test-drb February 2018

test-drb@ccmp.vtda.org

160 participants
141 discussions

Dec-10 Day announcement from Living Computers: Museum + Labs

by RichA＠livingcomputers.org

Happy DEC-10 Day! It is my honor to announce that we at Living Computers: Museum + Labs are releasing to the computing community our Massbus Disk Emulator and all the associated software. This device connects via Massbus cables to the RH10 and RH20 interfaces on KI-10 and KL-10 systems, to the RH11 interface on KS-10 and small PDP-11 systems (including the front end 11/40 on the KL-10), and to the RH70 on the PDP-11/70. The MDE provides up to 8 emulated RP06 or RP07 disks (represented by disk files in the format used by the SimH emulation of these systems). We expect that it will also work with the RH780 on the VAX-11/780 and VAX-11/785 although we have not yet tested it in this configuration. The original MDE was designed by Keith Perez in 2005, and emulated up to four RP06 drives connected to a KL-10. The current generation was a redesign by Bruce Sherry in conjunction with the restoration of our DECsystem-1070 in 2012, and initially provided eight RP06 drives on the RH10. It has undergone continual development, with associated software created for us by Bob Armstrong, and is now being opened up for the use of the relevant communities. To this end, we have placed the design files for the hardware and the source files for the software to interface with it, along with our library of Universal Peripheral Emulator routines, on public access repositories at Github. The URLs for these repositories are https://github.com/livingcomputermuseum/MDE2 https://github.com/livingcomputermuseum/MBS https://github.com/livingcomputermuseum/UPELIB These are released under a very liberal license which will allow for free use of the MDE by any interested party. Happy Dec-10 Day! Rich Richard Alderson, Sr. Systems Engineer Living Computers: Museum + Labs 2245 1st Avenue S Seattle, WA 98134 Cell: (206) 465-2916 Desk: (206) 342-2239 http://www.livingcomputerss.org/

6 years, 1 month

DEC compatible boards

by useddec＠gmail.com

I have well over 100, maybe 200 DEC compatible boards which I have no plans to use. Maybe 20 or so EMULEX, DILOG, ADAC, DATA TRANSLATIONS, and dozens or other manufacturers. Also the ones that have no company name on them. They range from a few PDP-8 boards, to Q-bus. Unibus, to VAX. I hope to have a complete list sometime later this year, bur feel free to send a wish list (off list)and I will dig through them. Thanks, Paul

6 years, 1 month

Bug-for-bug compatibility [was RE: SimH DECtape vs. Tops-10 [was RE: Writing emulators [Was: Re: VCF PNW 2018: Pictures!]]]

by RichA＠livingcomputers.org

From: Paul Koning Sent: Monday, February 26, 2018 12:19 PM >> On Feb 26, 2018, at 12:06 PM, Doug Ingraham via cctalk >> <cctalk at classiccmp.org>> wrote: >> The purpose of an emulator is to accurately pretend to be the original >> hardware. It doesn't matter that the original OS runs on a particular >> emulator. If a program can be written that runs on the original hardware >> but fails on the emulator then there is a flaw in that emulator. > That's true. But it is unfortunately also true that creating a bug for bug > accurate model of an existing machine is extremely hard. This is true even in real hardware (or "real" hardware, if you prefer), whether bug-for-bug or simply correct results for corner cases. The XKL Toad-1 System was designed to be a superset clone of the KL-10 based DECSYSTEM-2065 from Digital Equipment Corporation. It implements the full 30-bit extended addressing introduced with TOPS-20 v4, of which the KL-10 provided a 23-bit subset, and provides native support for 10Mbit Ethernet and FASTWIDE differential SCSI2 (both state of the art in 1991 when the design was frozen). As a better DEC-20, the Toad-1 was a success. (We will leave aside the issue of its market failure, which is irrelevant to the story.) Fast forward 20 years, to Living Computer Museum, where a KI-10 based DEC-1070 was undergoing restoration. Diagnostics were needed, so the resident TOPS-20 programmer laid hands on the MAINDEC sources for the KI-10 and proceeded to compile them all and generate paper tapes of the results. All went smashingly well until the multiplication test. The diagnostic source for this test uses a macro to build a set of test values for X**2 where X is a power of 2. Internally, Macro-20 uses the IMULM instruction to build the results. In the KA-10 manual, IMULx of 2**35 * 2**35 is supposed to store the high order part of the result into the 36 bit word addressed by the instruction, and set the overflow bit. On the Toad-1 (and on the Toad-2 prior to our discovery of this bug), a zero is stored instead. Since we compiled the KI-10 diagnostics on the Toad-1, this incorrect result was placed on the diagnostic paper tape, and the KI-10 seemed to fail the diagnostic. Imagine our chagrin when days of trying to correct the problem led to the conclusion that the diagnostic was incorrect. Rich Rich Alderson Vintage Computing Sr. Systems Engineer Living Computers: Museum + Labs 2245 1st Avenue S Seattle, WA 98134 mailto:RichA at LivingComputers.org http://www.LivingComputers.org/

6 years, 1 month

Suggestions for 16 mm movies to digital conversion

by jfoust＠threedee.com

At 01:09 PM 2/24/2018, Pete Lancashire via cctalk wrote: >I have a small, 5-20 stack of 16 mm's of movies dealing with computers >The one in front of me is >"Once Upon a Punched Card" >I am looking for a place in the USA with a reasonable price to have them >digitized and I will place them on both my Google drive and a Youtube >So far I have only been able to find places I can not afford. I use https://gomemorable.com/ . I've used them for both 8mm and 16mm. They have sales now and then that'll drop 40% off the price. They're running one now until March 3. They scan digitally with LED illumination, frame by frame. It'll brighten your old film in ways you can't imagine. They'll scan to HD (1920x1080) resolution. I send them a hard drive and they return the files as Quicktime ProRes movie files. These days, send 'em a bare SATA SSD to save on shipping. If you didn't want to edit yourself, they can send you a DVD or far better yet a Blu-ray. As I look at their web site now, I don't see a link that gets me to these services I describe, that I've used as recently as a month or two ago. I'll write them a note to see where the straight-forward per-foot pricing and hard drive options went. For 8mm, many old cameras would actually expose more of the width of the film than you'd ever see on your projector, so I have them scan the full frame. Here's an example of a color home movie from the 1940s that I had converted to VHS in the early 90s via telecine, compared to a modern digital scan: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f08K0Co3l5s - John

6 years, 1 month

More pictures of the 360/50 front panel

by pete＠petelancashire.com

https://photos.app.goo.gl/36CxlZQJDssj5uLh1 I will be pulling it out later this week and have more including the back and the hinged frame -pete

6 years, 1 month

Vtserver 32MB limit

by bob＠theadamsons.co.uk

I've been using vtserver to transfer an OS to a minimal pdp11 (only a HD and console port so far). Works fine but it has a well-documented 32MB file limit. This website http://home.windstream.net/engdahl/vtserver.htm mentions some hacks but I've been unable to contact the author. Anyone have details of either the code or author? Thanks Bob Sent from my iPad

6 years, 1 month

A CD-ROM that is compatible with the 16700A LA!

by mechanic_2＠charter.net

Hello all, . . . . For those of you who having not been following my trials and tribulations with a 16700A in another topic here is a partial update. I received this LA from a benefactor who has stepped forward. A real big thanks to him. I have run into that incompatibility problem with External CD-ROM Drives. . . . . I am disabled and partially housebound. I am living on SSD so money is very tight for me. I am looking for a CD-ROM Drive for little or nothing that is compatible with the 16700A I have an NEC 3x Drive that uses the CD Carriers. Remember those. I have installed this and a Maxtor 245MB SCSI drive in an External SCSI box. The Termination on the CD-ROM Drive is turned off and I removed the Termination resistors on the HDD. I have a Terminator installed on the end of the SCSI bus on the External Case. Could someone please help me out? Any and all help is greatly appreciated. GOD Bless and Thanks, rich! --- This email has been checked for viruses by Avast antivirus software. https://www.avast.com/antivirus

6 years, 1 month

Anyone have any info on the NEC D2167D-2?

by ethan.dicks＠gmail.com

Hi, all, I'm going through a box of random ICs and one particular item is not showing up on my searches outside of a couple eBay auctions for chip collectors. The IC is a 20-pin ceramic body with side brazed legs, gold pins, chromed lid, with NEC D2168D on it with "-2" painted on the ceramic and date codes >from 1984. It's almost certainly a RAM chip of some kind, but I'm not finding any pinouts or data sheets. Anyone recognize this? Anyone know a system that uses them? I have more than 10, and since I haven't run across them before, I probably don't have a machine that needs them. Thanks for any tips. -ethan

6 years, 1 month

ARPANET Reaches the Royal Signals and Radar Establishment (RSRE, Malvern)

by pbirkel＠gmail.com

The following extract comes from a History of Programming Languages (HOPL) retrospective on the development of the Ada programming language written by the individual who was the government lead at DARPA for much of the time of its development (Colonel William A. Whitaker). I found it humorous. Perhaps you will too. ----- The ARPANET connection was inaugurated during a visit to RSRE by Her Royal Highness Queen Elizabeth II. Her Majesty sent a message of greetings to the members of the HOLWG from her net account, EIIR, by pressing a red velvet Royal carriage return. Because the address list was long, it took about 45 seconds for the confirmation to come back, 45 seconds of dead air. Prince Philip remarked, joking respectfully, that it looked like she broke it. ----- I suspect that we've "all been there" at one time or another! paul

6 years, 1 month

What is vintage (was: Why don't you respect the mail threads?!)

by billdegnan＠gmail.com

What is vintage computing? I think it's the IBM PC. Anything else is not vintage computing. b On Thu, Feb 22, 2018 at 3:36 PM, Evan Koblentz via cctalk < cctalk at classiccmp.org> wrote: > It's gone meta: people threadjacking a thread about threadjacking. Now > it's some posters trying to show others who is smartest about arcane > details of obsolete email software. >

6 years, 1 month

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test-drb February 2018