test-drb December 2020

test-drb@ccmp.vtda.org

103 participants
82 discussions

Help needed identifying old MFM drives from the excavation

by cz＠alembic.crystel.com

As the excavation of Bob's junkpile continues I have finally hit the MFM layer. Specifically about 10 5.25 hard disks that look to be old style MFM drives. Vertex V150 Miniscribe 6085 ST 4038M Seagate Franklin telecom AT-40 Miniscribe 3650 HH Seagate ST4096 Priam ID45-H Rodime RO203E RD54 Real ST506 Pair of ST412's. Anyone recognize what kinds of systems may have used these? The RD54 is of course DEC, and I'm guessing the ST506 and 412's were from either a Rainbow or a Professional/350. But the rest are weird. Maybe Convergent miniframes? Probably not PC's as Bob had a lot of weird stuff. Thoughts? I'll see if I can get a mfm reader and suck data into files I can post for others to read/try/giggle at. But as there isn't much labelling I have no idea what is on them. Also did find Wordperfect and speller for what I think is Rainbow on 5.25 floppies. Let me know if you need a copy, or if a copy exists in archives (also two DEC disks for Learning the Rainbow or something like that) Chris

3 years, 4 months

Ok, Perqs are stowed away

by cz＠alembic.crystel.com

1 Perq 1, one chassis without motherboards of another Perq1, sides, lids, 1.5 sets of ends, pair of Perq2 endpanels, two keyboards (1 and 2 style) and a portrait monitor. Pictures of all the stuff at https://www.crystel.com/bob/perq4 Not many pictures of this stuff from all angles, so feel free to copy and put on real sites. Anyone need more of these Sun3/4 VME boards? Need to make more space. CZ

3 years, 4 months

Perkins-Elmer 3600 and PETOS

by lproven＠gmail.com

Does anyone know anything much about this early desktop computer and its OS? Example: https://www.ebay.com/itm/Perkin-Elmer-3600-PETOS-Like-Microsoft-BASIC-Compu… Although it predated the PC, MS supplied the BASIC and apparently the CLI resembles early DOS. I ask because there is someone in the Free Pascal Compiler fora looking for help getting data off one -- they're still using it for data monitoring! https://forum.lazarus.freepascal.org/index.php/topic,52458.0.html -- Liam Proven ? Profile: https://about.me/liamproven Email: lproven at cix.co.uk ? gMail/gTalk/gHangouts: lproven at gmail.com Twitter/Facebook/LinkedIn/Flickr: lproven ? Skype: liamproven UK: +44 7939-087884 ? ?R (+ WhatsApp/Telegram/Signal): +420 702 829 053

3 years, 4 months

WTB: CompuPro / Godbout RAM 17

by deramp5113＠yahoo.com

I assume you saw the RAM 17 on eBay right now? Mike

3 years, 4 months

e: Gateway Electronics Sale this Saturday from 9am to 4pm

by athornton＠gmail.com

If anyone goes to the Gateway sale, please, please tell Doug that Adam Thornton is doing fine in Tucson but misses him and the store greatly. Thanks, Adam

3 years, 4 months

Apple 1 and memorabilia up for auction in Boston (NOT on Epay)

by robert.stek＠gmail.com

I really don't need another one. Bob Saver of lost Sols

3 years, 4 months

Fire-Sale PDP-11 update (and request for parts)

by derschjo＠gmail.com

Thought you folks might be interested in a quick update on my folly here. At the beginning of November I drove down to the bay area to pick up the two fire-damaged PDP-11 systems -- a PDP-11/70 and a PDP-11/45. (I also made a few other stops and got a few other items, but that's not what I'm here to talk about...) Over the past few weeks I've gone over the two systems and my assessment is that the 11/70, while completely filthy, is completely restorable. The fire/heat damaged the front panel enough to discolor the plexi and start melting a few switches (http://yahozna.dyndns.org/scratch/1170/1170.jpg) but that's the extent of the damage. My only fear is that the fingers on the backplanes might possibly have some corrosion here and there, but I've started going through and cleaning the boards and the backplane slots and so far I haven't run into anything that looks troubling. The 11/45 is considerably further gone. It took a serious amount of heat, enough for the pig iron frame for the front panel to start melting ( http://yahozna.dyndns.org/scratch/1170/1145.jpg). The front panel is completely destroyed, as is the wiring harness for the power distribution. But... the metal of the chassis and the power supplies seems to have protected the boards and the backplane. There are no melted or even discolored wire-wrap wires on the backplane, and the boards look fine. As an experiment I took the non-11/45-specific boards out of the backplane (a Plessey memory board, an RL11 controller, and an M9301 bootstrap terminator -- this one was right up front where things were the hottest and the handles had started to melt) and tested them in my PDP-11/40. They all work fine. So I think that, maybe, with a LOT of effort, the 11/45 could live again. I'm tackling the 11/70 first (Al kindly sold me a new front panel for a very reasonable price so it already looks 100% better) and once I'm done with that I hope to move on to the 11/45. In the meantime I'm hoping to keep my eyes peeled for parts for the /45. I found a seller on eBay with "restored" H7420a power supplies for $68, with free shipping so I grabbed a pair. I realize this is unlikely, but I was curious if anyone has 1) any parts of the 11/45 power wiring harness, or 2) (really unlikely) an 11/45 front panel in any condition. Well, any condition better than "melted into slag," I suppose. I can build my own wiring harness, but if I can save myself the trouble, that'd be nice. - Josh

3 years, 4 months

Problems with FORT and ALGOL in TSS/8

by kej＠kyrafre.com

Hi everyone, The Nostalgic Computing Center <http://www.nostalgiccomputing.org/> has a virtual PDP-8 running TSS/8 <http://www.nostalgiccomputing.org:8080/aterm.html?m=pdp8&t=PDP-8&r=24&c=80> in its collection. We use the SIMH PDP-8e emulator to support the machine, and we recently updated the machine to run the TSS/8 distribution created by LCM+L, found here on GitHub <https://github.com/livingcomputermuseum/cpus-pdp8>. The LCM+L distribution is slightly different from other TSS/8 distributions available on the web in that it provides some additional goodies such as ALGOL and LISP. The NCC demonstrates how various classic computers worked by providing automated scripts that interact with the machines in the collection. For example, to demonstrate each of the programming languages supported by a machine, scripts are provided to create, compile, and run a simple Fibonacci sequence generator. We've done this for the TSS/8 system, but the scripts aren't working for FORTRAN or ALGOL, and we're wondering if anyone on this list might know why. Specifically, in the case of FORTRAN, the compiler exits with an error code 6204. This occurs even when trying to compile trivial "hello world" programs, and it appears to occur in all other TSS/8 distributions we've tried as well (i.e., this particular problem is not unique to the LCM+L distribution). We haven't found error code 6204 specifically documented in the TSS/8 user/admin manuals, but the manuals do document other error codes in the 62xx range. Documented error codes in the 62xx range appear to reflect file I/O errors, so we're wondering if perhaps one of the files supporting the FORTRAN compiler is corrupt in all of these distributions. For example, here is a transcription of a simple session demonstrating the problem: .R EDIT INPUT: OUTPUT:FTEST A WRITE(1,10) 10 FORMAT(5HHELLO,/) END E ^BS .R FORT INPUT:FTEST OUTPUT: 6204^BS . We tried enabling the floating point processor to see if lack of FPP might cause FORT to abort, but enabling the FPP did not solve the problem. The SIMH configuration file for the machine currently looks like: set throttle 800K set df disabled set rf disabled set rk enabled set dt enabled att rk0 tss8_rk_lcm.dsk set cpu 32k attach ttix 4000 load boot.bin run 200 Note that BASIC, FOCAL, and LISP all seem to run very nicely on the machine. The problem we're experiencing with ALGOL appears to be a glaring compiler bug, but the compiler was distributed widely through DECUS, and it is difficult to imagine that it would have been released with an obvious bug, so we are wondering if perhaps we're not interpreting the user manual <http://svn.so-much-stuff.com/svn/trunk/pdp8/src/decus/8-213/decus-8-213.pdf> correctly. Here is a transcription of a session that exhibits the problem: .R EDIT INPUT: OUTPUT:ATEST A 'BEGIN' 'INTEGER' I; I := 1; WRITE(1, I); SKIP 'END' $ E ^BS .R ALGOL INPUT:ATEST OUTPUT: *TOO MANY UNDEFINED [UEXPRESSION* ^BS . The compiler seems to be complaining that the simple assignment statement on line 3 of the program is somehow incorrect. If we change the statement to "I := 1 + 0;", the error message goes away, and the program runs, but it prints "0" instead of the expected "1". Also, if we change the program to: 'BEGIN' 'INTEGER' I; 'FOR' I := 1 'STEP' 1 'UNTIL' 10 'DO' 'BEGIN' WRITE(1, I); SKIP 'END' 'END' $ it compiles successfully and it prints what is expected, the numbers 1 through 10. Does anyone have experience with the ALGOL/8 compiler? If so, does this behavior make sense, and can you let us know what we're doing wrong? Note that the same ALGOL60 program compiles and runs as expected on the CDC mainframes and the TOPS-20 system at the NCC. thanks! Kevin

3 years, 4 months

Atari ST diskettes

by van.snyder＠sbcglobal.net

I found a box of 45 Atari ST diskettes in my basement, from my 1980's 520 ST (or maybe my brother's 1040 ST). I don't have a floppy drive, so I can't tell whether they're readable. Some are originals, for example for 1St Word, the word processor, and Regent Base, a relational database program. Others are copies. If you send a PDF of a USPS media rate shipping label, 4"x5"x6", 3lb, they're yours. Coordinate with me so you don't send a label after somebody else has already sent one. Van Snyder

3 years, 4 months

WTB: CompuPro / Godbout RAM 17

by ethan＠757.org

Looking for a RAM 17 for my IMSAI 8080 to replace 6 x 8K boards. -- : Ethan O'Toole

3 years, 4 months

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test-drb December 2020