test-drb August 2021

test-drb@ccmp.vtda.org

122 participants
92 discussions

FTGH for pickup in So Cal v3: Power Macs, DuoDock, Compaq 486, ...

by spectre＠floodgap.com

A number of the prior systems were picked up or other arrangements made, and a couple more pulled from storage to make room. As before, these are FREE TO A GOOD HOME but you have to come PICK UP from various locations in the Riverside-San Bernardino, CA region. Contact me privately if interested. These remaining machines and peripherals will go to the scrapper on August 14 if not otherwise claimed. NOT WORKING: Network General Sniffer (Compaq 486 portable). Should "just work" with a new power supply, but I don't have any time to deal with it anymore and Wireshark has made it generally obsolete for what I used to use it for. NOT WORKING: Macintosh DuoDock, with key. Doesn't feed; this is usually a capacitor problem. A bit yellowed but otherwise physically intact. I use a different dock with my 2300 so I don't really need this either. PARTIALLY WORKING: 500MHz iBook G3 laptop (snow, not colour) M6497 with tray loader optical drive and power supply. Does boot OS X, but needs a new LCD backlight (mini VGA port works and you can see the display in bright light) and battery is of course toast. Otherwise physically intact except that ex-bro-in-law put grotty stickers on it. PARTIALLY WORKING: Sawtooth Power Mac G4 450MHz. No RAM, no video card, no hard disk. Used to be my file server but had issues with one of the PCI slots. Has optical drive and ZIP with matching Apple bezels. Does power on, but obviously without RAM or a video card (AGP) will not pass POST. Add your own USB keyboard and mouse. Various other items: Apple II Super Serial card with DB-25 670-0020-? (uses 6551 ACIA) and Apple IIe 80 column 64K memory expansion 607-0103-K. Can't test them but both look intact. Kurta Penmouse. Serial and PS/2 connectors. Seems to have a power supply jack (9V) but I don't have the power supply and I don't know if it needs it. Can't test it, no drivers, physically intact. Sun model 411 SCSI CD-ROM. Requires caddy. Won't mount discs, might need a recap. UMAX Astra 2100U flatbed USB scanner with power supply. Powers on. Works with classic Mac OS but probably most systems. No driver disc. Pair of Telular SX5 GSM terminals. These were the server room's backup communication system. They work, but no GSM network to connect to anymore. Might be fun if you set one up. Real serial ports! Real GSM modem! Full kits with power supply. Visual UpTime Select T1 CSU/DSU. Has a Cisco V.35 cable connected and jacks for Ethernet, serial, DSX-1 and T1. Powers on, obviously goes right into Red Alarm since there's no network. You telco nerds will love it. Samsung 17" SyncMaster CRT. Works fine, great shape, just too big to keep around anymore. -- ------------------------------------ personal: http://www.cameronkaiser.com/ -- Cameron Kaiser * Floodgap Systems * www.floodgap.com * ckaiser at floodgap.com -- Never say never again. -----------------------------------------------------

3 years, 4 months

For Sale: FANUC A860 papertape reader with DOSTEK BTR (adapter)

by billdegnan＠gmail.com

FANUC A860-0056-T020 Papertape Reader and DOSTEK 440A BTR https://www.ebay.com/itm/274883740917 Ebay listing includes my project notes. Hopefully someone here will want it. Bill

3 years, 4 months

Compilers and languages (Was: Help reading a 9 track tape

by cclist＠sydex.com

On 8/3/21 1:12 PM, Paul Koning wrote: > > >> On Aug 3, 2021, at 3:28 PM, Chuck Guzis <cclist at sydex.com> wrote: >> >> ... >> One of my favorite 6000 bits of code was the register save and restore >> routines (not using CEJ). It was a favorite interview question for >> those job seekers claiming to be proficient in COMPASS. > > ALL the registers, right? I remember seeing that problem description. And later I saw the code, don't remember it but now I know how it is done. Yup, the trick is getting the first 18 bit register saved. Not obvious since normal stores are done through the (A6,X6 and A7,X7) registers. The trick is using RJ instructions to store an indication of each bit of a B-register. After you get one register saved this way, the rest falls out like a stacked deck in Solitaire. --Chuck

3 years, 4 months

Europe-based restorer of old mechanical keyboards?

by lproven＠gmail.com

I am not a collector exactly -- I just salvaged a bunch when they were being sent to recycling. My Model Ms are going strong, no bolt mod needed, but I also have 2 Apple Extended II and an Extended I and both, sadly, need some attention. I am almost devoid of electronics skills. Does anyone know of anywhere in Europe that does this kind of repair/refurb work? I do not want to do intercontinental shipping... -- 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

Skew vs. interleave

by mhs.stein＠gmail.com

There's a small discussion on S100computers about the terms 'skew' and 'interleave'. In CP/M documentation 'skew' refers to what's usually called interleave these days, i.e. offsetting sectors on a track to compensate for the fact that by the time the computer has processed a given sector the next one has already passed by, so that the computer has to wait an entire revolution for it to pass by the head again; in other documentation as in Chuck's 22disk for example this is also called 'interleave'. However, in later documentation the meaning of 'skew' seems to have changed to refer to the offset of sectors between adjacent tracks to compensate for the time required to step the head. Can anyone (Fred, Chuck?) shed some light on this apparent double meaning of 'skew'? And if skew was used to describe sector interleave then what was the offsetting of sectors between tracks called? Inquiring minds need to know ;-) m

3 years, 4 months

For sale: FANUC Tape Reader and Adapter

by billdegnan＠gmail.com

I put my FANUC tape reader for sale on Ebay, if anyone might be interested:

3 years, 4 months

Branching the thread away from Compaq deskpro boards: "What We Have Lost"

by lproven＠gmail.com

This was a talk at a recent Chaos Computer Club congress: https://media.ccc.de/v/rc3-525180-what_have_we_lost#t=1707 ? We have ended up in a world where UNIX and Windows have taken over, and most people have never experienced anything else. Over the years, though, many other system designs have come and gone, and some of those systems have had neat ideas that were nevertheless not enough to achieve commercial success. We will take you on a tour of a variety of those systems, talking about what makes them special. In particular, we'll discuss IBM i, with emphasis on the Single Level Store, TIMI, and block terminals Interlisp, the Lisp Machine with the interface of Smalltalk OpenGenera, with a unique approach to UI design TRON, Japan's ambitious OS standard More may be added as time permits. ? It talks about Lisp Machine OSes, which interest me, but I especially liked that there's a demo of Interlisp as well as the better-known Symbolics OpenGenera. Unlike Genera, Interlisp is now FOSS and there is an effort afoot to port it to modern OSes and hardware and revive it as a Lisp IDE. There's also a not-very-inspiring but all too rare demo of IBM i. It's not pretty but this descendant of OS/400 is the last living single-level store in active maintenance and production. But the big thing that made me link to this after the discussion of DOS/V, Chinese Windows 3.2 and Japanese DR-DOS and DR GEM, was the demo of the final version of Japan's TRON OS. Most people have never heard of TRON but it was extraordinarily widely-used, embedded in billions of consumer electronics products. Well, there was also a desktop-PC version, with its own very rich object-oriented GUI, and this talk contains the only demo of it I've ever seen. -- 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

Reading MT/ST tapes

by len＠shustek.com

>Date: Wed, 28 Jul 2021 18:37:17 -0500 >From: Cory Heisterkamp <coryheisterkamp at gmail.com> > This is a bit of a long shot, but is anyone aware of a successful > method to read IBM Selectric MT/ST tapes? > A museum in Australia has a box of them and are interested in the contents. At the Computer History Museum we sometimes use a software technique to recover data from the analog waveforms on mag tapes. https://github.com/LenShustek/readtape I'd like to try that on MT/ST tapes. Does anyone have a couple of MT/ST tape cartridges with data that I can experiment with?

3 years, 4 months

Unidentified IBM Module / Package

by coryheisterkamp＠gmail.com

Does anyone recognize these IBM modules? My gut says late 50?s based on the transistor packages and font. Perhaps for a contract or military system? Thanks- Cory https://www.dropbox.com/s/izitf1lmjqwcbuo/IBM1.jpg?dl=0 https://www.dropbox.com/s/dq8macaubrechkz/IBM2.jpg?dl=0

3 years, 4 months

Help reading a 9 track tape

by jimliu＠umich.edu

Hi, I have been lurking for a few years, but thought I'd finally speak up as I just received a 9 track tape purportedly containing the source code to Schoonschip (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schoonschip). This is a 2400' reel recorded at 1600 bpi based on the labels, and a cursory examination suggests that it is still in pretty good shape (although I am not sure how it was stored over the years). Here is a picture of the tape: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1JgY8QdVDchxubUz39jYn86gEczSvFhcZ/view?usp=… We no longer have any equipment that can read the tape, so I was wondering if anyone may be willing to help or if anyone had suggestions on where to go to get it read. Thanks! - jim -- James T. Liu, Professor of Physics 3409 Randall Laboratory, 450 Church Street, Ann Arbor, MI 48109-1040 Tel: 734 763-4314 Fax: 734 763-2213 Email: jimliu at umich.edu

3 years, 4 months

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test-drb August 2021