and into my living room. It came without drives so I'm having to start from scratch. I have two drives in slots one and two, and think I have the twinax console connected correctly. It appears to IPL from CDROM but I'm not getting anything on the console other than the cursor moving >from the upper right corner of the screen to the upper left corner of the screen after about twenty minutes of occasional CDROM activity. Does anyone have any pointers for a newbie at installing OS/400, or whatever V5R4 is called. I wish IBM would stop changing perfectly good OS and hardware names. -- Kevin http://www.RawFedDogs.net http://www.Lassie.xyz http://www.WacoAgilityGroup.org Bruceville, TX What's the definition of a legacy system? One that works! Errare humanum est, ignoscere caninum.

11 years, 6 months

4
6
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looking for TI printer

by jwest＠classiccmp.org

Looking for a TI 820 KSR printer. Anyone have a working one available for trade? J

11 years, 6 months

1
0
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Fwd: is there any word processing software for the pdp11?

by jacob.ritorto＠gmail.com

or, if not, anyone feel like helping me port a contemporary line printer daemon to 2.11bsd? --jake p.s. sorry for the previous subject misfire.

11 years, 6 months

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test-drb December 2014