test-drb February 2019

test-drb@ccmp.vtda.org

136 participants
165 discussions

by technoid6502＠gmail.com

I got a laugh out of this anecdote. Of course, folks heard me chuckle and I tried to share the joke but.... Way too geeky for public consumption. Back in 2000-ish, I was upgrading my DG MV4000/dc to 8mb so as to be able to run the snazzy AOS/VS II tapes I'd got along with the 9 track drive I hacked onto the machine... The install would start and then bomb at a certain point every time. I decided to work the machine hard and then pull the board and give a good SNIFF. This is a 15x15 inch board populated with 256kx1 drams. The time in the machine got the board cooking nicely, and when I smelled a certain charred smell in the vicinity of a 74ls04, I knew it was that magic black smoke. I pulled a 74HCT04 from a known-good isa card, socketed the spot and viola! Working 8mb board. It isn't ALLWAYS the most expensive chip, thank God, and sometimes even us not- as-bright guys come off with a win. I really enjoy reading this list even though I don't contribute all that often or anything of much value. It is a pleasure to watch you guys work. Jeff On Thu, 2019-02-14 at 12:00 -0600, cctalk-request at classiccmp.org wrote: > Re: PDP-11/45 RSTS/E boot problem > When our 11/45 failed in the MMU in 1975, my classmate Josh Rosen traced the failing path on the schematics. When Jim Newport the field service engineer showed up, Josh described the diagnostics result that pointed at the failed path, and added "This is the failed chip" (pointing to one particular chip. Jim asked "Why that one?" Josh answered "because that is the most expensive chip". It turned out he was right. paul

5 years, 10 months

Ultimate FDC? (Was: IBM 6360 - Filesystem(ish) info?

by cctalk＠ibm51xx.net

Fred,> Are we being a little sarcastic or serious? >:)>>A lot of BOTHJust making sure. ;)>I would like to see software for flux >transition hardware that would >extract sectors.>THEN, I would like to see that software as >a >subroutine, with an interface similar to >INT13h.>THEN, I would like to see that ROMable, >either on a physical ROM, or >loaded into RAM, with the INT13h vestor >repointed to it.That would make for a very powerful tool but as you pointed out yourself how many users would learn to use it? Unless it is a simple driver that gets loaded and the user has to simply put in a couple of generic parameters, e.g. "device=c:\drives\emudsk.sys APPLE", and it is up and running most users won't be able to make use of it.>My preference would be REAL MODE (DOS).As would mine but would a 286 be able to do it? And if you have a machine that runs real mode DOS why not make use of the HW that is there?>Match Point could be implemented in >software on the Central Point board.Great. Then if the DOB HW is duplicated then that part can be SW and no need to have Match Point HW duplicated. I am surprised the Copy II PC DOB card did not handle Apple II disks along with Mac disks.?>CompatiCard was just an ordinary FDC, >without the crippling corners cut.True, but if you are building the ultimate FDC then you don't want crippling corners cut. So something functionally equivalent.>SO, you are asking for FDC plus flux >transition, but better integrated, >rather than flux transition hardware >interrupting the drive cable.Yes! All on one card. Throw in FDADAP functionality to properly write 8" disks and you have a controller that handles most if not all IBM, Apple II, and Mac disks. As I understand it, in my limited way, having both FM and MFM should allow for many CP/M formats including SD. Will some formats be left out? Sure. Will it be as powerful as a Kyro Flux for archiving? Heck no. But will it let me pop in my original 123 disk and copy it for use with out too much hassle and work? Of course.?>There are a few exceptions, such as Pro-lock.Well then you had the ENHANCED Deluxe Board. :)>But, in quite a few cases, people have >disassembled (now illegal under >DMCA!), found the vulnerabilities and >simply disabled the copy protection.?Yes but that is harder and harder to find. They were never public but each city had multiple BBSes offering such altered programs. And of course the other problems w/ this method is you are confined to the one altered version? (even if you own a later version). Also there is no guarantee the alterations will not cause a bug that will crop up later due to a lack of total testing.-Ali

5 years, 10 months

OT: Phone museum seeks new owner

by couryhouse＠aol.com

go? to? garage? sales? ?' thy? turn up there. In a message dated 2/19/2019 1:57:35 PM US Mountain Standard Time, cctalk at classiccmp.org writes: On Tue, Feb 19, 2019 at 09:58:00AM -0600, John Foust via cctalk wrote: > Old tech, but not computers: I have a fondness for old rotary dial phones, especially ones like they used in movies and TV shows set in the '40s and '50s.? I've never managed to acquire one.? I'd love to have a few of them, but not that many.? :-) -- Kevin http://www.RawFedDogs.net http://www.Lassie.xyz http://www.WacoAgilityGroup.org Bruceville, TX What's the definition of a legacy system? One that works! Errare humanum est, ignoscere caninum.

5 years, 10 months

tracometer model 6a

by tdk.knight＠gmail.com

anyone ever herd of one? mines searial number 002 says national research councle of canada made by eda electronics https://imagizer.imageshack.com/img923/5723/Bnz2VF.jpg https://imagizer.imageshack.com/img924/6783/nHesKB.jpg https://imagizer.imageshack.com/img922/5776/wimiv2.jpg

5 years, 10 months

A History of Engineering & Science in the Bell System TRANSMISSION TECHNOLOGY and ELECTRONICS TECHNOLOGY

by couryhouse＠aol.com

A History of Engineering & Science in the Bell System TRANSMISSION TECHNOLOGY and ELECTRONICS TECHNOLOGY A History of Engineering & Science in the Bell System TRANSMISSION TECHNOLOGY and A History of Engineering & Science in the Bell System ELECTRONICS TECHNOLOGY? ( the? transistor? and devices? etc...) 60 for the? Pair? plus? 16.95? priority? mailing? insured? tracked and? signature? confirmation? payment to be? made? via? pay? pal? friends and? family...only? after? we? ok? who? gets them . both? ?tight? beauty? copies? with? ?great? jackets on them! Let me? ?know? asap? ?if? you? want. extra? copies? help re-roof museum buildings!Thanks? Ed#

5 years, 10 months

OT: Phone museum seeks new owner

by jnc＠mercury.lcs.mit.edu

> From: Grant Taylor > I do know that there are a lot of companies here in the US that are > filtering their website like this. It does go both ways; a while back, a vintage rail site I read regularly ('Weekend Rails') moved to a new hosting service, and that service filtered out and refused attempts from the US to read any of the sites they hosted (it wasn't at the site owner's request; I asked). So I had to use a European-based proxy for a while to get to it. Noel

5 years, 10 months

Free: 2x DEC Alpha workstations - 164LX and XP1000

by karbak＠gmail.com

Hello, I have a couple of Alpha workstations that were last used 5-6 years ago with some version of Tru64 on them. They haven't been turned on since, and may need some work to get running again. They're free to anyone who thinks they can use them, and can pick them up from the 78722 zip code (near UT Austin). Please contact me off-list to co-ordinate pickup. Thanks, Arun

5 years, 10 months

RS/6000 7043-140 boot floppies

by aperry＠snowmoose.com

Is there some trick to making boot floppies for the RS/6000 7043-140 (a mid-90s PReP architecture machine)? I initially tried to install Solaris 2.5.1 on it and created the boot floppy by dd'ing the image using a SPARCstation (running NetBSD). I dd'ed the image over, dd'ed it back and verified the SPARCstation could read back what it had written to the floppy. The RS/6000 loads what is on the floppy, but hangs transferring control to what it loaded. The 7043-140 does not appear on the list of supported systems in the Solaris 2.5.1 release notes, so, even though 2.5.1 supports PReP and the 7043-140 is a PReP machine, maybe they aren't compatible, so I tried NetBSD. The 7043-140 is listed as a supported system. The NetBSD boot floppy images are confusing to me. The files are too large to fit on a 1.44M floppy. I didn't see instructions on how to make boot floppies out of the .fs files one can download in the install instructions. I went ahead and tried to dd the part that fits onto a 1.44M floppy and try to boot that and of course that failed. I have e-mailed the NetBSD prep mailing list and no response from that. The system does boot the AIX install on one of its hard disks, but this is a recycled system and I don't have usernames/passwords for that install. Does anyone here have a suggestion on how to proceed? alan

5 years, 10 months

IBM 6360 - Filesystem(ish) info?

by anders.k.nelson＠gmail.com

Ah, cool thanks! I'm interested in storing arbitrary files in the manner close to the original as possible. Sounds like the extent list and allocation map would be useful for this; not so much the document content format. -- Anders Nelson +1 (517) 775-6129 www.erogear.com On Tue, Feb 19, 2019 at 2:44 PM Chuck Guzis <cclist at sydex.com> wrote: > On 2/19/19 11:12 AM, Anders Nelson wrote: > > Hi again, > > > > Is there a description of the DW filesystem somewhere I can look at? > > Hi Anders, > > Not that I'm aware of, unless Al has some document squirreled away that > we don't know about. > > What I know is from a lot of examining DW floppies and trying to > reverse-engineer it--and what little I could find on the web. > > The DW filesystem is basically a linked-list sort of structure. There's > a volume header block that contains an extent list and allocation map, > from which documents are treed from. Each document, in turn, links to > other entries that describe various properties of each document. For > example, the dates of the document, its name, the list of positions of > lines within the document, the document text, the formatting information > for the text, and so on. It's pretty complicated. > > One aside is that even though the DW is an 8086 system, numeric > quantities are big-endian. > > --Chuck > >

5 years, 10 months

CDC modules

by peter＠vanpeborgh.eu

Guys, I am wanting to determine which CDC (or possibly other) computer some of my modules came from. If you were a CDC employee around the time of CDC 6xxx computers, let me know where I could send my photos for identification of these items. Many thanks, peter || | | | | | | | | Peter Van Peborgh 62 St Mary's Rise Writhlington Radstock Somerset BA3 3PD UK 01761 439 234 || | | | | | | | |

5 years, 10 months

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test-drb February 2019