test-drb June 2019

test-drb@ccmp.vtda.org

151 participants
141 discussions

Recovering the ROM of an IBM 5100 using OCR (among other things)

by boris＠summitclinic.com

That was a very interesting read! The type of thing I could see myself doing over 40 years ago when once I'd come up with a neat idea and either did preliminary coding or hardware design suggesting it would work I'd jump right into it and find optimistic 1 month project timelines stretching to 6+ months. My approach now would be to just use a logic analyzer or a number of Propeller boards to sample all of the lines from ROS as very sedate clock speed that the 5100 uses. Still, this has applications beyond original goal and could use it to acquire patient lab data from hospital EMR's which are increasingly locked down. Used to be I could export a patients lab results to a text file easily to graph them out vs time or look at correlations between various lab values. Now that's forbidden as one is only allowed to look at them on the screen or use the abysmal graphing functionality which is very poorly coded and makes a PDP-8 doing the same functionality seem like a supercomputer. Thus, one could simply point a cell phone camera at the screen, record the lab results scrolling by and then do OCR on the series of images to create a data file of all of the lab results one is interested in. I've just photographed results on a screen as takes less room than another sheet of paper. >This is *epic*. > >https://github.com/stepleton/5100NonExecutableROSDecode/blob/master/WRITEUP… > >-- >Liam Proven - Profile: https://about.me/liamproven >Email: lproven at cix.co.uk - Google Mail/Hangouts/Plus: lproven at gmail.com >Twitter/Facebook/Flickr: lproven - Skype/LinkedIn: liamproven >UK: +44 7939-087884 - ??R (+ WhatsApp/Telegram/Signal): +420 702 829 053

5 years

CDC Cyber 180-960 available

by ggs＠shiresoft.com

Hi, It has come to my attention that a CDC Cyber 180-960 is available. Apparently this is from a supplier that was supporting Vandenburg AFB (California) with spares. Since Vendenburg is decommissioning it?s Cyber systems, the supplier wants to get rid of the spare machine that they have. I think the supplier just want the machine ?to go away? so the price is likely to be negligible. Please contact me off-list if interested and I?ll get you in touch with the relevant folks. TTFN - Guy

5 years

Datapoint 8600 system in Little Rock

by aek＠bitsavers.org

https://www.ebay.com/itm/Datapoint-8600-and-Peripherals/192961883648 anyone nearby? I'd like to get it, but I have no way to pick it up

5 years

Emulex SC11 Documentation Wanted

by nf6x＠nf6x.net

I'm looking for documentation covering a board set which came with my new PDP-11/34A. It looks like an Emulex SC11 disk controller, but it appears to be a newer version than what is covered in the 1979 manual scan which I found on Bitsavers. I have pictures of the board set on my blog: http://www.nf6x.net/2019/06/emulex-sc11-disk-controller-documentation-wante… -- Mark J. Blair, NF6X <nf6x at nf6x.net> http://www.nf6x.net/

5 years

Recovering the ROM of an IBM 5100 using OCR (among other things)

by jfoust＠threedee.com

At 04:15 AM 6/28/2019, Liam Proven via cctalk wrote: > I don't even know if a half a dollar is a note or a coin, and >that's without getting extra-pedantic and pointing out that about a >dozen countries call their currencies the "dollar". If you were a real pedant, you would've provided a list of dimensions of their half-dollar coins (or bills) in several common systems of measurement. - John

5 years

Recovering the ROM of an IBM 5100 using OCR (among other things)

by lproven＠gmail.com

This is *epic*. https://github.com/stepleton/5100NonExecutableROSDecode/blob/master/WRITEUP… -- Liam Proven - Profile: https://about.me/liamproven Email: lproven at cix.co.uk - Google Mail/Hangouts/Plus: lproven at gmail.com Twitter/Facebook/Flickr: lproven - Skype/LinkedIn: liamproven UK: +44 7939-087884 - ?R (+ WhatsApp/Telegram/Signal): +420 702 829 053

5 years

Big news, re: mobile computing history

by cctalk＠snarc.net

Hello! I have a major announcement. :) It's time for version 2.0 of my book, "Abacus to smartphone: The evolution of mobile and portable computers," which I published on dead trees four years ago. This time, it's going to be a (free!) interactive website: the era of printed books is behind us. Please help me raise funds to make this happen. Funders will get exclusive access for the first month that the website is live (approximately the whole of August 2019). All of the details (such what's new/different) are here: https://fundrazr.com/b1WZ91?ref=ab_74VRia ... please check it out. Thanks!! -Evan

5 years

RSTS collection in the UK

by aek＠bitsavers.org

We received this offer, it probably makes more sense for someone in the UK to get the lot. Is there someone at a collecting institution that would like to take this on? Email me and I can forward your contact information to them. "I have a few disk packs available if you need them. (Please note I am in the UK). I also have a range of PDP-11 interface boards, a mix of dual, quad and Unibus. Is there anything in particular that you need? Finally I have a mass of RSTS related documentation, such as one copy of every edition of the US publication RSTS Porfessional magazine. Plus copies of RSTS and RT-11 operating system manuals, from RSTS Version 4a (1974) through to Version 10.1 (mid 1990s)."

5 years

One of the deeper dives into RISC vs CISC I've seen

by guykd＠optusnet.com.au

At 12:56 PM 25/06/2019 +0200, Liam Proven wrote: >On Mon, 24 Jun 2019 at 12:31, Tony Aiuto via cctalk ><cctalk at classiccmp.org> wrote: >> >> On a related note, a fun talk about ARM >> https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=2045&v=_6sh097Dk5k > >Remarkable. Thanks for the link. Astounding. Very thought-provoking. Yes, it is. Fascinating! And right now jdownloader is fetching me a local copy, as opposed to previously not working with that one video for some inexplicable reason. So thanks for reminding me to try again. Guy

5 years, 1 month

Origins of nameless semaphores and Apple's non-support thereof

by dave＠661.org

I recently tripped over the fact that MacOS does not support nameless POSIX semaphores. When attempting to use them, I get a complaint that they're deprecated. I can't fathom why Apple would do that. I found this post explaining it, albeit not very well: https://lists.apple.com/archives/darwin-kernel/2009/Apr/msg00010.html. It seems that Apple yanked out support, but elsewhere (https://intfiction.org/t/macos-frotz-users/41553/5) I'm told that Apple did it because BSD 4.4 didn't implement them. I was fairly sure that it did. Does anyone have a more satisfying answer? -- David Griffith dave at 661.org A: Because it fouls the order in which people normally read text. Q: Why is top-posting such a bad thing? A: Top-posting. Q: What is the most annoying thing in e-mail?

5 years, 1 month

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test-drb June 2019