test-drb September 2014

test-drb@ccmp.vtda.org

188 participants
251 discussions

by jbryanlewis＠gmail.com

My wife and I were cleaning out the attic this summer and came across my old S-100 computer, with manuals. I'm finally getting around to posting to this list in the hope that someone can use the parts. I'm not really looking to make any money off them... it just feels like a shame to take them to the dump. Unfortunately in the couple of months it took me to get around to this, the manuals seem to have disappeared. There's a chance that my wife tossed them in the trash. (*whimper*) One Morrow 8" floppy drive One Discus HD. Dunno if it's a 10 or 20 MB, doesn't say on the outside. Two Godbout RAM20 boards = 2 x 32K. Morrow Winchester Controller, HDCA-3 One multi-I/O card. One S-100 bus chassis with big honkin' power supply. Doesn't show a brand name, probably Morrow Designs. Bryan Lewis

9 years, 8 months

Further PDP-11/05 debugging -- core memory faults

by marc.verdiell＠gmail.com

> My own little treatise on the organization and electronics of core memory for more depth: > http://www.cs.ubc.ca/~hilpert/e/coremem/index.html +1 , Like, Thumbs up! What a superb write-up. Thank you for this fantastic contribution. Could be published as part of a reference book. Marc

9 years, 8 months

Getting started with Data General Nova hardware -- looking for a few pointers.

by derschjo＠gmail.com

Hi all -- I've just acquired a new project (which I have promised myself I won't get too involved in until I have the 11/05 running satisfactorily). Well, a pair of projects. Or a pile of projects, depending on how you look at it. What I've ended up with are two Data General Nova chassis: an 800 and a 1200, and a box of boards to go with them. Only the 800 chassis has a power supply. I don't know much about the history of this hardware other than that it originally came from the University of Washington, and I don't know that any of this actually went together originally, but in addition to the chassis, I have: - 2 DGC Nova 800/820 CPU sets (two boards each) - 4 DGC Nova 8KW core planes - 2 Keronics P-4 8KW core planes - 1 Basic I/O Control board - 2 DGC Nova 2 CPU boards - 1 DGC Nova 2 16KW core plane I've been looking to get into DG stuff for awhile, but I don't have a lot of experience with the hardware. I've gotten pretty good with DEC stuff over the years and there are a lot of good informational sites out there on the 'net for DEC hardware to help the beginner. The DG hardware seems to be less well covered in this regard. I'm going to need to spend some time to get up to speed -- aside from reading through the manuals on Bitsavers and whatnot, does anyone have any general recommendations for getting started? Will the Nova 2 stuff work in an 800/1200 backplane? (Is the Nova 2 memory compatible with the Nova 800 CPU?) Anyone have any docs for the Keronics core boards? Anything I should be aware of when working on this hardware (gotchas, etc...)? I've heard rumor that the power supplies are not the most robust things in the world... Thanks as always, Josh

9 years, 8 months

Is plastic National Semiconductor (NS) TTL chips worse

by marc.verdiell＠gmail.com

The only way to know would be to look inside. If you want and are willing to ship the dead chips to me in the US/Silicon Valley, I could put them in the X-Ray machine and see if there are any obvious bond wire faults. But the wires might still look OK in the X-Ray micrograph if the defect is due to development of an oxide film between the pad of the circuit and the bond, or a chemical diffusion or reaction in the bond pad itself. There are (very expensive) tools that can ferret out such material problems (after you crack the chip open), but I am not sure I can get easy access to them. Maybe I can ask someone at National Semi (now TI) down the road from us and see if they'd be interested to research the cause of failure. Would be cool to do an electron micrograph section and find out...

9 years, 8 months

3B2 cards

by wdonzelli＠gmail.com

OK, I just uncovered three cards for a small 3B2 - two are quad serial ports, and the third is something else. It seems to me a long long time ago, I was supposed to give these to someone here (or the forum), but clearly things did not connect. To whoever it was - sorry! So, who was it? Shake a few nuts and bolts free in my head and let me know, and I will get them shipped out. If I do not figure out who it was to receive them, I suppose I will throw them up on Ebay. -- Will

9 years, 8 months

DECmate II H7842A and H7842B PSU Pinouts?

by bobvines00＠gmail.com

Does anyone have the pinouts for the DECmate II power supplies? The two PSU model numbers that I have are H7842A and H7842B, but I'd like to know their pinouts in order to properly connect a load (or loads) to them for "smoke testing" away from the computers themselves. They are both 220W supplies according to their labels. (These PSUs may have also been used in the DEC Rainbow.) Does anyone, by chance, have the schematic(s) for these power supplies? Other than close inspection for bulging/leaking capacitors or obviously burnt/damaged components or areas on the PCB, what should I look for to increase my chances of not allowing the smoke to escape? (Also, I recently found a "vintage computer" discussion site where they were trying to collect, preserve, & make *usable* images of any DEC microfiche sets they could get. One guy said that he had a fiche set that included the DECmate II. None of these fiche sets are on-line yet as far as I can tell.) Thanks, Bob

9 years, 8 months

my VCFMW Wishlist- Wanted Items

by slandon110＠gmail.com

Looking for the following stuff Amiga 1200, 3000 or 4000- Have a really souped up Mac SE/30 to trade Atari Computer, preferable an ST STE, stuff like that A minicomputer of some sort, preferably a small PDP or something like that. Ill have lots to trade, bringing a truckload of goodies Steve

9 years, 8 months

DEC VAX SDI interface via BDA?

by nw＠retrocomputingtasmania.com

I was poking about for alternatives to the hefty KDB50-Q SDI controller set for MicroVAX to connect up my Emulex SD590 SDI hard drives and found on ebay this item: http://www.ebay.com/itm/190665553055 DEC T1003 VAXstation BDA SDI 5015772-01 Disk Adapter to Single Drive Interface It is labelled as a VAXstation BDA (VAX BI Disk Adapter) and interestingly the T1003 is one component of the KDB50-Q board-set, so I am guessing this could be a VAXstation specific KDB50 all-in-one? anyone know anything about these? I could not find any manuals for them nor could I find a VAXstation that has some type of extensible bus that would support a board like this. I notice this seller has several other "VAXstation" boards too. I have a couple of M38 VAXstations but I don't think they take any type of expansion option other than graphics cards, so I guess the VAXstation BDA options go in the 4000 series? Looking at the few pages on the 4000 series does not reveal much in the way of expansion options either. thanks, nigel.

9 years, 8 months

M4 Data 9914 tach roller fix

by aek＠bitsavers.org

I was working on 1/2" tape recovery this week, and wanted to see if the M4 that I got from Guy worked any better that the Qualstar I was using, so I dug the 9914 back out after a rather frustrating experience earlier this year trying to get the tach roller resurfaced (it's the only rubber part in the whole tape path). It turns out 1/2" ID surgical tubing works just fine stretched over the tach roller. It's a bit of a challenge getting it over the lip of the roller but once it's in place it fills in the gap where the original rubber was just fine. I was able to recover the one bad block on the 1990 MSDP tape I had, so that's been updated on bitsavers, along with a bunch of other random tapes that were in the to do pile.

9 years, 8 months

warehouse closing

by sales＠elecplus.com

I am closing my warehouse by the end of this month. My husband's health is rapidly failing, and I want to spend what time he has left with him, not with a bunch of old computers and parts! Please review the pics here: https://plus.google.com/photos/106111250846948401252/albums?banner=pwa But know that the Apple room and the Lisa are gone. Lots of old keyboards, terminals (like the ones on Halt and Catch Fire), mono monitors new in the box, IBM 5150 and 5160 with kbds and monitors, tested working, u name it. Please also see www.elecshopper.com, make offer for anything you want. Still have 2 gaylords of IBM compat laptops, 8088 thru 80486 and P1, and 1 gaylord of Apple laptops, from the first ones thru abt 1996 or so. I would rather this stuff go to someone who will cherish it, then go by the pound to be ground up. Also more than 100 computer books from Apple and DOS thru Windows XP and Server 2003. 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

9 years, 8 months

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test-drb September 2014