test-drb July 2021

test-drb@ccmp.vtda.org

98 participants
64 discussions

VaxBrick (vax 4000-50, KA600 ) Owners manual/technical manual

by kiwi_jonathan＠yahoo.com

Doe anyone have an "owners manual" or technical manual for the KA600 aka VaxBrick aka Vax 4000-50? I have most of a Vaxbrick, but I'd sooner run Unix on it that VMS. But I know of no open-source OS which supports the KA600. I'd guess most of the internal devices are similar to SCSI or DSSI on high-end Microvaxes/vaxstations; but that's a guess. There's a listing on eBay for a lot which includes vaxbricks. I've made an offer on it, but let the offer expire after finding no open-source drivers. I'm willing to front purchase of the lot, if others are interested in buying a VaxBrick in a BA213 or BA 215. -Jonathan Stone

3 years, 5 months

RP/M2 by Micro Methods Inc

by cctalk＠ibm51xx.net

>I found a copy of RP/M2 for the IBM PC by Micro >Methods Inc. with manual >and some floppies, 8" and 5.25".? According to the >manual, this was a >CP/M compatible operating system.??David,Did you see the article on page 94:http://www.bitsavers.org/magazines/Micro_Cornucopia/Micro_Cornucopia_%23…

3 years, 5 months

Writings on AI from 17 years ago....

by cz＠alembic.crystel.com

I was looking through some old journal entries and found this: AI is lonely... She has been sitting quietly in my house for the past 8 years. She runs, but is old now and tired. Most of the time she sits in her room and waits patiently. Waits for the users who ran jobs in the middle of the night. Waits for PFTMG to run the daily feed. Waits for someone to Alt-U in and begin to hack... Waits for the TU77 MASSBUS interfact to be repaired Waits for RP07 drives that will never be repaired Waits to once again run the ITS tapes that sit quietly nearby. She's lonely. And although I have been looking after her for a long time, she needs help. Is anyone still interested? No, she will not be trashed. But perhaps the knight that guards her is getting old and needs someone else to share the load. Someone who won't just sell her on Ebay or break her apart or dump her off a loading dock. I worked too hard to save her from that. Twice. I owe her a lot; she rescued me way back when, yaknow. In a way she contributed greatly in making me the hacker I am today. But in the day and age where one can run a full ITS on a palm pilot is there any room for MIT-AI? And so the knight returns to quietly guard the last remaining ITS... CZ The funny part is someone replied "Donate it to a museum" and I wrote: "*nod* Unfortunately, after the Boston Computer Museum debacle, I'm a bit wary of museums. Other problem is it would just get stuck in a back room and eventually tossed like it almost did at Digex." Sometimes I wonder if I did fail. Anyone know if the LCM will be open this summer? I'm going to be in Seattle for a day in August, wouldn't mind stopping by and seeing how it was doing.... CZ

3 years, 5 months

Looking for VAX6000 items (Paul Koning)

by michael.99.thompson＠gmail.com

> > From: Paul Koning <paulkoning at comcast.net> > To: Chris Zach <cz at alembic.crystel.com>, "cctalk at classiccmp.org" > <cctalk at classiccmp.org> > Subject: Re: Looking for VAX6000 items > > A number of the large disk drives use 3 phase motors; RP04/5/6 are > examples as well. > > Three phase motors won't run on single phase power without help from run > capacitors. (There is no such thing as "two phase power" -- 220 volts is > single phase, balanced.) > > paul > The RP06 uses 220VAC single phase motors for the spindle and blower. I converted an RP06 from three-phase to single-phase to use with PDP-10 KS10 at home. Instructions are here: https://sites.google.com/site/mthompsonorg/Home/pdp-10/rm03-and-rp06-inform… -- Michael Thompson

3 years, 5 months

Koning TECO

by athornton＠gmail.com

Paul Koning may be pleased to know that his implementation of TECO has supplanted Blake McBride's TECOC as the standard TECO in the Rubin Observatory's Science Platform Interactive Notebook Aspect. https://github.com/lsst-sqre/nublado/blob/f6b186081c0a3c9e12a1935db304ee2b3… Of course if there is sufficient outcry from the user community I could be convinced to include both in the image, at least until my boss catches me doing it. Adam

3 years, 5 months

Looking for VAX6000 items

by abacos_98＠yahoo.com

Started work on putting together a couple of VAX6000. 4x0 and 5x0. Looking for spare XMI, VAXBI, Cab kits DSSI,Ethernet,CI, Storage arrays, spare regulators etc. Will travel the Northeast for larger items.Also Engineering drawings as the ones on Bitsavers are really hard to read. Thanks,Brian.

3 years, 5 months

DEC use of switching supplies (Was: Looking for VAX6000 items)

by jnc＠mercury.lcs.mit.edu

> From: Chris Zach > The older Vaxes had linear power supplies if I recall up to the time > of the Decsystem/2020 (when they went switching at last) Really? The H742 power supply: https://gunkies.org/wiki/H742_Power_Supply (well, technically, the associated 'bricks', such as the H744, etc) from about 1972 were switching supplies, so I'm suprised that the much later VAXen (any of them) used linear supplies. Of course, the H744/etc switching supplies didn't use a lot of the techniques used in modern switching supplies to make them small and light (e.g. stepping up the frequency to allow use of a small transformer); the H742 still has a whacking great transformer in it. But they were switching supplies (as we discussed here a while back at some length), not linear. Noel

3 years, 5 months

KI10/KL10 I/O bus terminator

by jnc＠mercury.lcs.mit.edu

Hey, anyone need a KI10/KL10 I/O Bus terminator: https://gunkies.org/wiki/File:KIKLIOBusTerm.jpg (H867)? Since I don't have either a KI10 or a KL10, I'm unlikely to ever have a need/use for this one! :-) Noel

3 years, 5 months

Looking for Maxtor LXT/MXT series firmware updates / docs

by classiccmp＠philpem.me.uk

Hi folks, Has anyone happened to squirrel away a copy of the Maxtor/Sequel LXT or MXT series documentation or firmware updates? I've got an LXT200A sat on the bench which seems to have corrupted on-disk firmware -- the firmware version is shown as "1.02BROM" I've got an identical second drive which works but has bad sectors, which identifies as "1.02BHAT". I'm hoping to dump the on-disk firmware on the working one and load it onto the dead one -- either onto disk or temporarily into RAM... high hopes I know. This is all an experimental thing - the local data recovery firms aren't interested in a drive this old or this small... If anyone has a mirror of Maxtor's old FTP site or support BBS, these are some of the files I'm after... MXTA_53.EXE MAIN 41K 03/94 MXT540A/AL Frimware Rev 5.3 firmware 540 MXTA_54.EXE MAIN 40K 03/94 MXT540A/AL Firmware Rev 5.4 Firmware Upgrade for MXT-540AT. MXTA_55.EXE MAIN 40K 03/94 MXT540A/AL Firmware Rev 5.5 Firmware Upgrade for MXT-540AT. MXTA_60.EXE MAIN 41K 03/94 MXT540A/AL Firmware Rev 6.0 Firmware Upgrade for MXT-540AT. Alternatively the same covering the LXT series. Or this (or similar) documents covering the LXT series: MAXTOR LXT-200A TECHNICAL MANUAL 1019707 Cheers Phil.

3 years, 5 months

IBM 534 data entry (Keypunch) machine for sale near Spokane, WA

by spam＠hell.org

Just saw this on CraigsList - not my ad. It might be worth someone grabbing before it goes to a scraper. https://spokane.craigslist.org/sop/d/spokane-ibm-card-punch-machine/7331662… -mike

3 years, 5 months

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test-drb July 2021