test-drb June 2015

test-drb@ccmp.vtda.org

165 participants
285 discussions

EK-LESIB-TM KLESI-B Adapter Technical Manual

by bob＠jfcl.com

Does anyone have a copy of this document? It's not on Manx and I don't think it's on bitsavers, so it's a long shot but I have to ask. If someone has a printed copy and is willing to loan it or sell it, I'll be happy to scan it and submit it to the archives. Thanks, Bob

9 years, 1 month

DEC Runoff to any modern format conversion - MORE INFO

by johnwallace4＠yahoo.co.uk

[massive snippages for brevity] Apologies if this is a daft question badly presented: has anybody mentioned, or better still looked at, DSRPLUS for this picture yet? I did have a quick look but may have missed it. It is, as the name suggests, intended as a bigger better version of DEC/DIGITAL Standard Runoff. Some variants of DSRPLUS are available through VMS freeware (some, e.g. freeware V6 and V7, appear to be available online and working). DSRPLUS might even already be available on one of the general-access VMS systems, for anyone who can't install it locally. It gets better too: a web search for "dsrplus documentation" (ie where is the DSRPLUS manual) doesn't quickly find a DSRPLUS manual but does quickly find a Bitsavers copy of the HSC50 User Guide, whose frontmatter says "This document was generated using DSRPLUS." Could be coincidence, but for someone looking for MSCP specs... Apologies if I'm in the wrong tree. Have a lot of fun.

9 years, 1 month

Looking for PDF files of The Computer Journal

by computerdoc＠sc.rr.com

Hi Everyone, I am looking for pdf files for the Computer Journal. There is a series of articles on designing microprocessors I'd like to someday read about. Any ideas where they may be located? Kip Koon <mailto:computerdoc at sc.rr.com> computerdoc at sc.rr.com <http://www.cocopedia.com/wiki/index.php/Kip_Koon> http://www.cocopedia.com/wiki/index.php/Kip_Koon

9 years, 1 month

PDP-12 Restoration at the RICM

by michael.99.thompson＠gmail.com

W contacted David Tumey about Teletype hammers. He will send us some as a donation. We put some heat-shrink tubing on to stop further damage. Warren repaired and tested the M706 Teletype receiver. We put it back in the PDP-12 and put the borrowed M706 back in the PDP-8/I. The donor brought another M706/M707 pair, so we tested them and then installed them. We have two working serial ports in the PDP-12. Warren is making an Arduino based programmable baud rate generator for this system. We ran more diags. The 8/I Instruction Test #1 & #2, and the random JMP, JMP-JMS, ISZ tests work OK. The LINC Tape-Quickie test and the Memory Address test fail after running OK for a few minutes. We tested all of the G221 Memory Selectors, and they are OK, so the memory address decoding is probably working OK. This may be a case where the processor is sometimes doing the wrong thing when comparing numbers, and the rest of the hardware is actually OK. Debugging this will be the project for next week. The donor dropped off more documentation, spare parts, LINC tapes containing the DIAL operating system, and an RK05 disk pack that likely contains OS/8. We will make image copies of the LINC tapes and the disk pack. -- Michael Thompson

9 years, 1 month

DEC Runoff to any modern format conversion - MORE INFO

by t.gardner＠computer.org

Hi Thanks for all the ideas. Apparently there is nothing off the shelf; I have sent copies of one of the two manuals to three of us who indicated they would try something and will be happy to do the same for anyone else. AFAIK, DEC RUNOFF is only similar to other runoffs in that it uses a period "." at the beginning of a line to designate a command. Most . commands span the single line but some have multi-line and/or multi file implications. E.g. Something like .HL 1 Overview of MSCP Subsystem Converts to <h1 style="text-align:left;"> Overview of MSCP Subsystem</h1> Most of the conversions are obvious but some are a bit more complex, in particular the .require command which apparently assembles the chapter files into a book. .referencepoint command which is some form of anchor, perhaps for an index since so far it always seems to follow a HL command so maybe .HL 1 Overview of MSCP Subsystem .referencepoint overvw_mscp_sub Converts to <h1 name="overvw_mscp_sub" ID="overvw_mscp_sub" style="text-align:left; "> Overview of MSCP Subsystem</h1> With the ID being called from a Table Of Contents built to include the full name and page number It looks like a multipass converter would be the way to go. Anyhow this is a bit beyond my current coding skill but if anyone else wants to try a converter I'd like to work with them Tom -----Original Message----- From: Tom Gardner [mailto:t.gardner at computer.org] Sent: Thursday, June 04, 2015 10:47 AM To: cctalk at classiccmp.org Subject: DEC Runoff to any modern format conversion or DEC MSCP protocol specs Hi I have multiple DEC Runoff (.rno extension) files for the manual on DEC's MSCP protocol. I'd like to convert them to a modern format. The manual is dated circa 1992 incorporating ecos thru MSCP23-4 and is revision 2.4 (or later) of MSCP. What appears to be an early version (Apr 1982 rev 1.2) is at <http://www.textfiles.com/bitsavers/pdf/dec/disc/UDA50/AA-L619A-TK_MSCP_basF n> http://www.textfiles.com/bitsavers/pdf/dec/disc/UDA50/AA-L619A-TK_MSCP_basFn s_82.pdf I've searched for a convertor without much luck, there is a VMS Pascal converter at <https://www.ctan.org/tex-archive/support/rnototex> https://www.ctan.org/tex-archive/support/rnototex which converts to LaTex which can then be converted to pdf, but I don't have any DEC equipment. Anyone know of a converter or perhaps other already converted manuals at other revision levels (e.g. rev 1.2 at link above)? If not, anyone running VMS Pascal or OpenVMS v6.1 (or later) willing to try a conversion to LaTex? DECs Runoff is a markup language that sort of looks like an early HTML, so I suppose I could try a grep conversion to HTML, or just strip out the markup. Any other ideas? Tom

9 years, 1 month

Troubleshooting a N* Advantage

by snhirsch＠gmail.com

My Advantage decided to stop booting from floppy disks (the only media it is capable of booting). At first it threw random disk errors, then progressed to the point where I get an immediate "Hardware Failure" diagnostic on screen at power up. If I reset and hit 'Enter' it starts the disk drive comes right back with a "?" prompt and LOAD SYSTEM. I've checked the obvious: - Power supply voltages are good - Pulled, cleaned leads and re-seated 52 very tarnished 4116s - Cleaned and reseated all other socketed parts. A lot does seem to be working. Display is fine. I can enter the mini-monitor and poke around. Keyboard is being read properly. I accidentally found an undocumented diagnostic (enter mini-monitor with Ctrl-C and enter 'A'). This displays the disk controller status registers. The only activity is the sector mark pulse, so something is responding to disk data. Any advice from other Advantage owners or those familiar with the beast would be appreciated. Interesting data point: I replaced the 8035 slave processor with a newer 8035 from the parts bin and none of the I/O operations it manages worked at all - no keyboard no disk activity. Is there perhaps something special about the older part? I'm not aware of any major differences in this part through the years, but you never know. --

9 years, 1 month

PDP-8/e front panels.

by rodsmallwood52＠btinternet.com

Hi Guys Thanks for all of the enquiries for panels. I have ten in total. One I have here (as in photo) and the other nine are in the drying rack at the silk screeners. My photo does not do them justice. The screening is a lot sharper and clearer. On Monday I'll go and get the rest of them (10mins down the road) and sort out shipping. I'll let one of the nine go to each of the first nine firm orders. Please send your order to me at rodsmallwood52 at btinternet.com. I'll respond with the total inc. shipping. Payment will be by PayPal. and I'll ship on receipt of payment in full. I'll also instigate another batch of ten. The plexiglas suppliers size the panel and do all the cutouts. They then ship direct to the silkscreeners who are (very) local to me. Total time to second batch availability circa 7-10 (business) days. If I get orders for more than ten then I'll bump up the second batch size accordingly. If there is a demand I'll do other 8's or 11's front panels that use the same plexiglas and silk screen technique. R & D (maybe ware) 8/e bezel in cast resin 8/e programmers console PCB ( If I can solve the problem of the Stackpole switches availability.) 8/e Microprocessor PCB addon to run an 8/e simulator with serial i/o to a terminal. Rod Smallwood

9 years, 1 month

PDP8/e front panels.

by rodsmallwood52＠btinternet.com

Hi All I have recently produced a number of high quality custom PDP8/e front panels. They are full size reproductions of the original. The production methods are exactly as used in circa 1971. They are not photographs. The front has the two colours plus the white each done with its own silk screen and the back has the intense black with the clear circular areas for the lamps to shine through. The inks were matched and made to order. The acrylic blanks with the cutouts for the keys were also a custom order. I did the artwork, The four screens were made and the printing done by two young ladies with very good graphic arts skills at 'Squegee & Ink Ltd' local to me here in Newbury UK. I have some photos but they do not do justice to the pin sharp lines and intense colours. The panel fits the bezel and the switches on the key + lamps board line up. I have a few to sell and can do more if needed. Due to the custom production they will not be low cost ($95.00 + shipping from UK) If you are interested I'll send you a picture. My photo skills are not that good. Rod Smallwood

9 years, 1 month

VMS EXCHANGE format for VAX console media

by nf6x＠nf6x.net

I have a copy of an 11/730 console tape which I have been told is in EXCHANGE format as created by the CONSCOPY utility. Can any of the VMS experts here help this VMS noob learn how to translate that into a raw block-level image of the corresponding TU58 tape, which I might be able to use with a TU58 emulator? I see that the EXCHANGE image is 512 bytes longer than a full TU58 tape. Could it be as simple as chopping off the first or last 512 bytes? I'm not quite at the point yet where I know what a console tape ought to look like in a hex editor, so I can't clearly see whether that might work yet. I'm presently starting to work on getting some version of VMS running on an emulated 11/780 under simh. So with any luck, I may have a functioning VMS environment before too long, even though I haven't managed to boot up my real 11/730 yet. My end goal is to use that console tape image with some TU58 emulator to boot up my real VAX. I have some original console tapes for it, but they no longer seem to be readable. I did get my machine to examine one of them quite a bit before deciding it wasn't suitable, so maybe there is still some recoverable data on those tapes... but none of them seem to be sufficiently error-free to boot my machine. I'm presently working on booting it from a downloaded console tape image, but getting tu58em and my 11/730 to like each other is still an ongoing project. Once I get there, I think that this EXCHANGE format image that I have is the same console tape version as my unreadable real tapes, and newer than the other downloaded image that I'm presently trying to use, so it would be nice to be able to get it into a format that I can use directly. Thanks in advance for any clues! -- Mark J. Blair, NF6X <nf6x at nf6x.net> http://www.nf6x.net/

9 years, 1 month

pdp8/e /f /m Omnibus legenda available

by simski＠dds.nl

Hello all, As part of my effort to resurrect our lately broken pdp8/f, I've made a nice drawing of the connector lugs of an omnibus card with its signals next to it. Both sides are done together on one page. any comments are welcome link: https://hack42.nl/wiki/Bestand:Omnibus_legenda.pdf -- Met vriendelijke Groet, Simon Claessen drukknop.nl

9 years, 1 month

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test-drb June 2015