On Thu Jan 24 16:26:48 CST 2019, Electronics Plus sales at elecplus.com
said:
> I just got off the phone with Jesse at Cypress. He said he did not post
the
> gold and tantalum items on ebay. It is someone else, trying to cast a bad
> name on him.
Sorry, but this doesn't really check out. Jesse sent an email to the list,
original subject 'Hewlett-Packard 3000, 9000, Itanium (HP-UX & MPE/iX)
Servers, Storage Arrays, Replacement Parts, Maintenance, & Disaster
back-ups' and put his email and website in the message. Going to that
website, cypress-tech.com, we can go to the 'ebay store' page where the
apparently official ebay store of Cypress Tech is linked to. Following the
link, http://stores.ebay.com/Cypress-Technology-Inc we see that this is the
same seller as the original gold scrap ebay link,
https://www.ebay.com/itm/382505855460
Here is the list of reasonable possibilities that I can think of:
- Somebody sent a fake email, from a fake Cypress-Tech.com, and made a fake
ebay page with the sole purpose of defaming this person (I'll admit, not
entirely out of the realm of possibility if there were someone with a
grudge against him)
- Jesse does not maintain full exclusive control over the ebay store, and
one of his coworkers/employees have posted the gold scrap auctions without
his knowledge (I suppose this is possible)
- You've been lied to, or otherwise you made a mistake
Please correct me if I've made an error somewhere, and please don't take
this as a personal attack of any kind. I don't have any interest in this
matter really, but my BS detector was showing a reading, so I checked it
out a little deeper and that's what I found.
Best Regards,
Joe Zatarski
> From: Fritz Mueller
> it flagged a bunch of memory locations that weren't reported by my much
> simpler diagnostic (which only does all-ones/all-zeros passes looking for
> stuck bits at this point.)
What is is complaining about?
> The MAINDEC memory diagnostic is bulky and complicated, and it takes
> several minutes to re-download it after a power cycle, so it's not
> exactly convenient to use while troubleshooting.
Would it be possible to put it on a disk and boot it from there? If it's in
some documented format (e.g. .LDA), I can easily produce a Unix disk with it
on, if that would help (although loading the image onto the physical pack
would take forever, I guess - although you could let it run overnight).
It's probably not worth trying to devise a way to load individual files onto
a Unix disk over the serial line until Unix is working reliably, so the
program can run under Unix (otherwise a stand-alone program would have to
include file-system code).
> I'll probably be beefing up my smaller diagnostic with a few more tests
> (including parity).
One of the first things to add is to store each location's address in it during
a set-up pass, and check to see that it's still there during the checking pass.
> Went ahead and tried both RSTS and Unix again after the above repair,
> and saw the same fault behaviors from both (sadness).
Yeah, sounds like you still have memory issues (per the diagnostic grumping).
> I tried enabling trap on parity error in the MS11 CSR before running my
> diagnostic, but it didn't trap, even though it did flag parity error(s)
> in the CSR. So maybe I *also* have a bug I haven't yet addressed in
> parity handling within CPU.
Starting the CPU (i.e. 'START' switch) or an INIT instruction will clear
the 'trap enable' bit in the MS11-L CSR.
I'd modify your program to set it, and check to see if you're getting
parity error traps. (Clearly, if that hardware - either in the MS11-L,
or the CPU - isn't working you need to look at that first.)
> some of the earlier ones support setting a bit to determine whether
> parity errors will halt or trap the CPU
Huh? I was just looking at parity in the MM11-L and MM11-U (to see if
parity needed to be enabled on them, or if it's always on by default),
and I didn't see that. Also, there's no way I know of, on the UNIBUS,
for anything to halt the CPU (the QBUS has such as line, but not the
UNIBUS). Which memory has this feature?
> I'm curious how OS init code sniffs out what memory CSRs there are,
> determines their specific flavors and, in a heterogeneous system,
> determines how much address space is under the auspice of each CSR?
Unix V6 does nothing at all with parity (doesn't enable it in memory modules,
although the memory that was extant at the time - MM11-S, MM11-U, etc - did
support it as an option).
If one turned it on, the code _would_ catch the trap and 'panic' (print a
message and halt operation). It would be pretty easy to modify the code to
send a signal to the process if it happened in User mode. I'm not sure there's
much to be done if it happens in Kernel mode.
V6 sizes memory by doing a read every 0100 bytes (of the xxxx00 byte), looking
for success or a trap. If that succeeds, it clears the 32. sequential words
starting at that address, and then tries the next 0100. (So if you modified
the code to enable parity traps, you wouldn't hsave to deal with bad parity
left over from random contents at power-on....)
> The 11/45 prints show a jumper (W1, lower left of sheet UBCB) that
> looks like it would entirely disable Unibus parity error detection if
> removed.
Yup, that's what it looks like to me too..
> when I pulled and examined my UBC board (and also looked over my spare)
> no such jumper or any associated pads were anywhere to be found! So maybe
> this was either added/removed from later etches of the UBC?
Well, if you have an M8106, you do have a KB11-A; in the later /45 CPU, the
KB11-D, that has been replaced by the M8119 - but that still has W1! (The
KB11-D prints are in MP00039, 11/55 Vol 1.) I looked on my M8119, and W1 is
indeed there - it's a 0-ohm 'resistor' (single black band) just less than
half-way up the 4th column of chips, with a '1' next to it in the etch. The
M8106 board layout drawing (a couple of pages back from UBCB) does show W1 -
upper left corner of the board, next to E84.
Noel
all the 3000 stuff too? sorry to hear that Al.. ?back in the 80s would visit him nice guy glad to hear he is,still alive. ?ed#
...
-----Original Message-----
From: Al Kossow via cctalk <cctalk at classiccmp.org>
To: cctalk <cctalk at classiccmp.org>
Sent: Sat, Jan 26, 2019 07:49 PM
Subject: Re: OT Parts houses & scrappers
On 1/26/19 5:40 PM, ED SHARPE via cctalk wrote:
> Is? Larry? at? Crisis computer still around?
He is in Sacramento. Most of what he had was scrapped 15 years ago.
A large number of Bay Area people were involved in saving what could be saved.
I ended up with a lot of 9000/300 stuff. I didn't go after any 21xx stuff because
I had literally hundreds of boards. All were stolen from a storage container
about a year ago.
Gentemen,
All of you have at one time expressed interest in all or part of this
rack full of Alphaservers and one of you even talked about driving a truck
up from Montana and taking it all home.
Are any of you still interested?
First priority goes to anybody willing to come up here and pick up all or
part of the collection. I will consider shipping if that is what it comes
down to but the packing and transprotation will be expensive for the DS15
and extremely expensive for the other units.
--
Richard Loken VE6BSV : "...underneath those tuques we wear,
Athabasca, Alberta Canada : our heads are naked!"
** rlloken at telus.net ** : - Arthur Black
Is? Larry? at? Crisis computer still around?
Jay? used to? know him? too back? years ago.
Ed#
In a message dated 1/26/2019 6:35:21 PM US Mountain Standard Time, cctalk at classiccmp.org writes:
> That sounds all well and good.? Until you something unexpected and
> unknown when you are at an auction for something else.? There's only so
> much self education you can do on a smart phone 10 minutes before the
> auction.
Start now with the research. You can gain quite a lot knowledge from
the various scrap forums and Youtube videos.
--
Will
> From: Electronics Plus
> I did not bring the stuff home. ... Call John Adler ... he owns the
> stuff in the sheds.
Now I am completely confused. What happened to the online spread-sheet that
some of us filled out? Did that go to him? If so, does the fact that we've
heard nothing means our offers were not interesting? If not, are we now
supposed to call instead?
Noel
> From: Fritz Mueller
> those PDP-11's have their toggles set for V6 single-user boot! :-)
Very observant! (Although I guess you've been using that a lot recently! :-)
> From: Paul Koning
> Was the 11/74 ever shipped?
I don't think so. (Well, I vaguely recall rumours of a couple going out on
beta-test; too busy to chase down where I saw that.)
Noel
> From: Paul Koning
>> Also, I still need images of a few things: -11/60 and -11/94 front
>> consoles, the original LSI-11 card, the KDJ11-E, and most of the DEC
>> QBUS boxes. (Yeah, I could try looking for free images
> Google "pdp11/60" turns up some good pictures, one showing the console
> panel closeup is from a UK computer museum.
Which one - 'computermuseum.org.uk'? Many of the pictures I saw online were
on pages with copyright notices. I was actually hoping someone who _has_ one
the the things I listed would take a picture and send it to me.
> It seems like a problem caused by taking the photo with flash; lit by
> ambient light it would probably look better.
They are in low-light locations; without flash it's a long exposure and I get
blurring because my hand isn't steady enough. And I don't feel like moving
them, or re-doing the lighting - too many higher priority things to do.
> A variant of the LSI-11 is the H-11 sold by Heathkit. .. it would be
> worth mentioning.
I've seen some go by on eBait, so I have an idea of the value, but I
couldn't get enthusiastic about listing them.
> Do you want to show the PRO system boards? And maybe the I/O boards?
Again, not enthusiastic enough to put in the work...
> In the discussion of boards, you might mention that "FLIP CHIP" often
> appears ... And there will be a "digital" logo, the 7-box kind.
OK, I will add that.
> (on older boards?All boards? Many boards regardless of age?)
It's spotty, and seems to die out later on. The -11/40 boards have it, but
for the -11/45 and -11/70, some do, and some don't. None of the KDF11 or
KDJ11 QBUS CPU boards do.
> The "Miscellaneous Digital Equipment Corporation PDP-11 Information"
> link lands me on a "Forbidden" error page.
Ooops. Fixed. Thanks.
> Zane Healy
> Don't forget the quad-height /73 board, it's much nicer than the
> dual-height boards.
That's the KDJ11-B, no? That's there.
> Is a /44 really worth that much now?!?!
Hey, one just went for more than that: eBait #183624991924, $3K! Admittedly,
that one was loaded, but the page does say "a number of factors will cause
them to vary considerably from the numbers given here ... Exactly which
peripherals and memory are included".
But I did adjust the number a bit - the boards are going for about $50 each,
and add in a BA11-A, it's probably $700 for a bare machine. Actually, I
really need to check all the numbers.
But I think I'd rather get the QBUS boxes sorted out first; I pretty much
only know the BA11's. If someone could tell me what later boxes to list,
above the BA23, (which I also need an image of), that would be very helpful.
Noel
