test-drb November 2017

test-drb@ccmp.vtda.org

126 participants
149 discussions

by dm561＠torfree.net

An interesting 3 hours on PBS last night: - 'Steve Jobs - One Last Thing': No description necessary. - 'Long Distance Warrior': McGowan/MCI's David & Goliath battle with AT&T and disastrous merger with Worldcom. - 'Digital Man/Digital World': Ken Olsen/DEC's growth and ultimate decline. (No doubt everyone here except myself had already seen this one ;-) Interesting comparison of the different styles and personalities of three men who profoundly influenced the tech world of today and their companies. Thoroughly enjoyed it. m

6 years, 8 months

Vaxstation 3100 of odd sort on epay

by jwsmail＠jwsss.com

This might be a tempest or shielded vaxstation? Anyone speculate or know for sure. The vendor may have these mixed in as equivalent to their other vaxstations. If you search for "DEC vax VS42A-BN" you end up back at the vendors listing for the ones with plastic covers. I didn't turn up any info yet, not hoping to. but the thing has what appears to be optical, and a huge connector which may be shielded SCSI on the back. I can't tell from the front, but there may be a hatch to allow it to be opened and a floppy inserted, not sure from the photos. VINTAGE-RARE-DEC-DIGITAL-VAXSTATION-3100-PF-VS42A-AA-RF-VS42A-BN-COMPUTER-SYSTEM/ http://www.ebay.com/itm/370930391341 Kind of an interesting device. I looped back into the vendors listings to this auction for the plastic topped version, by the way VINTAGE-DEC-DIGITAL-VT1300-VAXSTATION-VS42A-BB-COMPUTER-SYSTEM-VT-1300-TERMINAL/ http://www.ebay.com/itm/370912245260 It is badged VT-1300 so may not be a vaxstation. And the other box may be one of the VT-1300's that is tempest or shielded. thanks Jim

6 years, 10 months

Tek 40xx computer users

by rdawson16＠hotmail.com

I bought the Tek 4051 on ebay today; Jason brought it to my house and it works perfectly, with about a half hour of programming instruction my 12 old daughter was plotting a cat face. https://www.facebook.com/Thelma.Franco/videos/10154277153852670/ I would like to get in touch with other users of this first personal computer, and find additional resources. Do you know where I can find an archive of BASIC programs for this? Has anybody built plug in cards in the back, mine came with a realtime clock and a "file manager", I do not know what that one does. I have some Tek scopes with IEE-488, and I will see if I can get the IEEE interface working. There was a DC300 tape in the machine: biorithm craps blackjack artillery tanks weatherwar The belt is broken in the tape, I have ordered some new DC300's and will transplant the tape. Any resources will be welcome! Randy

6 years, 11 months

Slightly Meta: Travel tips for people traveling internationally with vintage equipment?

by mbbrutman＠brutman.com

I'm actively working on show planning for VCF PNW and I'm noticing that we have a few international travelers planning to attend and exhibit their machines/projects. I'd like to put together a FAQ for the logistics of traveling with vintage equipment across the US border. If you have ideas please let me know. For example: Should I plan on providing letters in advance stating that a person is a registered exhibitor at our show, including details like the show location, dates, times, and contact information in case there is a question about why somebody is carrying strange looking equipment into the US? Is there any sort of paperwork or customs form needed even if nothing is being sold or left in the US? Any other gotchas to look for? Thanks, Mike

6 years, 11 months

DR-DOS

by lproven＠gmail.com

I hope this is vintage enough. I've been playing around some more with my projects to create VMs / bootable USB keys with PC DOS 7.1 and DR-DOS. Right now I'm focusing on DR-DOS 7.1 and the DR OpenDOS Enhancement Project, because that's FOSS and AFAICS it can be redistributed, which I can't with DR-DOS 7.02/7.03/7.04/7.05 or DR-DOS 8/8.1, which were commercially licensed. I found a download of the last build released: https://archiveos.org/drdos/ First, it's the wrong size. VirtualBox can't mount it. VMware can. I truncated it to exactly 2880 sectors using the advice from ``jleg094'' here: https://forums.virtualbox.org/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=39141 VBox mounts that. But it won't boot, nor in VMware -- it just displays 2 dots and freezes. Embarrassingly late in the troubleshooting process, I've found why. I didn't think to check what was on the image! Foolish of me. I mounted it on a pre-booted VM and looked, and it's blank! There's nothing in the image at all. So, I mounted the empty image file as a loop device, copied the boot files in there and then the rest of the files in the distro archive. And lo, it works! It boots my VM just fine, and it's now running 7.01-08. All I need to do now is work out how to make the hard disk bootable, and I'm in business. The DR-DOS 7 SYS command won't do it, as the files aren't named IBMBIOS.COM and IBMSYS.COM -- they're DRBIO.SYS and DRSYS.SYS. I copied them to the expected names. SYS completes but the disk won't boot. Next step will be to try with Norton Disk Doctor. Anyway, if anyone wants a bootable diskette image with DR-DOS 7.01-08, complete with FAT32 support -- apparently it can even boot from it -- let me know. -- Liam Proven ? Profile: https://about.me/liamproven Email: lproven at cix.co.uk ? Google Mail/Talk/Plus: lproven at gmail.com Twitter/Facebook/Flickr: lproven ? Skype/LinkedIn/AIM/Yahoo: liamproven UK: +44 7939-087884 ? ?R/WhatsApp/Telegram/Signal: +420 702 829 053

7 years

Preventing VAX running VMS / Multinet from being used as SMTP relay

by billdegnan＠gmail.com

I have a microvax set up with VMS 5, running MULTINET (and decnet locally). The server has a FQDN and after a while being exposed to the WWW someone out there started using the server as an SMTP relay. I can disable and clear the queue, but I'd like to block entirely this from happening in the first place. I'd like to learn more about how this happens in VMS. Anyone have had this same problem before? I realize back when VMS 5 was current it was not so much of an issue, but today it is. I am working on a solution. I can envision a few ways including blocking the smtp relay port >from the firewall, but if possible I'd like to set up a VMS Multinet solution as a learning exercise. I am open to suggestions, and once I find the solution I'll post it. I understand that this kind of thing is not cookie cutter, there are different levels one could address something like this. I have a comcast business router, and one of the 5 IPs I have is NAT assigned to the internal 10.1.10 port of the microvax. This is the same machine I wrote about previously as with then, thanks for your help. I find the best way to learn is on the actual hardware warts and all. Bill

7 years

Kodak Diconix 150plus - looking for info

by r_a_feldman＠hotmail.com

>Date: Sat, 25 Nov 2017 23:27:29 +0000 >From: Philip Pemberton <classiccmp at philpem.me.uk> > >Hi folks, > >I just picked up a Kodak Diconix 150 Plus portable inkjet printer. No >power supply or documentation, but it works fine. <snip> >Which brings me onto my question... Does anyone have any information on >this printer? I have a Diconix 180si, with User Manual and Technical Reference manual. >I'm mainly looking for a DIP switch table (annoyingly, it won't produce >a config print - just a test page). I'd also love to find some details >on the control codes, emulations and character sets it supports. The 180si does not use DIP switches, so I can't help with that. The Tech Ref manual does have Command Code and Character Set info, however. The whole manual is a bit over 100 pages. I can scan it if you are interested. >Also - does anyone know what the material on the printhead capping >station is, or if they're still available? >It looks like a cardboard or blotting paper pad with a plastic backing >card. This one is soaked in ink and looks like it could do with being >replaced. I assume it's to stop the cartridge from drying out? The 180si uses one also. It "catches a spray of ink which the printer uses to clear the printhead cartridge before printing." A new pad is included in each printhead cartridge container. >I've put a HP 51604A (expired 2012!) cartridge in there, and it seems >happy enough. >Thanks, >-- >Phil. >classiccmp at philpem.me.uk >http://www.philpem.me.uk/ Bob

7 years

Playing with HP2640B

by mattislind＠gmail.com

I have been working on a HP 2640B terminal. It was mostly about fixing the "screen mold" problem and cleaning up the liquids that had been seeping out >from the screen down into the bottom. The small coaxial wire that connects the 4.9152 MHz clock signal form the power supply (never seen a crystal controlled SMPSU before!) to the backplane was broken off, but after fixing that the terminal worked fine. Just needed some adjustment to the brightness. With the correct terminfo installed it worked quite well as a serial terminal to a Linux box. Then I tried the short 8008 programs that Christian Corti pointed to http://computermuseum.informatik.uni-stuttgart.de/dev_en/hp2644/diag.html and ftp://computermuseum.informatik.uni-stuttgart.de/hp/hp2644 I tried both a couple of times. The terminal enter the LOADER mode but just hangs completely at the end. I tried different baudrates but no difference. The selftest STATUS line tell me 40<802 which should indicate that there are 4k memory in the terminal. However there should be 5k since there is one 4k board and one combined control store and 1 k RAM board. Maybe there is a fault in the 1k SRAM? The terminal doesn't complain though. Regardless, the programs listed either starts at adress 30000 or 36000 which should then be within the available space. The question is, should these program work for the HP2640B as well? It has a 8008 but my guess is that the firmware is different from the 2644. What is the joint experience regarding this? Has anyone ran these small programs above on a HP2640B? The HP 2640B firmware consists of four EA 4900 ROM chips which annoyingly are not anything like normal EPROMs. So dumping will need special considerations. Has anyone dumped the HP 2640B firmware already? I didn't find it on bitsavers. /Mattis

7 years

Retro Nintendo

by jwest＠classiccmp.org

I'm not sure that I've ever seen my spam be on-topic, but just got this today: http://www.myogn.trade/14935360/retrobox/ba5fe467dd71379e9b40ef956a0dabb7/?w sh1130 Thought I'd pass it on. No recommendation or anything, just thought I'd pass on the link. J

7 years

Kodak Diconix 150plus - looking for info

by classiccmp＠philpem.me.uk

Hi folks, I just picked up a Kodak Diconix 150 Plus portable inkjet printer. No power supply or documentation, but it works fine. It appears to be a variant of HP's Thinkjet (it certainly uses the same cartridges) tweaked for portable use. Looking inside, it's full of Chinon ICs, and was apparently made in Japan (from the baseplate). This one needed some parts on the DC interface board resoldering, but after that it worked fine. Which brings me onto my question... Does anyone have any information on this printer? I'm mainly looking for a DIP switch table (annoyingly, it won't produce a config print - just a test page). I'd also love to find some details on the control codes, emulations and character sets it supports. Also - does anyone know what the material on the printhead capping station is, or if they're still available? It looks like a cardboard or blotting paper pad with a plastic backing card. This one is soaked in ink and looks like it could do with being replaced. I assume it's to stop the cartridge from drying out? I've put a HP 51604A (expired 2012!) cartridge in there, and it seems happy enough. Thanks, -- Phil. classiccmp at philpem.me.uk http://www.philpem.me.uk/

7 years

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test-drb November 2017