test-drb February 2014

test-drb@ccmp.vtda.org

191 participants
208 discussions

by seefriek＠gmail.com

From: Chuck Guzis <cclist at sydex.com> >On 02/18/2014 03:46 PM, Jonathan Katz wrote: > >> Someone once told me "never underestimate the bandwidth contained >> within a station wagon crammed full of DLT tapes." > >That oft-repeated chestnut is attributed to Andy Tannenbaum and >pre-dates DLT, I think. In 1985 (when I first heard it), the station wagon was full of 9-tracks. Each generation adapts the wisdom, I suppose. KJ

10 years, 10 months

ST412 drive or controller fault?

by jules.richardson99＠gmail.com

Just curious as to what the expert opinion is on this - I've got a ST412-type drive here (it's a Miniscribe with 615/4/17 ~20MB geometry) which refuses to read from cylinders 128-255 or cylinders 384-511 - giving address mark not found errors - although cylinders outside those two ranges are fine. The way the faults lie exactly within a couple of specific bit patterns (01xxxxxxx and 11xxxxxxx) for the cylinder number makes it seem more like a controller problem to me - but I don't know how much logic there is on a ST412-type drive, what with the buffered seek ability. Controller passes internal/RAM diagnostics OK (but how exhaustive those are, I don't know). Issuing a drive recalibration and/or controller reset prior to attempting access to the problem areas makes no difference. Maybe the drive was simply never formatted on those cylinder groups for some reason - but that seems rather unlikely (and the filesystem on the drive is definitely unwell, suggesting that it's trying to access data that's no longer there, although I've not gone to the extent of picking the FAT apart to verify this) I think all the errors I've seen before on these kinds of drives have been totally dead, seemingly random, or confined to all/parts of a surface - not in cylinders. cheers Jules

10 years, 10 months

Found Convex 2000 Series Test Station SW Exemplar SPP-UX 5.2 tape

by cruff＠ruffspot.net

I was looking through a set of DAT tapes I had received and found one with some Convex Exemplar support software. The tape appears to contain a single 367 MB tar file, and is labelled: P.N. B5661-60000 2000 Series Test Station SW Exemplar SPP-UX 5.2 Wed Jun 4 17:36:34 CDT 1997 Is this interesting for someone?

10 years, 10 months

Musical printer...

by geneb＠deltasoft.com

I've heard printers referred to as musical before, but never so literally... http://vimeo.com/58200103 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_!

10 years, 10 months

30 pin memory, tested

by sales＠elecplus.com

First come, first served J 4M x 9 FPM, 60ns, 4MB, qty 1, $5 plus shipping 4M x 9 FPM, 70ns, 4MB, qty 1, $5 plus shipping 1M x 9 FPM, 70ns, 1MB, qty 5, $3 each plus shipping (4 are 3 chips, 1 is 9 chips) 1M x 8 FPM, 100ns, 1MB, qty 1, $3 plus shipping 256K x 9 FPM, 80ns, 256KB, qty 2, $2 each plus shipping All tested on SimCheck II 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

10 years, 10 months

Using Virtual Box

by seefriek＠gmail.com

From: Liam Proven <lproven at gmail.com> On 13 February 2014 19:15, David Riley <fraveydank at gmail.com> wrote: >> As far as I know, the Win9x "make a boot floppy" is essentially just >> a "format /s". >No, it isn't. Yes it is. >A Win9x boot floppy contains a menu-driven CONFIG.SYS and AUTOEXEC.BAT >files, allowing loading with CD drivers, creates a RAM disk and >unpacks a CAB file full of useful commands for emergency system >recovery to that RAM disk and more. None of which is required to create a boot disk. I say this as someone who routinely does it, not as someone who Googled up a MS knowledgebase article and didn't understand that it was about creating a startup disk, not a simple boot disk.

10 years, 10 months

To A/UX or not to A/UX, that is the question

by lproven＠gmail.com

During my big garage clearout, I found a couple of 16MB SIMMs in my spares pile, so now my venerable Quadra 650 has 68MB of RAM, up from the 52MB I'd got it to with 2 old 8MB EDO SIMMs I found last year. I also found a ColorSync 20" monitor - & it works! It has a 2GB internal SCSI disk, too. The next question is - do I try to get A/UX working on it? The disk is more than big enough - almost too big, in fact; I believe A/UX can only fsck a max of 2GB of root. So, *if* I can find a way to repartition it, does anyone know where A/UX can be found these days? I've not really looked yet... -- 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

10 years, 10 months

Compuserve SC-40 video

by aek＠bitsavers.org

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sBKHT1GodBk

10 years, 10 months

CPM3.SYS weirdness?

by jce＠seasip.demon.co.uk

> I'm looking at the memory dumps and comparing them to the original file. It > appears for every 128 byte block, the order is backwards. I.e. if I look > at five 128 byte blocks on my PC they appear in the Z80's memory to be > as 5, 4, 3, 2 and 1. Not the 'correct' way. I don't know if this is relevant, but records in CPM3.SYS are stored in reverse order; the first record after the header is loaded at the highest address, the next one 128 bytes below it, and so on. -- John Elliott

10 years, 10 months

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

10 years, 10 months

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test-drb February 2014