test-drb

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101090 discussions

by legalize＠xmission.com

Picked up an HP-85 the other day, including the HP7470A plotter, GPIB interface for the plotter, ROM library with a couple ROMs, 16K memory expansion, carrying case, manuals, and DC100 tapes. The thing is in very good physical condition, obviously having been cared for by its previous owner. I bought it from the owner's ex-wife for $50. Pics: <http://picasaweb.google.com/legalize.slc/HP85> -- "The Direct3D Graphics Pipeline" -- DirectX 9 draft available for download <http://legalizeadulthood.wordpress.com/the-direct3d-graphics-pipeline/> Legalize Adulthood! <http://legalizeadulthood.wordpress.com>

15 years, 5 months

Service bureaus (Was: Tek 4051 firmware listing

by jonas＠otter.se

On Sat, 18 Dec 2010 19:10:13 +0000 (GMT), Tony Duell wrote: >> UofO teaches mostly football, it seems. It's been suggested that it >> be renamed Phil Knight University. Last year construction was >> finished on an academic center for athletes (big glass cube). Now, > ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ Isn't that a >contradiction in terms? Now now, Tony, you are being unfair. I don't know about those Americans who play that game where they run around in padded suits and helmets, wrestling each other to the ground (I think they call it football for some reason), but not a few European athletes are intelligent people who do very well in ordinary careers when their athletic career is over. And you do know of course that Dolph Lundgren has a master's degree in chemistry? And he has studied at MIT... Brawn doesn't preclude brains. /Jonas

15 years, 5 months

PDP-11/45 power cords

by wdonzelli＠gmail.com

This past Saturday at the Retro Computing Society's mill space we took a good hard look at a PDP-11/45, with hopes to get it running. It is in pretty good shape, and has been upgraded quite a few times over its career running some chem lab equipment. We did, however, find that pretty much every line power cable in the system had started to decay (did DEC buy a bad batch of cords?). They are covered in extremely sticky goo, and every solvent we threw at it would not clean the cords up. I think the cords need to just be replaced., as clearly they have started something that can not be good. So...RCS is looking for official DEC 120 VAC 14-3 power cords with the early/mid 70s type molded-in power connectors, in nice condition, of course. Do you have some DECjunk with these power cords? We are interested (and will make it worth your while) if you can disconnect them - decently long lengths would be nice. Let me know of list. Thanks! -- Will

15 years, 5 months

DiscFerret: speed-ups, API improvements and a mailing list

by classiccmp＠philpem.me.uk

Hi guys, I've spent the past two days working on the Python API and Firmware for the DiscFerret. This work has resulted in a few enhancements... Firstly, I've made the RAM access routines a heck of a lot faster. How much faster? About SEVEN TIMES. The 001A firmware can access RAM at about 30Kbytes per second (peak is ~31KiB/sec during a RAM read). Upgrade to Firmware 001B, and this increases to ~220 KiB/sec, or very close to the theoretical limit of the Microchip USB engine (which is about 250KiB/sec). I'm looking for other ways to boost the transfer rate, but I think this is as far as it's going to go. To put this in perspective, if we assume that it takes one second to read a disc track, and that we get 128Kbytes of data from that read... 80 tracks double-sided = 160 tracks 160 * 128 = 20,480 KiB = 20MiB 20480 / 220 = 93 seconds to transfer the data (only!) Disc rotates at 300RPM. 60 seconds / 300RPM = 0.2 seconds per revolution If we wait for the second index pulse before reading, that's a maximum wait of 0.4 seconds, plus 0.2 seconds to read each track = 0.6 seconds per track, excluding seek 0.6 * 160 = 96 seconds 96 seconds + 93 seconds = 189 seconds... or three minutes and nine seconds. If you reduce the clock rate from 80MHz to 40MHz, that halves the amount of data which needs to be transferred, thus bringing the time down to 141 seconds, or two minutes and twenty-one seconds. Did I mention that -- at full speed -- this is about 30 seconds faster than the SPS Kryoflux analyser? If you're happy with Catweasel-level accuracy (~20MHz acq frequency), then you can get this down to 117 seconds... a shade under two minutes per disc. Admittedly, to get this speed-up, you need to reflash the firmware -- short the BOOT jumper, plug in the power cable and USB, then use mphidflash to upgrade the firmware. Unplug the cables, remove the jumper, then plug the USB and power cables back in. Simple! Next up -- the Python API now handles RAM access chunking. Tell it to read 512K of data, and it'll run off and figure out how many READ commands need to be sent, and how to read those bytes from the hardware in the fastest way possible (i.e. how many bytes it can stuff in each packet). It's also fully backwards compatible with the 1A firmware, although you'll hit the 30KiB/sec speed limit... I've also set up a mailing list -- it's open-access, sign up and you can post, or you can skim the list archives as much as you please. I'll be posting news about software updates, answering questions, and helping out with hardware issues. The mailing list homepage is: http://mail.discferret.com/mailman/listinfo/discferret-l_discferret.com If for some reason you don't like the Mailman web interface (or it refuses to play nice), you can also subscribe to the list by sending an email to discferret-l-request at discferret.com with the subject "subscribe" (no quotes). I'll be posting a slightly longer message there in a few minutes detailing exactly what you need to do to upgrade a Release 1A DiscFerret to Release 1B, including a new firmware HEX file. I should probably turn the DiscFerret site into a semi-closed Wiki (some pages protected, others open, "if you're on the mailing list you can edit the Wiki"), though that's a job for later... I'm also toying with the idea of offloading data separation onto the DiscFerret FPGA, meaning that you'd be able to program the data separator, then just grab a stream of clock and data bits instead of the timing stream. Less effort if all you want is an ADF file, and less data to transfer too... Enjoy! -- Phil. classiccmp at philpem.me.uk http://www.philpem.me.uk/

15 years, 5 months

Sports! .. and with an on-topic association.

by dm561＠torfree.net

Date: Tue, 21 Dec 2010 15:45:29 -0600 From: John Foust <jfoust at threedee.com> Subject: Re: Sports! .. and with an on-topic association. At 01:23 PM 12/21/2010, Tony Duell wrote: >A quick look at the picture of me on the recent HPCC conference page >(linked from http://www.hpcc.org/ [2]) will, I think indicate that I am >not the wort of person to go running... Hmm. Your shirt is untucked in some places, tucked in others. - John ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Surely a sign of true genius! But he needs a pocket protector; anybody have a spare they could send him? mike

15 years, 5 months

Sports! .. and with an on-topic association.

by dm561＠torfree.net

Date: Tue, 21 Dec 2010 15:16:53 -0500 From: "Teo Zenios" <teoz at neo.rr.com> Subject: Re: Service bureaus (Was: Tek 4051 firmware listing ----- Original Message ----- From: "Tony Duell" <ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk> To: <cctalk at classiccmp.org> Sent: Tuesday, December 21, 2010 2:27 PM Subject: Re: Service bureaus (Was: Tek 4051 firmware listing >> > >> > Perhps you could explain how human knowledge is advanced by palying >> > baseball (or any other similar sport). >> > >> > -tony >> >> Fixing and preventing sports related injuries. Pro athletes tend to get >> hurt > > Ah, so sports lead to cures for injuries that you wouldn't get if you > didn't take part in sports. I can think of a much simpler way to avoid > such injuries, which is, of course, the method I use. > Yea like nobody ever pulled a muscle, broke a leg, dislocated a shoulder, got a concussion outside of sports. People have been known to get major injuries just getting out of the bathtub (waiting on your reply about how you don't wash either). +++++++++++++ REPLY: +++++++++++++++++++++++++++ ?? I think perhaps your irony/sarcasm detector is malfunctioning... m

15 years, 5 months

Uncommon: Intel Paragon on iOffer

by shoppa＠trailing-edge.com

Pontus wrote: > On Tue, Dec 21, 2010 at 11:16:16PM -0500, Tim Shoppa wrote: >> That said, it does not strike me as an especially "something to be >> run at home" machine. Those who want to do this at home are already doing >> BOINC with machines 2 decades newer or they have their own Beowulf cluster. >> This is the fickle world of parallel supercomputing. > I think you are on the wrong list Tim :D Speed isn't really the reason. I was a user of both the Delta and a Paragon when they were new. Speed really was the reason! There was very little cute or affecting about the machines. The OS and Compilers sucked. (OK, not a lot worse than the suckiness of some others at the time). Parallelizing code that wasn't easily parallelized, a lot of folks wasted time with that. But for the problems in the sweet spot, wow, speed was ENTIRELY the reason. Knowing that I was using one of the fastest "machines" on earth (although really a farm of many machines) was in itself exhilirating. Bringing back that exhiliration by running the same hardware that was new 20 years ago, but today? It's just not the same. Again, the fickle world of parallel supercomputing. These are machines that are fine for displaying in museums, they were truly the pinnacle of parallel supercomputing for a couple years. I'm very happy that CHM has examples of each. But not at home :-). Tim.

15 years, 5 months

Need help with Project Northstar/Data I/O System-19/ADM Terminals (dwight elvey)

by trebor77＠execpc.com

> Message: 10 Date: Mon, 20 Dec 2010 20:50:36 -0800 > From: dwight elvey <dkelvey at hotmail.com> > Subject: RE: Need help with Project Northstar/Data I/O System-19/ADM, > Terminals (dwight elvey) >>>> Turns out that the Problem is that the Data I/O System-19 I am using doesn't want to load the Hex file as INTEL. It will only load a File if it is flagged as BINARY and that doesn't give a proper code Image. I am trying to get a fellow to see if his System-19 will load the file and burn the 2708 Properly then I can get mine Fixed I HOPE. >>>> I also have been Re-Erasing the EPROMs as I go along. >>>> Bob > Hi > What is the command sequence that you are using with the Data IO Sys-19 > to get it to understand Intel Hex? > Dwight Dwight; I have been using a program called PL [Version 26 & 34] that I downloaded from Magnetics & Memories of Philadelphia. It is driven by a Configuration file that can be Setup for the Device Type and File type and Baud Rate, etc. I am in contact with Al Marin of M & M and he is looking in on the Problem, My Latest attempt was to EDIT out a Intel Hex file to make it PURE Binary but that doesn't want to load properly either. I burnt a Prom with a few additional lines of Code that I had to shrink as it didn't match the input file when I load RAM from the device and created a File from it. But alas even that did not perform as it should on the N*. I could not see the OUT [6, 2, 3] instructions being executed the way the do with the Original 2708. If I go back to the 2708 that Andrew L Burnt for me the Code performs in accordance with the Listing. Bob

15 years, 5 months

Swap a Radio Shack Pocket Computer for a TI-85 calculator manual?

by dbetz＠xlisper.com

Anyone interested in this swap? I just recently got a TI-85 calculator thinking that I had a manual for it already. It seems that somewhere along the line I decided that I didn't really need the manual anymore so I got rid of it. So, I now have a calculator with no manual. Anyone have an extra TI-85 manual they'd like to trade for a Radio Shack Pocket Computer with manual?

15 years, 5 months

Another "Commodore" PC ... with a twist

by evan＠snarc.net

This time they made it LOOK like a real Commodore: http://www.commodoreusa.net/CUSA_C64.aspx. Neat, but unfortunately its only support for vintage operation is emulator software. It needs a real C64 inside, a la Jeri E.'s projects.

15 years, 5 months

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