test-drb December 2014

test-drb@ccmp.vtda.org

179 participants
207 discussions

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

9 years, 7 months

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

9 years, 7 months

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

9 years, 7 months

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.

9 years, 7 months

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

9 years, 7 months

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

9 years, 7 months

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

9 years, 7 months

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

9 years, 7 months

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.

9 years, 7 months

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

9 years, 7 months

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test-drb December 2014