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An NTSC Atari looks good on a PAL TV. How come?

by terry＠webweavers.co.nz

Thanks for those replies guys. It was as I suspected. Terry (Tez)

8 years, 5 months

AT&T 3B2 stuff--Calling Seth

by sales＠elecplus.com

Was Seth the person looking for this stuff? I finally found it! I sent him an email, but it might not be a current address. Seth, if you still want this stuff, please let me know! Cindy Croxton Electronics Plus 1613 Water Street Kerrville, TX 78028 830-370-3239 cell sales at elecplus.com AOL IM elcpls --- This email has been checked for viruses by Avast antivirus software. https://www.avast.com/antivirus

8 years, 5 months

An NTSC Atari looks good on a PAL TV. How come?

by terry＠webweavers.co.nz

Hi, The PAL vrs NTSC TV standard complicated things when collecting home computers from other countries. In New Zealand we are on PAL. PAL Atari 800s are rarer in the world that NTSC ones. That being the case I recently settled on an NTSC one for my collection. Hooking it up to a couple of my PAL TVs (via composite video) I was surprised to see a reasonable colour image. I then dropped in a UAV video enhancement board and was surprised to see a very good colour image! I'm assuming it's because composite input into "relatively" modern can handle NTSC and PAL? Is this a reasonable thought? The UAV is not an NTSC converter, and even the inventor was surprised this worked. Those interested can read about the adventure here: https://www.classic-computers.org.nz/blog/2018-03-06-Converting%20-NTSC-Ata… Terry (Tez)

8 years, 5 months

AT&T 3B2 stuff--Calling Seth

by jnc＠mercury.lcs.mit.edu

> From: Cindy Croxton > I finally found it! Oh, that is so awesome! Thank you for keeping an eye out! (I'm sure somehow it will get saved - Seth, let us know if you do, otherwise we can organize something.) Noel

8 years, 5 months

M837 (KM8-E Memory Extension and Time-Share) available

by jnc＠mercury.lcs.mit.edu

So I have an M837 (KM8-E Memory Extension and Time-Share option for the PDP-8/E, -8/F & -8/M) available; got it with a group of other cards, and I have no use for it. Anyone want it, and have (or can acquire :-) anything PDP-11ish (boards, mounting hardware, manuals, prints, I'm not picky - although it has to be something I need/want, I'm already knee-deep in DL11's :-) to trade for it? Noel

8 years, 5 months

NEC TK-80A Ref Manual Wanted

by billdegnan＠gmail.com

Looking for a reference manual to the NEC TK-80A trainer. Rev A. This one: http://bugbookmuseum.blogspot.com/2015/12/computer-tk-80-single-board-8080.… Thanks Bill

8 years, 5 months

QSIC update

by jnc＠mercury.lcs.mit.edu

Hey, all, a quick update on recent progress. I now have a working prototype to match Dave's (although he's still doing all the real work), and we've made a minor improvement in them (re-wired things so we can use shorter cables to the FPGA daughter-card). I got my indicator panel working, it looks quite nice: http://ana-3.lcs.mit.edu/~jnc/tech/QSIC/jpg/DasBlinken2F.jpg http://ana-3.lcs.mit.edu/~jnc/tech/QSIC/jpg/DasBlinken2NF.jpg The inlay is an original from a TS08 that I happened to have lying around; Rod S has made us a large batch of new blanks, but silk-screening of the captions on the front of those is yet to happen. The bezel is also an original. (I have a large stock of those, so it'll be a while before we need to work out how to make new ones - probably resin casting, although 3D printing will be an option too.) However, the guts are all new, and as you can see, the result looks just like the real originals. Dave has also worked out how to connect up the RKV12 (our name for the 22-bit RK controller, by analogy with the RLV11/RLV12) to the internal 'block' RAM in the FPGA, and then did the stuff to connect it to both the uSD card and the internal RAM at the same time, with one drive connected to the RAM, so things like swapping, etc don't 'waste' uSD writes. Both of these are working quite reliably; the exciser/tester runs until we get tired of the noise, and turn the machines off! :-) His current project is to work out how to talk to the larger external RAM on the FPGA daughter-board (the internal RAM isn't large enough for even a single complete RK pack). I'm so looking forward to putting swapping, /tmp, pipes, etc all on different platters, so as the system (Unix V6, natch :-) runs I can watch the lights and see _exactly_ what's going on! After that: turning the RK into an 'RPV12' (which should be pretty easy, the RK11 and RP11 are very similar), and adding a mux so that the two controllers can share the storage devices, etc. Those should both be done soon after the external RAM (and maybe before, if Dave needs a break from that :-). We also intend to do an 'extended RP11' (name not yet chosen, although I like 'RPV-12D - DEC's last was the RP11-C), which extends all the disk address fields in the register to use the unused bits, giving us pretty massive storage capability. With 16 bits of cylinder (up 7), 8 bits of surface (up 3), 4 bits of sector, that gives 28 bits of block number per drive; and with 8 drives per extended RP11, that's a total of 31 bits of block number per controller. Convert the blocks to bytes, that's 9 bits more, so 2^40 bytes per extended RP11, or 1TB! Very shortly now we'll need to turn to starting on the design of the 'production' hardware. Noel

8 years, 5 months

Membrain Software

by robert.jarratt＠ntlworld.com

In doing some research on the operating system for MU5, MUSS, I have been told that a UK company called Membrain may have acquired it at some point in the late 70's. Membrain were based in the South of England and made Automatic Test Equipment. Does anyone have any information on Membrain? Any software artefacts? Source code even? I have had a look on BitSavers and Membrain does not feature at all. Thanks Rob

8 years, 5 months

Some fun: who can identify this ?

by pete＠petelancashire.com

https://photos.app.goo.gl/ww7KPnPVexGJiqyE3

8 years, 5 months

Someone had asked me about they were looking for Claude Shannon Bell Labs publications for a display? Please email me off list Thanks Ed Sharpe archivist for SMECC

by couryhouse＠aol.com

Someone had ?asked me ?about ?they were looking ?for Claude Shannon Bell ?Labs ? ?publications ?for a ?display? Please email me ?off?list Thanks ?Ed Sharpe archivist? for SMECC

8 years, 5 months

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