Johnny Billquist <bqt at update.uu.se> wrote:
> The TK50 normally do not gum up. There are two problems with them, and
> those problems have been around since day 1.
> The first one is that the heads get dirty. Cleaning with isopropanol or
> similar with a lint-free pad solves that just fine.
> The second problem is that the tape pickup gets unhinged. Remove the
> covers and then you can fix that easily.
So much for "YMMV": jkunz and I must have had some really bad tapes back
then at the VCFe a couple of years ago. When we tried to read them (in
a TK70, I think - does that make the difference?), they slowed down the
mechanism, produced a squealing sound and stuck to the head to the point
where in some cases the tape (carrier) broke in some cases. We did clean
the head and tape guide parts with IPA several times only to get the
same problem again. I'm sure he can elaborate a bit more about the tapes
and the equipment used but I think I have it mostly correct.
So Long,
Arno
anyone know how to hook these up?
has controllers to talk to a Shibaura VMC-45 with a Tosnuc 600 control
picked it up for 50 bucks in near mint condition localy this week
and i'd like to hook it up to my laptop to back up every tape i got at this
time
Does anyone here have a spare keyboard for a Compaq Portable?
--
David Griffith
dave at 661.org
A: Because it fouls the order in which people normally read text.
Q: Why is top-posting such a bad thing?
A: Top-posting.
Q: What is the most annoying thing in e-mail?
Hi list,
3 years ago, I picked up an HP 9144A QIC tape drive with HP-IB interface. It came with three 16-track QIC tape drives. I never found the time to connect it to my HP 9000-300 and realized that I will probably never make use of it, which is why I'd like to give it to some other collector's hands who is interested. I powered up the drive for 2 hours, no smoke, the fan was running as expected. Nothing else tested.
Picture of the actual three tapes which come with the drive:
http://www.digitalheritage.de/OTHER/20141223_155006_tn.JPG
I forgot to take pictures of the drive, but will do it, as soon as I can access it next week again.
In the mean time, here is another one of the tape drive (not mine):
http://www.hpmuseum.net/display_item.php?hw=257
The drive weights 9kg (20 lbs).
First come, first serve. Drive and tapes are for free. You have to pay shipping costs or come to pick it up. Location is Bonn, Germany.
Kind regards,
Pierre
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Pierre's collection of classic computers moved to: http://www.digitalheritage.de
Yesterday afternoon we had a "network event" on our storage network. Traffic
was flowing, but with severe drops in connections.
We believe we have most - but not all - resolved at this point.
Unfortunately, in the thick of battle production machines come first so
classiccmp server sat down for a while and was just brought back up.
Apologies for the inconvenience.. Going to sleep now.
J
I've been using my lone RL02 with my QBus systems, I'd love to be able
to use it with my 11/34 as well. (If anyone has a spare RL02 *drive*
I'd be interested as well...) I have various DEC stuff for trade, drop
me a line if you have one going spare.
Thanks!
Josh
Dave,
Super useful info again. In the meantime the machine has arrived, in very
good shape. I'll post pictures when I have time tomorrow, and a video
hopefully. I took a quick look inside to confirm
- there is a DCPC and a MEM protect card
- Memory controller is an older 2102A
- Three are three 8k 2102A memory boards
- No MEM card in slot 112
- Under the processor board there is a screwed on card, which seems to have
ROM on it. Microcode I presume, but I don't know if that's the one you were
talking about. I'll post photos to confirm
The IO cards and the paper tape reader / punch that came with it suggest
that it was configured with a paper tape reader, a paper tape punch, a mag
tape and a TTY interface. A plausible story is that this was an early
machine setup for paper tape and TTY and didn't have extended memory. The
early 2102A controller fits that picture well.
So I might be in the hunt for the cards or alternate solutions you
mentioned.
Marc
From: "J. David Bryan" <jdbryan at acm.org>
On Tuesday, May 19, 2015 at 23:12, Marc Verdiell wrote:
> Thanks, very useful info, and the manual is indeed what I was missing.
You're welcome.
> But now where to find the DMS, with two cards in particular, that's
> not going easy to find both that match...
First, are you sure that the machine does not have DMS installed? It was a
very common option that became standard later on, as all versions of the RTE
operating system after RTE-II (circa 1976) required it.
Second, if the machine originally came with DMS but was stripped for resale,
then possibly only the MEM card (in slot 112) was removed. The firmware
card is screwed onto the CPU board on the underside of the machine and is
only accessible if the bottom cover is removed. So maybe it was overlooked,
and the availability of MEM cards is likely to be reasonable, as the same
card (but with different firmware) was used in the E/F-Series machines.
Third, if the machine has neither DMS part, then indeed finding an M-Series
DMS firmware card might be difficult. However, DMS firmware was also
included with the later M-Series Fast FORTRAN Processor firmware (product
number 12977B). Again, the FFP was a common option, and availability of
that card might be better than the older standalone DMS firmware card.
Fourth, if you can find a standalone MEM card, the M-Series DMS/FFP firmware
source is part of the HP 1000 Software Collection on Bitsavers, so you could
burn the required firmware PROMs and install them on a 12791A Firmware
Expansion Module card, which plugs into the I/O backplane and cables to the
CPU board. Both the FEM and the MEM were used on E/F-Series machines, so
availability should be reasonable.
Finally, the simplest HP operating system that used DMS (RTE-III) had
additional hardware requirements: a Memory Protect card, a Dual-Channel Port
Controller (i.e., DMA) card, one of several console I/O cards, a Time- Base
Generator (i.e., clock) card, and either an HP 7900A or 7905/06/20/25A hard
drive and its associated I/O interface(s). The latter may be the most
difficult and expensive part. You can avoid the hard drive and use Ansgar
Kueckes' HPDrive emulator with an HP-IB I/O card, but that requires RTE-IVB
as the minimum OS, which requires at least 96KW of memory (128KW if you want
to do anything other than boot the system :-). MP and DCPC also were
exceedingly common options, so I'd be surprised if your system didn't
contain them, unless they've been stripped out for resale.
Without DMS, you're limited to 32KW. In that, you could run (with some
additional hardware, most notably an HP hard drive) DOS-III or RTE-II.
Without a hard drive, you'd be limited to running one of several paper tape
or mag tape-based HP OSes. There are third-party OSes that run on the 1000,
but I know nothing about them.
At least software is no problem; virtually everything that HP developed for
the 2116/2100/1000 machines is available via the Bitsavers collection.
-- Dave
I've been brainstorming about hypothetical hardware for converting video from vintage 8-bit computers to drive modern monitors well, with support for all of the dirty tricks like color aliasing that many of them used. One of the things I would like to understand is the range of RF frequencies used by the machines that connected to ordinary televisions.
My old Color Computer used US VHF channels 3 or 4 for NTSC video. I found a reference to the ZX Spectrum using UK UHF channel 35 for PAL video.
What other channels were used all over the world by 8-bit home computers (and video games, too, I suppose), and which TV standards were used with them?