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101090 discussions

by brad＠bettercomputing.net

Got yet another PET today - a CBM 8032 with the black bezel. In my PET collection I'm trying to get, instead of each model, a representative of each body style - and there seems to be no shortage of that. Of the five I now have, each is different in some way. Anyway, I'm confident the 8032's mainboard is alive - it chirps on startup. But that's all it does. Nothing appears on the screen. I took the screen hood off - the tube lights up, so there's power and action. If I disconnect the data cable from the motherboard, I get a single dot in the center of the screen. I also have a SuperPET here, the only other unit with the larger monitor. So naturally I tried 'swapping' them - ie running the monitor leads from each to the other's motherboard and turning both on. However the SuperPET monitor doesn't come on either when connected to the 8032, and the 8032's monitor still doesn't come on even when connected to the SuperPET. Not sure what this portends - my expertise has been in the older models so far. Anyway, any advice would be appreciated.. I was hoping I'd get something by doing the swap, so I had an inlking as to what was wrong, but it appears that isn't going to happen here. Brad

11 years, 5 months

DEC-PDP 11/34 (?) for sale in Memphis, TN

by tosteve＠yahoo.com

Carl has a large "Marquette MUSE system" system for sale in Memphis, TN. MUSE=Marquette Universal Storage for Electrocardiography. It's DEC-based, not sure of the specifics. See pics here: http://oldcomputers.net/temp/muse-1.jpg http://oldcomputers.net/temp/muse-2.jpg http://oldcomputers.net/temp/muse-3.jpg Pick-up required. Contact Carl if interested: Carl E. Osborne Jr. - carl at datamed.com ------------------------------------------------------------------ History: Marquette?s forte? was the acquisition and storage of cardiology records, specifically electrocardiographic data (ECG/EKG), using mainframe Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) PDP-11 computer systems. They were large ECG management systems that stored electrocardiograms on 300MB CDC 9448 hard drives.

11 years, 5 months

Newspaper Article on the RICM

by michael.99.thompson＠gmail.com

There was a nice article on the RICM in today's Providence Journal newspaper. http://www.providencejournal.com/breaking-news/content/20140125-a-view-from… -- Michael Thompson

11 years, 5 months

Two of my recent posts aren't showing up..

by drlegendre＠gmail.com

Am I doing something wrong? I've written two new topics in the last few days, and neither of them are showing up. However, my replies to existing threads seem to show up more reliably. Is this even visible? TIA for any info.

11 years, 5 months

128K Mac oddness...

by derschjo＠gmail.com

So it being the 30th anniversary of the Mac and all, I thought I'd play with my 128K Macintosh a bit. I've had it running before, but never got it running anything interesting, so I thought I'd start with a few small games... and there, the trouble began. In a nutshell: I have a few 400K boot disks that I wrote years back (and they're still fine), these contain System 2.0 and System 3.2. All well and good -- I can boot and everything's grand (though a bit boring.) Likewise, I can format other 400K disks in either the external drive or the internal drive, and read/write from/to them without problems. UNTIL... I take one of the 400K disks I've formatted on the 128K Mac and attempt to copy some games from my Mac 512Ke to the disk. The 512Ke is happy to read/write the disk (using the same external drive I used with the 128K Mac) and everything's marvelous. But afterwards, when Finder on the 128K Mac attempts to open the disk, it bombs out with an address error ("Sorry, a system error occurred. ID = 02") and I'm forced to reboot. At this point, I've tried: - Using the internal rather than the external drive to read the disk (suspecting some manner of alignment issue with one or more of the drives) - Several different floppies (all DD, not HD, before you ask :)) - Formatting the floppy on the 512K Mac. - Copying files to a system disk, rather than a blank disk and then booting from said system disk - Booting the 512K Mac with various different System versions (3.2, 6.0.3) and doing the copy from there. - Both System 2.0 and System 3.2 All with the same results -- once the 512K Mac has modified the disk, the 128K Mac chokes on it (it will still *boot* from a modified System disk, but is unable to open it in the Finder without crashing.) At this point I'm stumped. I suppose it's possible my 128K Mac has a fault of some sort (a bit difficult to diagnose given my lack of ability to run a diagnostic...) but it seems to work fine otherwise. Is there some incompatibility between the filesystem portions of the toolbox ROMs in the 128K vs. the 512Ke that could cause problems here? My early-Macintosh-System-Fu is rather weak (I haven't used anything prior to System 6.X all that much) so perhaps I'm missing something obvious here... Thanks for any tips... - Josh

11 years, 5 months

128K Mac oddness...

by brad＠bettercomputing.net

Sounds like possibly an alignment issue. ?I went through this with my 400k drive in my Lisa and my Plus. ?The Plus could only occasionally read what the Lisa wrote. ?Then I realized when I had had the Lisa drive apart for servicing I had forgotten all about alignment for the stepper motor. ?As it turned out, I got lucky.. I actually had pictures of it from before disassembly and was able to use the sticker on the motor to make a lucky guess. ?After that, everything was merry. Sent from Samsung Mobile <div>-------- Original message --------</div><div>From: azd30 <azd30 at telus.net> </div><div>Date:01/25/2014 8:16 AM (GMT-08:00) </div><div>To: "General Discussion: On-Topic Posts Only" <cctech at classiccmp.org> </div><div>Subject: Re: 128K Mac oddness... </div><div> </div>Don't know about floppies, but hd's have an interleave issue between some early Mac models. It usually makes them slow though. Try asking this on m68kla.org -- alex ----- Original Message ----- From: Josh Dersch <derschjo at gmail.com> To: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts <cctalk at classiccmp.org> Sent: Sat, 25 Jan 2014 00:00:54 -0700 (MST) Subject: 128K Mac oddness... So it being the 30th anniversary of the Mac and all, I thought I'd play with my 128K Macintosh a bit.? I've had it running beforeI, but never got it running anything interesting, so I thought I'd start with a few small games... and there, the trouble began. In a nutshell:? I have a few 400K boot disks that I wrote years back (and they're still fine), these contain System 2.0 and System 3.2.? All well and good -- I can boot and everything's grand (though a bit boring.) Likewise, I can format other 400K disks in either the external drive or the internal drive, and read/write from/to them without problems. UNTIL... I take one of the 400K disks I've formatted on the 128K Mac and attempt to copy some games from my Mac 512Ke to the disk.? The 512Ke is happy to read/write the disk (using the same external drive I used with the 128K Mac) and everything's marvelous.? But afterwards, when Finder on the 128K Mac attempts to open the disk, it bombs out with an address error ("Sorry, a system error occurred.?? ID = 02") and I'm forced to reboot. At this point, I've tried: - Using the internal rather than the external drive to read the disk (suspecting some manner of alignment issue with one or more of the drives) - Several different floppies (all DD, not HD, before you ask :)) - Formatting the floppy on the 512K Mac. - Copying files to a system disk, rather than a blank disk and then booting from said system disk - Booting the 512K Mac with various different System versions (3.2, 6.0.3) and doing the copy from there. - Both System 2.0 and System 3.2 All with the same results -- once the 512K Mac has modified the disk, the 128K Mac chokes on it (it will still *boot* from a modified System disk, but is unable to open it in the Finder without crashing.) At this point I'm stumped.? I suppose it's possible my 128K Mac has a fault of some sort (a bit difficult to diagnose given my lack of ability to run a diagnostic...) but it seems to work fine otherwise.? Is there some incompatibility between the filesystem portions of the toolbox ROMs in the 128K vs. the 512Ke that could cause problems here? My early-Macintosh-System-Fu is rather weak (I haven't used anything prior to System 6.X all that much) so perhaps I'm missing something obvious here... Thanks for any tips... - Josh

11 years, 5 months

What to preserve from the pre-IP era

by aek＠bitsavers.org

Just throwing this out to see what other people think. I suspect we're at the tail end of the usage life of devices that don't speak IP. I'm mostly thinking about networking devices 80's > 00's So, what needs to be preserved? How much of this does CHM need to do? Is any other collecting institution already covering this? How much is within scope? We've been having curatorial discussions about this for years inside CHM, and have been doing some directed collecting since before the big exhibition was locked down in 2010, but it is a big topic and there were a lot of evolutionary dead-ends. What got me thinking about this is I've been working with someone who has storage units full of mid-80's IBM SNA stuff and it's taken me months to scan a fraction of it. I know there are huge swaths of telephony and networking that I've never even looked at. It's pretty overwhelming, actually, to get my head around from the software side.

11 years, 5 months

Using two RL02 drives on OS/8? (cont'd)

by charlesmorris800＠centurytel.net

It's working again! I made a new RL02 pack using vtserver on my other machine (11/23+), which takes a while to transmit 7.8 MB even at 19200 baud, put it in the 8/A drive 0, held my breath, flipped the boot switch... and got the "." prompt on the terminal :) So the problem that started this whole mess was an IDC connector that I had improperly crimped, inside one of the RL02 drives, so that I could run ribbon cable to the RL8A instead of buying the expensive BC80xx cable. Lesson learned. Bought a BC80J-20! That short circuit was somewhere in the write data lines, which apparently then wiped out the OS/8 pack so it wouldn't boot any more. Lastly, my incorrectly seated quad extender card was introducing errors even after fixing the cable problems, and I wasted several hours chasing that... I may invest in a hex-height extender card to avoid this problem in the future! On the other hand, I now have a serial interface on the desktop PC >from which I can download programs direct to the 8/A. The next thing is to learn how to use Philipp Hachtmann's KL8E in FPGA to download through a laptop USB port at high speed. It looks like I can just change the few IOT instructions of the RIM and BIN loaders to match the card's switch settings. Trying to get Windows to put binary files out a USB port will be more fun, I'm sure. Meanwhile, back to the original problem! My build of OS/8 does not recognize that there are two RL02 drives in the system... which is how I think this thread got started in the first place quite some time ago :)

11 years, 5 months

Fwd: [GreenKeys] Bletchley Park

by captainkirk359＠gmail.com

Somewhat off-topic, but this was brought up in the GreenKeys mailing list. The new CEO of the Bletchley Park Trust is sacking some of the circa 80 year old volunteers who had been working for Bletchley Park and the National Museum of Computing; apparently just for showing guests the NMOC and Colossus. In case the BBC link doesn't work, here's a link to the reposted version on YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d5n9eVVtKeA I've attached one of the more interesting and informative replies after the forwarded message. Regards, Christian ---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Craig Sawyers <c.sawyers at tech-enterprise.com> Date: 24 January 2014 18:55 Subject: [GreenKeys] Bletchley Park To: greenkeys at mailman.qth.net This has just been aired on BBC UK. Bletchley Park's new boss Ian Standen is sacking the 80-odd year old volunteers that have been working there for decades. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-25886961 Craig ______________________________________________________________ GreenKeys mailing list Home: http://mailman.qth.net/mailman/listinfo/greenkeys Help: http://mailman.qth.net/mmfaq.htm Post: mailto:GreenKeys at mailman.qth.net 2002-to-present greenkeys archive: http://mailman.qth.net/pipermail/greenkeys/ 1998-to-2001 greenkeys archive: http://mailman.qth.net/archive/greenkeys/greenkeys.html Randy Guttery's 2001-to-2009 GreenKeys Search Tool: http://comcents.com/tty/greenkeyssearch.html This list hosted by: http://www.qsl.net Please help support this email list: http://www.qsl.net/donate.html On 25 January 2014 04:57, Craig Sawyers <c.sawyers at tech-enterprise.com> wrote: > All the details are in the video segment - but I suspect that might not be > possible to get outside the UK. Basically it is one guy in tears because > after taking visitors around Colossus (which he was not allowed to do; see > below) he was called to Standen's office and dismissed. It showed another > guy who had been given his marching orders (remember these guys are unpaid > volunteers) clearing out the display cabinet of his own personal Churchill > memorabilia into cardboard boxes. Then there was an interview with Standen, > in which he said that to enhance the visitor experience the site had to move > with the times, and those who would not fall in line had to go. > > This is all down to a major league dispute between the Bletchley Park Trust, > who own the site, and the National Museum of Computing where Colossus and > Tunny and all the related equipment and galleries are. Basically the > relationship used to be pretty positive - the NMOC paid a rent, the ticket > price was split between the Trust and the NMOC and everything worked. Then > Standen, and ex-military guy, took over as the Trust's CEO and all hell > broke loose. The Trust now claim that the NMOC owe them ?200k in historic > debt; they claim part ownership of Colossus; they refuse to collect money on > the gate for NMOC so you have to pay extra to see Colossus, and the whole of > the NMOC is out of bounds to tour guides - I believe they are even > instructed not to mention its existence. > > The only mention of the NMOC on the Bletchley website is buried here > http://www.bletchleypark.org.uk/content/visit/whattosee/other.rhtm . What > it does not mention is that you cannot visit the site just to see Colossus > etc - you have to pay the site entry fee at the gate, and then as a result > of Byzantine politics pay extra to see everything to do with Colossus. > > The knock-on has had an effect on the Lorenz SZ42, which I restored to full > functionality around ten years ago. During a visit to Paderborn in Germany > five years ago for a Cipher Challenge, the Germans fired it up before I > arrived and blew up the mains transformer, which was kind of ironic. On > return I had that re-rewound. Then Tony Sale died, and shortly afterward > Standen took over as CEO. The problem is that formal ownership of the SZ42 > is still GCHQ, and custodianship vests in the CEO. But the location of the > machine is at NMOC. The continuing blood on the walls dispute essentially > locks me out of repairing the only functional SZ42 on the planet. > > It is a total mess, alas > > Craig > > > > ______________________________________________________________ > GreenKeys mailing list > Home: http://mailman.qth.net/mailman/listinfo/greenkeys > Help: http://mailman.qth.net/mmfaq.htm > Post: mailto:GreenKeys at mailman.qth.net > > 2002-to-present greenkeys archive: http://mailman.qth.net/pipermail/greenkeys/ > 1998-to-2001 greenkeys archive: http://mailman.qth.net/archive/greenkeys/greenkeys.html > Randy Guttery's 2001-to-2009 GreenKeys Search Tool: http://comcents.com/tty/greenkeyssearch.html > > This list hosted by: http://www.qsl.net > Please help support this email list: http://www.qsl.net/donate.html -- Christian M. Gauger-Cosgrove STCKON08DS0 Contact information available upon request.

11 years, 5 months

DEC TU58 Baud Rate

by nf6x＠nf6x.net

The manuals for the TU58 DECtape II tape drive controller indicate that the transmit and receive baud rates can be set independently. Have any of y'all ever heard of an application that uses different transmit vs. receive baud rates with a TU58 drive, or is this independent baud rate capability just a coincidental feature that arose from the way the controller's UART was implemented? I'm thinking about a little embedded TU58 emulator project, and I'm wondering how important it is to support the independent baud rate feature. -- Mark J. Blair, NF6X <nf6x at nf6x.net> http://www.nf6x.net/

11 years, 5 months

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