On Wed, 6/1/16, Rod Smallwood <rodsmallwood52 at btinternet.com> wrote:
> On 01/06/2016 19:34, Brian L. Stuart wrote:
>> On Wed, 6/1/16, Rod Smallwood <rodsmallwood52 at btinternet.com> wrote:
>>> On 01/06/2016 18:57, Charles Anthony wrote:
>>>> On Wed, Jun 1, 2016 at 10:49 AM, Rod Smallwood <rodsmallwood52 at btinternet.com> wrote:
>>>>> Apart from a personal 1202 alarm
>>>> I have a habit of coding "can't happen" error checks with 1201 or 1202
>>>> error numbers.
>>> You may be close .. Do you know why you do that?
>>>
>>> Here's a clue "Garmin"
>>???
>> You had me really confused there for a moment.? I thought you were talking
>> about the company that makes navigational devices at first and couldn't
>> for the life of me figure out what they had to do with it.? Obviously, I had the
>> wrong Garmin...
>>
>> But "personal 1202 alarm" is the funniest thing I've seen all day.? I'm going
>> to have to start using that expression.? My students won't have a clue what
>> I'm talking about.? Hopefully it'll be a good way to educate them a bit.
>>
> OK so answer this how many seconds were left? and who wore a different
> waistcoat every time?
The different waistcoat (or vest on this side of the pond) was Gene Kranz's habit.
I'd have to cheat and look up the number of seconds. My vague recollection
is about 15, but that memory seems to have suffered from bit rot. My impression
though is that Armstrong was determined to put that thing down no matter what
and the main role of the fuel level was when to stop looking and take the best
spot he could find.
BLS
Hello, kind ClassicCMP denizens,
I have two old Tektronix workstation machines.
One is a Tektronix 4132. It is a pc-sized (a little less tall, a little deeper) unit that uses a National Semiconductor 32016 chip as the CPU. It's got a bunch of cards for RAM expansion, parallel and RS-232 ports. It comes with two built-in RS-232 ports, one of which is for the console terminal. These machines have a slot in them a SCSI (single-ended) drive. Typically they were equipped with Maxtor XT1105 and XT1140 drives. In the front, they have a tape cartridge drive that uses 3m DC300A data cartridges. This drive is equipped with a piggy-backed Adaptec converter that takes the native QIC tape drive format and converts it to a SCSI accessible tape drive. On the bank panel is a 7- segment display that indicates the self-test and diagnostics, and when the OS (UTek) is loaded indicates system activity. These is also a row of DIP-switches that set things like the console baud rate, boot device, and stuff like that. There are two DB-25 serial ports, a GPIB port, an AUI port for 10 Megabit Ethernet, and a port that extended the internal SCSI bus externally. Below the back panel are slots for plugging in options such as RAM and I/O, which included things like full-width RAM cards (2 MB I think was the largest), half-width dual-port async RS-232 serial cards, a half-width parallel interface card, a half-width SCSI interface card (added another SCSI interface to the machine). The machine ran a 4.2-Berkeley variant known as UTek.
UTek was installed on the machine by putting a special cartridge in the drive that contained essentially a miniroot filesystem and basic boot code. The configuration switches on the back would be set to force the tape drive as the boot device. The machine would be powered up (the power button was a soft-power switch on the front panel of the machine), and the tape would be read, and options provided via the console terminal to format the drive, set its partition table, and things like that. Then, the mini-root Unix system would be loaded into, and run out of memory. From there, if I remember correctly, there was another cartridge (or perhaps two) that had the full UTek installation on them. The first tape was loaded, and a script run from the mini-root OS that would begin the process of loading UTek onto the hard disk from the tape image, and creating the boot block and all that would be needed to boot up the full UTek environment from the hard disk. When complete, the scripting would ask for things like setting the time and date (the machine had an built-in battery-backed real-time clock/calendar), setting the root password, creating user accounts and groups, and stuff like that.
The machine was (for the day) a pretty capable little Unix workstation at a time (the 4132 was announced in August of '85) when Suns were still at Berkeley, and anything else that ran a halfway decent version of BSD was a supermini like a DEC VAX, some of the more powerful PDP 11's, or a Gould PowerNode.
The other machine, the Tektronix 4317, was again a Unix workstation-class machine, but this time, was based on the Motorola 68020 CPU, likely because software availability for Motorola 68K-family machine was much higher than that of the National 32016/32032 architecture, and porting things proved to be quite a difficult thing to do.
The 4317 was also in a PC-like cabinet, with a QIC-type tape drive on the front. Internally, a SCSI hard disk provided storage, typically a larger one, like a 300Mb drive, from various different manufacturers. The back panel was similar to that on the 6130, though the SCSI connector was more standardized, and there was an option for a framebuffer card that could add on to the CPU that provided graphics capability. BNC connectors for RGB and sync (IIRC...or maybe it was sync-on-green, can't remember) were there, along with a jacks for plugging in a keyboard and mouse. With a color display and keyboard/mouse the machine could run X-windows. The back panel also had RS-232 ports, GPIB, and, if I remember correctly, it had both an AUI and BNC (for thin-net coax) for 10 Megabit Ethernet. It had some slots for expansion options, but I don't remember how they were organized. The CPU board had quite a bit of room for RAM, and I believe a RAM expansion board could pop onto the main board to bring the RAM (without expansion slots) to something like 4 or 5 megabytes.
Anyway, the situation is this:
I've got a 4132 and a 4317 stashed away in storage. Both machines have had hard disk failures, so OS is gone.
I used to have installation media, but alas, the cartridges all suffered failed drive tapes, and they failed in a way where they turned into goo, and without noticing it, I put them in the drives, and the goo turned to tapes into sticky, goopy spaghetti, not to mention making a mess out of the tape drive head, and getting gooey junk all over the capstan and metal tape guides. They weren't salvageable in any way.
So...what I'm looking for, after all that (hopefully informative) verbiage, I am wondering if anyone out there may have original UTek distribution media for both the 4132 and 4317 (may also work with the 4319 media), on DC300 or DC600 cartridges that are still viable, or at least if someone out there may have imaged said media somewhere along the way. I figure that with a good drive, I could reconstitute the images such that I could potentially get these two machines running again. I have appropriate SCSI disks that will work with the machines, and both machines seem to pass the in-built diagnostics and get to the point where they want to boot....but, alas, there's nothing to boot.
Any help is greatly appreciated. I have had these machines for a long time, and the 4132, I actually built from parts purchased from Tektronix stock when I worked there. I ran it for a long time, until I could get a PC that was a lot faster, and run (sigh) Windows, for very little money. I even still have 8mm backup tapes from the things...but only user data, not full backups of the OS and all.
Thanks in advance,
-Rick
---
Rick Bensene
The Old Calculator Museum
http://oldcalculatormuseum.com
On Wed, 6/1/16, Rod Smallwood <rodsmallwood52 at btinternet.com> wrote:
> On 01/06/2016 18:57, Charles Anthony wrote:
> > On Wed, Jun 1, 2016 at 10:49 AM, Rod Smallwood <rodsmallwood52 at btinternet.com> wrote:
> > > Apart from a personal 1202 alarm
> >
> > I have a habit of coding "can't happen" error checks with 1201 or 1202
> > error numbers.
>
> You may be close .. Do you know why you do that?
>
> Here's a clue "Garmin"
You had me really confused there for a moment. I thought you were talking
about the company that makes navigational devices at first and couldn't
for the life of me figure out what they had to do with it. Obviously, I had the
wrong Garmin...
But "personal 1202 alarm" is the funniest thing I've seen all day. I'm going
to have to start using that expression. My students won't have a clue what
I'm talking about. Hopefully it'll be a good way to educate them a bit.
BLS
> If you look in the "PDP-11/84 System Technical and Reference Manual"
Ooops, getting my 84's and 94's (it's the same chassis) mixed up. You of
course want the "PDP-11/94-E System User and Maintenance Guide"
(EK-PDP94-MG-001)
http://bitsavers.org/pdf/dec/pdp11/1194/EK-PDP94-MG-001_Sep90.pdf
> Section 3.7 lists several ways to get into ODT. In addition to those,
> if you look at Section 3.2.2, it allows you to configure the machine to
> fall into ODT on power-on (section B gives details).
Basically the same manual, but you want Section 3.5.6.2 in this one for the
startup config.
Noel
Hi
I'm trying to get my 11/94 running. Its a hybrid having both Q
and Unibus. The CPU card has a KDJ11-E
18Mhz processor with 4Mb ram and six serial ports plus the console on
board. Apart from a voltage monitor card
that's all there is in the Qbus section.
Between the Q and Unibus sections is a special convertor card (KTJ-11B
UNIBUS adapter.)
After the KTJ-11B I have one slot with an RX211 8in floppy controller in
it.
All of the other slots have bus grant cards except the last one that has
a terminator card and a MLM card.
On switch on the console display comes up. Whilst it performs the same
functions as the one in the manual
it looks different. What ever I do by way of setting up devices I can't
get it to talk to the RX211.
it just says No Controller.
Ideas anybody?
Rod Smallwood
Nitpick: It's not the "Monster 6502", it's the "MOnSter 6502".
Eric has added discrete capacitors to the internal buses which has it
working better than before. I haven't heard whether that's improved
the maximum clock rate.
I am trying to empty my storage unit back to my house (to save money
and becuase I have these old computers to play around with, not to
store). One thing I brought home recently is an old (even on this list)
CRT terminal. It claims to be a Beehive B601.
I have no manuals for it at all.
Inside is the CRT (which looks to have a shallower deflection angle
than normal, but maybe it's a normal 90 degree one), a PSU (big
mains transformer and some kind of hybrid module for the regulator),
and 4 boards of logic plugged into a backplane. These are :
Comms (all TTL, there is no UART chip that I can spot)
Processor (8008 + lots of 1702As. I can only find
16 bytes of RAM (a pair of 7489s) but maybe I am
missing something
Cursor (yes, an entire PCB with that title -- all TTL again)
Display (lots of TTL + a couple of ROMs (presumably
character generators) + a couple of rows of 8 pin
ICs (MOS shift registers for the display RAM?) and
2 metal cans at the end of them (clock drivers?)
One odd feature is that one of the LEDs on the front
(there is a column of same next to the screen) is labelled
'Hebrew' and there seem to be hebrew (as well as English)
characters on the keycaps.
Does anyone know anything about this? Does anyone
have a service manual for it?
-tony
Date: Mon, 30 May 2016 12:18:37 -0700
From: "r.stricklin" <bear at typewritten.org>
To: "General Discussion: On-Topic Posts" <cctech at classiccmp.org>
Subject: Re: Xerox Star install floppies
Message-ID: <7507C1FC-A36D-4130-B729-3F0FD6F2CDB5 at typewritten.org>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
On May 29, 2016, at 9:15 PM, David Griffith wrote:
> This person then stated that Al Kossow might or might not have a full set.? In any case, it's not on Bitsavers.? Al expressed interest in a set that I offered a couple months ago, but he never followed up on that.? So, would someone please confirm the existance of a full set of install floppy images for the Xerox 8010 Star somewhere?
I've been buying those lots on eBay as I've seen them come by. I sent Al copies of them last week, or possibly the week before (the days run together). I'm not sure whether they constitute a full set of anything, either, but I assume Al will let me know.
> ViewPoint 1.1 (file check)
Of the four you listed, this one I don't have.
ok
bear.========================================================================
Don Maslin had most of them.? I sent copies of mine to him and he sent
copies of his to me. of coarse that a few years ago.
Jerry
Hi folks,
Been rummaging in the garage for stuff I'll be exhibiting in the UK in July
and found this:
http://www.binarydinosaurs.co.uk/LSI1123.JPG
It's a 4-slot cage containing:
M7270 11/03 CPU
M7944 4K RAM (x2)
M8027 LP11
There's a fault label on the M8027 saying it occasionally drops characters.
Question is, anyone know what it was out of?
Cheers!
--
Adrian/Witchy
Binary Dinosaurs creator/curator
Www.binarydinosaurs.co.uk - the UK's biggest private home computer
collection?
