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Kaypro "Profile" Magazines free+postage from 95006

by shumaker＠att.net

available for free + postage from 95006: several partial years of the KayPro focus magazine "Profiles": Dec/Jan 85 ?Dec 85 (full year) Jan-Mar 86; Jul 86 Jun ?Jul 87; Sep ? Dec 87 Jan ? May 88 Note that these issues are all available as scanned docs (or will be shortly) on Gene Buckle's site at www.retroarchive.org. But if you gotta have an original.... I figured I'd offer them here before they get recycled. mags are in good shape. steve

15 years, 6 months

Bill's PDP-11/34A

by bqt＠softjar.se

On 2010-11-03 18:00, Ethan Dicks<ethan.dicks at gmail.com> wrote: > On 11/3/10, B Degnan<billdeg at degnanco.com> wrote: >> > Here are pictures from the system as I first got it, if it helps with >> > the card order/comparison purposes. Note that some cards are not >> > installed in the backplane. >> > http://vintagecomputer.net/digital/pdp11-34a/before/ > Do you have packs for your RL01 drives? Hopefully the packs were > removed and the heads locked for transport. Good point. There is a transport lock for RL drivers, that should be in place when transported, and which should be remembered to be moved out of the way when used. > An 11/34 w/RL01 is a nice little RT-11 system, though it'd be a bit > cramped for 2.9BSD (both in terms of disk and RAM). You could > probably also run an older version of RSX-11/M on it too. I think we > ran something around RSX-11/M 4.0 or 4.1 on ours in the mid-1980s. You can always get more disk. Easiest would just be an upgrade to RL02 drives... Also, current RSX-11M would also be happy on that machine, assuming he has the full 256K of memory. Once more possibly disk space being an issue, though. Johnny -- Johnny Billquist || "I'm on a bus || on a psychedelic trip email: bqt at softjar.se || Reading murder books pdp is alive! || tryin' to stay hip" - B. Idol

15 years, 6 months

PDP-11 firsts?

by bqt＠softjar.se

On 2010-11-01 00:02, ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk (Tony Duell) wrote: >> > On 2010-10-30 01:12,ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk (Tony Duell) wrote: >> > >>> > > >>>>> > >> > I have not seen anyone comment any of the other things I listed as >>>>> > >> > possible firsts on the PDP-11. >>>>> > >> > Can anyone come up with an earlier machine that used condition codes? >>>>> > >> > How about general registers with addressing modes, which is totally >>>>> > >> > orthogonal? How about having the PC as a general register? >>> > > The Philips P800 series has the PC as a general register (register 0). >> > >> > Could you use it like any other register? > There were some restrictions. I don't think you could shift it (at least > ont on the P850). But for many instructions it was just another register. Cool. So you could add to it, index by it, and so on? >>> > > There are 16 registers, some instructions can only use the first 8, others >>> > > can use all 16. Addressing modes (simpler than the PDP11, I admit) are >>> > > pretty much orthogonal. >> > >> > Sounds like the registers were atleast not as orthogonally used as on a >> > PDP-11. If an instruction could take a register, it could take any >> > register. And all addressing modes are valid (well, almost) anywhere. > I think all P800 instructions that had addressing modes could use any > addressing mode. Any instruction with 4-bit register fields could use any > register. Any instruction with a 3 bit register field could use any of > the first 8 registers. And IIRC, like the PDP11, the addressing modes > commonly known as 'immediate' and 'absolute' were a couple of the other > addressing modes with the register specified as 0 (=PC, of course). > > I guess the P800 wasn't totally ortogonal but it was a lot more > orthogonal than many other machines. Indeed sounds nice. When did the machine appear? >>> > > What do you mean by condition codes here? >> > >> > The four low bits of PSW. > Err... I don;t think that's helpful. Quite a lot of machines with a > status register have a 'low 4 bits' of it:-). But that doens't make them > condition codes. Similarly uf you hapopen to implement the same > functionality using other bits of a status registers, doesn't that make > them condition codes? > > What I was asking was what fucntionality do you require of these > condtiion codes other than there being conditional jumps on carry, zero, etc? Sorry. I was just being lazy, and trying to explain condition codes by referring to what they are on the PDP-11. To try and be more specific then: condition codes are bits that are set/reset as a result of operations performed by the processed, and upon which you can the make conditional branches/jumps on. As opposed to, for example, a PDP-10, where you instead encoded the condition within the instruction, along with a register to test upon. Johnny -- Johnny Billquist || "I'm on a bus || on a psychedelic trip email: bqt at softjar.se || Reading murder books pdp is alive! || tryin' to stay hip" - B. Idol

15 years, 6 months

PDP 11 Core Memory - H214 Memory Stack

by thomas.gardner＠sbcglobal.net

There are several pictures of an 8 KiWord H214 Memory Stack posted on the Internet, for example, see http://www.conservatique.com/_/rsrc/1251146207239/pdp/pdp-1105/H214-c... <http://www.google.com/url?sa=D&q=http://www.conservatique.com/_/rsrc/125114 6207239/pdp/pdp-1105/H214-core-plane%3Fheight%3D167%26width%3D200&usg=AFQjCN GgCgWQk-XDZ2griejhV44yO10CAQ> At least one DEC manual describes the H214 as having "16 memory mats arranged in a planar pattern" but the photo referenced above (and many others) show 20 memory mats arranged in a two x ten planar pattern. Two by ten is a very strange array for a machine that has a 16 bit word or 18 bits in one with the byte parity option. Can anyone explain what is going on? Tom Note this is also posted to alt.sys.pdp11 <http://groups.google.com/group/alt.sys.pdp11>

15 years, 6 months

68K

by bqt＠softjar.se

On 2010-11-01 18:00, Ethan Dicks<ethan.dicks at gmail.com> wrote: > On Sat, Oct 30, 2010 at 6:51 AM, Johnny Billquist<bqt at softjar.se> wrote: >> > On 2010-10-30 01:12, Ethan Dicks<ethan.dicks at gmail.com> wrote: >>> >> I know it works well enough in early Sun workstations and the AT&T >>> >> Unix PC (3B1/7300), but I have no knowledge of any required >>> >> workarounds due to possible bugs. >> > >> > Yes, the 68010 worked fine with demand paging. The 68000 did not. >> > Neither of them implemented instructions restarts, though. As noted below, >> > the 68010 did instuction suspension instead. > Yes. I was previously unaware of the distinction but did know what > the 68000 could not do that the 68010 could. We were at the same level, then. :-) >> > The "interesting" workarounds that I've hear of are actually 68000-related... >> > Using their own designed MMU (there were none from Motorola for the 68000), > What about the 68451? (we had one in a prototype product design in > 1984/1985 that never made it to market) > > It wasn't terribly popular, but it did exist. Tried to look it up on the net, and I'm unsure if it really was usable on the 68K. It would appear that it did hit the market, and if you had a 68010 in combination with this chip, you could implement virtual memory, since you could recover from page faults. However, there were also third party MMUs competing with the Motorola chip, which might explain why it was rather uncommon. Performance wise, the 68010 in combination with the 68451 appear to not have been that impressive. >> > and a second CPU, Apollo made the primary CPU stall on a page fault, and the >> > secondady CPU wake up. The secondary CPU could then do a page in... > That sounds like the design of the Perkin-Elmer workstation I have - > two 68000s, one for running the OS, one for paging. I wouldn't be surprised to learn that SUN did something similar as well... Johnny -- Johnny Billquist || "I'm on a bus || on a psychedelic trip email: bqt at softjar.se || Reading murder books pdp is alive! || tryin' to stay hip" - B. Idol

15 years, 6 months

Moving Home - repeat

by williams.dan＠gmail.com

Hi, I still have : An Octane Sun Blade 2000 Dell Itanium blade (Heavy) 2 x Dual machine blade sparc machines I hate to do this but if they are not claimed by Monday they will have to be thrown out. I have also found a processor card still in it it's box for a Vax 4000/500 if anyone is interested. Dan

15 years, 6 months

Early Fairchild Sentry scrapped, early TTL IC's worth preserving ?

by jdr_use＠bluewin.ch

The remains ( mostly just the PCB's ) from an early Fairchild Sentry test system were junked today. The PCB's are brimming with early ( 1974 datacodes ) Fairchild TTL ic's. ( (9xxx and 93xx ) Also ECL of course, but I don't do that ! Any worth looking for, in particular w.r.t. to keeping old PDP's running ? Jos Dreesen

15 years, 6 months

SparcStation Voyager framebuffer problem

by IanK＠vulcan.com

I posted not too long ago looking for a framebuffer driver that seemed to be missing from the Solaris distributions I have for my Voyager. Well, I finally opened up the machine and found something quite unexpected. I had assumed (as had others, according to statements) that the color and monochrome components (screen and framebuffer) would be physically incompatible, so it would be impossible to mix and match. *Wrong!* In fact, I found I have a color framebuffer, which was talking to the monochrome screen. What's really strange is that OpenBoot seems to have created a new name - bwthree - to describe the framebuffer! I don't suppose anyone has a monochrome framebuffer with which you might be willing to part company? Or perhaps a color screen? -- Ian UNIX is user friendly. It's just selective about who its friends are. Ian S. King, Sr. Vintage Systems Engineer Vulcan, Inc. http://www.livingcomputermuseum.org

15 years, 6 months

Fwd: Ersatz-11 V6.0 PDP-11 emulator

by pat＠computer-refuge.org

Finally, you can run a PDP-11 on OS/2, even if you can't run OS/2 on your PDP-11. ---------- Forwarded Message ---------- Subject: Ersatz-11 V6.0 PDP-11 emulator Date: Wednesday 03 November 2010 From: John Wilson <wilson at dbit.com> To: Info-PDP11 at dbit.com ... - OS/2 version. "Finally!" I hear you say. OK I know there isn't much overlap between the OS/2 crowd and PDP-11 folks, or between the OS/2 crowd and anyone, really -- but *I* like it better than Windows, so there. YOU don't have to use it! OK OK, just let me breathe. -- Purdue University Research Computing --- http://www.rcac.purdue.edu/ The Computer Refuge --- http://computer-refuge.org

15 years, 6 months

Information about Tektronix 4107A/4109A graphic terminals

by dm561＠torfree.net

Date: Wed, 3 Nov 2010 13:52:40 -0400 From: David Ryskalczyk <d235j.1 at gmail.com> Subject: Re: Information about Tektronix 4107A/4109A graphic terminals > A little OT but speaking of vintage Tek: I have a bunch of their Service > Scope 'magazines' from the late 60's; can I assume that these exist > elsewhere and I can dispose of them if and when? > > mike > Have you checked BAMA? http://bama.edebris.com/manuals/ I'd offer to scan them (I have an Epson GT-15000 scanner with ADF) but an currently overloaded with DEC documentation to do. --Dave ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Didn't see anything there, but it looks like they're available on CD, so no sweat. Going to read 'em first anyway before I throw 'em out; some still-relevant interesting tips in those old magazines. mike

15 years, 6 months

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