test-drb August 2015

test-drb@ccmp.vtda.org

206 participants
257 discussions

Origin of "second system effect" before 1975?

by tshoppa＠wmata.com

I know of two publications in 1975 that used the term "second system effect" or "second-systemitis". 1: Brooks' _Mythical Man-Month_. 2: Bell's and Streeker's "What We Learned From the PDP-11". Does anyone know of earlier usage of this term or earlier names for this effect, possibly outside of computers? Tim.

8 years, 8 months

FS: PDP-11/55

by ggs＠shiresoft.com

I have nothing to do with this...I just noticed it on alt.sys.pdp11 and figured that I'd pass it along. TTFN - Guy Hi all, I have a PDP-11/55 for sale (Ottawa, Ontario, Canada). Bids open until 2015 09 15, buyer to arrange shipping, I will have it wrapped and ready to go. Please visit: www.krten.com/~rk/museum/index.html For pictures, detailed inventory and contact info. Sealed bids via eamil please. Winner will be notified 2015 09 16, machine will be ready to ship same day. Must be shipped / picked up no later than 2015 10 09. Sold AS-IS / where is, untested, unpowered since received. Comes with H960 rack and 2 side panels. Cheers, -RK -- Robert Krten Visit me at http://www.ironkrten.com

8 years, 8 months

John @ CPUShack?

by drlegendre＠gmail.com

Wonder if anyone here has ever dealt with John Culver, who works from the address john at cpushack.com? He operates a site at the same URL. Among other things, he's a buyer, seller & collector of vintage CPUs, and associated chips. I've done several deals with him, with goods & money moving both directions at various times, and have nothing but good memories. In my experience, the guy is a real mensch, so I wanted to give him a plug here - May I suggest that anyone who might be looking for a specific vintage chip give him a holler and see what he can turn up? IMO, you could do a whole heck of a lot worse! -Bill

8 years, 8 months

RT-11 on a PDP-11/10

by bqt＠softjar.se

Hi all. Update have an 11/10, that was recently powered on again for the first time in I don't know when. After some fiddling with the RX01 disks, we put an RL11 and an RL02 on it. Lots of space, I know. :-) Also, we have RT-11 running on it. And for fun, we wanted to run the original Tetris. But here is the catch - Tetris is using some instructions that the 11/10 don't have. (I would guess EIS stuff.) Do anyone know if there is some software emulation of these instructions that can be added to RT-11 in order to be able to run such programs? RT-11 V5.5 by the way, if anyone wants to know. And no, I am not sitting by the machine, or trying to play with it personally. It's other people at Update. But an 11/10 is cute. And we did boot the RL02 on Magica (11/70) to check that there is nothing wrong with the binary, and it runs fine on that large machine. Johnny -- Johnny Billquist || "I'm on a bus || on a psychedelic trip email: bqt at softjar.se || Reading murder books pdp is alive! || tryin' to stay hip" - B. Idol

8 years, 8 months

ColourPET

by echristopherson＠gmail.com

I just noticed the September 2015 issue of Nuts & Volts has, right on its cover, a project to outfit a Commodore PET with color (digital RGBI) output. It requires a PET with the Universal Dynamic PET motherboard, the one that could be switched between 40 and 80 columns via jumpers; the actual output is only in 40 because of memory limitations. The specific project in the magazine allows four 16 foreground and 16 background colors per pixel, but it says the author has also made it output 8-bit analog RGB foregrounds with one fixed background color. -- Eric Christopherson

8 years, 8 months

So, what's the deal with DigiBarn?

by ian.finder＠gmail.com

Hey all- I've always wondered about this. Their website hasn't seen a proper update in years, and it looks like they have a lot of choice hardware donated to them that they may not be maintaining... Is it open to the public? Are people actively volunteering there to make sure this stuff is shown some love and not falling into disrepair? Keeping leaky batteries, capacitors, rust at bay, and doing repairs? Imaging disks? They have some very worthwhile examples of machines but I haven't seen much >from them as an organization in years! I'm sure lots of people would be willing to help if they are under-resourced. Thanks, - Ian -- Ian Finder ian.finder at gmail.com

8 years, 8 months

Altair BASIC copyright [was RE: Larry Niven's Altair]

by COURYHOUSE＠aol.com

Looks like the big "C" to me! I have no idea about the Davidoff guy... But would you REALLY even want to spend the amount of money to argue this with the lawyers of Gates and Allen? Ed# , and 00380 00400 --------- ---- -- ---- ----- --- ---- ----- 00420 COPYRIGHT 1975 BY BILL GATES AND PAUL ALLEN 00440 --------- ---- -- ---- ----- --- ---- ----- In a message dated 8/25/2015 11:35:05 A.M. US Mountain Standard Time, RichA at LivingComputerMuseum.org writes: From: Paul Koning Sent: Thursday, August 20, 2015 7:48 AM To: General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts Subject: Re: Larry Niven's Altair > On Aug 20, 2015, at 10:30 AM, Jay Jaeger <cube1 at charter.net> wrote: >> On 8/20/2015 3:32 AM, Randy Dawson wrote: >>> I assume all the 8K, 4K BASICs are in public domain by now. The >>> demo for the kids will be the 15 minutes of paper tape, followed by >>> READY. >> Bad assumption. Things that were actually registered even if there >> was no notice, or published with a copyright notice would still be >> protected under U.S. copyright. > Depending on when. If it was published without notice, the key > question is whether publication occurred before Jan 1, 1978, or after. > After, notice does not matter; before, lack of notice means no > copyright. Sorry to take so long to chime in on all the rampant speculation, but I've had real work to attend to. The following is excerpted from the main source file of BASIC for the Altair, by Gates, Allen, and Davidoff. I have no further comment. 00100 MCSSIM(START) 00120 00140 TITLE BASIC MCS 8080 GATES/ALLEN/DAVIDOFF 00160 IFNDEF LENGTH,<PRINTX !!! MUST HAVE COM !! 00180 END> 00200 IF1,< 00220 IFE LENGTH,<PRINTX /SMALL/ > 00240 IFE LENGTH-1,<PRINTX /MEDIUM/ > 00260 IFE LENGTH-2,<PRINTX /BIG/ > 00280 IFE STRING,<PRINTX /NO $$/ > 00300 IFN STRING,<PRINTX /$$ $$/ > 00320 > 00340 SUBTTL VERSION 1.1 -- MORE FEATURES TO COME 00360 COMMENT * 00380 00400 --------- ---- -- ---- ----- --- ---- ----- 00420 COPYRIGHT 1975 BY BILL GATES AND PAUL ALLEN 00440 --------- ---- -- ---- ----- --- ---- ----- 00460 00480 00500 WRITTEN ORIGINALLY ON THE PDP-10 AT HARVARD FROM 00520 FEBRUARY 9 TO APRIL 27 00540 00560 PAUL ALLEN WROTE THE NON-RUNTIME STUFF. 00580 BILL GATES WROTE THE RUNTIME STUFF. 00600 MONTE DAVIDOFF WROTE THE MATH PACKAGE. 00620 00640 THINGS TO DO: 00641 SYNTAX PROBLEMS (OR) 00642 NICE ERRORS 00643 ALLOW ^W AND ^C IN LIST COMMAND 00646 TAPE I/O 00648 BUFFER I/O 00650 USR ?? 00652 ELSE 00660 USER DEFINED FUNCTIONS(MULTI-ARG,MULTI-LINE,STRINGS) 00680 MAKE STACK BOUNDARY STUFF EXACT 00700 (FOUT 24 FIN 14) 00720 PUNCH,DELETE,,, 00740 INLINE CONSTANT CONVERSION--MAKE IT WORK 00750 SIMPLE STRINGS 00760 * Rich Rich Alderson Vintage Computing Sr. Systems Engineer Living Computer Museum 2245 1st Avenue S Seattle, WA 98134 mailto:RichA at LivingComputerMuseum.org http://www.LivingComputerMuseum.org/

8 years, 8 months

Osborne O1 Keyboard issues

by drlegendre＠gmail.com

Howdy gents, Working away on the recently acquired Osborne 1. Seems there's something wrong with the KB - and if I didn't know better, I'd say it's a case of shorted contacts. The KB connector is 24 pins, double row header like a short floppy or IDE header. On the KB side, there are two "shorted" groups of pins. Group one is 2X shortred pins, group two is 5X shorted pins. Thing is, this KB is not really built to be serviced, best as I can tell. The switch matrix is made of two layered flexible circuits, and the key assys are 'riveted' in place, by melting over the plastic pins. So I see no way to disassemble it and give it a clean.. and then, even so. With such limited access, I don't see many avenues other than flushing with solvent(s) and hoping for the best. What's to be done? Is this one.. done already?

8 years, 8 months

Altair BASIC copyright [was RE: Larry Niven's Altair]

by RichA＠LivingComputerMuseum.org

From: Paul Koning Sent: Thursday, August 20, 2015 7:48 AM To: General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts Subject: Re: Larry Niven's Altair > On Aug 20, 2015, at 10:30 AM, Jay Jaeger <cube1 at charter.net> wrote: >> On 8/20/2015 3:32 AM, Randy Dawson wrote: >>> I assume all the 8K, 4K BASICs are in public domain by now. The >>> demo for the kids will be the 15 minutes of paper tape, followed by >>> READY. >> Bad assumption. Things that were actually registered even if there >> was no notice, or published with a copyright notice would still be >> protected under U.S. copyright. > Depending on when. If it was published without notice, the key > question is whether publication occurred before Jan 1, 1978, or after. > After, notice does not matter; before, lack of notice means no > copyright. Sorry to take so long to chime in on all the rampant speculation, but I've had real work to attend to. The following is excerpted from the main source file of BASIC for the Altair, by Gates, Allen, and Davidoff. I have no further comment. 00100 MCSSIM(START) 00120 00140 TITLE BASIC MCS 8080 GATES/ALLEN/DAVIDOFF 00160 IFNDEF LENGTH,<PRINTX !!! MUST HAVE COM !! 00180 END> 00200 IF1,< 00220 IFE LENGTH,<PRINTX /SMALL/ > 00240 IFE LENGTH-1,<PRINTX /MEDIUM/ > 00260 IFE LENGTH-2,<PRINTX /BIG/ > 00280 IFE STRING,<PRINTX /NO $$/ > 00300 IFN STRING,<PRINTX /$$ $$/ > 00320 > 00340 SUBTTL VERSION 1.1 -- MORE FEATURES TO COME 00360 COMMENT * 00380 00400 --------- ---- -- ---- ----- --- ---- ----- 00420 COPYRIGHT 1975 BY BILL GATES AND PAUL ALLEN 00440 --------- ---- -- ---- ----- --- ---- ----- 00460 00480 00500 WRITTEN ORIGINALLY ON THE PDP-10 AT HARVARD FROM 00520 FEBRUARY 9 TO APRIL 27 00540 00560 PAUL ALLEN WROTE THE NON-RUNTIME STUFF. 00580 BILL GATES WROTE THE RUNTIME STUFF. 00600 MONTE DAVIDOFF WROTE THE MATH PACKAGE. 00620 00640 THINGS TO DO: 00641 SYNTAX PROBLEMS (OR) 00642 NICE ERRORS 00643 ALLOW ^W AND ^C IN LIST COMMAND 00646 TAPE I/O 00648 BUFFER I/O 00650 USR ?? 00652 ELSE 00660 USER DEFINED FUNCTIONS(MULTI-ARG,MULTI-LINE,STRINGS) 00680 MAKE STACK BOUNDARY STUFF EXACT 00700 (FOUT 24 FIN 14) 00720 PUNCH,DELETE,,, 00740 INLINE CONSTANT CONVERSION--MAKE IT WORK 00750 SIMPLE STRINGS 00760 * Rich Rich Alderson Vintage Computing Sr. Systems Engineer Living Computer Museum 2245 1st Avenue S Seattle, WA 98134 mailto:RichA at LivingComputerMuseum.org http://www.LivingComputerMuseum.org/

8 years, 8 months

Naval COBOL Audit tests

by cclist＠sydex.com

Well, so much for catalog listings. One can only wonder about other government documents--this was an important one historically. I am not surprised. NTIS's response: Dear Sir, I have checked our databases and we no longer have this item available. Thank you, Mary Brisbois Customer Contact Representative National Technical Information Service US Dept of Commerce P: 800-553-6847 or direct 703-605-6071 F: 703-605-6900 www.ntis.gov

8 years, 8 months

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test-drb August 2015