test-drb June 2015

test-drb@ccmp.vtda.org

165 participants
285 discussions

by COURYHOUSE＠aol.com

the buyer also trafficked in these areas Computers/Tablets & Networking > Vintage Computers & Mainframes 1 Seller 1 <1h Video Games & Consoles > Other Video Games & Consoles 1 Seller 1 <1h Computers/Tablets & Networking > Keyboards & Keypads 1 Seller 1 <1h Musical Instruments & Gear > Parts & Accessories 1 Seller 1 <1h Video Games & Consoles > Video Game Consoles 1 Seller 1 <1h Computers/Tablets & Networking > Other Vintage Computing 1 Seller 1 <1h Computers/Tablets & Networking > Vintage Manuals & Merchandise 1 Seller 1 1d 16h Toys & Hobbies > Space Toys 1 Seller 2 <1h Consumer Electronics > iPods & MP3 Players 1 Seller 1 <1h Consumer Electronics > iPods & MP3 Players 1 Seller 1 <1h Consumer Electronics > iPods & MP3 Players 1 Seller 1 <1h Consumer Electronics > iPods & MP3 Players 1 Seller 1 <1h Consumer Electronics > iPods & MP3 Players 1 Seller 1 <1h Consumer Electronics > iPods & MP3 Players 1 Seller 1 <1h Consumer Electronics > iPods & MP3 Players 1 Seller 1 <1h Consumer Electronics > iPods & MP3 Players 1 Seller 1 <1h Video Games & Consoles > Video Game Consoles 1 Seller 1 <1h Computers/Tablets & Networking > Mice, Trackballs & Touchpads 1 Seller 1 <1h Toys & Hobbies > Electronic Learning Toys 1 Seller 1 <1h Consumer Electronics > Internet & Media Streamers 1 Seller 1 <1h Computers/Tablets & Networking > Vintage Parts & Accessories 1 Seller 1 <1h Musical Instruments & Gear > Signal Processors/Rack Effects 1 Seller 1 <1h Health & Beauty > Other Mobility & Disability 1 Seller 1 <1h Business & Industrial > Point of Sale Equipment 1 Seller 1 <1h Computers/Tablets & Networking > Vintage Computers & Mainframes 1 Seller 3 8h Computers/Tablets & Networking > Graphics Tablets/Boards & Pens 1 Seller 1 <1h Computers/Tablets & Networking > Other Computer Software 1 Seller 1 <1h Computers/Tablets & Networking > Scanners 1 Seller 1 <1h Consumer Electronics > Vintage Calculators 1 Seller 1 <1h Video Games & Consoles > Controllers & Attachments In a message dated 6/26/2015 2:45:35 P.M. US Mountain Standard Time, jws at jwsss.com writes: That is pretty sad to hear. The item is the notebook / diary detailing the restoration of their PDP8/s (or I think it is of theirs). Undoubtedly donated by someone who may have thought it would remain there. I suspect unless the items are going to organizations, they will show up soon on ebay. The buyer in this case showed he had done 90% of his recent business all over items from there, and if you look at their queue it is easy to see why. http://www.ebay.com/itm/221805321988 <https://www.google.com/url?q=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ebay.com%2Fitm%2F221805321988 &usd=2&usg=AFQjCNH-hrxHjmQnJE9doH0QtvgjGgzvmg> I just hope it's not one of the psychos on ebay that one has to deal with with a lot of items, but it probably is. I'm going to go back thru the AGCW feedback given to see what else they got, but I suspect its not a collector. Any word where such items as the PDP8/s and such stand? If the recent example of the Apple 1 donation is any indication the people that are doing the selling are probably not getting the best for their dispersion of the collection. In the Apple case 200k is way under what it probably could have fetched, and whoever got it (and probably whoever sold it) make out like banditos. thanks Jim On 6/26/2015 12:27 PM, Brendan Shanks wrote: > Yep they started selling/giving away their collection few months ago: > http://forums.nekochan.net/viewtopic.php?t=16729439 > > Brendan > > On Fri, Jun 26, 2015 at 11:58 AM, jwsmobile <jws at jwsss.com > <mailto:jws at jwsss.com>> wrote: > > > Does anyone have access to the museum that was at Austin Goodwill? > It seems to be going out on ebay as we speak. Also there is a > bidder for the good stuff that has vacuumed up 90% of the stuff, > so I'm smelling some sort of thing going one. > > They have a PDP8/S and they just sold off a significant artifact > related to that, which is what has me wondering. I'm going to call > and see if anyone has a story that way, but wondered if anyone > here has any info too. > > There are a lot of nice things going out which could have > explanations as being recent donations, but not the 8/s artifact. > It seems to be custom related to the 8/s. > > thanks > Jim > >

8 years, 10 months

UNIBUS extension card/cable sets

by johnwallace4＠yahoo.co.uk

[huge snippage for brevity, apologies for rubbish formatting] I'm not 100% sure I'm right in what follows (it's been a long time) but improvements are welcome. It builds on much of what has already been said. Termination has been covered by various contributors - termination reduces (but may not completely eliminate) reflections. Reflections in a single segment setup (two boxes, one cable) are relatively simple to cope with in a setup from the Qbus era where things aren't particularly fast. In a three box (two cable) setup my recollection is that the configuration rules require the cables to be of significantly different lengths, and the reason for this is to ensure that the two sets of reflections are timed signifcantly differently and canot make Bad Things happen by arriving at the same time as each other. Consider the middle box (of 3) is driving a bus transition. Signals will propagate from the middle box to each of the ends. When the moving rope er sorry voltage transition reaches the end of the cable, it will be reflected to some extent. If the cable segments are both the same length(ish), the reflections will come back to the middle box at round about the same time, superimpose on each other, and potentially cause confusion. (Does that sound plausible?) If the cable segments are of significantly different lengths then the reflections will arrive back at the middle at significantly different times and the reflections will be more manageable - less risk of Bad Things happening when they superpose. Or something along those lines. Anyway, hopefully the "different cable lengths so the reflection timings are different" will ring a few bells even if it's not actually right. Have a lot of fun John Wallace

8 years, 10 months

XH558 - was Re: using new technology etc

by andy.holt＠tesco.net

>From my local paper: The last flying Vulcan bomber will be flying over the (non flying) Vulcan at Southend Airport on Sunday. It doesn't get much better than TWO Vulcans together - it's unique in fact - the Southend Vulcan bomber will be overflown by XH558 (the last flying Vulcan) in a tribute to the V-Force in a mini-flying display THIS Sunday! The local Vulcan will be open for visitors and cockpit tours all day.

8 years, 10 months

Northtop Flying Wing, inflight computing

by jnc＠mercury.lcs.mit.edu

> On 2015-06-26 12:47 AM, Robert Ollerton wrote: > Im pretty sure there is a book on this, perhaps from the Smithsonian > Air and Space Museum. As it so happens, within arm's reach of where I'm sitting I have what is probably the book you refer to: Gary R. Pape, John M. Campbell, "Northrop Flying Wings: A History of Jack Northrop's Visionary Aircraft", Shiffer, 1995 It's a large-format book on glossy paper with tons of illusrations; it covers the prototypes as well as the bombers, and in great detail. Highly recommended. > Much later, Jack was given a vip tour of the secret B2 factory and > presented with a model of the design in Lancaster CA before his death. Yes, a famous story in the aviation world. Somebody had a lot of class. The book has a picture of Jack with the B-2 design team. {Hope I got the attribution right here: I didn't get the intermediate messages, so I'm picking this out of a later reply.} >> On 2015-06-19 3:05 PM, geneb wrote: >> it's my understanding that the program was cancelled because at the >> time, the USAAF (USAF?) mandated stall testing as part of their >> development programs. Without serious flight control computers, >> stalling a flying wing just ends up in a freshly planted aluminum tree. Umm, not quite. See pp. 160-161; they did deliberately stall a YB-49 as part of the flight test program; it was pretty benign unless the CG was way aft, in which case it became a handful. The Air Force did lose one during flight testing, it is thought perhaps as the result of a spin; it is further thought that perhaps Northrop's guidance on how to handle spins in this very unusual flying device wasn't given to the test pilots - one of whom was Glen Edwards, who the Edwards AFB is named after. The book isn't clear on why the wings were dropped; it seems to have been a combination of DoD budget limitations, cost over-runs in the wing program, the loss of the two YB-49 prototypes in accidents, etc. Noel

8 years, 10 months

UNIBUS extension card/cable sets

by jnc＠mercury.lcs.mit.edu

> From: tony duell >> So every other wire on the 40-conductor flat cables should be ground - >> that's even better than the classic BC11A, where almost every other >> line is, from what I can see, simply left floating (which is better >> than nothing, but not as good as grounding them, is my understanding). > I am surprised. DEC didn't waste copper like that. It's been a long > time since I worked on a BC11A, but I thought alternate wires were > grounded. Maybe a track right along the edge of the PCB where the cable > comes off (so you can't see it). You're right, the alternates are grounded (ohmmeter shows it). I cannot see how they did it; I think there must be a comb-shaped trace along the top of the card, where it's hidden once the Flexprint cable is soldered down. The intermediate ground conductor on one trace, on one end, _is_ connected to ground, so the rest could pick it up via a comb-shaped trace. >> I would have assumed that it's the _change_ from one impedance level >> to another that's the issue (you can get a reflection off the >> junction), so whether one's using long or short cables between a pair >> of M9014's, it shouldn't be _that_ big a deal (modulo propagation >> delays, which _are_ an issue with length). > Well, Unibus is terminated into 180 Ohms and 390 Ohms, isn't it? Yes. > The thevenin equivalent is thus around 123 Ohms. DEC spec for UNIBUS is 120 +/- 18 ohms. > Most ribbon cables have a characteristic impedance when used with > alternate wires grounded of around 100 Ohms (I seem to remember that is > certainly right for the twist-n-flat ones). What's the number for the regular flat? (I have a ton of the latter, but none of the twisted kind. And speaking of the twisted kind, I've always wondered what kind of machine they used to produce it - the mind reels!) By definition, regular flat must work 'OK', because DEC created these cards, and specified the use of ordinary BC05L-xx cables, so whatever its number is, it must be acceptable! :-) > That's a small mismatch, but I don't think it is going to cause big > problems. BTW, is my understanding that the issue is the _junction_ of the two different impedences, and not so much the length of the section with a different impedance, correct? (The sound-based mental model I'm using is two different diameters of pipe - going from a larger cross-section to a smaller could produce echos - aka reflections - from the junction, but after that, it should be OK.) Noel

8 years, 10 months

cctech cctalk mail filtering algorithm

by aek＠bitsavers.org

I subscribe to both lists. From examining the mail headers, here is a mail filtering algorithm that seems to deal with duplicate posts showing up from the other group. Create a cctalk and cctech saved mail folder in this order: put msgs with "To" header of either cctalk or classiccmp into cctalk put msgs with "To" header of cctech into cctech if "To" == cctalk and "Reply-To" == cctech, delete the message if "To" == cctech and "Reply-To" == cctalk, delete the message there are a couple stragglers for the case where "To" == classiccmp but this got the bulk of the dups.

8 years, 10 months

Persci 299 with unknown Persci dual S-100 cards?

by santo.nucifora＠gmail.com

Hello, I recently acquired a Persci 2142 dual disk drive with two S-100 controller cards. The 2142 is a Persci slim-line case that fits the internal Persci 299 drives but also included were to Persci S-100 cards. The only thing that makes sense is that one or both of these are the Persci 1170 controller card (set) but I have not been able to find a picture of such a card anywhere. There is an 1170 card picture at the Computer History Museum but it suspiciously looks like a Vector S-100 prototype board with components on it (and not the right amount compare to my cards). That page is here: http://www.computerhistory.org/collections/catalog/102712583 I have pictures in my latest post of the front and back of both cards along with the Persci 299 drive mechanism and the complete 2142 unit. If anyone knows what a Persci 1170 controller looks like, I'd love to know if that's what I have. Is it both cards? I am assuming so because there's a marketing brochure out there with a description of the 1170 controller and the Z80 CPU, as described, is on the second card (not the main card) as is the memory. Pictures of what I have are here: http://vintagecomputer.ca/persci-drive-is-a-299-what-are-the-controller-boa… I can try to read the EPROMS on the second board (they are B2716s) but the first board has a 2708 and I've nothing that will read it. Maybe that will give a clue? I would assume that's where Persci DOS is? I will be taking the 299 drive mechanism apart and refurbishing this drive as I did the Persci 270 in my Processor Technology Helios II (big thanks to Martin Eberhard for his awesome guide and his help!). Hopefully it's close enough to the 299 that the guide will still be useful. I have yet to check if the glass gauge is intact in this drive or all of this will be for nothing. I'll do that when I take it apart. Should be a fun project. If you have any info, please let me know. It would be much appreciated. Santo

8 years, 10 months

Northtop Flying Wing, inflight computing / was Re: XH558 - was Re: using new technology etc

by rollerton＠gmail.com

>From memory, so please forgive a mistake or two: The TB-49 Wings would Yaw (side to side motion) while in flight, sometimes just enough to make the crew seasick, sometimes enough to be dangerous when in formation with other aircraft and always unable to stay on track to be a useful bomber. I recall someone saying the yaw was several wing spans in length in each direction. The autopilots of the time couldn't dampen it fast enough let alone keep it under control. Jack Northrup and his team knew they would have to wait for something both programmable, more data inputs and faster. there were about 4 or 6 piston engined, and 4 or 6 jet engine versions. Stored on the ramp at Ontario California airport for many years and then sold for salvage, I think in the late 60s or mid 70s. Jack Northrup continued to be enthusiastic about the tail-less design even in retirement. Much later, Jack was given a vip tour of the secret B2 factory and presented with a model of the design in Lancaster CA before his death. Im pretty sure there is a book on this, perhaps from the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum. On Fri, Jun 19, 2015 at 2:40 PM, Brent Hilpert <hilpert at cs.ubc.ca> wrote: > On 2015-Jun-19, at 9:07 AM, Christian Gauger-Cosgrove wrote: > > > > Bringing this topic full circle, does anyone know if any minicomputers > > (DEC PDP-8s or 11s, DG Nov?, HP 21XXs, et cetera) were ever used on > > aircraft? Not transported by one, but I mean setup and used on one. > > > On 2015-Jun-19, at 12:09 PM, Toby Thain wrote: > > On 2015-06-19 3:05 PM, geneb wrote: > >> On Fri, 19 Jun 2015, Toby Thain wrote: > >>> > >>> "in 1949 the Air Force ordered all the flying wings destroyed, all > >>> the jigs and tools destroyed, every trace of the flying wing > >>> eradicated. A few years later even the engineering drawings were all > >>> destroyed by new Northrop management." > >>> > >> I don't know why they went to those lengths, but it's my understanding > >> that the program was cancelled because at the time, the USAAF (USAF?) > >> mandated stall testing as part of their development programs. Without > >> serious flight control computers, stalling a flying wing just ends up in > >> a freshly planted aluminum tree. Even WITH good computers, stalling a > >> flying wing is a Bad Idea(tm). AFAIK, the B-2 has never been stalled > >> (on purpose), even during development. > > > > Thanks. I knew there must be more to it... I wonder if the cited book > covers this angle. > > > > To tie these two lines of question together (and bring it back very much > on-topic), the BINAC (amongst the first stored-program computers, 1949) > was supplied to Northrop for research into airborne flight control (quick > web search says part of the Snark missile project), > > I'm not suggesting the BINAC and YB-49 (the flying wing) were connected, > but it's interesting they were contemporary projects both at Northrop, and > computer control was just what the flying wing needed. > >

8 years, 10 months

AT&T terminal keyboards?

by ethan.dicks＠gmail.com

Hi, All, I just picked up a couple of AT&T terminals, a 730+ and a 5620 "Blit" terminal. The 730+ powers on, passes self-test and probably would work great if I had a keyboard for it. The 5620 lights the CRT but doesn't appear to work outside of presenting a huge green dot the size of the raster. It also lacks a keyboard. I have hopes that it's something simple like wonky internal connectors that need to be reseated (vs bad components). I read on one of the several FAQs that I can use an AT&T 4410 terminal keyboard with the 730+. The box has an 8p8c jack. Additionally, from the same source, I got a 3B1/7300 keyboard and mouse. It happens to have an 8-pin 0.1" female connector in a barbed-lock housing. Outside of the connector, the key layout is superficially the same as a picture I saw of a 730+/4410 keyboard. What I'm curious about is if they are electrically compatible - i.e., could one make an 8p8c->2x4 pin header pin swabber and have the 3B1 keyboard work on the 730+? I won't shocked if they are entirely different, but there are enough superficial similarities that I'm minded to at least ask. I've found the trove of old Blit apps, etc. and see how tortuous the path is to get layers working, etc., but for now, I've got a couple old terminals that are entirely unlike any of the DEC terminals I have, so that by itself is cool. Thanks for any deep knowledge of these guys that isn't already covered on the FAQs. -ethan

8 years, 10 months

Imaging TRS-80/III single-sided disks

by alexandre.tabajara＠gmail.com

Dear sirs, Imagedisk is my savior, and I image all kind of disks I know with it :) But now I got a pair of TRS-80 model III single-sided disks. How do I image it using imagedisk? Can I use a double-sided floppy drive to image it? Or do I need to put the single-sided drive on my PC? Please, help! :) Thanks Alexandre --- Enviado do meu Apple IIGS (pq eu sou chique) Meu site: http://www.tabalabs.com.br Meu blog: http://tabajara-labs.blogspot.com

8 years, 10 months

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test-drb June 2015