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PDP 11/34 + RL02 for free on Craigslist Chicago

by stephane.tsacas＠gmail.com

http://chicago.craigslist.org/chc/sys/1513324257.html <http://chicago.craigslist.org/chc/sys/1513324257.html> -- Stephane http://updatedoften.blogspot.com

16 years, 4 months

386 Drives, was Re: Fwd: Old Computer to recycle

by marvin＠west.net

From: Fred Cisin <cisin at xenosoft.com> > >> > Although the computer was originally a 286, it stopped working at >> > some point. I was in graduate school at the time, and spent $900 to >> > get all my data back and installed on a new 386 drive. So it is now a >> > 386. > > Are 386 drives still available? How many do you need/want, and what size :)?

16 years, 4 months

Amdek Color-I RGB monitor repair

by sethm＠loomcom.com

My until-very-recently-working Amdek Color-I RGB Monitor (November 1983) has given up the ghost. It was working perfectly the last time I powered it up, but now it doesn't turn on. No noise, no hum, no glow, nothing, it's just silent, as if it died in its sleep. (It's worth noting that it was left un-plugged between the last time I used it and now, so I don't think it was a surge). I'm embarrassed to admit this to the many old veterans on this list, but while I have a good history of working with digital electronics, CRT repair is well outside my scope of experience. Still, I'd really like to fix this guy and get it working again, so I would greatly appreciate any newbie advice that anyone has to offer before I open the monitor up and start poking around (ginerly, for fear of dying). My first step was naturally to google 'Amdek +"Color-I"' and 'Amdek +"Color-I" +manual', which unfortnately hasn't been at all useful. No service manuals to be found. Other pointers would be very welcome! I know that poking around CRTs has given a lot of electronics hobbyists a good, non-lethal education. I'm hoping to follow in those footsteps. -Seth

16 years, 4 months

Running Computers Cold

by borisg＠unixg.ubc.ca

Thanks for the warming tips Ethan. I've got a couple of MacIIvx boxes that I "forgot" in my unheated workshop and the temperature dropped to -4 F a couple of days ago. I was just going to light the wood stove that I have there to warm them up but this looks like it will be too fast a temperature rise as I can get from <-4 F to 80F in the space of about 4-5 hours. One of the Macs has a flaky HDD that I've almost got backed up completely but I don't want to take any chances with when I reboot. I figured that the relative humidity of the air would be low enough with this big a temperature rise from -4 F but will have to figure out how to warm the shop more slowly (besides waiting for spring). One nice way of looking at temperatures of stored computers is a small USB temperature monitor that can sample temperatures from 1/sec to 1/hour and stores 16537 readings. I got mine from wattsupwiththat.com and one of them will be ideal for this as I think I'll try instead of the wood stove is putting in a 1.5 Kw electric heater and leaving it on for a couple of days which might work as the workshop is well insulated. Anyone else have experience of "restoring" HDD's by freezing them? I've used this technique before when I've got a HDD that won't spin up and I toss it in my freezer for about an hour at -10 F and then connect the power. I can't remember where I read this but I've successfully used it on 2 drives to get them to spin up long enough that I can copy their contents. From what I've read on this thread it might have been a fluke (we're talking about modern sealed drives here no more than 10 years old). Boris Gimbarzevsky >On 12/9/09, Zane H. Healy <healyzh at aracnet.com> wrote: > > At 9:55 PM -0800 12/8/09, Chuck Guzis wrote: > >>On 8 Dec 2009 at 21:19, Zane H. Healy wrote: > >> > >>> Okay, this is the first time I've ever had to worry about this. When > >>> is it to cold to run a computer? It's 35F out in the garage, and it > >>> is supposed to get a lot colder tonight. I just shut the dehumidifier > >>> down (to cold to run it) and setup a heater near the computers (and > >>> other stuff I don't want to freeze). > >> > >>It seems to me that Ethan would be the perfect one to answer this. > >>35F is probably a heat wave at the South Pole. > > > > Except I don't think they run their computers outdoors! :-) > >But we do use outside air to cool them. It's free except for the >power to push it around. (Oh... and +35F is never seen at the Pole - >the record is +7.5F, and I've personally been around for +7.0F). > >As for the extreme case, we've had computers malfunction when outside >access doors were left open and -80F air came in directly, bypassing >the blowers and the louvers. On a day-to-day basis, the room with the >14 racks that was AMANDA (it was shut down earlier this year after a >10+ year run) shed about 35-40kW of heat with indirect access to >outside air with some measure of automatic and manual thermal controls >(covering up open cable panels and stuffing blankets in hatches in >addition to thermostatic controls on air blowers). If we let the room >get over about +55F, the high-voltage supplies for the photomultipler >tubes would go into thermal shutdown (ultra-dry air at 650millibars >doesn't have much heat capacity). OTOH, and more to the point, if we >let the room get much colder than about +35F (say +25F or colder), a >specific rack of digital hardware that was adjacent to the floor vents >feeding cold air to the high voltage supplies would malfunction until >the temp came up to the high thirties to low forties. > >In another location entirely, central Ohio, I used to rent the >basement of my mother's typing and typesetting shop. The building was >a late 19th C/early 20th C brick "shotgun" commercial space with a >former storm-cellar-type access to the basement. As such, cold air >poured from the modern back door, down the basement stairs, and into >the space I ran PDP-8s, PDP-11s and a VAX-11/730. One of my jobs at >the time was hacking PDP-11 assembler on an 11/23. The basement would >routinely get to +40F, and sometimes colder if the wind was from the >right direction (the water pipes had electric wraps). I couldn't >personally stand to work in that environment without a heater pointed >at me, but the computers ran fine. The lone device that had problems >was an LA-180 printer I used for listings. It worked down to about >+45F, but colder than that, I speculate that the rail lubricant got >too viscous, because it would blow carriage motor fuses until it >warmed up. I quickly learned not to print on cold nights. > >I'd say that if you keep things at or above freezing, you are probably >perfectly fine. Magnetic media is a lot more sensitive than ICs in >terms of cold soaking. One thing to watch for is to not power up >cold-soaked electronics. The current inrush is likely to blow ICs >(the internal bonded wires between the die and the frame, mostly). >I've thawed machines that were left in unheated buildings over the >winter at McMurdo - ordinary temps around -45F or so. Specifically in >that case (ultra cold, powered off), there are known and published >"max rates of rise" of temps to minimize the risk of permanent damage >from thermal expansion. A good rule of thumb is about 2-3 degrees per >hour. What I did with the cold-soaked computers was to throw them >into a lab freezer at -40F for a few hours, then into a lab >environmental chamber at -30F that I would tweak up about 5 degrees >every couple of hours. When the chamber was up to about +20F, I threw >the equipment in a lab refrigerator. The thaw process took two >workdays, but 100% of what I treated that way survived (no hard disk - >these were floppy-booting diskless PCs that ran from a Novell server). > >If it gets really cold (+0F, say), I'd bring the disks in the house >and leave the CPUs powered off until the garage temps are back around >+32F. ICs can be stored down to -40 typically, but not operated at >those temps (and especially not put through a power-on cycle at those >temps). > >So that's my experience and observations of cold and computers. Take >away from it what you will. > >-ethan

16 years, 4 months

db25 filler panels

by dgriffi＠cs.csubak.edu

Before I go out and try to buy or make some, does anyone here have any spare DB25 filler panels? -- David Griffith dgriffi at cs.csubak.edu A: Because it fouls the order in which people normally read text. Q: Why is top-posting such a bad thing? A: Top-posting. Q: What is the most annoying thing in e-mail?

16 years, 4 months

IBM RT Mouse Was: IBM RT-PC available

by fjkraan＠xs4all.nl

> Since I lack a mouse for mine, can I put in a plea that whoever does > adopt this system consider selling / trading me the mouse? 10 years ago > IBM told me the 6150 mouse was no longer available, but there was a > replacement, for which quoted me 150 pounds. They wouldn't tell me the > part number of the replacement, but I am pretty sure it was just a > Logitech PC mouse and an adaptor to plug it into the 6150. I tried > making my own connector (from a Compaq laptop power supply connector, > iirc), but had little success. > The IBM RT mouse I have (Part No. OOF2383) is definitly a protocol mouse, as it has a HD63A01XOF processor for two encoders and two buttons (http://electrickery.xs4all.nl/tmp/rt_mouse.JPG). I can check out the wiring and protocol (if not propietary) later.

16 years, 4 months

Fwd: Old Computer to recycle

by jfoust＠threedee.com

Sorry about that... I read "New York" and assumed New York, and that's correct... From: Edwina Williams <Wmsedw at aol.com> Subject: Re: Old Computer to recycle Date: Tue, 15 Dec 2009 15:13:46 -0500 To: John Foust <jfoust at threedee.com> X-Mailer: Apple Mail (2.753.1) X-AOL-IP: 162.84.208.173 X-Spam-Flag:NO X-AOL-SENDER: Wmsedw at aol.com X-Spam-Status: No, score=-2.6 X-Spam-Score: -25 X-Spam-Bar: -- X-Spam-Flag: NO Sorry, I should have included this information. I am in New York City, in the Inwood neighborhood, which is near (north of) the George Washington bridge in Manhattan. Because I am near the bridge, I am also convenient to New Jersey. Also, I have a car and sometimes go to the Kingston, New York area, so I could take the computer there to meet up with someone. Thank you, Edwina

16 years, 4 months

IBM RT Mouse Was: IBM RT-PC available]

by fjkraan＠xs4all.nl

> > I can check out the wiring and protocol (if not propietary) later. At http://www.cs.cmu.edu/afs/andrew.cmu.edu/usr/shadow/www/ibmrt/faq/hardware.… (H.11) I found some info. The mouse (or locator in IBM RT speak) is more a co-processor on a wire than a humble mouse :-). Fred Jan

16 years, 4 months

Looking for a Honeywell-Bull HD120 diskdrive.

by jdr_use＠bluewin.ch

i suppose it had to happen sometime... The cartride harddisk drive in my Lilith has died, it is unable to find tracks anymore. Headmovement is of course controlled by the only ASIC, thus pure unobtainium, that is inside the machine. So : anyone has a spare unit ? ( yes i know, winning the lottary is more likely) Failing that i will be finally forced to write new microcode and kludge in an IDE disk.... Jos Dreesen

16 years, 4 months

tube digital interest / was Re: Running Computers Cold

by wbblair3＠yahoo.com

> William Blair wrote: > > > > Beautiful works of engineering art that look like > they're new out of the box. > > Indeed, which is one reason it can be so difficult to see > the stuff scrapped. > > Obviously, I can't claim any contribution to the beauty-of-the- > engineering-art aspect for these items ... and I don't want to > admit to how many OCD hours went into making them look > new-out-of-the-box. Great job on that front. Wouldn't HP like to have such gems to display, at least in a glass case in a lobby somewhere? If I had a museum (and it would definitely hold items like those), I'd take them in a heartbeat.

16 years, 4 months

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