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101090 discussions

MASSBUS disk emulator (Was: Unibus controller for MFM disks)

by jnc＠mercury.lcs.mit.edu

> From: Paul Birkel > Maaaaaybe there are three ribbon cables back there Sure looks like it, and running to a standard MASSBUS connector, to boot. (Not that I have any use for the latter - absolutely no MASSBUS cables at all. But one could just run flat cables from this, to one's RH11/RH70.) I don't see a second MASSBUS connector, wonder what they do about termination? Maybe it's onboard? So I guess one could only have one of these things per MASSBUS port? Not really a problem, of course! ;-) We _definitely_ need to put these things in 'production'. Noel

9 years, 3 months

MASSBUS disk emulator (Was: Unibus controller for MFM disks)

by jnc＠mercury.lcs.mit.edu

> From: Ian S. King > When I left in 2014, LCM's Massbus disk emulator was working quite well > indeed, and was running in 'production' ... ISTR the plan was always to > open-source the hardware and firmware, too. I'm interested in this (as I suspect are lots of other people with machines that can use MASSBUS disks). Can you briefly describe what it was? Does anyone know anything about the status of the plans to open-source it? Noel

9 years, 3 months

Reasonable price for a complete SOL-20 system?

by james＠attfield.co.uk

> From: "Mark J. Blair" <nf6x at nf6x.net> > Subject: Re: Reasonable price for a complete SOL-20 system? > > The gunstock wood origin story sounds more plausible, but less fragrant. > > -- > Mark J. Blair, NF6X <nf6x at nf6x.net> Not to rain on anyone's parade, but speaking as an owner of probably one of the first Sol-20's in the UK I would have to comment that the wood (which we always thought was a nice touch) was actually quite light in appearance and weight and if anyone had suggested wharf wood at that time I am fairly sure the suggestion would have been met with a degree of scepticism as would the suggestion of gun stock wood (I had achieved my marksman status by then and had some small experience of the feel of the stock in the hand and shoulder). For all that, I liked the SOL-20 as the best word processor on the planet at that time (with the Electric Pencil ROM) as it took great advantage of the VDM-1 memory-mapped display board to achieve what products like WordStar struggled for years to do. In fact, we often used to marry the VDM-1 to the Horizon for that very reason - that and the fact that we could then play ATC (Air Traffic Controller) on the North* which was a great mapped video game unavailable to serial terminals. It was also liked because it had a great keyboard with a good feel and, turn and turn about, could also have the North* drives bolted on to make a great little twin drive system. Another advantage was that we didn't have to solder up all the boards and assemble it like the IMSAI and some of the North* boards. I did love my IMSAI though, but the 8080 CPU was a drag as everyone was gung-ho for the 'new-ish' Z80 even though CP/M was still in 8080-land. Then came Cromemco and everything changed with CDOS and Cromix. People still wanted CP/M though - I recall even now assisting with porting CP/M to a Cromemco Z2 I took down to the Byte Shop in London one weekend. Of course, my IMSAI never flew better than when it was filled with Cromemco boards and a 299B drive on the side :) - those lovely blinkenlighten! Anyhoo - back to the SOL-20 - we always figured that the reason that the wooden side panels were featured was simply because the Horizon (the Big Dog at that time) was available with a very attractive wooden case cover for those who preferred something other than a functional blue metal case (in fact strangely remarkably similar to the blue of the SOL-20). Of course, although opinion may vary, either was arguably more attractive in an office than the metal mesh that SWTPC went with. I say this with some affection since as I write this my foot leans against the case of my old SWTPC AC-30 cassette interface. The innards gave up the ghost long ago but I can't bring myself to skip it as it brings back too many fond memories of a basement, an SWTPC processor, a lovely dual 8" drive unit and FLEX. In summary, if you don't mind an 8080 and you can get some decent drives for it (we were never very fond of the Helios drives) a SOL-20 is a very nice, well designed integrated system. I would have one again in a trice. James

9 years, 3 months

Unibus controller for MFM disks

by michael.99.thompson＠gmail.com

> > Date: Sun, 16 Oct 2016 12:07:24 -0700 > From: "Ian S. King" <isking at uw.edu> > Subject: Re: Unibus controller for MFM disks > > When I left in 2014, LCM's Massbus disk emulator was working quite well > indeed, and was running in 'production' to keep down the hours on the RP06 > drives. ISTR the plan was always to open-source the hardware and firmware, > too. > -- > Ian S. King, MSIS, MSCS, Ph.D. Candidate > The Information School <http://ischool.uw.edu> > Dissertation: "Why the Conversation Mattered: Constructing a Sociotechnical > Narrative Through a Design Lens > > Archivist, Voices From the Rwanda Tribunal <http://tribunalvoices.org> > Value Sensitive Design Research Lab <http://vsdesign.org> > > University of Washington > I never got the Massbus disk emulator that I was promised for loaning the LCM a board from my KS10. -- Michael Thompson

9 years, 3 months

ROM dumps of Intel MDS-2 IOC

by fulivi＠tiscali.it

Hi everyone, I'm looking for the images of ROMs installed on the IOC (I/O controller) board of Intel MDS-2 development systems. In particular I'm looking for the content of the character generator ROM (A19-2708) and of firmware ROMs (A50 to A53-4x2716). So far I had no success in googling them. My goal would be to contribute a good emulation of MDS systems to MESS, especially for what regards the look of the video terminal. Well, this is the plan, when "real-life" is not inteferring too much... Thanks a lot. -- F.Ulivi

9 years, 3 months

One last epay for the day, TEC terminal

by jwsmail＠jwsss.com

Since some need to possibly use current loop, I was searching and thought it useful to bring this to people's attention. The TEC is also one of the terminals in the video I posted a few days ago related to "Jobs" if you care to look. I've used these and at the time the only problem I had was dropping them on your foot, they are not light. the vendor says that Bitsavers has the manual, which may make this a bit attractive as well, saving looking all over the place for documentation. The screen doesn't look great, but might be usable w/o a huge amount of work. Another thing that ones here may be able to use is that it has the video output option installed, so one could drive a modern monitor, or presentation projector in a display situation with this one. I think the ones we had were a bit fancier, and had a block of indicators on one side or the other that you could blink, this one does not. 1972-TEC-440-Serial-Terminal-/ http://www.ebay.com/itm/262674442502 no affiliation, just wish I had room for it, hope someone can use it. i'll throttle myself for a few days unless I see a random 360/50 or so for sale so I am not bothering those who don't like these. Apologies in advance. thanks Jim

9 years, 3 months

Anyone with a CDC disk pack reader that can help Paul Vixie?

by spectre＠floodgap.com

Apparently Paul Vixie's got a CDC Hawk disk pack from an Alpha Micro AM-100/T that he'd like to get the bits off of (he'll worry about the file system separately). I have a controller card in an unknown state but I don't have any way of reading the disk pack, so it will probably be easier to do this in a separate working system, which does not need to be Alpha Micro. If you've got a means of doing this, I'll get you in touch with him. -- ------------------------------------ personal: http://www.cameronkaiser.com/ -- Cameron Kaiser * Floodgap Systems * www.floodgap.com * ckaiser at floodgap.com -- One learns to itch where one can scratch. -- Ernest Bramah -----------------

9 years, 3 months

Looking for a Sun Enterprise Exxxx

by silvercreekvalley＠yahoo.com

Hi all, Looking for a Sun Enterprise E3xxx/E4xxx ? any model really. I have a few CPU modules and it would be great to have one of these machines up and running again. I?m in the UK ? and can collect. Reasonable price paid J PM if you have anything . Cheers Ian

9 years, 3 months

very cheap eBay.de Apple offerings

by sales＠elecplus.com

http://www.ebay.de/sch/i.html/?_saslop=1 <http://www.ebay.de/sch/i.html/?_saslop=1&_sasl=tom201513> &_sasl=tom201513 Scroll down for a box of 5.25" floppies for Apple with no bids yet. Cindy Croxton

9 years, 3 months

PDP-11 RL02 disk emulation

by scott.l.baker＠gmail.com

Hi, Has anyone built or had any experience with this (or any other) RL02 emulator? http://www.pdp11gy.com/indexE.html#file:///E:/homepage/indexE.html Thanks, Scott

9 years, 3 months

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