test-drb

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101090 discussions

Rebuilding a Hawley Mark II X063X mouse?

by tothwolf＠concentric.net

Over the weekend while moving another project out of long term storage, I also unpacked the Hawley Mark II mouse for my SGI IRIS 1400 since I wanted to see what it might take to repair its cord. When I originally acquired the machine, the outer insulation of the mouse's cord was just beginning to crumble at the ends, but 10+ years later, it has now become extremely brittle and is completely flaking off the cable. The cable they used for the mouse is very small diameter [my mouse has the same cord as this one: http://www.oldmouse.com/mouse/hawley/X063Xvanilla.shtml] and I don't think I would be able to find a multiconductor cable that small to replace it. The individual conductors are still tightly twisted together along with a fiber wrapping of some sort. Since the inner conductors appear to still be intact, I'm considering using heatshrink tubing to replace the outer insulation, but I'm not sure if this would be the best approach or not. In addition, the main ball doesn't turn very well and the rollers/contacts inside the mouse also don't move. I've not yet disassembled it any further than just lifting off the outer cover since I'm not sure of how involved of a project this thing is going to become. [I was initially hoping it would be a minor project to repair the cord but it's starting to look like repairing this mouse may be pretty involved.] Has anyone else rebuilt one of these mice, and if so are there any gotchas I need to be watching out for?

11 years, 9 months

FCO for KDA50-Q?

by nw＠retroComputingTasmania.com

I have some Emulex SD590 drives which require a controller like the DEC KDA50-Q (M7164+M7165) or KDA50-QA. I found a KDA50-Q controller on eBay, but also discovered that the KDA50-Q has a rather bad (show-stopper) bug that was fixed in later revisions, detailed here: http://deathrow.vistech.net/~cvisors/DEC94MDS/kda50dol.txt >From that description I understand I need either revision D1 or D2 of the M7164 module. What should I be looking for on the board that would indicate it has had the FCO applied? is it an option to re-program the 6 PROMs that appear to be involved? Alternatively, if anyone has the two board set (M7164 and M7165 joined with the 40-pin and 50-pin cables) along with the cab-kit up for sale I would be interested in discussing further. thanks. Ps Thanks Jay for getting cctalk back online, well done!

11 years, 9 months

Thanks for getting the list up again!

by mattislind＠gmail.com

I should have written it in my previous post: Thanks a lot, Jay, for getting the list working again! /Mattis

11 years, 9 months

Hello world!

by drlegendre＠gmail.com

Sorry to hear about the trouble, Jay. Thanks for taking care of the list.. -Bill

11 years, 9 months

Second/Final Attempt - Control Board for Mitsubishi M2896 8" FDD

by cctalk＠fahimi.net

Long shot here but does anyone have a control board (or two) for an 8" internal Mitsubishi M2896-63-02U either from a dead drive or as spare parts they may want to part with? Thanks. -Ali

11 years, 9 months

CD carriers FFS from 95006

by shumaker＠att.net

Standard CD carriers/trays for Sun type CD drives... I have 11 of them... no physical damage although some have mild plastic yellowing. All appear functional/usable. Free for shipping from 95006 (Haven't tried but I suspect they will all fit a small flat rate box if you want the lot). Steve

11 years, 9 months

FW: Comparison of Desoldering Stations

by robert.jarratt＠ntlworld.com

Sending again since the rebuild of the list probably lost the first post (apologies if this is duplicate). Thanks Rob From: Robert Jarratt [mailto:robert.jarratt at ntlworld.com] Sent: 02 November 2014 18:29 To: General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts (cctalk at classiccmp.org) Subject: Comparison of Desoldering Stations I need to buy a desoldering station and in my price range it seems I have the choice of two: Duratool (sold under several other brands too) D00672: http://cpc.farnell.com/duratool/d00672/desoldering-station-uk-eu-plug/dp/SD0 1384 Aoyue 474A++: http://www.amazon.co.uk/AOYUE-Aoyue-474A-Desoldering-Station/dp/B00FDOP2DI/ Has anyone tried both of these to give me an idea which is the better buy? Thanks Rob

11 years, 9 months

Small change in mailing headers

by snhirsch＠gmail.com

Thanks for getting the list going again. Probably not a big deal, but the 'Sender' header now has quotes around the string 'cctalk' and required a slight tweak to my procmail rules. Steve --

11 years, 9 months

DecWriter / LA30P with unibus

by mattislind＠gmail.com

For quite some time I have been pursuing an effort to repair a PDP-11/04 system and make it running under CAPS-11. I have had it successfully boot >from the TU60 tape drive. The plan is now to attach a contemporary console terminal to it. I happen to have a LA30P which looks suitable and would make it a nice looking system. I have documented the effort here: http://www.datormuseum.se/computers/digital-equipment-corporation/pdp-11-04 The LA30 is now working fine but the problem is that I don't have the M7910 or M791 card that make up the LC11 Unibus option as this terminal was once upon a time connected to a PDP-8/E instead. Is there anyone that have a M7910 or M791 card who wants to sell or trade it for something? During the restoration process of the LA30 I found that it is using quite uncommon paper. I needs 9-7/8 inch (250 mm) wide paper. Is there a source for this kind of paper somewhere else than in the USA? If there is no M791 or M7910 available I have to either make my own M791 or make a serial / parallel converter to go into the LA30P (I guess that no one has the M7389 and M7731 boards that make it a LA30S, or?). When looking for more information on the LC11, there were limited amount available on the net. I did find the LC11 Decwriter System Manuel (pages 4-2 and 4-3 was missing which is quite annoying) but not the LC11 Decwriter System Engineering Drawings. Anyone knows an online source for that one? /Mattis

11 years, 9 months

What quad QBUS boards work in a Q/CD backplane?

by jnc＠mercury.lcs.mit.edu

> From: Mark J. Blair > Where is the modified Unibus used? ... I tried to cram in every bus I > could find using the same physical form factor, but if MUD is an > especially niche application then maybe it doesn't need to be in there. > From: David Riley fraveydank at gmail.com > Typical Unibus peripherals are quad-width; those that are hex-width are > *generally* only in it for the additional power .. There are certainly > exceptions, but I don't know what they are. > If someone is trying to build Unibus memory, they'll probably be > interested in the modified Unibus pins. Otherwise, it's somewhat > unlikely. I'm on the road, and away from my documentation, but I definitely would not call MUD 'niche' - it's pretty much the standard hex-height UNIBUS spec in all the later UNIBUS backplanes. Here's what I can recall: in the beginning, there were what were called 'Small Peripheral Controller' (SPC) slots, which took quad-high cards in the C-F connectors. Older, simpler interfaces (think DL11, RX01/2 controllers, etc) were quad cards which went in the C-F connectors of an SPC slot. (More complicated interfaces, like the RK11, RP11, DH11 etc were entire custom backplanes/system units - 4 slot for the RK11, larger for the DH11, IIRC.) I forget what was in the top two connectors (A-B) of the old SPC slots (e.g. on the early DD11s - the name of the early 4-slot backplane units). Of course, in the 1 and 4 slots, the A and B connectors had 'standard UNIBUS' so one could plug in either a jumper module to the next backplane (earlier M920, later M9202 - once they started dealing with lumped loads), or a UNIBUS cable (the big flat white one) to another system unit. So then hex cards started to become common (and basically all later UNIBUS interface cards are hex cards - from early ones like the DZ11 and RL11, to the latest ones like the UDA50, DELUA, etc). Around then, the MUD spec came in: in a MUD slot, the bottom 4 connectors (C-F) are still SPC (so you can plug any quad SPC board into the C-D connectors of a MUD slot), but the top two connectors (A-B) are subtly different. I _think_ many (most?) hex boards are MUD only, but I would have to check on that. When I get back, I will check and see what the A-B connectors in an old SPC slot are - and if any hex UNIBUS cards use that, instead of MUD. (Of course, any hex card that _only_ uses SPC pins can go in either kind. I don't know if there are any hex cards are like that - or perhaps many are, I just don't know off the top of my head.) > From: David Riley > Qbus shares Unibus' defined +5v and GND pins and adds a few more > dedicated grounds ... I'm honestly a little surprised they didn't make > the power pins a little more broadly compatible (or at least less > likely to cause damage) in general Well, I can kinda-sorta understand the UNIBUS and QBUS not being safe from each other. It's sort of 'intuitively obvious' that one shouldn't plug a card >from one into the other. (And remember, the QBUS started out as almost all dual-high cards, except the LSI-11 CPU card, another differentiation.) But the Q/Q and Q/CD thing is, to me, at least, different - one has to know there are two kinds of QBUS, and not to plug cards for one into the other (except the many cards that can go both ways). But now that I think about it, I guess there are sorta two kinds of UNIBUS too - MUD and non-MUD. And I think I even recall someone damaging a card by plugging a non-MUD card into a MUD slot (or vice versa, I don't recall the details any more). Noel

11 years, 10 months

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