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101090 discussions

DECdatasystem 534 (11/34) and VT52 for sale at VCF Midwest 10

by julian＠twinax.org

I will be selling my DECdatasystem 534 and VT52 at the show. Cabinet rack, 72x24x26".11/34a, 32kW of core and A/D+D/A cards. System runs fine and drops to a console prompt, and passes all the diags I've been able to throw at it. I've restored all the foam filters and the cabinet was pressure washed a couple of years ago so no funny smells or mold. I have no peripherals for it. The VT52 does not power on. I'm entertaining pre-show offers, so let me know privately if you are interested in either of these items. Julian

10 years, 10 months

Clearpoint DCME/Q4E configuration

by jnc＠mercury.lcs.mit.edu

> From: Johnny Billquist >> Yes, and if you plug one of their PMI memory boards into a Q/Q >> backplane, it will emit magic smoke, too! :-) > I don't remember if I've ever tried that Don't! :-) As the MSV11-J manual puts it, "NOTE: Insertion of the MSV11-J in a Q-Q backplane may damage other components or the memory itself. The PMI bussing on the MSV11-J's CD connectors is not compatible with the +12V bussing on the Q-Q backplane." > but I can believe that some jumpers would need to be moved around for a > Q-Q slot. ... No jumpers moved. There are no jumpers to configure an MSV11-J for Q/Q slots. (It's only got 4 jumpers total, two of which are factory config; the others are battery backup power.) > By CRC, I guess you mean ECC. Yup, sorry, not completely awake when I typed that, I guess! :-) > And with 37 bits, I think it should have ECC. ECC depends on the CSR > address set correctly. But I could be wrong as well. I think it needs more than 5 bits, for 32. The MSV11-J uses 6 bits, for 16. >> However, when I plugged the other one in - nada. No response at all; >> the boot PROM bitched about 'no memory at 0'. So I'm not sure _what_ >> that configuration is for. > Would sound like it was configured for a non-zero start address maybe? I did wonder that, but why would anyone configure a 4MB card for a non-zero start address? Anyway, I have yet to investigate this jumper configuration more extensively - later. > But if you tried with the switches/jumpers the same as on the board > working then it sounds like it would just be broken. No, that board (mostly, except for the "Memory CSR" error) worked with the jumpers in the _PMI_ configuration. Although I suppose some of the circuitry for use in the non-PMI config could be broken, but I think not. (More below.) >> The boot PROM was complaining about "Memory CSR Error" .. _but_ the >> memory was shown (by the boot PROM 'map' command) as PMI, and my own >> memory-test program showed it was all working OK. > And then the cards also have a CSR register or two, which is used for > various things. And they are expected to be at specific addresses. > ... > If you have a memory starting at address 0, there should be a CSR at a > specific address as well So I did some experiments, with very interesting results. I took the card that got the "Memory CSR Error", plugged it in, and ran a 'find all device registers' program in the system with it in. It showed a single memory CSR, at 172100. I then plugged in the card that _does_ pass the startup test, and it also had a single register, at that same location. So I guess it must be something about the way that register operates, that is different between the two cards. Which is possible; as I mentioned, there are a few programmable chips which are different revs. (And one large custom chip, which _seems_ to be a different rev.) Oddly enough, if I operate that 'broken' card in QBUS mode (after the CPU), not PMI mode (before), it _does_ pass the built-in self-test!!! Which argues that its failure to operate in QBUS mode, with the non-PMI jumper settings, is not because the hardware to operate in QBUS mode is broken. So I have no idea what the other set of jumper settings is for! Blast, I sure wish we had documentation for these things! Noel

10 years, 10 months

Looking for a VAX 9000

by Sue.Skonetski＠VMSSoftware.com

Dear Group, My name is Sue Skonetski I am a vintage Digital, Compaq and HP person and now with VMS Software. It is not a typo I am really looking for a VAX 9000. Thanks, Sue Sue Skonetski VP of Customer Advocacy Sue.Skonetski at vmssoftware.com Office: +1 (978) 451-0116 Mobile: +1 (603) 494-9886 Mit freundlichen Gr??en ? Avec mes meilleures salutations

10 years, 10 months

5.25 floppies that read but don't write

by marc.verdiell＠gmail.com

I have connected a 1.2M 5.25" floppy to my computer. After a bit of jumper learning and setting, it's recognized and reads my old DD and HD floppies fine. But for the life of me I cannot write to it. Not under DOS, Win98, or WindowsXP. Which all read fine. But can't add a file. It goes through to the motions and makes the noise, heads moves as if everything went fine, but if I take the disk out and put it back in, the file is not there. I can't format either. Fails after a while on the above OS'es with different error messages without the head moving past track 0, suggesting it can't even read back the first track it's trying to format. Formatting from ImageDisk or OmniDisk looks like it works (head goes through the motions over the whole disk). But nothing seems to be written on the disk: neither utility can read the formatting back. Both HD and DD. On the same cable there is a 3.5" A: drive which reads and writes fine. Can't be the controller since it works on the 3.5" drive? The cable maybe? I tried several. Anyone has had this happened ever? Time to bring out the o'scope?

10 years, 10 months

VT100 keyboard (source?)

by hilpert＠cs.ubc.ca

Would anyone have a surplus-to-needs, or know of a source for, a VT100 keyboard? This would actually be for the DECmateI/VT278 I mentioned on the list a couple weeks ago, Rob and I are looking into doing something with it. Alternatively, does anyone know if there is any degree of signalling compatibility between the VT100 and VT220/320 keyboards? Those RX floppies in the pedestal on ebay mentioned a week or two ago were just what was needed to complete it, as they actually looked like they were part of a 278, but the listing was removed from ebay.

10 years, 10 months

Manuals Plus preservation efforts update

by tothwolf＠concentric.net

In Realtime: We are barely halfway done http://ascii.textfiles.com/archives/4711 They are still looking for volunteers tomorrow (Tuesday, August 18). Anyone in or near Baltimore might want to go help.

10 years, 10 months

VCF Midwest: Last Chance for Rooms

by silent700＠gmail.com

Hello all - I thought they did this weeks ago but the VCFMW hotel has informed me that they still have the special rooms pricing block open. It will close "for real this time" at the end of the day this Friday the 21st. A rather humbling number of rooms have been reserved so far - well beyond our expectations - but there is room for a few more. Follow the link at http://vcfmw.org for details. See you next weekend! -j

10 years, 10 months

DECmate I floppies (was Re: VT100 keyboard (source?))

by ethan.dicks＠gmail.com

On Wed, Aug 19, 2015 at 5:48 PM, Brent Hilpert <hilpert at cs.ubc.ca> wrote: > Thanks, that was a question I had been intending to ask, but to confirm: > If one obtained (as appropriate) bare RX01/2 floppy drive(s), it would > just be a matter of power supply for the floppies, and passive cabling > to interface the drives to the CPU/display? Yes. There's a board that goes under the wooden "top" that has a DB25 on one side, a Berg 40 on the other, and some wires and ferrite beads in between. It should be the identical board that's in the RX01 enclosure for the MINC-11 and/or WT78. The pinouts should be the same even if those use a different part number for the board. > I actually have the DB25-to-DC37 cable that goes between the disk unit and the DC37 connector on the CPU/display unit. Right. Well documented and easy enough to make, but good you have one. What I need to make (since I've never seen one) is the DC37-dual-DB25 cable to hang all the drives off of the DECmate I. 100% passive and just a few dozen solder joints. > If we move this along we may be asking for system software in the future, > I haven't looked at what may be readily available (i.e. bitsavers) as yet. I think mine came with WPS-8, but it should run OS-278. You just need to find a way to write RX02 floppies. I need to come up with a semi-portable PDP-11 rig with RX02s and 256K of RAM so I can cut floppies with vtserver (and probably some RL01 and RL02s while I'm at it) -ethan

10 years, 10 months

Probs w. M3119 CXY08 MUX on VAX VMS 7.3

by dave＠mitton.com

From: Paul Koning <paulkoning at comcast.net> >> ... > Ok. RSTS does indeed check for duplicate vectors. It also checks for > devices interrupting at too high a priority. > It?s pretty neat code. Back in 1977 or so when that came out, it may > have been one of the first autoconfig systems, at least in DEC. It > could probe almost all devices supported by RSTS (and some not > supported); the exceptions being card readers and the DT07 bus switch. > But it would do hairy things like the KMC-11 and DMC-11, for example. Wait? What was tricky about KMCs and DMCs? They used the same algorithms, I had it down cold at the time. Speaking of which, I have one copy of the KMC-11A Programmer's Guide if anyone needs it or would like to scan it? Dave (KMC-11 Tools Developer, RSX and VMS) PS: I used ALGOLW on MTS in one of my ECE classes because we could represent processor registers and operations using bit arrays/vectors and boolean operations. Thus building working models of systems in code.

10 years, 10 months

Analog to Digital Converter

by dj.taylor4＠comcast.net

I have a number of laboratory instruments that are from the 1990 time frame. They produce digital data that is the digitized signal from a detector, the data can be from 512 to 65K samples long. The ADC used in these instruments is a 16bit 100ksample/sec design. The ADC is in a 3 by 4 inch metal box with a row of pins on each long edge. I think some of them are failing because I get the full 16 bit resolution from one machine, but not the others. This was determined by taking the digital samples and sorting the values and computing the increments between the adjacent values. In some cases the output looked like 14 bit resolution and in one case 6 bit resolution. Does anyone have any experience with technology? Who was the manufacturer? (There is no id on the outside) What is inside the box? Is it a hybrid circuit? Doug

10 years, 10 months

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