Hello $list,
I tried to ship my old Model 150 (9406-150), but ParcelForce decided
it was of better use to me if it had it's steel enclosure crushed
inside it's well-packaged box and not pay out the insured money, so
I'm looking for a machine which might be able to replace it.
I can trade w/ spare parts of the 150 (I should have 6x32 SIMM RAM
remaining from the machine, some SCSI disks from it might still be
alive or the SCSI QIC tape drive), or with some QIC tapes/ dumps of
install media for $exotic_release.
I only have the 'small' Twinax extension brick (four lanes, DE/DB-9
type of connector) and the terminals for that kind of equipment, so
I'm looking for one with the lower capacity Twinax card, and
preferably a CD drive (since I have all my OS releases on CDs).
It doesn't need to carry valid license keys for that machine (I'll
just reinstall it every 70d) since it's just for playing around, but
it's always nice to have them if there are keys available for a
specific release on the machine.
Kind regards,
Yvan Janssens
Sent using CompuServe 1.22
Not mine, please contact seller directly. He will also keep an eye out for
OLD DEC, Sun, Data General, HP, etc.
WTS Red Hat BOX0035UN, NEW, qty 8, CALL, WTS (8) Red Hat BOX0035UN
Enterprise Linux AS Ver4 Premium X86
Qty. 8 Accept offers for 1 up to 8
Condition: New, 30 days warranty
Jose Schott
TechnoDirect
"If we don't own it, we don't sell it"
Tel #: (305) 503-5338
jose at technodirect.net
Cindy Croxton
> Date: Sun, 11 May 2014 12:54:23 +0200
> From: Marco Rauhut <marco at familie-rauhut.eu>
> To: cctalk at classiccmp.org
> Subject: How to clean DEC Tapes
>
> Hello all together...
>
> i am restorating a DEC TU56 dual drive in the moment. My question is,
> how to clean the tapes, not the drive.
> The tapes i have are found in a garage, where they been for about 25
> years without a case. Some ideas how to clean them without damaging?
>
> Best regards
>
> Marco
I forwarded your question to Charles Lasner and asked if he had any
recommendations. Here's his reply:
"This is pretty straight-forward. Tape on reel, reel not in cardboard
box or preferably cannister.
Tape is probably quite dusty, but should not have any other problems.
First wipe off the obvious surfaces carefully, not aggressively.
Then unfurl the first less than two feet and carefully clean by
placing within a small amount of cotton batting handplaced over the
top and bottom and gently pull away towards the end. That way, you
are exposing tape that will be totally clean other than the edges.
Then gently place the end onto a takeup reel and carefully wrap the
end gently around the hub until it obviously takes tension. [Note:
the takeup reel should COMPLETELY clean!]
Place some gauze and cotton over the head and then manually wind
forward the entire tape off of the reel.
Then completely clean the original reel, and inspect it for problems.
Some reels age badly and crack; it really depend not only on how well
handled, some plastic just will not last, while other batches will
apparently last indefinitely.
If need be replace it.
Assuming the tape has important contents, just wind it back to
original position now cleaned; expect a bit of oxide on the cotton
above the gauze. [The gauze is to protect the head and in case the
cotton slips off, hold it manualy with a free hand or perhaps it can
be stuck on with a bit of surgical tape on some of the edges. The
tape must be touching cotton and go smoothly on the tape movement both
ways.
If the pass onto the takeup reel shows a lot of dirt, of course
replace the cotton, etc.
If the tape is being recycled, consider reversing the tape completely.
This is a little tricky because you want the tape wound the other way
yet still oxide-side down. [It's easier to turn a DECtape into a
LINCtape and vice-versa!] But it can be done with some half-twist
tricks by using the most extreme reels on both drives and don't
involve either head. This has to be done manually because you are
trying to use two drives at once, etc. [Harder on a TU55 might need
some external winder unless they are arranged side-by-side, often that
is not the case.
In any case, you now have the former "inner" end on the outside and it
will likely have a pristine loose end.
And of course never cut anything off the tape. However, if it is
still there do cut off the 3M first 1 inch label. It can be sticky.
Some of the tapes didn't even have this label. In any case, the point
is we do NOT want it near the hub, but never cut off any actual tape!
Remember a format is you just make the tape loop on the takeup reel
and DO NOT WIND IT! Let the formatting program do the rest, don't
"help" it; it has extra-end-zone logic already, etc.
And if you do that right AND you happen to have a generous tape, you
are entitled to make a slight patch to the formatting program and
obtain a 3300 octal block long tape instead of the normal 2702 blocks
octal. With a one-word patch to OS/8 PIP you can get 857 free blocks
[records] instead of the normal 730 blocks [really records]."
Hope this helps!
Bob
I'm trying to install BSD 4.3 on SIMH, following these instructions:
http://gunkies.org/wiki/Installing_4.3_BSD_on_SIMH
I've got the 43.tap, boot42, and install.ini files set up per the
instructions, but when I try to run SIMH, it only gets as far as printing
the section sizes (I guess?), but doesn't ever output the "start 0x12f8" or
anything subsequent. I've tried with both SIMH 3.8-0 and 3.8-1, on Linux
on an x86_64. Has anyone else had success with this?
The output I get mostly but not completely matches what's shown on the web
page:
VAX780 simulator V3.8-0
RQ: creating new file
loading ra(0,0)boot
Boot
: ra(0,0)vmunix
279844+80872+100324
> You can have a valid MS-DOS format, and versions of DOS and Windoze that
> do not support THAT format will still choke on it.
No windows! LINUX using dd, raw access...
I managed to repair the first machine today.
The first floppy was reading the 720K I had, but diskette written with this
were
readable with a lot of errors on PC.
Diskettes written with second drive wasn't readable anywhere.
It ended up, both drives were misaligned. It took the whole sunday to do it,
but now both are perfectly realigned, and can read/write diskette truly
interchangeable
with the PC and between the drives.
> Second unit, el lcd version, with one floppy and fixed disk. Boots dos
from
> hd, but cannot read nor write nor format floppies. It tries at start, but
> reports track 0 errors. Floppy drive broken?
Second and third units still don't read the diskettes written on unit one
(working one).
It would very strange to discover that both machines have broken
controller... too strange...
Or not?
Anybody has similar experiences?
Andrea
There was also a subtle difference in the feed hole location. On most formats. the center of the feed hole lined up with the center of the data holes. On a few older computers, the leading edge of the feed hole alisned with the leading edge of the data holes.
The reason was related to whether the sensors were mechanical or electronic.
I have data tapes of both types. To use only one reader, I added a switch enabled delay to the feed hole signal. Otherwise the leading edge type can give marginal data signals on a reader set up for center line format.
Billy Pettit
I was at Tom Thinh's storage locker again yesterday picking up a few things, and discovered a pretty nice looking Compupro 8/16 S-100 system with dual 8" floppy drives. He's looking for a good home for it, and I'm not an S-100 guy, so if you're interested please contact him directly. He's located in Milpitas, California, but he does ship. He's open to reasonable offers (he's aware of the value of things, he's not going to give it away, sorry :) )
I regret not getting a picture inside the unit, but here's the front and the back. It's dirty and needs a good dusting, but otherwise in fine shape. It looks like it's got four RAM boards, CPU card, disk controller, and lots of serial IO.
Front: http://www.loomcom.com/junk/compupro_front.jpg
Back: http://www.loomcom.com/junk/compupro_back.jpg
If you're interested, please contact Tom Thinh directly. Phone number (for text or voice) is: 1-408-874-6471
-Seth
Hello,
I would need an advice about some issues I'm experimenting with floppy
drives of Data General One portable computers.
I have three units, and all of them have problems...
For the tests I used 720 k floppies.
First unit, early version with non-el lcd, double floppy. It came with a
floppy of dos 2.11.
Drive A successfully boot the included floppy, so maybe this drive is ok,
but with a pc I cannot read the dos floppy... strange.
Drive B doesn't read the dos floppy, but I can successfully format and use
another floppy on it. I think that this drive needs head alignment.
Second unit, el lcd version, with one floppy and fixed disk. Boots dos from
hd, but cannot read nor write nor format floppies. It tries at start, but
reports track 0 errors. Floppy drive broken?
Third unit: el lcd version with two floppy drives and terminal / diagnostic
firmware. It doesn't boot the dos floppy from neither of the two drives.
The diagnostic have floppy diagnostic, but after a beginning phase all test
fail.
Both floppy drives broken?
Now, it seems that issues with DG one floppy drives are very common, or I'm
particularly unlucky.
Anybody is experiencing the same difficulties?
Problems are related to the drives or the controller?
Andrea
