test-drb December 2018

test-drb@ccmp.vtda.org

174 participants
203 discussions

by iain＠csp-partnership.co.uk

Many many years ago in a distant galaxy (called Strathclyde University Computer Science) we ran a game on the PDPs. It was great at testing out terminal line speed handing and debugging curses (well that is what we told the bosses). I remember the game as being called ?search?. But since we had the source code it could have been anything. It was played on 24 x 80 dumb terminals. It was multi user. In the game you moved around the universe in your craft - the display was a kind of 3-D picture (you got closer to a plant and the planet got bigger - try drawing increasing circles on a 24x80!). You could travel through the universe shooting other craft (friend of foe). The only craft name I think I remember is ?shankers? - becuase we had source a lot of the craft names turned into locally relevant names. You could team up with other players and (1 line) communication with a group or with that player. I have searched (on and off) for the game. I cant find anything like it. I would like it to test out the DZ cards on my PDP! - OK that is my excuse ;-) Is anybody aware of what I am talking about? Does anyone have any old code anywhere? Aye, it was not as good as the old GT40 - but it was a different era.

6 years

Interesting RK8E fault

by derschjo＠gmail.com

Hi all -- Finally got all the parts together (and my act together) to actually get an RK05 lashed up to my PDP-8/e -- only took a decade or so :). I fixed a few problems with the RK05 and it appears to be behaving very nicely. The RK8E controller is mostly working properly but fails interestingly when running the formatter, and during the exerciser -- on cylinder 128 and 192 and very infrequently on cylinder 64 it will get a cylinder mismatch when doing the seek. When running the formatter during the verification pass, on cyls 64 and 128 if I retry the read it'll continue without issues, but it's never successful on a retry on cylinder 192. I tried hooking it to the RK05 in my 11/40 and it exhibits the same behavior, so I'm guessing the drive isn't at fault. And the error is consistent across packs (of which I have only two). Apart from that fault the drive and controller seem to work fine -- I wrote out an OS/8 pack with Adventure on it (or at least the first 191 cylinders of it) and it works without issue. Reading the RK8E service docs and schematics, the cylinder address compare is done by reusing the CRC buffer, so I suspect the issue is in or around there -- the big problem is that debugging it is rather painful since that logic is in the middle board of a three board set, with jumper blocks on top -- so bringing it out on an extender isn't an option. I'm curious if anyone's seen this issue or is so very familiar with the logic that the fault is obvious. I suspected the 7496 shift register at E14 which takes in the cylinder address to be compared w/the header on disk, and I went ahead and replaced it in the hopes that I'd get lucky, but no go. Anyone have any advice? Thanks, Josh

6 years

DECUS PDP-11 SPACE WAR?

by mattislind＠gmail.com

Anyone has old DECUS distributions? I am looking for the PDP-11 SPACE WAR program. It is supposed to be 11-192, written by William (Bill) Seilier and Lawrence (Larry) Bryant in 1974. https://i.imgur.com/rjaWX4X.png It is a space war like program for the PDP-11/10 with AA11 and AD01. Much later Bill rewrote it in C for the MSP430: http://processors.wiki.ti.com/images/tmp/f1276339401-2015330541.html https://github.com/dlitz/openmsp430/blob/master/fpga/actel_m1a3pl_dev_kit/s… But where is the original PAL-11 source? Anyone?

6 years

SUN SPARC station ELC

by guykd＠optusnet.com.au

Checking out a SUN SPARC station ELC tonight. It powers up, passes self test. Boot fails because the CMOS RAM battery is dead, so it's lost boot config. That's no problem, it's an ST MK48T02B-25 'TIMEKEEPER RAM' 2K x 8, which is still available. Or I'll probably just cut open the tophat and connect a new battery. Then RTFM to find how to tell it to boot from external SCSI device 3. By extreme good fortune this machine came with a complete set of manuals. The main problem is the video monitor worked for a few minutes, then dropped to about half brightness - and since then is randomly varying in brightness. Before I open it up and start connector wiggling and hunting bad caps, dry joints and so one, does anyone know if schematics for the monitor exist online? Guy

6 years

Opening RL02 disk pack

by jnc＠mercury.lcs.mit.edu

> From>: Christian Corti > I thought that the DEC packs would be similar but no, DEC had to invent > something different... Huh? I thought RL0x drives use an IBM 5440 type pack (as used on the IBM System/3 - I used one of those at my first computer job, they'd just gotten it in); DEC may have used their own format (and servo track stuff), I don't know much about the 5440. Noel

6 years

Hemp Oil Gummies That Improve Cardiovascular Health

by cctalk＠gtaylor.tnetconsulting.net

On 12/8/18 4:43 PM, Michael Mulhern wrote: > We are the spambot challenge? Something like that. -- Grant. . . . unix || die

6 years

seagate 801-> Q-bus interface

by useddec＠gmail.com

Does anyone know who made a controller for a Seagate 800 or 801 floppy that will plug into the Q-bus? Model numbers wound be nice to. Thanks, Paul

6 years

Hemp Oil Gummies That Improve Cardiovascular Health

by cisin＠xenosoft.com

WOW! That is the first TRULY obviously and unarguably spam post that I've seen make it past the cctech moderation! On Sat, 8 Dec 2018, HempOil via cctech wrote: > Hemp Oil Gummies That Improve Cardiovascular Health > http://www.tedsplansmart.review/12706-954-1315-7688394/classiccmp/tindex9.h… > > Unsubscribe Here > > http://www.tedsplansmart.review/12706-954-1315-7688394/classiccmp/rindex10.…

6 years

IBM SMS Data Capture - IBM 1410 update

by jnc＠mercury.lcs.mit.edu

> From: Jay Jaeger > I have finished the 3rd phase of my IBM 1410 SMS computer > reverse-engineering project. ... The ALDs comprise 752 pages from 9 of > the 11 total volumes of system schematics/engineering drawings ... It > took me roughly 375 hours of time (probably more like 450 - not all time > was captured) to capture the data into a database Wow. I am super impressed. My hat is off... Fantastic job! Noel

6 years

PDP-8/e

by johannesthelen＠hotmail.com

I have used Access Port on Win. Lot easier than TeraTerm and also supports 110 Baud. http://www.sudt.com/en/index.html [http://www.sudt.com/images/sn_en_230x160.gif1zB]<http://www.sudt.com/en/index.html> SUDT.com<http://www.sudt.com/en/index.html> SUDT SerialNull 1.7: SerialNull is a professional Serial Port Simulator, which purpose is to emulate RS232 serial ports connected via virtual null-modem cable using SerialNull.. Virtual Serial Ports are absolutely the same copies of real ones; Real serial ports are not occupied www.sudt.com - Johannes Thelen Finland Before microcomputers blog (Finnish) http://ennenmikrotietokoneita.blogspot.fi/ ________________________________ From: cctalk <cctalk-bounces at classiccmp.org> on behalf of Rod G8DGR via cctalk <cctalk at classiccmp.org> Sent: Friday, December 7, 2018 11:59 AM To: General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts Subject: PDP-8/e Hi All Seasons Greetings.. My PDP-8/e was long due for a major overhaul. 1. So everything out 2. Big Hoover job on the Omnibus 3. Bring up on Variac ? No smoke 4. Check PSU volts. ? All OK 5. Power off 6. Install minimal System ? Front Panel, Three CPU cards, RFI shield, 4k Core and Bus term. 7. Yup all looks in right order 8. Power on 9. Toggle in standard AC count up program 10. Clear + Cont 11. And they are racing at Rockingham!! 12. Yup counts up just like it should. 13. Let it run for a while. 14. All stop. 15. PSU off 16. Inset Async Card (Its 110 baud only) 17. Fire up VT100. Beep - yup its alive. 18. Toggle in keyboard echo test. 19. Clear + Cont ? Program runs 20. And .. yes keyboard gets echoed back. OK now I need a little help. Does anybody know of a terminal emulation program that will simulate the reader on an ASR33? I know about RIM and BIN loaders but how and what to feed them I have long forgotten My PDP-8 course completion certificate is dated November 1975. Rod Smallwood Sent from Mail for Windows 10

6 years

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test-drb December 2018