test-drb July 2015

test-drb@ccmp.vtda.org

176 participants
257 discussions

by linimon＠lonesome.com

You know ... I might still have some boards pulled from an ancient Apollo in the garage that I had forgotten about. IIRC dual 68k. Is anyone still maintaining one of those machines? mcl

9 years, 5 months

seeking advice on moving PDP 11 and related gear

by jnc＠mercury.lcs.mit.edu

> From: tony duell > OK, I've done it many times, but ... I had the drives out in under 5 > minutes. It is not that hard... With a previously un-seen rack, it is _not_ guaranteed to be that easy, as Bill D and I can attest! Twice I've been up to get racks with stuff in them from him, and both times I had the same thought: 'Oh, no problem, we'll just whip the units out of the racks, and then load the resulting smaller objects.' Not so fast, kemo sabe. On both occasions there was an hour-long struggle to get things out of the rack; in both cases some of the bolts that held the slides onto the rack (removing them being the usual approach when something won't come out of the slides - detach the slides from the rack) were not all accessible without... getting the unit in the slides out. (Catch-22...) One time, we had an RK05 hang up because the front size Dzus fastener on the RK05 cover had popped out, and it was in the vertical channel of the H960 where i) we couldn't get to it, and ii) it prevented movement of more than an inch either way. The worse (worst) one was a BA11K that had one of its slides rust, and freeze. We finaly had to give up on getting that out, and load the rack with the BA11 still in it. That particular slide is _still_ frozen; my son and I finally resorted to partially disassembling the rack (one of the lowboy corporate racks) by punching out a couple of rivets, to get the BA11 out of it with the entire slide still attached; once out, we could then get the slide off the BA11. So I will echo the advice to take tools. Lots of tools. Noel

9 years, 5 months

PDP-12 at the RICM

by michael.99.thompson＠gmail.com

We are missing the documentation for many of the MAINDEC-12 diagnostics. MAINDEC-12-D0AB-PB PDP-12 CP TEST 2 MAINDEC-12-D0BA-PB INSTRUCTION TEST PART 1 MAINDEC-12-D0CB-PB PDP-12 CP TEST 3 MAINDEC-12-D0SA-PB Auto Priority Interrupt MAINDEC-12-D1AC-PB Extended Memory Control MAINDEC-12-D1BA-PB JMP SELF MAINDEC-12-D1CA-PB Address Test MAINDEC-12-D1DA-PB PDP-12 CHECKERBOARD MAINDEC-12-D1FA-PB PDP-12 BASIC MEMORY CONTROL TEST MAINDEC-12-D3EB-PB TC12-F Option Test MAINDEC-12-D8CC-PB KW12A Clock Test Anyone have the docs? -- Michael Thompson

9 years, 5 months

List Gripes

by COURYHOUSE＠aol.com

I get them too Jay is this because it is AOL mailbox? thanks Ed# In a message dated 7/3/2015 11:40:52 P.M. US Mountain Standard Time, dj.taylor4 at comcast.net writes: I've been getting those unsubscribe messages on a regular basis, they appeared after I changed my mail from verizon to comcast. I was blaming it on comcast, gave them holy hell! But the email does get thru. On 7/3/2015 2:41 PM, Vincent Slyngstad wrote: > From: John Willis: Friday, July 03, 2015 8:52 AM >> Well, I am once again re-subscribed to this list. Why it or its >> moderators >> decide to unceremoniously unsubscribe me every few months without >> warning >> is beyond me. Especially annoying when subscription requests always take >> 2-3 days to process. It would be _really_ nice to do a warning >> message to >> people who haven't broken any list rules and haven't asked to be removed >> before dumping them, especially if this is an automatically-triggered >> event >> based on the member's lack of posting activity. > > I frequently get messages with this silliness: > > Your membership in the mailing list cctalk has been disabled due to > excessive bounces The last bounce received from you was dated > 01-Jan-1970. You will not get any more messages from this list until > you re-enable your membership. You will receive 3 more reminders like > this before your membership in the list is deleted. > > To re-enable your membership, you can simply respond to this message > (leaving the Subject: line intact), or visit the confirmation page at > > Maybe yours are being routed to a spam folder somewhere? > > Vince > > (01-Jan-1970? Really?) >

9 years, 5 months

Have manual: "Operating Instructions for the Remington Rand Automatic Printing Calculator Model 96"

by alexeyt＠freeshell.org

It's a 32 page pamphlet, in good condition. "Revised 10-46", but does not appear to have a proper copyright. I found it recently at a used book store. I don't see it online anywhere. I am willing to scan it and/or send the physical copy to someone who needs it. $5 plus shipping to a private collector, free to a museum; museums (e.g. bitsavers) get dibs. Alexey

9 years, 5 months

TTY 33 - Finally

by rickb＠bensene.com

Hello, all, Today I received a very nice, (mostly) operational Teletype ASR-33. It is in really stunning condition...no cracks, very little discoloring, everything is there, and the best part is that it is very clean inside, and it works great as far as I can test it in local mode, except for one thing: The paper tape reader has a problem. Put a tape in, clip down the cover (not this is all done in LOCAL mode), and press the lever to START, and the tape reads one frame, prints the character, the reader stops, and the printer acts like it is receiving a BREAK signal...just free-runs without printing anything more. Only way to stop it is to power it off, then power it back on again. I know there is the Green Keys list, but I'm not a member (though I probably should be now), but knowing the knowledge base of folks on this list, I figured I'd ask here first, and see if anyone has any ideas. The TTY came with a neat General Electric TDM-114 Acoustically Coupled Data Set. There's a cable that comes out of the terminal (it's a table top model, not a pedestal model) that has a six-pin connector that plugs into a socket on the back of the dataset. The acoustic coupler cups aren't very deep, and are a relatively hard rubber-like material, but there are little spring loaded rollers that are designed to grab onto the handset and press it securely against the coupler cups. Quite different from many of the pressure-fit acoustic couplers that I've seen. This one requires the use of on original-style Western Electric telephone...anything else won't latch into the coupler. Fortunately, I've got a few of the old Western Electric telephone sets around here so I can test it out. Not much information out there about this modem...when I get it working, I'll have to take some pix and maybe a video of it running with the terminal, and post a little video about it on YouTube. I'm wondering if perhaps TTL or (I'd never get so lucky) RS-232 signals are used for the coupler. I haven't taken the cover off the unit yet to determine if how the cable is connected into the terminal, as I'm really itching to hook this thing up to my PDP 8/e and do some "period-correct" computing. If the terminal only does current-loop, I think that I can make a cable that'll work with the serial card in the 8/e to get the terminal going (I seem to remember the serial card (can't remember the M number) can do both current loop and RS-232), but if the TTY could easily do RS-232, then it'd be a snap to hook it up. Last week I did order a nice little Black Box Current Loop to RS-232 converter, which will make things easier, but it'll be a few days before it gets here. Fortunately, the TTY also came with original Teletype technical docs, so once I get it open, I should be pretty easily able to figure things out. Along with the TTY, also came two TI Silent 700 780-series data terminals and an old TI calculator for the museum. Anyway, I'm really happy to have finally after so many years to have got my hands on a trusty old Teletype ASR-33. Happy Independence Day to all! Rick Bensene The Old Calculator Museum http://oldcalculatormuseum.com

9 years, 5 months

OT: Reading Mac Floppies

by starbase89＠gmail.com

Greetings, I know this may be OT, but can someone tell me if a modern PC (with a USB floppy drive) could read 1.44MB floppies from a 68k Mac? I want to use a Powerbook 190 for some word processing and need a means of transferring data. Thanks Joe

9 years, 5 months

list consolidation

by jwest＠classiccmp.org

FYI - in the fairly near term, I plan to get rid of the "two views of the same list" configuration on the classiccmp server. It has always created a rather large administrative burden, but also lately just has not been working right (problems subscribing, duplicate emails, a continuous stream of bounces, etc.). The list would go back to the way it used to be - one list, one view, at classiccmp at classiccmp.org. The primary reason for the "two view" paradigm was due to (at the time) some very substantial off-topicness, flamewars, etc. For a period of time I was not regularly reading the list and thus missed those things when they were occurring. For the past year or so (and it will very likely continue that way) I have been back to regularly watching/reading the list - so on my part I will do a better job monitoring the list for "outbreaks", and will email the involved parties off-list whenever (if) it starts to occur. In addition, many of the most vocal flamers are no longer here. Separately, those who are more irked by off-topicness I would ask to get slightly more familiar with the DEL key J Best, J

9 years, 5 months

AMT DAP 500/600 software available

by derschjo＠gmail.com

Hi all -- Last December I picked up an AMT DAP 600 (64x64 distributed array processor) which came with a set of manuals and QIC tapes; the manuals are on Bitsavers, the tapes were just recently (carefully) recovered by Bear and I thought I'd make them available in case anyone out there has a DAP 500 or 600 and is looking for software, since this seems to be pretty hard to come by. The archive is at: http://yahozna.dyndns.org/scratch/dap/ (I'll be forwarding this on to Al as well so that it might someday make it onto Bitsavers). Tapes 1 and 2 are the vital ones, these include the Sun-based host software (SCSI driver, host diagnostics and tools, assemblers and FORTRAN-PLUS compiler). The rest are additional libraries (Image Processing, DSP, etc) and a few backup tapes with what look like interesting demos (I haven't tried them yet). In other news, thanks to Bear's efforts my DAP 600 is now running nicely, if you want to see a (crummy cellphone) video of it rendering the Mandelbrot set, check this out: http://yahozna.dyndns.org/scratch/dap/mandelbrot.mp4 Thanks, Josh

9 years, 5 months

BA23 Cab Kit for a Microvax 3400 (KA640)?

by rob＠bitscience.ca

Hi folks, I?ve got an empty BA23 (originally used for a 11/23 system), and a KA640 with the appropriate memory. I know that the KA640 was more commonly used in the larger BA213 cabinets, but is it reasonable to put it in the BA23? Is there a cab kit for that combination? What would it include ? just the rear panel, or was there a replacement front panel as well? If such a kit exists (in either form), does anyone have a spare they might be willing to part with? Thanks, Rob

9 years, 5 months

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test-drb July 2015