test-drb October 2016

test-drb@ccmp.vtda.org

203 participants
312 discussions

by shatle＠nfldinet.com

-------- Original Message -------- Subject: Re: Photos from the NWA Auction From: ethan at 757.org Date: Tue, October 18, 2016 6:47 pm To: "General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts" <cctalk at classiccmp.org> > Wonder if anyone got the actual simulators/cockpits? Fun toys but > won't fit in your average basement... There were bids on them, hopefully they go to home flight simulator nerds that will entertain us with videos on youtube of them running inside their houses! -- I was at the facility briefly to help out another lister with prepping his lot for shipment. The GP4 is being dismantled for scrap. About half the racks are already empty. With a little bit of cash beer money and some wrench work, the panel you see in IMG_5535 is now in the backseat of my car. It will likely be all gone by EOD on Friday.

7 years, 11 months

Museum thoughts?

by COURYHOUSE＠aol.com

Hi Mouse - running a museum project is fun but also a lot of work. here is a little framework to think about and discuss Ed# at SMECC . - SPACE you rent or buy a building ($$$$ !) or... place displays in other's premises (can work if they protct your gear) - INSURANCE (property, liability, employee) - UTILITIES ( winter is your enemy, summer is ours in AZ) - SECURE FURANITURE AND FIXTURES (when in doubt, lock it under glass) EMPOLYEES and/or VOLUNTEERS Great to have so you are not the only one chained to the entry desk, employees cost $$$ volunteers no salary - either can be a blessing or a curse if you get a bad one In a message dated 10/19/2016 7:41:07 P.M. US Mountain Standard Time, mouse at Rodents-Montreal.ORG writes: There's someone local who's seen my assortment of computer hardware twice and has, each time, told me I should set up a museum. This is tempting, but I don't know the first thing about doing it. About all I'm sure of is that it would involve a lot of stuff I currently have no idea of. I know that there are at least a few people here who've been involved in such things. While all the examples that come to mind are in the USA, and mine would be in Canada, I'm sure there are many respects in which the issues are jurisdiction-independent - and, who knows, there may be such a person in Canada that I just can't recall offhand. So, I'm wondering if there's anyone who'd be willing to share experiences, thoughts, issues, whatever, on the possibility. I'm not looking to make a lot of money off this. If I can turn my computers from money-sink to money-neutral, I'll be content. (They are currently soaking up money in the form of causing me to be renting significantly more storage than I would be if they were to vanish.) /~\ The ASCII Mouse \ / Ribbon Campaign X Against HTML mouse at rodents-montreal.org / \ Email! 7D C8 61 52 5D E7 2D 39 4E F1 31 3E E8 B3 27 4B

7 years, 11 months

VTServer/etc for V6 Unix

by jnc＠mercury.lcs.mit.edu

> From: Dennis Boone > The sources for the V6 versions of the tmrk et al programs seem to be > here: Yes, I have those, thanks; those are the 1-block programs I mentioned to Warren: >> The only V6 boot mechanisms are 1-block programs that go into block 0 >> of device 0 and which boot Unix directly from that file-system Well, to be technical, also there are the programs to copy the disk images >from tape to disk - mcopy.s does that - etc. In case anyone looks at mcopy.s and wonders how R5 (which contains a pointer to the console print/input routines) gets set up, mboot.s, which will have run previously (to load the appropriate disk-controller-specific version of mcopy off the tape) does that. One can't actually boot V6 Unix directly from a V6 distribution tape, all one can do is copy the disk images from the tape to the disk; one then boots from the disk. (Although now that I look, there is tpboot.s, which claims to boot >from a file on a 'tp' format tape. But I don't think V6 was ever distributed in that form - and in any case, it would still need a disk with a Unix file system, with appropriate files - init, sh, etc - already on it, to be able to boot Unix that way.) Noel

7 years, 11 months

MFM floppy and HD emulator DREM

by emu＠e-bbes.com

Hi all, anybody has any experience with that: http://www.drem.info/ ?

7 years, 11 months

VTServer/etc for V6 Unix

by jnc＠mercury.lcs.mit.edu

> Here are some notes I made a while back, when I looked at it: > ... > Block 2-xx - gubbish, apparently inodes, code, etc? So I just realized something's incomplete here. There's an intermediate stage (loading 'xxyy', where 'xx' is "tm" or "ht", and 'yy' is "rk", "rp" or "hp"). Those must be in stored in that block "2-xx" area, but I'm not up for grokking the assembler ("tpboot.s") that loads them to see how it works (it takes a file-name, 'xxyy' as above, entered at the console). And I got the tape files slightly wrong: mcopy.s is indeed the tape copier program (assembled with either tm.s or ht.s, and one of rk.s, rp.s and hp.s), to produce the 'xxyy' files above. However, the first stage booter is "tpboot.s", not "mboot.s" (didn't look closely enough); again, assembled with either tm.s or ht.s - that produces the first-stage bootstrap that goes in blocks 0 and 1 of the tape. Noel

7 years, 11 months

VTServer/etc for V6 Unix

by jnc＠mercury.lcs.mit.edu

> From: Warren Toomey > This doc: .. describes a way to install from tape, but it seems like it > does a block copy of a tape image to the disk. Yup, that's the standard V6 install from tape. It uses the two programs I mentioned in the last message; first mboot (which produces the '=' prompt), and then mcopy (assembled with the appropriate disk and tape drivers), which is used to copy disk images to the disk. > Also .. there is a v6.tape.gz file. Unfortunately, I have no > documentation on this. It could be raw blocks, or it could be a TAP > file, who knows. I looked into this previously. The other three files: root.v6.tar.gz doc.v6.tar.gz usr.v6.tar.gz are just TAR dumps of the 3 disk images on the V6 distribution tape: the root (includes kernel source, and most of the binaries), usr (source for all commands), and documentation. The v6.tape seems to be an image of V6 distribution tape. Here are some notes I made a while back, when I looked at it: The first 100 512-byte tape blocks contain the tape bootstrap stuff. Blocks 100 - 4099 are the RK05 root image, blocks 4100 - 8099 are the /usr RK05 image, and the blocks 8100 - 12099 are the /doc RK05 image. .. The most recent timestamp on any file in /usr and /doc is July 19th 1975, as with Dennis' copy. However, the most recent file timestamp on root is October 11th, 1975 Block 0 on tape - mboot (tm tape booter) Block 1 on tape - hboot (ht tape booter) Block 2-xx - gubbish, apparently inodes, code, etc? Block 98 on tape - hpuboot Block 99 on tape - rpuboot Block 100 on tape - rkuboot HTH. Noel

7 years, 11 months

VTServer/etc for V6 Unix

by wkt＠tuhs.org

Hah, the file http://www.tuhs.org/Archive/PDP-11/Tools/Tapes/Vtserver/v7_standalone.tar.gz has the source code for the standalone tools including boot and vtboot.pdp. So, given a working V7 environment, you should be able to rebuild these and possibly make them work in a V6 environment. Alternatively, if you have a working V6 environment (e.g. a simulator), you could bring in the vtclient.c code and integrate it into the V6 boot binary. Cheers, Warren

7 years, 11 months

Are DEC TK50/TK70 tapes worth hanging onto?

by tdk.knight＠gmail.com

Don't store ur tapes in a damp basement will help with sticky shed syndrom... Keep em dry a food dehydrator helps... On Oct 18, 2016 7:46 PM, "Al Kossow" <aek at bitsavers.org> wrote: On 10/18/16 5:37 PM, Steven M Jones wrote: > I think they're useful to folks who have drives that can use them, and > they aren't nearly as fragile as QIC or helical scan drives (4mm, 8mm) > of a similar age. > The drives, maybe, but the tape sheds like nuts.

7 years, 11 months

2020 Power consumption

by RichA＠LivingComputerMuseum.org

From: Mike Ross Sent: Wednesday, October 19, 2016 2:39 AM > On Wed, Oct 19, 2016 at 7:44 PM, Pontus Pihlgren <pontus at update.uu.se> wrote: >> Somewhat related, how much power does a 2020 draw on average? > Bye some enormous coincidence I was just looking through some DEC > pdp-10 brochures I have. > DEC advertised the 2020 as drawing no more power that a hairdryer; the > quoted figure was 1400w as I recall. Umm, are you sure about that? That was how we advertised the Toad-1 System in the 1990s, but the Mighty Mite power supply in the 2020 draws a lot more than that. 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/

7 years, 11 months

MASSBUS disk emulator (Was: Unibus controller for MFM disks)

by jnc＠mercury.lcs.mit.edu

> From: Ian S. King >> Does anyone know anything about the status of the plans to open-source >> it? > I've made some inquries, stay tuned.... OK, thanks! >> Can you briefly describe what it was? I'm still curious about what it was: was it a stand-alone board with a separate power supply, or did it plug into some sort of backplane? Did it use something like SD cards for storage? And what was the MASSBUS connection like: a set of 3 Berg headers into which one plugged the flat cables, or was there some oddball connector that wound up connected to a standard MASSBUS connector? Noel

7 years, 11 months

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test-drb October 2016