test-drb

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101090 discussions

An American perspective on the late great Sir Clive Sinclair, from Fast Company

by lproven＠gmail.com

I found this interesting for perspective. The British media (and AFAICS of Australia, New Zealand and several bits of Europe) have been saturated with coverage of a much-loved, widely-celebrated and revered hero of tech. As FC points out, even the American _tech_ media barely noticed. ? The prescient, quirky legacy of U.K. gadget inventor Clive Sinclair Little known in the U.S., Sinclair democratized computing with his dirt-cheap 1980s PCs. Even his many failures were decades ahead of their time. ? https://www.fastcompany.com/90680349/clive-sinclair-obituary -- Liam Proven ? Profile: https://about.me/liamproven Email: lproven at cix.co.uk ? gMail/gTalk/gHangouts: lproven at gmail.com Twitter/Facebook/LinkedIn/Flickr: lproven ? Skype: liamproven UK: +44 7939-087884 ? ?R (+ WhatsApp/Telegram/Signal): +420 702 829 053

4 years, 5 months

Programming Bipolar PROMs

by ccth6600＠gmail.com

While restoring and repairing a Data General Nova 2/10 I found a bad bipolar PROM on the CPU board. The PROM has open-collector outputs and is organized as 32 words by 8 bits. It appears that one of the open-collector driver transistors is faulty (but it could also be that a fuse has "healed"). The part is an Intersil IM5600CP, but these were also made by others, for example Signetics and Philips made the 82S23 and TI and NTE made the faster SN74S188N. Some vendors still sell these parts and there are even a few on Ebay. How do I program these PROMs? I found one somewhat obscure description of the algorithm in the NTE datasheet, but I suspect that each manufacturer had (somewhat) different algorithms. Is there an affordable commercial programmer out there which can program these PROMs? Is there a simple design out there which I could breadboard for a one-off programming job (maybe using an Arduino to control the programming sequence)? Thanks and best regards Tom Hunter

4 years, 5 months

CCtalk on Linux vs Windows

by c.murray.mccullough＠gmail.com

I quite agree that one OS isn?t better than another. It is one?s personal choice. However, it would be amiss of me not to acknowledge that some people prefer one over another and will do so until someone proves otherwise. My dear friend and I don?t let this situation get in the way of our relationship though. In the past I have run both WIN and Linux on my machine ? a dual-boot situation I will not carry forward with WIN 11 ? and find Linux does some things better than Windows particularly when I run an emulator(It is based on a Coleco ADAM I?ve had since1984.) Happy computing. Murray ?

4 years, 5 months

Looking for older versions of MatLab for Unix / VMS

by mdehling＠gmail.com

Dear List, I am looking for older versions of MatLab (3.x, 4.x, and 5.x) for Unix and (Open)VMS. I'm happy to pay a reasonable price for media kits, or, alternatively, images of the installation media would suffice. The media for Windows or Mac can be found on the various abandonware sites, but I've had no luck finding MatLab for Unix / VMS so far. Cheers Malte -- Malte Dehling <mdehling at gmail.com>

4 years, 5 months

WTB Sparcserver

by silvercreekvalley＠yahoo.com

Hi Looking for a Sparcserver 1000/2000 to add to the sun collection. I?ve never seen one of these in the UK, but hopefully there might be one around. Happy to buy / pickup as I know they are heavy in the UK. Outside UK I might be able to arrange for collection. Thanks.

4 years, 5 months

Burnable, patched Microvax-2000 SCSI-boot EPROM images?

by kiwi_jonathan＠yahoo.com

I recently rescued two Microvax-2000s but both have dead RD53s.? Does anyone have a ROMable image of the Microvax 2000/Vaxstation 2000 boot-PROM patches from Wolfgang Moeller at?http://ftp.gwdg.de/pub/vms/pk2k/??? ?I'm looking to install NetBSD, not VMS and I don't have any VMS systems on which to run PATCH.? ?Microvax 2000 specs say it can sustain 3.3MB/s I/O, which has to be via the SCSI interface.? So a SCSI emulator should be significantly higher performance than an MFM drive (either 30+ year old drive, or emulator). Web-searching shows a Sean O'Banion has burned the PROMs successfully; I haven't yet found other names. If someone is willing to burn at least one set of EPROMs for me, I'd pay for the service (either ship EPROMS, or pay for them). ?

4 years, 5 months

OpenVMS/VAX license expiration

by athornton＠gmail.com

You might want to search the Github repositories of a certain "athornton" looking for something called "yarr". Obviously it would be wrong to use it. So don't. Adam

4 years, 5 months

Setting up a VMS system

by compoobah＠gmail.com

On Fri, 2021-09-24 at 12:00 -0500, cctalk-request at classiccmp.org wrote: > > supported by any release licensed by VSI, and they changed the > > PRODUCER > > key so you can't use those PAKs on DEC/CPQ/HP variants of VMS. > > Part of their licensing agreement with HPE which prohibits them from > selling/licensing any previous version of OpenVMS that they haven't > worked on. > > > HP stopped issuing new hobbyist PAKs back very early in 2020. I put > > in > > for a renew March or so and never got it. They were so > > disinterested in > > the program that they didn't mention stopping it, so I guess it > > isn't > > surprising that the page is still up. > > If it's a VAX PAK you need, contact me and I can send you a copy of > the last VAX OpenVMS Hobbyist PAK sent out.? Note that it expires on > 1-JAN-2022 so it's good only for a few more months. Yeah, would have been nice if they would have handed it off to Montegar again for VAX/early Alpha with the understanding that (a) it would be the same restrictions that DEC/CPQ/HP had and (b) they weren't bugged about it ever again. Sigh. Fits into the HP model of "buy and bury" I guess. At least VAX has other options. Anyone succeeded in patching the DCL security hole for VAX? I know it wasn't officially fixed.

4 years, 5 months

PDP-11/73 boot issues

by aaron＠aaronsplace.co.uk

Hi all, My PDP-11/73 has started misbehaving after several years of being very stable. It is showing symptoms similar to when I've forgotten to enable the LTC in the past, except this time, it is enable. Power supply seems good - +5V, +12V, all seems there and appears to be stable. I've probed the LTC going onto the backplane and I'm getting 50Hz. It looks a tad noisy, not sure if this is a problem. I will see if I can get a picture of it, but it has very distinct rises and falls, so hopefully that's ok. Looks to be about 50% duty cycle. I've attempted several builds of the kernel, including the out-of-the-box build from 2.11BSD distribution. I've also compiled a shrunk down kernel without a bunch of devices I don't have, but it still fails to work. I am using a SCSI2SD so it's easy for me to copy images and test them in SIMH - they all boot fine in SIMH with a similar setup (mscp, tmscp, 11/73, 1MB-ish RAM). Does anyone have any ideas what might be causing this? I've run out of ideas unfortunately. I'll stick a dump of the boot below, with debug flag passed showing output from autoconfig. I've also tried it without the tmscp card - just CPU, RAM and Emulex UC07 in MSCP mode for scsi disk. I have tried it with less memory, and I've tried removing the halt jumper from the 11/73 board (W5 if I remember correctly) Cheers, Aaron --------- ^C BOOT> DU 0 73Boot from ra(0,0,0) at 0172150 : ra(0,0,0)unix -D Boot: bootdev=02400 bootcsr=0172150 2.11 BSD UNIX #116: Wed Dec 31 18:01:57 CST 1969 root at localhost.2bsd.com:/usr/src/sys/GENERIC ra0: Ver 5 mod 13 ra0: RA81 size=1216601 phys mem = 1179648 avail mem = 959040 user mem = 307200 _hkprobe = 0 _hkattach = 143330 _hkVec = 0 hkintr = 120 _htprobe = 0 _htattach = 143550 _htVec = 0 htintr = 150 _raprobe = 0 _raattach = 34270 _raVec = 34200 raintr = 100 _rkprobe = 0 _rkattach = 144650 _rkVec = 0 rkintr = 130 _rlprobe = 0 _rlattach = 144770 _rlVec = 0 rlintr = 110 _tmprobe = 0 _tmattach = 143610 _tmVec = 0 tmintr = 160 _tmsprobe = 0 _tmsattach = 143740 _tmsVec = 143730 tmsintr = 200 _tsprobe = 0 _tsattach = 143660 _tsVec = 0 tsintr = 170 _xpprobe = 0 _xpattach = 0 _xpVec = 0 xpintr = 0 endvec = 1000 _conf_int = 16124 CGOOD = 14 CBAD = 24 _nextiv = 5500 trap = 4150 _version = 17400 KERN_NONSEP = 0 Grab 177440 = 36556hk ? csr 177440 vector 210 skipped: No CSR. Grab 172440 = 36556ht ? csr 172440 vector 224 skipped: No CSR. Grab 172150 = 0Grab 156 = 240Grab 154 = 100Stuff 14 @ 154 Stuff 340 @ 156 probe ra: return conf_int:Stuff 100 @ 154 Stuff 240 @ 156 ra ? csr 172150 vector 154 bad probe value 224. Grab 177400 = 36556rk ? csr 177400 vector 220 skipped: No CSR. Grab 174400 = 36556rl ? csr 174400 vector 160 skipped: No CSR. Grab 172520 = 36556tm ? csr 172520 vector 224 skipped: No CSR. Grab 174500 = 0Grab 262 = 0Grab 260 = 0tms ? csr 174500 vector 260 interrupt vector already in use. Grab 172520 = 36556ts ? csr 172520 vector 224 skipped: No CSR. xp ? csr 176700 vector 254 skipped: No autoconfig routines. At this point it is stuck no matter how long I wait.

4 years, 5 months

DEC ML11 (Was: DEC KM11 (Was: DEC KL11))

by jnc＠mercury.lcs.mit.edu

> From: Tony Duell <ard.p850ug1 at gmail.com> > Were there 2 things called the KM11? > The KM11 that I know is the maintenance unit > From: Paul Birkel > I think that we're all talking about the ML11-A, or at least are > intending to ... although the Subject line has been erroneous from the > get-go ... Well, at least your brains are working, unlike mine! (Age starting to catch up with me?) Yes, the ML11; I tried to correct the erroneous 'KL11' and changed the wrong letter! Noel

4 years, 5 months

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