test-drb April 2022

test-drb@ccmp.vtda.org

53 participants
28 discussions

Possibly going up to VCF, stuff I would like to sell/get to proper people pdp8/12/HP stuff

by cz＠alembic.crystel.com

Hi all! I'm thinking about going up to VCF in Wall next weekend. I haven't been to it since it was the Trenton Computer Fest (think late 1990's) so I'm not sure what the protocol is on tailgating, trading stuff or whatnot. Appears that they have a "sale room" you drop things off in with prices. Ok.... Things I could "sell" if anyone's interested: HP1000e computer, dead power supply, basic boards, no advanced memory. HP9825B likewise does not power up, but it's there. Microvax 2 boards, stuff like that. Spare 11/24 CPU boards (I have a bunch, all work, no idea why I have all them) Stuff I could bring to get out of my house and into the right hands: Big box of pdp12 schematics. This came from my olden days when I had to turn up a pdp12 because it will not fit in a station wagon. Still it looks like board locations and a lot of 12 stuff. Big box, heavy to ship, easier to drive over. Ton of pdp8/12 IO cables. These are the black circular wire ones, I think negibus. There's also some posibus ribbon cables but I'll save those for my 8/L's. If you need a set, let me know. Stuff I'd trade for: AF01 A/D converter. I don't have Negibus anymore, but I did check/reform the power supply and hooked it up and things do light up. Bunch of extra channel cards (I think it might have all 64). Would trade for a memory box for an 8/L. Back to unearthing BLT.AI.MIT.EDU....... C

2 years

Quantum ATL-7100 DLT Changer in SLC

by Tim＠Rikers.org

I have a Quantum ATL-7100 100 tape DLT changer. Last I checked it worked fine. It's almost as big as a fridge. I have around 100 tapes for it, not all the same density. It uses fast/wide scsi-3 differential for the drives. I think I have 2 working drives in the cabinet plus one or 2 separate external drives. I think my drives are DLT-7000 or similar which gives a total capacity of 7TB. Upgraded with SDLT 220 drives and tapes the chassis would have a capacity of 22TB. Anyone interested in picking this up in South Jordan Utah? (outside Salt Lake City). The only issues I know about it, is the tape loading pivoting door is not quite rotating correctly, and I replaced one of the AT power supplies with a unit that is NOT autoswitching. So if you want to run the unit on 220V instead of 110, you will need to change the chassis and the replaced internal power supply. It's really fun to load it up with tapes, then tell it to auto-shuffle them. I have the door hot wired so you can open the door while it's operating. Easy to restore the switch if you don't want to. Photos here: https://rikers.org/gallery/hardware-atl7100 Interested, please email directly, I don't check the list very often. Tim

2 years

RCA COSMAC MS2000 MicroDisk Development System

by Rice43＠btinternet.com

Hi all, I?ve recently come across something i?ve soon realised really quite unusual. An RCA MS2000 MicroDisk Development System. I?m very green to the COSMAC scene, with this being my first 1802 machine. I?m very interested in knowing the pitfalls i may come across in restoring such a machine. I?ve had a quick cursory look over the machine, and it seems to be complete, with 2 RAM/ROM cards, CPU card, FDC and a (3rd party?) ROM programmer board, along with the PSU and floppy disk drives. It?s my understanding that these are pretty similar to the RCA Microboard development systems, which i believe are also pretty similar to the ELF ?homebrew? microcomputer this group revolves around. I?ve found some manuals on bitsavers,, a website on the Microboard system, along with disk images on the Emma02 emulator website, so I have a reasonable undertanding over what this actually is. I have a week off work next week, so am planning on taking my time on disassembling and checking the unit over next week. I?ll endevour to upload some pictures of said machine when i tear it apart. Thanks, Josh Rice

2 years

Bob Lucky

by brain＠jbrain.com

I don't remember seeing this here, and not sure how many of you read his articles, but: https://spectrum.ieee.org/bob-lucky-obituary -- Jim Brain brain at jbrain.com www.jbrain.com

2 years

Any CodeWright users: still have patch installers?

by dnm＠pobox.com

This is a long shot, but on the off chance anyone else on the list shares some of my particular weirdnesses, anyone got a line on the *patches* for Embarcadero (nee Borland (nee Starbase (nee Premia) CodeWright? I have the latest version Embarcadero sold (and maybe still sells?) as of not all that long ago -- 7.5 -- but it's basically patch level 3 (e.g., 7.5.3) instead of patch level 5 (e.g., 7.5.5). I'm hoping someone has the patch installers squirreled away somewhere, and that I can find that person. At least for Windows, patch installers were typically named something like "xcw753_4.exe", which would update an existing version 7.5.3 to version 7.5.4. Likewise xcw754_5.exe would update 7.5.4 to 7.5.5. Every now and again, I go looking for archives in The Wayback Machine, etc. or stashed away versions of the patch installers, but no dice so far. I've even attempted emailing folks who posted 10+ years ago or more on various fora about the patches/about CodeWright, but nothing has yet worked out there either. -- Daniel Moniz <dnm at pobox.com> [http://pobox.com/~dnm/]

2 years

Lecture: A tour of Update's new premises, 2022-04-09, 19:00

by stueberahoo＠yahoo.de

Hi all, you're invited to the Update computer club[0] public lecture series "Updateringar"[1]! When: 2022-04-09, 19:00 CEST Where: https://bbb.cryptoparty.se/b/upd-0mo-m2u-aq8 A tour of Update's new premises In December and January 2021/2022 Update moved out of the Uppsala University IT department's basement into rooms of its own (thanks again to all our volumteers who put in a huge effort!). The new premises offer 150 m? of space for Update's collection and activities, with a dedicated area for exhibitions. What has happened since the move? With this online tour we invite you to take a peek into our new home and at what we've been working on in the last couple of months. We will give you an insight into current and future projects and show off some of our collection items. Bjarni Juliusson, Anke St?ber (Update) The lecture is free and open to everyone. Don't want to miss upcoming events? Subscribe to our low-traffic announcement list here[2]! Hope to see you there, Anke [0] https://www.dfupdate.se/en/ [1] https://wiki.dfupdate.se/projekt:updateringar [2] https://lists.dfupdate.se/postorius/lists/announce.lists.dfupdate.se

2 years

UNIBUS powoer on/off spec

by jnc＠mercury.lcs.mit.edu

> the later "pdp11 bus hanbook" (which, as mentioned, does not seem to be > online yet, alas) Arck, I'm a moron; Paul has pointed out to me that this is, in fact, online at Bitsavers: http://www.bitsavers.org/pdf/dec/pdp11/handbooks/PDP11_BusHandbook1979.pdf It didn't show up in a couple of pages of results in a Web search for it, though. I have noticed that things on Bitsavers often don't show up high up in Web search results, unless you add 'bitsavers' to the search term. I have been told that at one point Google was 'downgrading' results that used plain HTTP, instead of HTTPS, because they were trying to push people to switch to HTTPS (this was when everyone was hyperventilating over the Snowden revelations). Given the near-ubiquitous use of HTTPS these days, I'd have thought that piece of 'information credit engineering' by our tech overlords was past its 'sell by' date, and now serves primarily to block people from finding the material they are looking for (as here). Noel

2 years

Glass memory?

by anders.k.nelson＠gmail.com

Hey all, found this on eBay: https://www.ebay.com/itm/Corning-Glass-memory-/125087612899 I can't find any info on it - was it some kind of delay-line or magnetic laminate stack? Interesting!

2 years

Short PDP-8 Memory Address Test..

by lbickley＠bickleywest.com

Continuing the debugging of my recently acquired PDP-8/E, I wrote an address test that's easy to enter from the front panel: --- # PDP8 Quick Address Test # Pass 1: Loads locations 23-7777 with their own address. # Pass 2: Tests each location for the correct address. If # it fails (address does not equal it's own address) then # the diagnostic halts with the error location in 22. # The contents of that location displays the error. # By Lyle Bickley # 0000 7600 CLA 0001 1021 TAD 21 0002 3022 DCA 22 0003 1022 TAD 22 0004 3422 DCA I 22 0005 2022 ISZ 22 0006 5003 JMP 3 0007 1021 TAD 21 0010 3022 DCA 22 0011 1022 TAD 22 0012 7041 CMA IAC 0013 1422 TAD I 22 0014 7440 SZA 0015 7402 HLT (ERROR!) 0016 2022 ISZ 22 0017 5011 JMP 11 0020 5000 JMP 0 (START OVER) 0021 0023 0022 0000 --- Cheers, Lyle -- 73 NM6Y Bickley Consulting West https://bickleywest.com "Black holes are where God is dividing by zero"

2 years

UNIBUS powoer on/off spec

by jnc＠mercury.lcs.mit.edu

> From: Paul Koning > You might give a precise source citation on that page. Done: https://gunkies.org/w/index.php?title=UNIBUS_Initialization&curid=6842&diff… Don't complain to me if the publication data is skimpy; that's all that's in it! (I mean, we all know that DEC is in Maynard, but the book doesn't say it...) Noel

2 years

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test-drb April 2022