test-drb February 2015

test-drb@ccmp.vtda.org

203 participants
261 discussions

by jnc＠mercury.lcs.mit.edu

> From: Chuck Guzis > "the first electronic digital computer" I think that's a bit of a stretch; the ABC wasn't really a computer (as we think of them). As someone (forget the name) said, for those early machines, if you add enough adjectives, each one is the first <something>. Here's my list (in temporal order): ABC - first electronic digital computing device COLOSSUS - first large-scale electronic digital computing device heavily used for actual work ENIAC - first general-purpose electronic digital computing device Manchester Baby - first operational stored-program computer EDSAC - first stored-program computer heavily used for actual work Noel

9 years, 10 months

begging drivers/docs for obscure old PC/Mac hardware

by bear＠typewritten.org

Folks; Over time, I have accreted some assorted unusual hardware for PC and Macintosh, for which I lack the software to drive it. I know we have some terrific packrats on the list, so I'm shaking the tree, to see what might fall out. * DuPont Imaging Systems MacBlitz NuBus RISC processor. Apparently this is a Clipper CPU which runs UNIX independently of the host Macintosh, with IPC of some description. Has its own ethernet and SCSI interfaces. The Googles know almost nothing about this. * Vermont Microsystems Image Manager 1024 (IM-1024) 1024x800 PGC-compatible display adapter. Supposedly there were AutoCAD, GEM, Windows 1.x and 2.x drivers at one time. I'd love to see any of them. * Matrox "Space Machine" SM-1280 solid modeling graphics adapter. I'm not sure what kind of drivers were available; possibly it was just a set of development libraries for programming the board yourself. * Matrox PG-1280 (and/or the Microchannel equivalent MC-1281) graphics accelerator. I'd love to see any DOS-era PC drivers, or the PRPQ that let this board work under AIX on an RT. Somebody on the VC Forum thought he had these installed on a running system, but I never heard any further news. * Hercules Chrome TIGA (40 MHz TMS-34020) graphics accelerator. I have a Windows 3.1 driver for this, but I'm not sure the card is set up correctly. Mainly looking for documentation here. * IBM 5364 S/36 PC SSP, MCODE, and/or DOS host software. Somebody on the list kindly sent me a disk image of just enough of the DOS host software to prove my 5364 runs, but it's not a complete install and is missing some features I wanted to enable (keyboard maps mainly, IIRC). In addition, without the MCODE floppies the system can't be reconfigured for the various communications options (bisync, SDLC, etc.) my host PC has installed. Shoot, I thought there was something else, too. I guess I'll think of it eventually. Anyone? ok bear. -- until further notice

9 years, 10 months

Windows CE

by sales＠elecplus.com

Someone asked awhile back for Windows CE software, but I did not save the post. I have a sealed package with CE 2.1, includes COA. Cindy Croxton

9 years, 10 months

imitation game movie

by jnc＠mercury.lcs.mit.edu

> From: Fred Cisin > Or Zuse? Oh, $DEITY; forgot about him! So modify a few of the latter entries in my list to add 'electronic'... :-) Noel

9 years, 10 months

Magnetic tape filesystem

by tom_a_sparks＠yahoo.com.au

I am wondering if there were any magnetic tape filesystem? I know that some micro you could give a name to your data/program on the audio cassette and they had a catalogue feature I also know about Linear Tape File System (LTFS) Has anyone tried putting cp/m or fat filesystem on audio cassette?

9 years, 10 months

imitation game movie

by jnc＠mercury.lcs.mit.edu

> From: Jon Elson > has anybody seen the Imitation Game movie, ostensibly about Alan Turing? > .. > Any comments? I have, and I also have extensively studied both WWII codebreaking, and Turing's life and work. It's an OK movie, but as any kind of historical thing - fuhgeddaboutit. There are so many 'errors' (changes) that it's basically impossible to list them all. They ran about about one error/change per minute, throughout the whole movie. It's more wrong than right, actually. About the only thing that was absolutley accurate (other than the basic concept, that Turing worked at BP and helped break German codes) was Joan Clarke's soliloquy in his flat at the end of the movie, describing his contribution to the world. > Various descriptions have hundreds of people at Bletchley wiring the > rotors and doing much of the other work. The Bombe parts must have been > made in machine shops across England. Hmm. The descriptions I've seen of their manufacture (e.g. Gordon Welchman, "The Hut Six Story", pp. 138-141, Hugh Sebag-Montefiore, "Enigma: The Battle for the Code", pp. 56-58) all indicate that the machines were manufactured by British Tabulating Machines in their Letchworth factory (about half-way between BP and Cambridge), and only came to BP once they were completed. There was a lot of local sub-contracting of small sub-assemblies which didn't require machining, though (see Welchman). Noel

9 years, 10 months

Radio Shack

by r_a_feldman＠hotmail.com

Most people posting in this thread have assumed that all Radio Shack stores were closing. That is not the case (at least for some time). Only about half of the company-owned stores are being closed. RS has published a list of the 1784 stores it wants to close: http://radioshackcorporation.com/pdfs/RS-Store-Closure-List_020415.pdf. Another 1750 stores will be taken over by Sprint for cell phone "store-within-stores" and about 1000 stores owned by franchisees are not part of the Chapter 11 bankruptcy proceedings. According to the Register (http://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/02/10/radioshack_store_axed/), the closings will take place by March 31. Two stores in downtown Chicago, near where I work, are on the list, so I will be watching them to see when they start selling off the merchandise. Bob

9 years, 10 months

8" drive advice...

by supervinx＠libero.it

I need to connect an external 8" floppy drive to the FDADAP card. I've found two drives: NEC FD1165A and Shugart SA851. I have to buy ine of them. I'm about to choose the NEC one, since it doesn't need an AC power source. The Shugart SA851 is targeted 115 VAC, and I live in Europe. Beside power supply questions, are there other reasons why I should choose the Shugart? Hard sectored disk support? I only have to read/write IBM S/36 and 5120 floppy disks... Thanks! -- Vincenzo (aka Supervinx) --==ooOoo==-- My computer collection: http://www.supervinx.com/Retrocomputer --==ooOoo==-- You can reach me at: www.supervinx.com www.facebook.com/supervinx http://www.youtube.com/user/supervinx http://www.myspace.com/supervinx

9 years, 10 months

11/45 hack?

by jnc＠mercury.lcs.mit.edu

> From: Paul Anderson > it's not part of the 128 kw or 256 kb limit of the 45 Err, don't think so - that limit is in the addressing hardware in the CPU as well as in the UNIBUS. > From: Eric Smith > The 11/45 (or 11/50, 11/55) Fastbus memory, whether MOS or bipolar, is > not directly on either Unibus Actually, my understanding is that it is on UNIBUS B (or 2), via a second port to the memory; see this post: http://www.classiccmp.org/pipermail/cctalk/2015-February/003460.html which gave my understanding of how it works. And of course if you connect the two UNIBI together, it's therefore directly on UNIBUS A (or 1), as well. I.e. DMA devices can do transfers to/from it. Noel

9 years, 10 months

Memorex MRX IV 6250 BPI SuperReel Tape on sale - 4 reels maybe new

by mazzinia＠tin.it

It's not my auction, have no relations.. 4 Reels 2 packages Memorex MRX IV 6250 BPI SuperReel Tape VAX DEC IBM Vintage http://cgi.ebay.it/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=371253355734&category=175…

9 years, 10 months

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test-drb February 2015