test-drb January 2017

test-drb@ccmp.vtda.org

198 participants
283 discussions

by aek＠bitsavers.org

I sent this out to some friends at the end of December -------- Forwarded Message -------- Subject: Stinky screwdrivers Date: Thu, 29 Dec 2016 08:51:02 -0800 From: Al Kossow <aek at bitsavers.org> To: Eric Schlaepfer <schlae at gmail.com>, Kenneth Sumrall <ken at scrapheap.net> CC: Hedley Rainnie <luvhed at gmail.com>, Alvaro <apg88zx at gmail.com> http://www.garagejournal.com/forum/archive/index.php/t-153147.html I've been buying a lot of Xcelite tools lately, and was wondering why some of the handles stunk. Sadly, it looks like the good USA made hand tools will all have their plastic handles crumble eventually though I have two Craftsmen nut drivers I bought in 1975 that are still perfect. Xcelite isn't made in the US anymore. Bought a #0 Super-tru Tip (no longer says USA) and it is absolute crap. -- as an addendum, I just bought a new "Made in USA" Xcelite pliers, and the build quality was an embarrassment. now I understand all the interest in used hand tools on eBay

7 years, 11 months

Stripping an RA80

by ard.p850ug1＠gmail.com

I am probably going to be flamed for this.... My VAX11/730 has an R80 disk drive as you might expect. I dismantled this many years ago to move it and never reassembled it. Over the years (in particular during a house move), the smaller parts (screws, the brackets and clevis pins for the gas struts, and ribbon cables) have got lost. A friend of mine (Philip) was having a clearout and gave me an RA80 (SDI interface, of course). I don't run SDI drives anywhere (I think I have a UDA50 somewhere), but a lot of parts are the same as in the R80. My first thought is to strip this RA80 (that's why I got it!). This will provide me with most of the missing parts (all that I would have to make is the 26 way ribbon to the controller cable -- the 60 way one is still in the R80 chassis). So after stripping I think I would be left with 4 classes of part : 1) Those I need for the R80 -- brackets, screws cables, etc 2) Those that could be useful spares for the R80 : HDA Spindle Motor Belt Belt Tensioner PSU R/W PCB Servo PCB Microprocessor PCB (the ROMs are different, of course, but the the PCB is the same and could be a source of components. I don't swap boards anyway) AC and DC power harnesses Fans Motor capacitor 3) Those that are of no use in the R80, but are not too hard to store Personality board Control panel SDI cabling 4) Those that I don't need and which are a pain to store Cbassis parts. Is there any reason to keep the bare, stripped, chassis, or should I let it go as scrap metal? Does anyone run an RA80 and think any of the bits in list 3 (certainly) or 2 (I may want to keep these, in particular the HDA if it's good) are useful to them? Of course I don't know if the parts are still good. Or should I preserve the RA80 as it is, and just use it as patterns for the missing bits. Try to find a source of the UNC screws, make up the cables, make up brackets, etc. I would only do that if there is a very good reason. -tony

7 years, 11 months

What's the rarest or most unusual computer-related item do you own?

by spereira1952＠comcast.net

> On Jan 11, 2017, at 1:00 PM, cctech-request at classiccmp.org wrote: > > Message: 8 > Date: Tue, 10 Jan 2017 22:09:52 +0000 > From: Andy Cloud <r3trohub at gmail.com <mailto:r3trohub at gmail.com>> > To: "cctalk at classiccmp.org <mailto:cctalk at classiccmp.org>" <cctalk at classiccmp.org <mailto:cctalk at classiccmp.org>> > Subject: What's the rarest or most unusual computer-related item do > you own? > Message-ID: > <CAGmukzzmPkTx0D98iSPK41=Y4utY1nxiyfhrGwek=v5VdpQz5A at mail.gmail.com <mailto:CAGmukzzmPkTx0D98iSPK41=Y4utY1nxiyfhrGwek=v5VdpQz5A at mail.gmail.com>> > Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8 > > Hi Everyone! > > I thought this would be an interesting question to ask around - What's the > rarest or most unusual computer-related item do you own? > > For me, personally, I have a Altair 8800! > > Looking forward to hearing your answers > >> _Andy I recently acquired my ?holy grail?: an Altair 680b. And, with a bit of troubleshooting, I got it up and running, too. smp -- Stephen M. Pereira Bedford, NH 03110 KB1SXE

7 years, 11 months

pdp-11 assembly standards

by hilpert＠cs.ubc.ca

> I've never heard of that '&o' bizzaro-stuff - where did you find that? This one: http://mdfs.net/Software/PDP11/Assembler/AsmPDP.txt Reading more closely, the encoding has some relation back to BBC BASIC. I was beginning to wonder if it was some html character-encoding screwup.

7 years, 11 months

pdp-11 assembly standards

by jnc＠mercury.lcs.mit.edu

> From: Brent Hilpert > This one: > ... > Reading more closely, the encoding has some relation back to BBC BASIC. Given this (from the documentation): Assembler directives -------------------- #include <filename> Includes the specified file. #ifndef <label> Continue assembling if <label> is undefined. #ifdef <label> Continue assembling if <label> is defined. #if <value> Continue assembling if <value> is non-zero. #else Toggle assembly. #endif Continue assembling. which is clearly C-related, I wonder if there is some relationship there (the '%o' looks rather printf()-ish). Although I note the documentation says "any valid value recognised by BBC BASIC" - does BBC basic use the leading '%' notation for constants? Noel

7 years, 11 months

What's the rarest or most unusual computer-related item do you own?

by tmanos＠concursive.com

I just gave away my pride and joy: an AT&T 3B2 1000 in perfect condition with just about every accessory you could want and fully configured. It was a dual processor system, and fully maxed out with RAM and ports. It had an ethernet card and SCSI, I collected boards and documentation for many years and had a complete set of original docs, and many, many spares. I was downsizing and ended up giving it away to another denizen of the list along with a couple Sparc 20's and a bunch of other stuff. It completely filled up a rental SUV and traveled from Virginia to a state way out west. Many hundreds of pounds of stuff. It's happily running now. I miss it, but hopefully it's getting more use than I was giving it. On Tue, Jan 10, 2017 at 5:09 PM, Andy Cloud <r3trohub at gmail.com> wrote: > Hi Everyone! > > I thought this would be an interesting question to ask around - What's the > rarest or most unusual computer-related item do you own? > > For me, personally, I have a Altair 8800! > > Looking forward to hearing your answers > >>_Andy

7 years, 11 months

pdp-11 assembly standards

by hilpert＠cs.ubc.ca

7 years, 11 months

Re: What's the rarest or most unusual computer-related item do you own?

by vintagecomputer＠bettercomputing.net

-------- Original message -------- From: Chuck Guzis <cclist at sydex.com> Date: 2017-01-10 11:24 PM (GMT-08:00) To: "General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts" <cctalk at classiccmp.org> Subject: Re: What's the rarest or most unusual computer-related item do you   own? On 01/10/2017 09:58 PM, Brad H wrote: > Am envying the Altair guys though.? I want one but they always come > up at just the wrong time. I've still got the 8800 I built (with all those crappy white stranded wires) back in the day.? It's not that great, trust me. I moved to an IMSAI box and finally to an Integrand box.? Don't have the IMSAI any longer, but still have the Integrand. Haven't powered any of them up in 30 years.?? One tends to forget about >such stuff. >--Chuck For me it'd be purely about the history. ? ?Gates and Allen writing the interpreter without an actual Altair to work on. Allen writing the bootstrap on the plane he took to pitch to MITS. ?Gates' first written tirade about piracy. ? An Altair isn't out of my reach.. just.. other stuff (like the Mark-8 boards) keeps coming up just as I've stored enough money to buy one.

7 years, 11 months

pdp-11 assembly standards

by hilpert＠cs.ubc.ca

7 years, 11 months

pdp-11 assembly standards

by hilpert＠cs.ubc.ca

On 2017-Jan-10, at 5:03 AM, Noel Chiappa wrote: >> From: Brent Hilpert >>>>> One assembler doc uses a prefix of "&o" >> >> So the answer is, by modern expectations the old standard would be >> ambiguous or misleading. > > Well, the ideas of 'assembler' and 'standard' don't really go together in my > mind... :-) > > But seriously, I don't know how many different PDP-11 assemblers there were, > but the two _main_ ones (DEC's, and Unix's) both use the same numeric > convention (although they differed in other ways, probably because of the > CTSS/Multics erase character convention): a sequence of digits is an octal > number, unless there's a trailing '.', in which case it's decimal. > > (Well, technically, DEC had PAL-11 and MACRO-11, but PAL-11 was basically a > subset of MACRO-11, and used the same number syntax.) > > I've never heard of that '&o' bizzaro-stuff - where did you find that? > > Noel This one: http://mdfs.net/Software/PDP11/Assembler/AsmPDP.txt Reading more closely, the encoding has some relation back to BBC BASIC. I was beginning to wonder if it was some html character-encoding screwup.

7 years, 11 months

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test-drb January 2017