I saw the recent posts on IEEE-488 on the PDP-11, and Christian's post on
his Commodore GPIB floppy drive connection to the Tektronix 4051.
I have been working for a couple of years on a GPIB/IEEE-488 Flash Drive
for the Tektronix 4051, 4052 and 4054 computers, and am getting close to
completion.
My Tektronix 4050 GPIB Flash Drive emulates the Tektronix 4924 Tape Drive,
which is supported by all the 4050 computers using secondary GPIB addresses
for commands. This allows the flash drive to be used without needing an
option ROM Pack. In particular, 4051 ROM Packs are not compatible with the
4052/4054 ROM Packs as the 4051 used a Motorola 6800 CPU and the 4052/4054
used a Tektronix custom 16-bit bit-slice CPU in order to improve
performance 10x and double the memory capacity from 32KB to 64KB.
The 4050 GPIB Flash Drive design uses an Arduino directly connected to my
custom interface PCB with the GPIB connector, and a micro SD Flash board.
I picked the 644-Narrow Arduino board by Pandauino as it has the Atmega644
processor which has twice the flash and RAM as the Arduino Nano and also
has 5V I/O which can interface without buffers to the Tektronix 4050 GPIB
port. The current code takes 40912 bytes of flash and 2798 bytes of RAM
(more than the Nano) and supports PRINT, INPUT, READ, WRITE, OLD, SAVE,
BOLD, and BSAVE. These commands have been tested on my 4052 and 4054A and
my software development partner's 4051 computer.
The flash drive also adds two secondary address commands not supported by
the 4924: HEADER and CD. We are using the Arduino FAT32 library which
supports long filenames, and create the filename to match the Tektronix
tape file header format which includes a file number, file type (ASCII,
BINARY, NEW or LAST), data type (PROGRAM or DATA) and the file size. We
also take advantage of the extra spaces in that format to insert the file
name as a comment - like the Tektronix 4050 BASIC program to add comments
to the file header. The CD command is for changing the directory in the
microSD card, and allows multiple different Tektronix 4050 DC300 tapes that
I have recovered and posted on my github repository:
https://github.com/mmcgraw74/Tektronix-4051-4052-4054-Program-Files to be
stored in separate directories - while maintaining the original tape file
numbers.
More info and photos in my project thread on vcfed.org:
https://www.vcfed.org/forum/forum/genres/other/64990-tektronix-405x-gpib-fl…
Monty McGraw
Hello everyone;
The HP 3056DL was a datalogger consisting of an HP3421 and an HP85B; I
bought one many years ago and that's how I got my HP85B and one of my
HP3421's. I never restored the tape drive since I had an HP9121 floppy
drive available early on (I still have it but it is in need of repair).
The 3056DL? came with the manual, but without the tape containing the
datalogging software.? Now that I am a happy owner of an EBTKS board, I
am looking for an image of the original system tape for the 3056DL.?
Does anybody have it by chance?
Regards,
Carlos.
> rom: Paul Koning
> WD-40 is a good solvent to use for adhesives stuck to plastic. It's
> unlikely to hurt the plastic but it will soften the glue.
My go-to solvent for non-ionized glue residues (use water for ionized) on all
sorts of materials has been, for many years, mineral spirits (US name; 'white
spirit', in the UK):
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_spirit
It scores highly on both i) 'doesn't harm underlying material' and ii) 'softens residues'
axes. (I've mostly used it on books, to remove stickers, but my experience should
transfer to use on computers.)
> As always, check on a hidden part of the case to make sure the
> particular plastic doesn't object to the stuff you're using.
Sage, and important, advice for _any_ removal method.
Noel
I got a Apple cube here as part of a larger haul, at some point someone
placed a bit of tape on the clear polycarbonate case, the tape is long
gone but the yellow glue remains.
Am unsure about the hardness of it, if I could use sugar cubes to
rub it off, anyone knows a scratch free way to get it off ?
Regards
--
Jacob Dahl Pind | telefisk.org | fidonet 2:230/38.8
Like many, I used an HP 2000 TSB system in high school to first learn
about programming. Wanting to learn more than just BASIC, I soon
discovered there was a program on the system that let you write and run
FORTRAN programs. All these years later I can't remember anything more
than that and haven't seen anything more on it since then until recently.
While clearing out my storage space I came across an old binder with a
photocopy of a manual. Looking though it I soon realized it was from my
high school computer class and described the system for running FORTRAN.
So now I have a name at least and a copy of a manual, but haven't yet
found anything more and hope that someone here might be able to shine
some light and supply more about it.
The manual says it was known as OSMI 2000 FORTRAN and was a "series of
programs written in the BASIC language which run short FORTRAN programs"
on an HP 2000 BASIC system. Anyone heard of this before?
Thanks.
David Williams
www.trailingedge.com
Last week, Ken Gielow passed away. He was the author of the Z80DIS
disassembler,
which was both interactive and used a form of "artificial intelligence" to
cleverly disassemble Z80 code.
I have numerous requests for pickup.
What is the most fair way dealing with this? First come first serve?
I need to have removed by Christmas.
>From memory, I can state what is in the photos.
1 - Alphaserver DS20E
1 - Alphaserver DS20
1 - Alphaserver 1000
1 - Alphaserver 1000A
2 - Compaq XP1000
1 - Alphaserver 1200
1 - Alphaserver 400
4 - non functional Decserver 700's ( bad ps)
2 - Decstation 500
2 - Alpha PC workstation
TZ series tape inits
BA 350 series drive racks
I also have VMS CD media and maybe True64
Call me at 7-2-4-9-9-1-6-9-8-3
Did the 4004 chip start our interest in microcomputing? It is 50 today.
Classic computing begins earlier but for the masses, if they could be
called that in the early seventies, this was it. I hesitate in calling it
the first microprocessor as pc'ers will object.
Happy computing all.
Murray ?
