test-drb November 2017

test-drb@ccmp.vtda.org

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

by barythrin＠gmail.com

I'm curious about this idea as well. Feels less fun to take a favorite kim-1 on field trips lately. null

7 years

Altair Peripheral Emulator

by Mark＠Misty.com

Hi, Does anyone know where I can find the Altair Peripheral Emulator? Links I have found so far are all dead: http://home.comcast.net/~forbin376 http://frankbarberis.tech.officelive.com/default.aspx Mark -- Mark G. Thomas (Mark at Misty.com), KC3DRE

7 years

Microassembler, etc, available

by jnc＠mercury.lcs.mit.edu

On 11/28/17 13:27, emanuel stiebler via cctalk wrote: > Dave has a KV10 already in verilog, so why not port it to the uengine? Well, the uengine would have to be considerably modified before it could be used for a PDP-10 (e.g. wider data-paths); this version is very specialized to the SD application (e.g. hardware CRC support, etc). Noel

7 years

what is this NCR modem? what did it go to?

by COURYHOUSE＠aol.com

does the 71 sate seem early? In a message dated 11/26/2017 2:38:17 P.M. US Mountain Standard Time, cctalk at classiccmp.org writes: The NCR 260 (first part of the part number) was a KSR portable thermal printing terminal. Somewhat similar to the Silent 700. But, the NCR 260 had an integrated modem with acoustic coupler

7 years

TRS80 Model 4P CRT contrast fail

by binarydinosaurs＠gmail.com

Hi folks, A random facebook post made me dig out my model 4P which has never worked as long as I?ve owned it, it?s always just sat on a shelf looking cute. Good old ASTEC PSU problem so I fixed that, reseated all the thankfully socketed chips and it burst into life. Sort of. I know it?s running because I can turn the brightness up to raster lines and see the pattern actually change when RESET is pressed. With contrast right up I can JUST see the boot logo appear while it reads the floppy. None of the pots on the video board deal with contrast so I?ve got it out on the bench to remove and test the capacitors. What else can I look at at the same time? Someone else has already mentioned the transistors Q101, Q102 and Q103 (on the yoke board). Screen pic: http://www.binarydinosaurs.co.uk/trs80Model4PScreen.jpg <http://www.binarydinosaurs.co.uk/trs80Model4PScreen.jpg> - you can JUST see the boot logo, I know it?s not screen burn because it does disappear on RESET and comes back again. Video board schematic: http://www.binarydinosaurs.co.uk/trs80Model4PVideoBoardSchematic.png <http://www.binarydinosaurs.co.uk/trs80Model4PVideoBoardSchematic.png> Cheers! ? Adrian/Witchy Binary Dinosaurs - Celebrating Computing History from 1972 onwards

7 years

Microassembler, etc, available

by jnc＠mercury.lcs.mit.edu

So, as part of the work on getting our QSIC card to support SD cards for storage, Dave and I have produced some tools that people might find useful. Dave's original concept was to do SD support with a state machine. However, the SD protocol turned out to be a little too complex for that, so we decided to create a bespoke micro-engine (hereinafter 'uengine' - I use 'u' in place of the lower-case 'mu' all the time) to handle it. This turned out to be a good call; Dave cranked out a uengine in Verilog (which was incredibly quick to produce), and I whipped up (literally - the first version was done overnight) a uassembler. The latter has since been much improved; the current version reads the entire definition of the uengine >from a configuration file, and thus should be usable on any umachine. So, if you need a uassembler for some project, here's one. (And if you need something it can't do, let me know, and I can add stuff; e.g. it doesn't currently support the '+' operator in literals, only '|', but it would be fairly simple to add '+' if anyone had a use for it.) The source is here: http://ana-3.lcs.mit.edu/~jnc/tech/QSIC/tools/uas.c (and no, I don't have the energy to learn how to use sourceforge or github to distribute it, so don't bug me about it). I wrote it under Cygwin on Windows, but Dave compiled and runs it on Linux as-is, so it's pretty portable. The current output format is hex that Dave massages into 'ROM' contents on the FPGA in some fashion I don't know the details of, but if anyone needs something different, again, I'd be happy to add whatever's needed. The source syntax supported is documented in comments at the start of the uassembler source; it's pretty simple, here's a brief synopsis (see the file for more detail). ucode is a collection of lines, one per micro-instruction. The syntax for individual lines is: {<label>:} <operator>{, <operator>}... {<literal>} <operator> can be either: <value> (symbolic) or <field>=<fvalue> (where fvalue can be symbolic or numeric); specific symbolic values are assigned by the configuration file (where they are defined) to specific fields. <literal> is <data>{|<data>}... where <data> is symbolic (a label, or a value) or numeric. Forward references to labels are supported. Numeric items (everywhere) are either octal, decimal or hex. Whitespace (either space(s) or tab(s)) can be used in most places. Comments start with a ';' or '/', and the rest of the line is ignored. A sample umachine configuration file (for the QSIC uengine) is here: http://ana-3.lcs.mit.edu/~jnc/tech/QSIC/tools/ueng and the (simple) format of the config file is documented in the comments at the start. A sample source file for uas for that uengine is here: http://ana-3.lcs.mit.edu/~jnc/tech/QSIC/sd.asm if you want to see what source looks like. Dave has a github site where all his stuff is available; the latest version of the ucode is here: https://github.com/dabridgham/QSIC/blob/master/verilog/sd.asm and the whole thing is here: https://github.com/dabridgham/QSIC including the Verilog for the uengine. Dave reports that it should be easy to adapt his uengine design to other uses, it should run in pretty much any FPGA. So if you want to build a PDP-15 (or a Multics! :-) in an FPGA, there you go. Dave indicates he'd be happy to help anyone who needs to tweak the uengine design for their particular application. Hopefully someone will find this useful! Noel

7 years

Parts for old RS/6000's

by BHuntsman＠mail2.cu-portland.edu

Anyone on here have any old RS/6000 parts? I have an old C10 I'm trying to beef up a bit for a project. I'm after the following (pardon the lame table): FC FRU Qty Desc 3033 74G8824 2 2.2GB SCSI-2 Fast/Wide Disk Drive 4012 9H5583 8 32MB SIMM Memory 4224 02G7431 1 Ethernet 10BaseT Transceiver 3107 31G4126 1 Serial Port Converter Cable D/T 7008,7009 51G7737 1 System Unit SCSI Terminator Also interested in some MCA blanks, if anyone has some extras lying around. Thanks!

7 years

Sun 3/50 processor board and unknown processor

by chd＠chdickman.com

I was given two boards that were "spares for a PDP-11/40." The business that I got my PDP-11/40 from was cleaning out storage and found these two boards and gave them to me. It looks like board 2 is for a Sun 3/50 workstation. Board 1 is some kind of micro-programmed processor based on AM29331 and AM29331. There are also some Analog Devices DSPs. AM29000 based processor with Analog Device DSPs http://www.chdickman.com/board1.jpg Sun 3/50 processor http://www.chdickman.com/board2.jpg Can anyone identify them? -chuck

7 years

what is this NCR modem? what did it go to?

by Flash688＠flying-disk.com

COURYHOUSE at aol.com wrote: > what is this NCR modem? what did it go to? > > NEW Vintage 1971 NCR Acoustic Coupler Modem, NOS, Factory Boxed, C260-400 > / F01 132411929563 on the bay It is a Bell 103A compatible modem (110 or 300 baud) used with the NCR 260 series of thermal printing terminals. The 260 came in several variants: -1 (receive only), -2 (keyboard send/receive), -6 (Automatic (cassette tape) send/receive). I worked with them at NCR in 1973 and 74. I still have the manuals, and just a few days ago scanned them for Bitsavers. If you need a copy I can send you the raw TIFF files (one per page). Both the -400 and -500 were EIA I/O to the terminal. The C260-400 connected to a Bell System DAA (Data Access Arrangement), while the C260-500 was an acoustic coupler. The acoustic coupler had a solenoid that would would automatically raise and lower the handset on the telephone! Back in those days you could not connect anything directly to the telephone lines -- you had to use the telco-supplied DAA (kaching!) or an acoustic coupler. I don't know if this modem can be connected directly to a phone line without a DAA. I think the asking price is totally unrealistic unless you are a rabid collector of NCR gear. Alan Frisbie

7 years

what is this NCR modem? what did it go to?

by COURYHOUSE＠aol.com

OK! Shades of the crown answering machine we have in the museum with the handset lifter! Yea the price is defiantly a barrier on this except for Paul Allen I suppose. Ed# _www.smecc.org_ (http://www.smecc.org) In a message dated 11/27/2017 12:16:16 P.M. US Mountain Standard Tim, cctalk at classiccmp.org writes: COURYHOUSE at aol.com wrote: > what is this NCR modem? what did it go to? > > NEW Vintage 1971 NCR Acoustic Coupler Modem, NOS, Factory Boxed, C260-400 > / F01 132411929563 on the bay It is a Bell 103A compatible modem (110 or 300 baud) used with the NCR 260 series of thermal printing terminals. The 260 came in several variants: -1 (receive only), -2 (keyboard send/receive), -6 (Automatic (cassette tape) send/receive). I worked with them at NCR in 1973 and 74. I still have the manuals, and just a few days ago scanned them for Bitsavers. If you need a copy I can send you the raw TIFF files (one per page). Both the -400 and -500 were EIA I/O to the terminal. The C260-400 connected to a Bell System DAA (Data Access Arrangement), while the C260-500 was an acoustic coupler. The acoustic coupler had a solenoid that would would automatically raise and lower the handset on the telephone! Back in those days you could not connect anything directly to the telephone lines -- you had to use the telco-supplied DAA (kaching!) or an acoustic coupler. I don't know if this modem can be connected directly to a phone line without a DAA. I think the asking price is totally unrealistic unless you are a rabid collector of NCR gear. Alan Frisbie

7 years

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test-drb November 2017