>Date: Mon, 2 May 2016 12:37:43 +0200
>From: Mattis Lind <mattislind at gmail.com>
>To: "General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts"
> <cctalk at classiccmp.org>
>Subject: Re: PDP8 MAINDEC ?
> Selling, trading, giving away. What ever works. Rather than the garbage
> bin. I have no need for multiple copies. Just checking if someone like to
> play with the real paper tapes.
> When it comes to digital copies the plan is to check what is already online
> and then scan / read those that aren't. But it is a long time plan since it
> takes quite a while. Unless you feel like helping out... A page feed
scanner and a couple of thousands of pages.
>
> /Mattis
I can take good care of (some part of) it, a bit depending on which tapes
and documents you have.
/Anders
> From: Pontus Pihlgren
> I wonder what the three leftmost cabinets contains. I don't recall what
> peripherals have the blinkenlights at the top. RK05 and TU10
> controllers perhaps?
I have a half-done page with images of all the 5-1/4 inch indicator panels
(PDP-8, -11, -15); so I can identify the indicator panel on the right (above
to the two DECTape drives), which is a TC08 DECTape controller (I have a large
picture of one of those, for the page, and that's definitely it), which makes
sense, given it's in the same cabinet as the DECTape drives.
The other one, I have no idea - anyone?
I'm pretty sure it's not an RK08. The RK08, like the RK11-C, was wired for an
indicator panel, but like the TM08, it only used two rows of lights. (I've
never seen an image of one: this is deduced from reading the engineering
drawings.)
The partial page is here:
http://ana-3.lcs.mit.edu/~jnc/tech/DECIndicatorPanels.html
if anyone is interested. Good images of the missing 5-1/4" indicator panels
(which also include the RF11 and FP15, as well as the mythical RK11, which may
not exist) gratefully accepted!
Noel
We have quite a lot of PDP-8 MAINDEC which are duplicates even when taking
different versions into account. This include the paper listing and the
actual paper tape.
Is there an interest in such tapes / documentation?
Just to let folks know that I just received the prototype boards for the MEM11A (FedEx just left).
The boards look great! The parts from Digikey arrived late last week, so once I get my soldering
station set up (new microscope and new Metcal soldering iron) I?ll start to build a couple of boards
to test out. Once I have a couple working *and* I get firm orders for at least 25 boards (hint, hint)
I?ll do a production run.
TTFN - Guy
> From: Guy Sotomayor
> The reality is that an SPC board will be more expensive because of the
> gold edge fingers.
Oh, right, forgot about that. Yeah, six of one...
> I was originally thinking that if I do have to split the board up, that
> I'd make them completely independent. But that has the issue of
> requiring 2x the number of UNIBUS transceiver parts (which are all but
> unobtainium as of now).
Actually, 8641's (at least) are still around for not much. See below.
> some of the signals I'm running are pretty fast between the FPGA and
> some of the other components ... I wouldn't want to run those signals
> very far and certainly not across any sort of cabling.
For sure. We've been having issues (although we think we have it licked now)
with signals running across a flat cable between the prototype QSIC's
mother-card (a QBUS wire-wrap card) and its daughter-card (an bought-in FPGA
devel card), and that's for much slower signals (the only thing on the
mother-card are QBUS transceivers and level converters). Of course, the fact
that the interface doesn't put a ground wire between each pair signals wires
doesn't help! :-)
> From: Ethan Dicks
> I'm starting to get sorry I sold off my surplus NS8641s from Software
> Results 20 years ago. To be fair, I did get over $4 each for them, so at the
> time, it was a good deal for me (ISTR retail was $7.50 even then, so I
> got a good spread on the price).
> I do have some left, but handfuls, not armloads.
NS8641's are still available. I got a bunch from a guy in Hong Kong for
US$1.50 each - considering the source, I built a test card to make sure they
met specs, and they do, so I'm pretty sure they aren't counterfeits. :-)
When I was worried he couldn't find enough, I checked with a supplier (4 Star
Electronics, I think) and they had like 50K available, and quoted me a price
in about the same region, so I don't think UNIBUS transceivers actually are a
problem, at least, not at the moment.
Noel
Sounds like some of the SMR stuff Seagate is working on. Not sure if HAMR needs fs changes or not, but I know SMR does for certain.
Sent from my T-Mobile 4G LTE Device
-------- Original message --------
From: Eric Christopherson <echristopherson at gmail.com>
Date: 5/1/2016 1:44 AM (GMT-05:00)
To: "General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts" <cctalk at classiccmp.org>
Subject: Re: File systems expert for a news article (urgent)
On Fri, Apr 29, 2016, Evan Koblentz wrote:
> >>Anyone here on cctalk consider themselves a file systems expert and have
> >>the credentials or job title to vouch for it? If so, then I need to
> >>interview you ASAP today (in the next hour-ish) for a TechRepublic.com
> >>article. Contact me offline: news at snarc.net.
> >>
> >>Not going to discuss the story itself here in public.
> >>
> >
> >Can you be a little more specific?? File systems is quite broad
> >
>
> One of the hard disk standards bodies is working on a new feature (which I'm
> not going to post here) that would require changes to file systems,
> otherwise the new feature is academic and useless in the real world. So I am
> looking for someone with FS chops to comment on whether the changes can
> reasonably happen. Cannot say more except in private.
Hopefully not something that would require said filesystem
implementators to pay licensing fees or sign NDAs or take affirmative
action to limit users' use of data, or onerous things like that.
--
??????? Eric Christopherson
hilpert at cs.ubc.ca
that is a valid idea....
or a replacement also for TSS-8 using pdp8s but would timeshare
Ed Sharpe Archivist for SMECC
In a message dated 5/1/2016 2:20:53 P.M. US Mountain Standard Time,
hilpert at cs.ubc.ca writes:
On 2016-May-01, at 1:55 PM, Paul Koning wrote:
>> On May 1, 2016, at 4:37 PM, Warner Losh <imp at bsdimp.com> wrote:
>>
>> Cool brochure. When was this price list in force?
>
> Judging by what it advertises, probably 1972, maybe 1973. Unlikely to
be later than that.
I wonder if this MINI-RSTS/BASIC-PLUS was a marketing response to HP's
timeshared BASIC system for the 2100s.
