Ethan O'Toole wrote:
> We owe a ton of props to the Internet Archive. While they might not
have
> everything, they have a glimpse into the early days of the internet
and
> have been at it since early on.
Here here. I very much second Ethan's sentiments regarding the
Internet Archive.
It's a daunting effort to scrape and store all that information.
Fortunately, deduplication and compression technologies have come a
long way, and long-term, online storage of large amounts of data
processed as such has become much less expensive due to the huge
decreases in the cost-per-bit of spinning rust.
Despite all of that, it's still a lot to store, and even with these
technologies, there are costs involved for staffing, servers, as well as
continually adding storage.
Any and all support the Internet Archive can be given is well-deserved,
in my opinion.
Shameless plug:
I make regular donations to the Internet Archive, and right now, they
are have a 2-to-1 matching gift campaign going on due to pledges from
corporate and institutional donors, so if you possibly can make a
donation, head over to https://archive.org and give help support this
valuable /free/ resource. I just made a $25 donation myself. Every
little bit helps.
Best wishes for a happy and safe Thanksgiving holiday to all,
-Rick
--
Rick Bensene
The Old Calculator Museum
http://oldcalculatormuseum.com
Beavercreek, Oregon USA
Hi, made a number of updates to the sale pages on my site, and brought
back a copy of my commercial site (good for downloads).
Unfortunately I screwed up the .html pages and lost some links.
Should all me fixed now.
Added an FAQ some more parts (eg: 8008 CPI for MOD8), some sample
pricing (please see FAQ before complaining).
If you've looked at the site before, do refresh each page as you go to
it as many browers cache page and will happily show you the old one.
http://www.classiccmp.org/dunfield/sale/index.htm
Dave
All,
I've recently scratched a curiosity itch on what it would take to build
a multi-port Twin-Ax to WiFi bridge. The electrical interface is easy
enough and ESP32s are cheap. So I built a bridge PCB-to-FPGA adapter
and connected my System/36 (5362), an InfoWindow II (address 0 and 1),
and my board during IPL and sign-on to see what I could sniff. The
result is here:
https://www.retrotronics.org/tmp/s36_ipl_twinax_decode_30nov19.zip
I get occasional decode errors called out with 'BAD FRAME'. The [SPF]
next to bytes mean bad start bit (0), parity error, or non-zero fill
bytes respectively. And I occasionally get a sync pattern followed by
either illegal Manchester transitions or return to idle without any
bytes (and thus no address) - the zero frames in the log.
My main question is I need help on the next step. For a brief moment, I
was under the impression SNA LU6 or LU7 ran on top of the Twin-Ax line
layer. But that doesn't appear to be the case. I'm not sure it's
direct 5250 either. Can anyone familiar with IBM-Midrange-World take a
look at the decode and point me to the next protocol layer up the stack?
Even the slightest breadcrumbs would be appreciated as I know very
little about the Midrange world.
Additionally if anyone is familiar with the wire-level and could assist
on some of the framing errors, that would help as well. The twin-ax
cables are less than 2m each so the line should be 100% clean. The
problems are likely something I am doing wrong in the interpreter.
Thanks,
-Alan Hightower
Greetings
I think the time has come for me to part with my collection of PC 9821
hardware. It has deteriorated over time, but I think it all still works. I
have two laptops and a desktop system. I used it to test FreeBSD/pc98 for
years, but support was dropped a few years ago and I have no further need
for it. It's a bit oddball for here, perhaps, but I don't want to just
scrap it all... Anybody interested?
Warner
I am continuing to clean out stuff from my office and today's items are
printed copies of the USENIX publications Computing Systems (early 90s)
and ;login: (late 90s). The content is available online, but some people
like the printed versions.
I prefer to send them all out in one lot rather than send them out
one-at-a-time.
They are located in the Seattle area. As far as shipping, I think they
would all fit in a large flat-rate priority mail box.
alan
Many years ago I cut the faceplate off an HP display exhibiting serious
decay of the sealant between the faceplate and the CRT itself, cleaned
everything up, then reattached the plate just with a bead of sealant around
the perimeter (where it wouldn't be seen once the bezel was back on).
Short of outright replacing the CRT with one of the same type, is that
still accepted practice - or in the years since has someone worked out a
way of applying new sealant across the entire face without getting air
trapped in there, thereby maintaining the structural integrity of the original?
cheers
Jules
I am looking for the elusive grid server software disks, I would really like to put this thing online
I know of the disks that were on the yahoo grid group, but they were missing the all important utilities disk 2 , but worse than that they are for a tempest server, which unfortunately won't run the communications card on a regular server.
I know there is a copy out there, as i watched the disks slip through my fingers a couple of yeas ago on ebay with a 2701 server drive.
The search continues........
It's not really classic (although it does try to pretend to be :-)
but does anyone here do anything with the P118 SBC? I am trying to
get 8" disks running on it but I am seeing some rather strange behavior.
bill
Hi friends,
In the continuing saga of building a CP/M system with Pro-Log cards housed
in a Heathkit dual 8? floppy drive cabinet
I recently acquired a Pro-Log 7387 floppy disk controller card w/ manuals.
The 8272 chip on the card was fried (either before I got it, or by me doing
something stupid early on once I had acquired it), and so I replaced the
chip with another pulled from a 8-bit ISA floppy controller. Now I am
getting some more reasonable replies out of the card.
Now I'm stuck with "Missing Address Mark" errors, no matter if I'm using a
real 8" floppy drive (8MHz FDC clock, appropriate settings in all the
software) or a GoTek floppy emulator (4MHz FDC clock, 720KB settings on the
GoTek & Floppy Disk Utility).
I can see the read data & read window lines working as I'd expect, so I'm
fairly confident that the read data separator and related logic is OK (I
even replaced the 74ls74 read data separator with no effect).
What am I missing that would cause a 8272 to always return Missing Address
Mark?
I'm using RomWBW, with the included FDU utility patched to talk to the FDC
at the correct addresses, and from the traces I've captured it appears that
side of things is working correct. I'm hoping someone out there has
experience troubleshooting floppy controllers?and can give me some pointers.
-David
------ Trace with GoTek running FlashFloppy and emulating a 720KB drive
follows -------
RetroBrew HBIOS v2.9.1-pre.5, 2019-11-23
PROLOG Z80 @ 3.686MHz
0 MEM W/S, 1 I/O W/S, INT MODE 1
512KB ROM, 2048KB RAM
SIO0: IO=0xF5 SIO MODE=9600,8,N,1
SIO1: IO=0xF7 SIO MODE=9600,8,N,1
MD: UNITS=2 ROMDISK=384KB RAMDISK=1920KB
FD: IO=0xC4 UNITS=2
Unit Device Type Capacity/Mode
---------- ---------- ---------------- --------------------
Disk 0 MD1: RAM Disk 1920KB,LBA
Disk 1 MD0: ROM Disk 384KB,LBA
Disk 2 FD0: Floppy Disk 3.5",DS/DD,CHS
Disk 3 FD1: Floppy Disk 3.5",DS/DD,CHS
Serial 0 SIO0: RS-232 9600,8,N,1
Serial 1 SIO1: RS-232 9600,8,N,1
PROLOG Z80 Boot Loader
Boot: (C)PM, (Z)System, (M)onitor,
(L)ist disks, or Disk Unit # ===> BOOT CPM FROM ROM
CBIOS v2.9.1-pre.5 [WBW]
Formatting RAMDISK...
Configuring Drives...
A:=MD1:0
B:=MD0:0
C:=FD0:0
D:=FD1:0
3623 Disk Buffer Bytes Free
CP/M-80 v2.2, 54.0K TPA
B> FDU
Floppy Disk Utility (FDU) v5.2, 08-Jan-2018 [HBIOS]
Copyright (C) 2017, Wayne Warthen, GNU GPL v3
SELECT FLOPPY DISK CONTROLLER:
(0) Exit
(1) Disk IO ECB Board
(2) Disk IO 3 ECB Board
(3) Zeta SBC Onboard FDC
(4) Zeta 2 SBC Onboard FDC
(5) Dual IDE ECB Board
(6) N8 Onboard FDC
(7) RC2014 SMC (SMB)
(8) ProLog 7387
=== OPTION ===> PL
===== PL ==============<< FDU MAIN MENU >>======================
(S)ETUP: UNIT=00 MEDIA=720KB MODE=POLL TRACE=00
----------------------------------------------------------------
(R)EAD (W)RITE (F)ORMAT (V)ERIFY
(I)NIT BUFFER (D)UMP BUFFER FDC (C)MDS E(X)IT
=== OPTION ===> FORMAT (T)RACK, (D)ISK ===> DISK
ENTER INTERLEAVE [01-09] (02):
RESET DRIVE...
PROGRESS: TRACK=4F HEAD=01 SECTOR=01
===== PL ==============<< FDU MAIN MENU >>======================
(S)ETUP: UNIT=00 MEDIA=720KB MODE=POLL TRACE=00
----------------------------------------------------------------
(R)EAD (W)RITE (F)ORMAT (V)ERIFY
(I)NIT BUFFER (D)UMP BUFFER FDC (C)MDS E(X)IT
=== OPTION ===> READ (S)ECTOR, (T)RACK, (D)ISK, (R)ANDOM ===> TRACK
ENTER TRACK [00-4F] (00):
ENTER HEAD [00-01] (00):
PROGRESS: TRACK=00 HEAD=00 SECTOR=01
READ: 46 00 00 00 01 02 09 2A FF --> 40 01 00 00 00 01 02 [MISSING ADDRESS
MARK]
CONTINUE? (A)BORT, (R)ETRY, (I)GNORE ===>