I think the real gotcha will be the DOS drivers.
The 802.11b DOS driver+hardware combo I know about is PCMCIA. ORiNOCO Gold is PCMCIA, has MS-DOS drivers, has 128 bit WEP and was a highly respected card when it was new.
PCMCIA card to ISA slot ... I remember some bridges that have Windows 95 or Windows NT drivers for the bridge itself. It's not pretty.
Tim.
For fun, I'd like to mix old with slightly-less-old and put an 802.11
wireless card in my old Compaq 386 luggable. Does anyone know if
there is a card that is both ISA and has DOS drivers? Doing WEP would
be a bonus, 128-bit WEP more so. If no WEP, I can set up a separate
AP for it but it would be nice to take it on the road (being a
"portable" and all.)
The Cisco AIR-ISA34x series seem to fit the bill. One chart I found:
http://www.kmj.com/cisco/340a.html
...suggests that the ISA342 will do 128-bit WEP. so maybe that is the
one to find.
Any other ideas/suggestions/experience?
-j
--
silent700.blogspot.com
Retrocomputing and collecting in the Chicago area:
http://chiclassiccomp.org
_Teletype_Tales_
Part 3 - How I Spent My Christmas Vacation
If you're still reading, don't worry, this is the last part...
but it is a bit long.
This year I ended up with a good chunk of "left over" vacation
time. My employer implemented a "use or lose" vacation policy
and my boss, a _really_ nice guy, was insistent that none of his
staff was going to lose any. So I ended up on vacation for the
last two weeks of 2010 despite having a rather heavy feature
request list on my plate. What to do? Spend a lot of time with
my family of course but after a discussion with my wife it was
decided that part of my Christmas present would be several
uninterrupted days of hobby time. Time to "bite the bullet" and
get that teletype working. Or end up with a big pile of levers,
cams, spring, cogs, etc.
The day came and I jumped in with both feet. I took a few pictures
and made a few notes. Then I pulled all of the cables off of the
call control unit, popped out the h-plate and lifted the typing
unit out. I guess I half expected springs and gears to go flying
everywhere but it came out neat and easy. Even after all of the
work I had done before, the filth was incredible. In addition to
much more dog hair and bug bits, there was oil soaked chad and this
"goop" everywhere. But now I could see the source of the goop.
Under the typing unit, there was what had been a large foam rubber
pad. It had decayed into crumbly dust that, when exposed to oil,
turned into the goop. Clearly, more cleaning was required. Do
another halfway job? Nope, take it all the way apart. Four screws
later and the call control unit lifted out. Two more after that and
the keyboard was free. One last screw and the tape reader was out.
Now I could fully clean the subbase. Lots of detergent, warm water,
gentle scrubbing and, finally, paper towels and it was squeaky clean.
I still didn't have the guts to try and disassemble the typing unit
or the keyboard, but with access to their undersides, I was able to
clean a lot more gunk out of them with a combination of light
instrument oil, canned air, paint brushes and toothpicks. Well, that
had to be a good bit better.
I put it all back together. Getting the h-plate back in isn't too hard
once you get the knack. Plug in, local mode, a definite improvement.
The carriage movement wasn't perfect but it was much better. The
keypress encode/decode now seemed to match in almost all cases. Two
problems remained, no line feed and no bell. I took the typing unit
back out and looked carefully at the area of the line feed mechanism.
It was substantially different from the illustrations in the documents.
At this point, I made what turned out to be a great decision. I brought
out the KSR to see if its line feed mechanism looked like the docs.
The h-plate in the KSR was already out as a result of its previous
misadventures. Pulling the cables to the call control unit was easy
and I lifted out the KSR typing unit. Its line feed mechanism seemed
to match the docs. As I looked at it, I realized that it didn't seem
to be damaged in any way. I hand turned the motor a few revolutions
and everything seemed OK. I decided I would give it a try, installed
in the ASR. I spent a little while, giving it the same cleaning I
gave the ASR typing unit. One interesting "tidbit" about this typing
unit is that, sometime in its past, it clearly "ate" a ribbon. There
were bits of shredded ribbon all through it. My hands were black.
To make a long story short, the KSR typing unit worked perfectly in
the ASR, bell, line feed and all. During the test, I didn't reconnect
the reader to the call control unit because the reader control mechanism
is part of the ASR typing unit and I was concerned that the reader might
"run wild". So now I'm looking at the docs, wondering how hard it would
be to transfer the punch and reader control over to the KSR typing unit.
The punch seemed like it would be almost trivial. It was, _almost_. The
punch essentially just bolts onto the side of the typing unit. There are
eight small levers that control which holes are punched and there is a
large lever that provides the "power". The small levers simply drop into
place, connecting with push rods in the typing unit. The large lever
connects to a rotating shaft in the typing unit. Here's where the trick is.
The lever connects to the shaft via a sleeve. The shaft has holes all the
way through it, the sleeve has holes on both sides and screws go all the
way through the sleeve and the shaft. There is almost no play in the
connection... almost. I took out the KSR typing unit and transferred the
punch mechanism to it.
I put the KSR typing unit back in, threaded in some tape and tried it.
Shredded
tape. What??? Everything sure looked OK. The "bit" levers looked like
they were all moving correctly, the large lever seemed to be going through
its motions. I spent a long time watching it. Finally, I tried putting it
back on the ASR typing unit. Shredded tape. WHAT!!! What could possibly
have changed? Maybe I attached the sleeve for the large lever to the wrong
holes? No, those are the only holes in the shaft. That's when I noticed
that little bit of play. Just three or four degrees. That couldn't
possibly make any difference, could it? I held the play all the way
clockwise
and tightened the sleeve screws. Shredded tape. I loosened up the sleeve,
held the play all the way counter-clockwise and retightened. Perfect! I
moved the punch back to the KSR typing unit and, with my new knowledge, got
it attached and working.
After the punch experience, I spent a very long taking exact measurements of
the reader control mechanism that needed to be moved to the KSR typing unit.
It is a complicated little assembly, consisting of a cam controlled lever
that moves based on whether a solenoid is energized and in turn opens and
closes a switch as the cam rotates. It looked like the location tolerances
of the whole thing would be about a sixteenth of an inch. There is a spring
that attaches to the lever and keeps it pressed tight against the cam. I
transferred the mechanism. Attaching the spring turned out to be the
hardest
part of the whole job. The lever end of the spring is "permanently"
attached,
but the other end has to thread through a tight space and hook over a small
pin that is part of the typing unit frame. I fooled with it for more than
an
hour. What finally worked was to tie some plastic fishing line to the end
of
the spring, guide the line to the pin and use the line to stretch the spring
over to the pin. I used a piece of "coat hanger" wire to coax the loop at
the
end of the spring over the pin and then finally reached in with a long thin
scalpel to cut the line and pull it out.
"There's the easy part done," I said to myself. I figured I would spend the
rest of the day getting the lever, solenoid and switch lined up correctly.
I put the KSR... well, now it was really the ASR, typing unit back in and
fired it up. The bit gods, or maybe Rube Goldberg himself, smiled upon me.
It worked the first time.
Now to talk to the world. I don't have anything that is currently
configured
to "talk" current loop but I have a current loop to RS-232 converter. I'll
spare you the details of frustratingly confusing documents that aren't clear
about which wire pairs the 33 is sending on and which it is receiving on,
but
I will mention that the current loop to RS-232 converter is pretty old and
populated with tantalum capacitors. Guess what caught fire? Fortunately,
B&B
publishes the schematics for the converter on the web. They also publish a
nice little document that shows how to wire up a 20ma current source for the
loop. In case you didn't look before, the pictures are here:
http://wsudbrink.dyndns.org:8080/images/teletype/
P1010006 and P1010007 show the converter and the current source, built in
an old RS-232 patch box. The pin sockets had been previously damaged, so I
removed them and soldered the circuit directly to the PC board in the patch
box. Oh, the external power connector on the RS-232 converter melted when
the caps burned, so the patch box also supplies power to the converter.
But that was it for the problems. The 33 now talks to itself perfectly in
local mode and talks to the world over the RS-232 converter. I've hooked
it up to one of my IMSAIs and to my Altair 680.
So, that's about it, the end of an almost ten year "saga". What's left?
Two things, one big but minor and one small but rather major. The big
minor thing is the back panel to the stand. It's missing, it's big, but
you can't see it unless you pull the unit away from the wall and walk around
back. Its absence doesn't seem to hurt anything and I'm not even sure the
unit originally had one as there are no scuffs or scratches where you would
expect if one had been installed. Now, the small major thing is the small
screw (Teletype part number TP183112) that holds the paper tape reader cover
in place. It is physically small, but it is major because the cover bounces
around during normal operation without it. It seems to be a rather special
screw, more like a threaded rod. If I can't get an original, I will
probably
try to fabricate one myself.
Oh, the last thing is the KSR unit. It is partially operating, no bell or
line feed and under the wrong cover. I'm going to hang on to it for spares
if anything in the ASR breaks. I guess I really lucked out in my recent
restoration. I didn't have to dig deeply into the keyboard or the typing
units... knock on wood, I can't imagine what horrors of finely tuned springs
and levers lurk in them :-).
I hope you have enjoyed reading this,
Bill Sudbrink, January 2011
_Teletype_Tales_
Part 2 - Waiting For Another Day
For ten years (Really? Ten? Well, more than nine.) the two teletypes
have sat in a corner of my basement. From time to time, I made
requests (public and private) for help, but nothing I could offer
(mostly unlimited pizza and beer) could entice anyone knowledgeable
to come give me a hand. That's not to say that no progress was made
however.
Most of the progress came in the form of further acquisitions. The
first was a nice shiny chad bin. There was a chad bin with the ASR
when I got it, but the plastic had degraded to an opaque milky yellow
and the "lip" that is supposed to hold it in place had broken off and
been lost. When I got the ASR, the bin was being held in place with
masking tape. The "new" bin is whole and crystal clear. It has just
the slightest golden tint to betray its age.
I also went to work getting original prints of all of the model 33
documentation. I got them in bits and pieces over the years, some
bought, some gifts, a single section here, a collection there. I'm
now confident that I have a complete set, in fact, I think I've ended
up with two complete sets and three copies of a few of the sections.
The best part came on Father's Day of 2002. A greenkeyer pointed me
to a shop that had some "new old stock" model 33 parts. The prices
weren't too bad and my wife agreed to let me get what they had as my
Father's Day present. They didn't have any KSR covers, but they had
a complete ASR cover, brand new, punch, reader, top cover, front metal
nameplate and mode select knob. Pictures here:
http://wsudbrink.dyndns.org:8080/images/teletype/
The P53* pictures are before installation, the P10* pictures are
installed. There are also pictures of my recent work, described in
part 3. I unscrewed the reader and punch covers from the old cover
and put that on the KSR. Better than nothing.
I made occasional attempts to further clean and lubricate the ASR,
still afraid to really take it apart. I did manage to get the carriage
to move somewhat but not really well. The punch seemed to work, punching
values that matched whatever it printed. It would punch a line feed, but
the paper wouldn't budge. It would also punch a control-G but the bell
would not ring. I never made any attempt to hook up the current loop.
Everything I did was in local mode.
End of part 2.
_Teletype_Tales_
Warning, this is rather long and in three parts. If you are not
interested in TTYs, just skip this and the next two emails.
Part 1 - Ancient History
My very first interaction with a computer, in 1976, was via an
ASR33 teletype. I continued to frequently use ASR33s for the
next several years. A good friend of mine actually owned one.
Consequently, I have a definite nostalgia for them and wanted to
add one to my collection for a long time.
I finally acquired one in December of 2001. Actually, I got two
model 33 teletypes, an ASR and a KSR. They came from a HAM radio
operator. The ASR is on a floor stand and the KSR is a tabletop
unit. The ASR had been well used. It was dirty, inside and out,
full of dog hair, bug bits and even some broken light bulb glass.
There was "goop" all over that I took to be coagulated lubricant
but it turned out to be degraded foam rubber (but that part of the
story comes later). The cover was yellowed with some cracks here
and there. The KSR wasn't much better even though it had been
stored in a box. As a matter of fact, it was worse because it had
been moved around in the box but the shipping screws were not in
place. This allowed the typing unit which is "free floating" to
shift around and smash the plastic cover to bits.
When I got them home, I immediately put the KSR away for "another day"
under the assumption that it was badly damaged. I tried to carefully
clean as much of the crud out of the ASR as I could without actually
taking anything apart other than taking the cover off.
I should point out here that, while I'm not bothered by the complexity
of electronic circuits, I find mechanical complexity (lots of levers,
gears, cogs and the like) a bit intimidating.
After the cleaning, I hand turned the motor a few revolutions. It
turned freely, so I went ahead and plugged it in and switched it on
to local. The motor hummed nicely, there was no grinding or other
bad noises. The hammer pad had been replaced with a plastic faucet
washer, held in place with shrink tube. It seemed secure, so I slid
some paper in and pressed a few keys. It was clearly trying to do
something but it was definitely not right. The hammer was striking
the type cylinder but the carriage was not moving. Moving the paper
around, you could see that sometimes the struck character corresponded
to the pressed key, sometimes not. I asked for help on both cctalk
and greenkeys (I really wanted to try to get someone to come "on site"
and work on it with me) but didn't get anything very useful. Sadly,
I put the ASR away for "another day".
End of part 1.
I want to install DECnet on my MicroVAX II running MicroVMS 4.6. I know that
I can do this by copying the relevant files from a full-fat version of the
VMS 4.6 install tape (which I have). The thing is that I would like to do it
"properly" if at all possible by using the actual optional DECnet product
for MicroVMS. Does anyone have this?
Thanks
Rob
Manx is an online catalog of computer documentation.
The new manx is up for beta testing here: <http://manx.classiccmp.org>
Paul Williams created manx as a series of perl scripts and a database
of online computer manuals. Paul has graciously provided us with a
copy of the data from the database from which I reverse engineered a
compatible implementation in PHP. Later, Paul provided me with the
perl scripts which I used as a referene for finishing off the PHP
implementation.
The new manx is an open source project hosted at <http://manx.codeplex.com>.
Please use the issue tracker on codeplex to report any problems you
find with this new manx. You can also browse the existing issues in
the tracker to see the planned enhancements. The main planned
enhancement to come is supporting users and roles to allow community
contributions to the database so that new additions don't have to go
through a single person.
Thanks to Paul Williams for providing the database dumps and scripts
and Jay West for hosting the finished application.
--
"The Direct3D Graphics Pipeline" -- DirectX 9 draft available for download
<http://legalizeadulthood.wordpress.com/the-direct3d-graphics-pipeline/>
Legalize Adulthood! <http://legalizeadulthood.wordpress.com>
