If anyone going to VCFMW needs any (mosyly) DEC items dropped off there
please let me know so I can plan ahead. Trades are sometimes workable for
other DEC equipment, even more so for US and foreign coins and currency.
I plan on arriving Friday afternoon and returning Saturday night.
If anyone wants to stop by and look around, please let me know of tentative
plans so I can plan accordingly and not have too many people tripping over
each other.
Please contact me off list.
Thanks, Paul
If anyone from the UK is coming over to VCFMW and would be willing to bring
me some nice crisp uncirculated currency I will be happy to trade you for
US currency or DEC computer items. I can make up a list over the next few
days. I don't know when the new 50 is coming out, and I'm also interested
in the Steven Hawkins coin, coins from the isles, pre-decimal and other
foreign coins.
Please feel free to contact me off list.
Thanks, Paul
It's well documented that in 1967 or so the AGC code was bloated (amongst other problems) and looked like it was not
going to be ready in time for the landings, so much so that NASA sent in Bill Tindall to MIT to kick heads.
Could they perhaps have given the under-pressure programmers some breathing space - a contingency - by carrying
another set of ropes with the excess (return mission) code on them, whilst still working on the all-in-one set?
That is, fly to the moon with everything required up to P65 etc then once on the surface, exchange the rope modules
for the return software and throw the first rope set out onto the surface to save weight.
Power cycling the AGC in flight was possible and even done later on Apollo 13 and surely they would have done this
in simulations. And they could presumably have left the IMU running and aligned, as sufficient power was available?
Steve
I've been studying scanned documents for the M9312 UNIBUS bootstrap/terminator card because of reasons. They refer to Digital Equipment Corporation Purchase Specifications 23-000A9-01 and 23-000F1-01 for the PROMs, and I'm wondering whether those documents have been preserved anywhere? I'd love to see them.
Ok, about the reasons: My PDP-11/34A has an M9301-YF bootstrap/terminator card, which doesn't have bootstrap code for a couple of the newer devices I'd like to use in the system such as RL02 and emulated TU58. The newer M9312 card looks more flexible for changing out bootstraps than the M9301 series.
I'm working on getting my hands on an M9312, but I don't know yet whether I'll be able to get original PROMs for the specific bootstraps that I want. I haven't identified a trustworthy source for blank old-timey bipolar PROMs yet (and I'm not sure if I have a suitable device programmer for them), and I was thinking about making some sort of PROM emulations that I can swap around like they're going out of style. It would probably be helpful (and definitely interesting) if I could learn details about the original part specifications, such as what speed ratings DEC used. I don't have an M9312 in my hands yet, and I'm not yet sure about how rapidly the card performs its little 4-to-16 bit deserialization stunt.
If 70ns access time parts are sufficient for the M9312's PROMs, then I may design an emulation with a 5V compatible 28 series EEPROM. If they need to be faster, then I may need to do something fancier. Or maybe I'll find the original PROMs that I need and then get distracted and wander off. It may well be easier to design a replacement for the entire M9312 card than trying to emulate the individual 512x4 bipolar PROMs, but since when do I do anything the easy way? I sure wouldn't be playing with 40 year old computers if I was concerned with practicality and ease of use!
--
Mark J. Blair, NF6X <nf6x at nf6x.net>
http://www.nf6x.net/
At 10:29 AM 7/17/2019, Patrick Finnegan via cctalk wrote:
>On Wed, Jul 17, 2019 at 10:17 AM Ethan O'Toole via cctalk <
> There are likely to be similar places around flyover America.
You been poking around my warehouse?
>I'd agree in prinicpal, but if even 0.1% of LGR's 1M youtube followers try
>to show up one day, it'd be a Problem. More people going will create a
>bigger headache for the volunteers helping to deal with the situation and
>might end up in no one getting anything.
YouTube subscriber numbers versus reality; you'd have a hard time
getting 0.00001% of those subscribers to do anything in the real world.
>I've been overwhelmed trying to
>deal with my own collection sometimes; I can't imagine having 10-20x the
>space filled up would be like.
I'm overwhelmed and it's time to purge. The problem isn't a desire
for old computers, the problem is having too much space. You might
like motorcycles or tractors or Beanie Babies, but if you have the
space and the inclination, you can eventually fill your available space.
> There's some threshold where
>instead of "more people getting retrocomputers", it's "This is too much
>stress, so it's all going to a landfill".
Yes, assuming you expended the effort to organize and document,
then organization makes dispersal slightly more easy... but most of
the problem is still there. You want to advertise what you have?
Effort. Put a value on it? More effort. Want to give it away?
Sell it? All that takes time and effort.
Lots of time. Packing, shipping, even just dealing with schedules and
communication and meet-ups and those who don't show up. And yes,
if you're in "flyover America" you have far fewer enthusiasts to attract
for local pickup.
Even sending it all to recycling takes a tremendous amount of effort.
I put some stuff on eBay the other day, some server stuff less than
ten years old plus some other items, like 18 VoIP phones with a
starting bid of 99 cents... the only thing seeing a bid so far
is a NIB toner cartridge for an HP laser printer.
So, to deal with my own hoarding / collecting, I'll strive to make
a list of stuff I haven't touched in 10, 20, 30 years, and I'll
post here to see if anyone is interested. Too much lingering
obligation and future debt, even if it only has to go to recycling.
I've considered taking a truckful to VCF Midwest, but apparently
I'd need to make a big scary sign that says "If you don't take it now,
it's going to recycling" because I can't imagine that I'd be able
to give away half the load.
- John
A friend of mine is an old IBM dealer. His mother started the business, and
they have documentation going back to the beamspring days. He has agreed
that he will pack all the stuff into boxes and pack the boxes on a pallet.
These are not free; he wants an offer, since he has to pay a guy to pack,
cost of boxes, etc. There are several hundred pounds of stuff. Think of a 5
foot wide 6 foot tall cabinet stuffed to the gills, and then multiply that
by at least 4. If interested, let me know.
Cindy Croxton
Electronics Plus
1613 Water Street
Kerrville, TX 78028
830-370-3239 cell
sales at elecplus.com
---
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>So, to deal with my own hoarding / >collecting, I'll strive to make?>a list of stuff I haven't touched in 10, 20, >30 years, and I'll >post here to see if anyone is interested.? >Too much lingering >obligation and future debt, even if it only >has to go to recycling.This is always a good first step. If people don't know what you have people can't reach out.Just saying ;)-Ali
>It's unfortuante that this wasn't a well >known business/resource before it>was an overflowing burden for the family >to deal with.??Actually it was. They used to sell on eBay all the time. Guy was an old timer, nice enough once you got to know him but he wasn't very friendly or easy to deal with initially specially through eBay (listing with ridiculous S&H, no response to messages, etc).The place was on my list of if "I ever have the time and money" but life caught up to them before I hit the lottery :D.-Ali
For those who saw this item:
https://www.ebay.com/itm/183639487495
but didn't know what it went to (Web searches for "5409818" and "5009817"
didn't turn up anything useful for me), it turns out to be a "Configuration
2" backplane for a PDP-11/05-/10:
http://gunkies.org/wiki/PDP-11/05#Backplane_versions
with slots for one MM11-L memory unit, and 4 SPC slots.
Noel
> From: Ethan Dicks
> Did anyone here get it?
Yeah, me - although I didn't expect to! Because of my work on DEC indicator
panels (this one's a 10-1/2" panel, unusual):
http://ana-3.lcs.mit.edu/~jnc/tech/DECIndicatorPanels.html
I put in what seemed to me a lowish bid, expecting not to get it (I figured
I'd make do with the image from the sale), and was rather surprised that I got
it.
I don't have an RF08, of course, so if anyone actually has an RF08, I'll
happily do a deal to get it to you.
> I did not bid because I have zero parts of an RF08 (and if I ever
> make a modern RF08 emulator, I might as well make one of these to
> match).
Yeah, for the QSIC indicator panels, we built totally new ones, too. We
took advantage of that to change the interface; the DEC originals have a
wire per light, which is kind of klunky. Ours time-multiplexes a single
data line (there are 'clock' and 'latch' lines too); visually, it seems
to look identical to the DEC originals in operation.
Noel
