test-drb January 2015

test-drb@ccmp.vtda.org

175 participants
253 discussions

by useddec＠gmail.com

I found a FTI table top reader today, and the only number on it is 2939. Also a Remex rack mount with 6300BB1, which could be a serial number. I might have a few more to dig out at some point. If interested, please contact me off list. Shipping from zip 61853. Thanks, Paul

9 years, 10 months

SIM990/DX10 help?

by scaron＠umich.edu

Hi everyone, I downloaded Dave Pitts' SIM990 emulator and the pre-rolled DX10 disk images available on his site yesterday evening, thinking I'd give it a run. SIM990 compiled clean; I'm running on Debian 7.7, 32-bit, on an Intel D510 Atom system. I feel as though this should be plenty of power... I run Hercules on this same system all the time to fool around with MTS and MVS 3.8J and I find the performance to be just fine... (way better than on my old Sun Fire V120s, LOL) I extracted the DX10 images and I started the emulator on them as directed: sim990 -msc 12 512K dx10.cfg For a terminal emulator, I'm using PuTTY; I also tried Procomm Plus (latest version) with a few different emulations and couldn't make it work, I seem to get furthest with PuTTY. I connect using Telnet protocol to port 2000 on the emulation host. I get the DX10 IPL screen: * TEXAS INSTRUMENTS * DX10 "SYS3 " SYSTEM IPL * ST01 I hit F10 then "!" and I get a sort of menu-like thing: **************************** DX10 3.7.0 THIS SYSTEM HAS THE FOLLOWING SUBSYSTEMS INSTALLED: COBOL PASCAL SORTMRG BASIC ... ***************************** I don't get a signon prompt but I assume user login has not been enabled on this basic disk image, however... I never get the SCI prompt, [], and it seems unresponsive; I've tried typing i.e. BASIC, COBOL, commands from the DX10 manual, totally random junk, etc. and I don't get any response; I mean, it seems to be refreshing the screen every time I hit RETURN; it's not giving me any kind of error message, but it's not really doing anything either. Is my emulation just not working right? I tried the DNOS image too and I was able to get a little further... At IPL it prompts for date and time which I'm able to fill in, and there is a login stage (l: SYSTEM, p: SYSTEM) which I can get through, just use the cursor keys to move through the fields and hit RETURN to push the screen (it seems screen-oriented, feels reminiscent of an IBM) but once that's done I land at an equally unresponsive main menu just like I describe occurring with DX10. Has anyone played with this and found a Telnet client that works well? I don't see anything on the author's site other than to note that Windows Telnet won't work. Not clear what I'm doing wrong. Thanks! Sean

9 years, 10 months

Weekly Classic Computer Trivia Question (20150105)

by dpi＠dustyoldcomputers.com

Time for another trivia question. We will start off the year with an easy one. This one is related to computers but not exclusive to computers. What is the significance of the phrase: The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog. No fair looking it up on the internet. Doug Ingraham PDP-8 S/N 1175

9 years, 10 months

Seeking... TI TMS9902 ICs

by johnwallace4＠yahoo.co.uk

Dave Pitts' aforementioned page links to some 990 stuff at bitsavers. The stuff there is largely system level stuff. People whose interests are closer to chip level might want to have a look at the 9900 Microprocessor Series Family Systems Design Databook available at archive.org, if they're not already aware: https://archive.org/details/9900MicroprocessorSeriesFamilySystemsDesignData… A 2 inch thick book that contained pretty much everything you were likely to need to know about the 9900 family. One of the few other useful 9900 resources I vaguely remember was a 3rd party 9900 book which contained the source for an "instant input assembler" - a tiny line by line assembler which you could add to your PROM-based 9900 debug monitor so you could enter small programs as source rather than hex. Neat. Can't remember name of author or of book, can't quickly find them either. I worked with 990/4 systems many years ago and there was almost no 9900 family glue logic inside. As far as I remember, the /4 was designed before (most of?) the 99xx support chips came to market. So a serial card in a /4 had a handful of chips doing what a 9902 would eventually do in one. Not sure about the video controller but the same probably applied. I have a vague recollection that the interweb has some decent writeups of the innards of the 99/4 home computer stuff (sorry, no pointers); from those, it might be possible to work out if the kit of parts on eBay is a plausible match for a 99/4 or similar volume market product. Have a lot of fun John Wallace

9 years, 10 months

PET/CBM Book available

by nospam212-cctalk＠yahoo.com

I have a spare copy of the PET/CBM Personal Computer Guide Second Edition by Adam Osborne & Carroll S. Donahue published by Osborne/McGraw-Hill available. If you are interested make me an offer. David Williams www.trailingedge.com

9 years, 10 months

Compaq Systempro processor board repair

by tothwolf＠concentric.net

I have a Compaq Systempro 486DX2/66 processor board (Spare No. 133825-001) which I'm trying to repair that is missing some SMD components on the solder side of the board. Does anyone happen to have one of these in their collection and would be willing to read the component markings so I can repair this one? Thankfully Compaq used SMD capacitors with readable codes on them which indicate their values. My board is missing R135, C227, C178, and C153. Looking at the solder side of the board with the card edge connectors facing towards you, R135 and C227 are towards the top left corner, about 1" from the top and 1.5" from the left. They are opposite U54 which is on the component side of the board. I /think/ R135 is supposed to be 56 ohms and C227 0.047uF (based on some similar looking circuitry on the board) but I have no way to verify if those are the correct values. C178 is about 1/4" from the top edge of the board and just to the left of U511 (ATT7C174J). It is opposite U43/U60 which is on the component side of the board. C153 is just above the longest card edge connector, about 1" from the leftmost contacts. It is opposite U32 which is on the component side of the board. I salvaged this board out of a scrap bin many years ago and have already made lots of repairs to it, but I've never quite finished it. I'm about to order some other SMD parts for other projects, so if I can figure out what value these parts are supposed to be, I can pick up a few extra reels of components and finally finish this board.

9 years, 10 months

64700A

by aek＠bitsavers.org

Today's project was a teardown and photo shoot of a 64700A, which isn't of much practical use with a 68302 pod on it, and even after 10 years of ignoring them the prices are still too high and the software to use them unobtanium. http://bitsavers.trailing-edge.com/pdf/hp/64700/64700A/photos/ The lack of documentation for the whole 64700 family is pretty sad. I scraped the Agilent web site back in 2000 and there wasn't much there on the A series back then. I also pulled most of my Applied Microsystems stuff out and that will be tomorrow's project.

9 years, 10 months

Camiacs Model V document V0.3 update

by drlegendre＠gmail.com

Camiacs RS-232 / CL converter Model V document - Updated, with corrections. Your comments / additions / etc are of course requested.

9 years, 10 months

RK05 classic computing trivia question

by ard＠p850ug1.demon.co.uk

Based on some boxes of stuff I unpacked today... How could you quickly distinguish an RK05F spare head from a normal RK05 spare head? -tony

9 years, 10 months

OpenGenera

by aswood＠t-online.de

Shouldn't OpenGenera now free of copyright terms? I seem to remember 2015 was the year! -- Andreas

9 years, 10 months

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test-drb January 2015