> From: Daniel Seagraves
> The Saturn software, which is what actually flew from Earth to the
> moon, was lost.
You mean the Instrumentation Unit on top of the S-IVB stage? That was
discarded when the S-IVB and CSM separated shortly after leaving Earth orbit
(about 6 hours after launch), so I'm not sure it's accurate to say it's "what
actually flew from Earth to the moon". Yes, it put the CSM on the injection
orbit, but...
A very cool computer (the first one to have all its critical components
triplicated for reliabilty, I gather), and yes, it would be nice to have its
software too.
Noel
Come join us in Seattle on February 10th and 11th for the first VCF PNW.
We have 20 exhibits, six speakers, and a panel discussion planned. There
will be a consignment area for buying and selling vintage gear, and of
course there is an entire museum (Living Computers:Museum+Labs) to check
out as well. The show is free with museum admission.
More information can be found at https://goo.gl/AUoLU2 . You can also
email questions to me. And lastly, we need your help - spread the word!
Thanks,
Mike
I scanned a nice little booklet I found in my fathers stuff.
"MY COMPUTER LIKES ME when i speak in BASIC" by Bob Albrecht.
http://www.datormuseum.se/documentation-software/my-computer-likes
If someone feel like they can straighten it up, please do! I didn't feel
like ripping it apart to have it scanned so it was troublesome to scan it
perfectly in my page scanner.
So did we ever get an answer to the original question (the value of
a Sun3)? All I saw was 'you'd have to pay to recycle them'.
> From: Grant Taylor
>> Before that, if you were lucky enough to be at Stanford, MIT, or CMU,
>> you could use the Dover and Altos that were part of Xerox's University
>> Grant Program.
> What made the Dover and Altos special in this context?
Sorry, I don't understand the question. (I assume you're not simply asking
'what made the Dover and Altos special'.) Which context? (As in 'what's the
connection between the Sun3 query, and Dovers and Altos'? If so, I think it
was just thread drift via the laser printers.)
> This is the 2nd time I've heard about 3 Mbps Ethernet.
That's the 'original' Ethernet; PARC did the 3Mbit one first, and the 10 Mbit
one came along quite a few years later.
I'm trying to remember what kind of cable it used; IIRC it was black coax,
with a woven shield (i.e. not solid like CATV), not quite as large in
diameter as the yellow 10Mbit stuff. To connect up to it, one clamped on a
connector thingy, which had a threaded hole in it over the cable; one then
screwed in a cylindrical cutter which made a hole through the shield, and one
then screwed in a transceiver (which was a box about 2"x2"x4", IIRC).
Hopefully someone has a picture somewhere?
Noel
> I just found a piece, I'll put up a photo.
Here ya go:
http://gunkies.org/wiki/File:3MegEthernetCable.jpghttp://gunkies.org/wiki/File:10MegEthernetCable.jpg
I should have put a ruler in, for scale. The 3M is about 2/3 of the thickness
of the 10M. The center conductor is about 2mm - pretty heavy!
> From: Guy Sotomayor Jr
> The XGP printed on roll paper. It was a laser type process
Plain paper? Well, my memory of it being thermal paper could easily be wrong;
it's been a _long_ time, and I didn't use it much.
Noel
> From: Grant Taylor
> What makes the copies of papers printed on them special?
Well, the Dover was the first device (that I know of) that could print _very_
high-quality graphical/multi-font output, and on ordinary paper. It was also
pretty darned fast - a couple of seconds per sheet, IIRC. The whole package
just blew us all away (I was a MIT when we got ours).
There was a prior device (from quite a few years before) called a 'Xerox
Graphics Printer', but i) IIRC it printed on thermal paper (think
poor-quality thermal fax paper); ii) the resolution was nothing like as high
as that of the Dover (which was, IIRC, in the 100's of DPIs - which it needed
to produce the very-high quality printout with type-faces), and iii) it was
quite slow.
What they did with the Dover was take a high-end Xerox copier (one of the
things the size of a couple of desks),and rip out the optical front end
(which copied an image of the page being copied, onto the drum), and replaced
it with a scanning laser that was fed an amplitude-controlling bit-stream
>from an interface card in the Alto.
>> That's the 'original' Ethernet; PARC did the 3Mbit one first, and the
>> 10 Mbit one came along quite a few years later.
> I assume this has something to do with the Digital / Intel / Xerox as
> in the DIX connector.
Right, a couple of years later Xerox, DEC and Intel did a consortium to make
Ethernet widely available, and produced the 10Mbit version. Technically, it
was little different from the 3MBit version. The low-level packet format was
different (because of the higher speed, and larger maximum size), and the
addresses used the later PARC thinking (UID's for interfaces), but those were
not major changes.
>> I'm trying to remember what kind of cable it used
> That sounds like typical Radio Grade cable.
Yeah, I just found a piece, I'll put up a photo.
> I'm not quite sure what you mean by "solid like CATV".
The CATV that used a heavy foil ground layer.
> That sounds like a description of what I've heard called a "Vampire
> Tap". My understanding is that's the poor way to connect to (what is
> effectively) the Ethernet bus.
Vampire taps worked fine on 3MB Ethernet. As the speeds went up, less so.
> I suspect that Wikipedia's article on 10Base5 has some decent pictures:
Nothing of the 3MB, and it doesn't show how the clamp-on connector and
vampire worked.
Noel
Hi all --
I picked up this little toy at VCF West last summer:
https://1drv.ms/i/s!Aqb36sqnCIfMouYd0HV0ZThE3FnE_Q
As far as I can tell, it's supposed to be a clock and I assume it was a
kit -- this one was definitely hand-assembled.? It's powered by two AA's
(apparently, there are no markings), has a 4 digit LED display, and at
the moment it does not work at all.
Can't find anything about this item at all.? At the moment I'm curious
what the 28-pin IC at the top is -- there are no markings of any kind
anywhere on the chip.? It has an interesting construction -- blue
plastic on both sides with a metal cap over the die.? The two other ICs
are RCA 3081 and RCA 3082 which are simply transistor arrays for driving
the 4-digit LED display.? I assume the 28-pin IC is a simple
microcontroller with built-in ROM, or perhaps it's a device specifically
designed to run a digital clock.? Whatever it is, I'd love to know what
it does so I can debug this thing and possibly source a replacement.
I realize this is not a lot of information to go on, but on the
off-chance someone's seen something like this before I figured I'd give
it a go...
Thanks,
Josh
Hello friends,
I am totally ignorant about hp9000 machines. I am considering acquiring this machine for fun and learning about the 9000. It has a 9153A and 9134D with other accessories. The system currently boots up to BASIC 4.0
I have read that this machine can also support HP/UX. Can anyone advise if HP/UX can be installed on such a machine? Perhaps using internal drive for HP/UX and the external hard drive to boot to BASIC? Both hard drives have BASIC 4.0 installed.
What would be involved to install HP/UX?
Thanks very much
Eugene
Hi all --
I'm in the middle of repairing a console for a Symbolics 3640. This uses
the earlier Phillips-based monitor and it employs a TIPL757A transistor in
the deflection circuit. The one in mine is toast and I haven't been able
to find a suitable replacement.
The datasheet (or at least a page of it) is here:
http://pdf1.alldatasheet.com/datasheet-pdf/view/108034/TI/TIPL757.html
The base current rating seems to be important in this application; I tried
replacing it with a BUX48 (which meets the other specs but only has a 4A
continuous base current rating) and it blew in a few minutes. I haven't
found a source of 757As, and I haven't found another TO-3 transistor that
matches its specifications.
If anyone's sitting on a pile of these, knows a good source for them, or
knows of a transistor to substitute, please let me know.
Thanks!
Josh
