test-drb December 2020

test-drb@ccmp.vtda.org

103 participants
82 discussions

by classiccmp＠philpem.me.uk

Has anyone got a couple of the white plastic rivets which are used to hold the Jupiter Ace case together? They consist of a 4-point clawed rivet of about 5mm long, and a pin which pushes down the centre to open it out. I need five of them ideally - but even two or three would get the case buttoned up, if not perfectly. I've checked the local plastic supplier catalogues and haven't found anything which quite matches up. Cheers, -- Phil. philpem at philpem.me.uk https://www.philpem.me.uk/

3 years, 4 months

found it: first speech synthesizer (at least, for S-100 systems)

by sieler＠allegro.com

Hi, Some years back, I was asking if anyone had information about the speech synthesizer developed for the Altair 8080 by Wirt Atmar of AICS (in New Mexico). No "hits". Most places on the web claimed the Computalker was first, given the date as 1976 or 1977. (Earlier speech synthesizes existed, but they were external boxes that one interfaced to, or were standalone (often with a large/weird keyboard).) Today, I stumbled over a fairly bad OCR of Byte magazine from August, 1976 at https://archive.org/stream/byte-magazine-1976-08/1976_08_BYTE_00-12_Speech_… It has two articles about speech synthesizers for S-100 bus systems. The first is by the Computalker people, who say: At the time this article goes to press, a synthesizer module incorporating several detail refinements and im- provements over the circuits of this article is being de- veloped by the author and associates. and A detailed user's guide will be supplied with the Computalker module Note the future tense! The second is by Wirt Atmar, whose product *was already shipping*. Near the end of his Byte article, Wirt lists currently available products: At the present time, two speech synthesizers are both commercially available and affordable by the hobbyist. One is the Votrax produced by: Vocal Interface Division Federal Screw Works 500 Stephenson Dr Troy Ml 48084 Price, approximately $2,000 Interfacing: Parallel or Serial (RS-232) The second is the Model 1000 manufactured by: Ai Cybernetic Systems PO Box 4691 University Park NM 88003 Price, $425 Wirt had told me (twenty years ago or so) that he thought his was the first for microcomputers (e.g., a user installed card, not an external box). Now, I'm sure ... but it was realllly close! Wirt demonstrated his product at the earlier MITS World Altair Computer Conven- tion, where it won first prize. He advertised it poorly/infrequently, since it was mostly a side business. And, that shows, since history doesn't remember it. Stan

3 years, 4 months

misc stuff - free

by jnc＠mercury.lcs.mit.edu

> I can't pick up in ON, unfortunately, but if someone who is in the area > could please pick up this "Microprocessor Data Package" and ship it to > me, I'd be willing to pay anything reasonable, or maybe slightly > unreasonable. You probably know this already, but if you're willing to pay, there are 'pack and ship' services who will show up at a location, take the stuff to be shipped, go pack it up, and ship it. I have used PakMail: http://www.pakmailcanada.com/ several times to retrieve things in this way (they shipped my PDP-11/45 from Ontario, although the seller did a lot of the packaging in that particular case), and have generally been happy with them. I don't see a London location, but maybe one of their other Ontario locations: http://www.pakmailcanada.com/pakmail-canada-locations is close enough to be useable? Noel

3 years, 4 months

WTB: CompuPro / Godbout RAM 17

by deramp5113＠yahoo.com

Were you the winner of the eBay auction? It went for a very reasonable price. It was very difficult for me to not bid on it - those are great boards for use with early S100 systems :) Mike

3 years, 4 months

found it: first speech synthesizer (at least, for S-100 systems)

by sieler＠allegro.com

Hi, I'd like to apologize for referring to the OCR of the Byte article as a "fairly bad OCR". I was thinking of the garbled sections that may be the result of trying to OCR graphics. The vast majority of the text comes across clearly, and I don't want to insult whoever volunteered their time to do the OCR'ing ... I know how tedious it can be! I've been spoiled by OCR programs that produce their output as pdfs with searchable text, and should have remembered the results I get when I look at just their text! Stan

3 years, 4 months

tty and video displays

by sieler＠allegro.com

Paul writes: > General overstrike requires a bitmap display, or some sort of persistent display. Although he carefully specified 'general overstrike', I'll still mention how the HP 2641A (an APL terminal) did it. When about to enter a newly received character into memory, the terminal checked if a non-blank was already in that spot ... if yes, it looked up the pair in an internal ROM table and replaced the existing character code with a new character code designed for APL\3000 (a code that, when received, would display as the appropriate overstrike). That meant that we couldn't use the terminal at Burroughs, because our APL had a few overstrikes that weren't in the table. Stan

3 years, 4 months

Apple Investment

by c.murray.mccullough＠gmail.com

Apple went public Dec. 12, 1980 at $22.00/share over 40 years ago. Where has the time gone! A $1000 investment would be ~45 shares. Today that would be 5040 shares after 5 splits. Its price today is $121/share. That would be $609,840. Here in Canada that?s $939,153! Quite the nest egg. It has certainly paid quite handsomely to have invested in Classic Computers or in one company back then. Happy computing. Stay safe. Murray ? <http://www.avg.com/email-signature?utm_medium=email&utm_source=link&utm_cam…> Virus-free. www.avg.com <http://www.avg.com/email-signature?utm_medium=email&utm_source=link&utm_cam…> <#DAB4FAD8-2DD7-40BB-A1B8-4E2AA1F9FDF2>

3 years, 4 months

Macro-10 humour

by dstalk＠execulink.com

I came across this among some junk I had. Don .TY NEMON.DOC LEVEL 5 MACRO-10 MNEMONICS ============================= COINCIDENT WITH THE RELEASE OF THE LEVEL 5 MONITOR SERIES, THE MNEMONICS FOR THE HARDWARE INSTRUCTIONS USED IN THE MACRO-10 ASSEMBLER HAVE BEEN UPDATED TO REFLECT CHANGES TO THE MONITOR, AND NEW OPERATING PROCEDURES. ALTHOUGH THEY HAVE NOT ALL BEEN IMPLEMENTED AS YET, A PARTIAL LISTING FOLLOWS: TRCE TRANSLATE REDUNDANT CODE TO ETHIOPIAN ROTC REQUEST OPERATOR TAKE OFF CLOTHES TDCE TRY TO DUMP CORE EVERYWHERE HRR HASH RELOCATION REGISTERS XCT EXTEND CYCLE TIME ANDCMB ALLOW NO DIRECT CURRENT IN MEMORY BANKS AOSE ALERT ONE SYSTEMS ENGINEER SETNM START EJECTING TRANSISTORS AT NEAREST MACHINE SETCM STOP EVERYTHING TO CRASH MONITOR SETAM START EATING TAPE ON ALTERNATE MONDAYS TLCN THROW LIFEPRESERVER INTO CHANNEL FOR NON-SWIMMER MULM MONITOR UPDATE FROM LUNAR MODULE MOVMS MAINTAIN ONLY VARIABLE MAGTAPE SPEED FSBRI FIVE SONIC BOOMS OVER REMOTE INTERFACE HRRES HIJACK REMOTE READER TO ENGINEERING SCIENCE HRREM HALT AND REVERSE ROTATION ON EVERY MAGTAPE JUMPE JUMBLE USERS' MEMORY ON PARITY ERROR IDPB IMMEDIATELY DROP PARITY BIT SETCAI SUDDENLY ELECTRIFY TERMINAL ON CRUDELY ARTICULATED INPUT JFFO JAIL AND FINGERPRINT FLIPPANT OPERATOR ORCMB OPERATOR REQUEST TO CHANGE MAIN BATTERIES SKIP SEARCH FOR KNOT IN INPUT STRING SKIPL SKIP ON KNOT IN POWER LINE ORCBI ORDER REDUNDANT CHANNELS TO THE BACK OF THE I/O BUS SUBI START UNLOADING BAGGAGE FROM THE I/O BUS PUSH PUNCH USING SEMI-CIRCULAR HOLES JUMPL JUMP AND UNRAVEL MAIN POWER LINE SOSL SMEAR OUTPUT ON SLOW LINE PRINTERS TRON TRY TO REWIND OPERATORS' NECKTIE SOSN SEND OUTPUT TO SUPERVISORS' NECKTIE AOBJN ADD ONE BIT TO JOB NUMBER IMULM INSIST THAT MALICIOUS USERS BE LOCKED IN MEMORY FMPR FORGET MEMORY PROTECTION AND RELOCATION FMPRB FAKE MONITOR PROBLEMS AND RESET BRIEFLY CAIE CHANGE ADDRESSING TO INEFFECTIVE FROM EFFECTIVE TRN TRANSLATE TO ROMAN NUMERALS DPB DETACH PROCESSOR BRIEFLY DIVB DECODE INTEGERS TO VERIFIED BRAILLE SETCAI SNICKER ON ERRONEOUS TYPEIN FOR CAI DIVMB DESTROY INDIVIDUAL MEMORY BANK ORCB OUTPUT A RECORD CODED IN BRAILLE TRCE TRANSFER ON ROMAN CATHOLIC ENGINEER TLNE TRANSFER ON LUTHERAN ENGINEER TROA TRANSFER ON ATHEIST SOS SERVICE ONLY STUDENTS SOJG SERVICE ONLY JEWISH GRAD STUDENTS TDC TAKE DISK TO CHIROPRACTER TSCA TURN SYSTEM CLOCK AHEAD FADRB FILTER AIR ON DETECTING ROPE BURNING FADM FILTER AIR ON DETECTING MOUNTIE PUSHJ PROCESS USER'S SHORTHAND JOB TDCA TYPE DOCUMENTATION, CENSORING ANECDOTES MOVEM MONITOR OUTPUTS A VULGAR ERROR MESSAGE ADDM ALLEVIATE DELAYS IN DECTAPE MOUNTING AOSL AWAKEN OPERATOR IF SNORING LOUDLY CAIE CENSOR ALL INPUT FROM ENGINEERING DPB DISPLAY PASSWORDS FROM BATCH FSBM FAST SPLICE OF BROKEN MAGTAPE BLT BEGIN LOSING TIME S0JG STACK OPERATOR (JUST GIRLS) TSON TIME SLICE OF ONE NANOSECOND JRST JOG 'ROUND SEVEN TRACK TAPE TSC TRANSFER SWAPPING TO CARDS

3 years, 4 months

DEC stuff - free

by dstalk＠execulink.com

I'm listing this stuff just in case someone is desperate for any of it. All items are as-is and free. Pickup only here in London, ON. I'm too old and too tired to run around shipping things. I'll hold on to this stuff for a couple of weeks; after that it's the recycling bin. Hardware: 12 x M594 2 x M971 M970 R002 BC08R-01 H8611 VT-52 coils (flyback, etc) VT-100 current loop interface card VAX PASCAL manuals: AA-D030A-TE VAX/VMS Primer (VMS V01) SPD 25.11.4 VAX-11 PASCAL 1.1 AA-H484A-TE VAX-11 PASCAL Language Reference Manual AA-H485A-TE VAX-11 PASCAL User's Guide AA-J181A-TE VAX-11 PASCAL Installation GUide/Release Notes AA-J180A-TE VAX-11 PASCAL Primer 3" DEC binder for the PASCAL manuals single package of prints: PC11 M7810-C-1 "11/25/74" Asynchronous Line Interface M7800-0-1 "75" DL11-0-2 Installation Procedure "4-75" LP11 Interface M7930-0-1 RK05-0-2 "72" RK11-D-1 "73" individual prints: DUV11-DA-1 Field Maintenance Print Set "12-13-76" PC11-0 engineering drawings "70" H720-E Fiche: 2 x DECUS PDP-11 Catalog 1977 DECUS PDP-11 Catalog 1978 Logic Handbook 1970 Logic Handbook 1973-74 Control handbook 1969 Manuals: VT100 User Guide EK-VT100-UG-002 VT52 DECscope Maintenance Manual EK-VT52-MM-001 (1976) RTM Register Transfer Modules (1973) Media: EC-N4783-48 ManageWORKS Workgroup Administrator & SDK March 1995 (trial software) DECdirect CD Catalog Winter 1995 ONYX Electronic Systems and Options Catalog V1.0 (floppies) Listings: MAINDEC-11-DEFPB-A-D Feb 21, 1976 PDP11-45/55/70 FP11C part 2 MAINDEC-11-DEFPA-A-D Feb 21, 1976 PDP11-45/55/70 FP11C part 1 MAINDEC-11-DCKBA to DCKBE-C-D March 21, 1975 PDP11/45-11/40 BASIC CP TESTS

3 years, 4 months

when was memory "above" the terminal screen invented?

by sieler＠allegro.com

Hi, First, apologies if I asked this years ago (I've searched my archives, no hits :) When was the concept of memory "above" the screen invented for terminals? I.e., previously displayed data that had scrolled up and off the screen ... but could be retrieved (usually by scrolling down). (Sometimes called "scrollback", or "offscreen memory".) (BTW, I'm talking about terminal-local memory, not a scrollback implemented by the computer to which the terminal is connected.) The HP 2640A, 1974, had (IIRC) several pages of memory available ... the user could scroll backwards and see what had been on the screen before it scrolled off (as long as it hadn't been lost by having too much subsequent output). I suspect the DEV VT100, 1978, had it, but I can't find definitive proof online (sure, I can find VT102 emulators that have scrollback, but reading an old VT102 manual doesn't make it clear that it has it.) thanks, Stan

3 years, 4 months

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test-drb December 2020