Today I finally got the SPACEWAR version for PDP-11/10 running again on my
PDP-11/05 with AR11 board. I played a couple of rounds together with my
daughter. She was better than me. Quite hard game IMHO.
https://youtu.be/fTiHRAKjyho
Bill Seiler and Larry Bryant wrote this version in 1974 and submitted it to
DECUS. It was believed to have been lost to history. But Bill had saved the
printouts from the PAL11 assembler. He sent me scans of these printouts as
pdf files. I then transcribed it into source files and iterated several
times in SimH to get a clean build and link. I got some help from people
here doing OCR on some files. But the lines mostly confused the OCR process
so a lot of errors was introduced. It turned out that it was easier to just
transcribe the whole lot by hand than finding and correcting errors.
The AR11 is somewhat different to the AD01 and AA11 that Bill and Larry
used. AA11 has a 12 bit 2?s complement D/A while the AR11 is only 10 bits
and not 2?s complement. I did some patches and eventually got everything
right.
I also connected a couple of analogue joysticks. The fire button is just
short ciruiting the viper of the potentiometer to the 5V supply lead. The
screen is a HP1332A vector screen.
All the transcribed code, AR11 patches and build instructions are available
on github. https://github.com/MattisLind/SPACEWAR
It should be possible to adapt it to orher types of A/D and D/A hardware if
anyone wishes to do so. However the gameplay might be harder when running
on a faster PDP-11?
Have fun!
/Mattis
Anyone have any idea on how to open this particular Apple II PSU? It is
a Astec AA 11040B and has like a rivet on each side in the middle. All
the other supplies I've messed with just had screws along the bottom.
Trying to remove the bottom of the casing so I can work on the supply
itself. Link to a pic of it.
Thanks for any help.
http://www.trailingedge.com/images/A2PSU.jpg
David Williams
www.trailingedge.com
Does anyone have a DMC11 integral modem line card schematics set? I'm looking specifically for the part right next to the connector, i.e., the coax driver and coax receiver parts. I don't see it on Bitsavers.
That does have a line unit maintenance manual which has a schematic of the digital parts (in other words, everything up to the point I actually need the most) but it omits the analog part, saying to find it on "print D16".
The DMR11 print set does show a circuit for this, but it's very different from what the DMC manual describes and it has some aspects that don't make much sense, like a "sine generator" in the output stage.
paul
Jim,
I sent you an email to your jwsmail at jwsss.com mail account and haven't heard
back from you, so thought I'd better try to reach you on cctalk!
It's about potential restoration work needed in the LA area. Please get back
to me privately.
Sorry for the interruption of posting this to the cctalk list...
Best, Lyle
--
73 NM6Y
Bickley Consulting West
https://bickleywest.com
"Black holes are where God is dividing by zero"
Strange question, does anyone happen to have the keyboard overlays for the VAX/VMS version of Word Perfect that they can photograph, or better yet scan? I have the manuals, and the green, red, and blue stickers on the VT keyboard, but no overlays. I *might* have the overlays, but I can?t find the the VT keyboard I?m thinking of (though after digging, I know I have more than I thought).
I?m looking for the VT200/300 version (which should work for my LK401).
Zane
Date: Mon, 10 May 2021 10:15:34 -0700
> From: Vincent Slyngstad <vincent.slyngstad at gmail.com>
> To: cctalk at classiccmp.org
> Subject: Re: QBUS/UNIBUS card handles
> Message-ID: <826ef016-3060-e690-de81-8209479712e9 at gmail.com>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8; format=flowed
>
> On 5/10/2021 9:25 AM, Fritz Mueller via cctalk wrote:
>>
>>> On May 10, 2021, at 7:14 AM, Joshua Rice via cctalk <cctalk at classiccmp.org> wrote:
>>> I would assume it would be trivial to do an injection-moulded run of these handles...
>>
>> They might also be ideal for silicone mold / resin cast, for smaller/home production runs?
>
> Resin casting will work, but it's messy, etc. I haven't had any trouble
> with the toughness of 3D printed handles. Honestly, I often attach them
> with a pair of small zip-ties instead of rivets, and they are still
> plenty strong. The usual caveats about 3D printing apply -- just don't
> print it so that the layers will be torn apart when you pull on it!
>
> Maybe you PDP-11 guys are more used to hex cards, or something? I did
> have some PCB made where the card fingers tended to bind, but that's
> best addressed with some careful filing and a tweak of the CAD files for
> the next run :-). (The CAD files on so-much-stuff have long been
> tweaked for a good fit to the connector blocks.)
>
> Vince
Vince,
I recently had Shapeways 3D print some of your card handles in Nylon 12.
They call Nylon 12 ?versatile plastic? on their web site and they use a laser sintering
process for fabrication. I used the card handles on my QBone and UniBone boards
which makes them MUCH easier to insert and pull. The Nylon 12 seems to be
quite tough and I used 3mm x 6mm long screws to fasten them. Shapeways
charged $5.00 each plus shipping to make them.
Thanks for the great 3D design!
Best Regards,
Mark
Re:
Today I finally got the SPACEWAR version for PDP-11/10 running again
on my PDP-11/05 with AR11 board.
...
Bill Seiler and Larry Bryant wrote this version in 1974
Congratulations!
Odd coincidence, sort of, in names ... "Seiler" wrote SPACEWAR in 1974 for
the PDP-11, "Sieler" (me) wrote it for the Digital Scientific Meta 4 (an
IBM 1130 super clone) in 1971. I suspect he gets his name mispronounced as
much as I do :)
Stan Sieler (long "e")
Okay, now that my 11/45 is up and running well, I could really make good use of one of those rack caddies for RK05 packs to hold my most commonly used system packs for different operating systems. Anybody have one they'd be willing to sell/trade, or at least the DEC part number so I could try to track down some drawings?
Looking at pictures on the web, there seem to have been at least two styles: one with plated rod wings, and one with sheet metal wings? I'm supposing I'll end up needing to fab something myself unless these are less rare out there than I think they are (I've yet to see one go by on ePay, for example.)
cheers,
--FritzM.
On Sat, 2021-05-08 at 12:00 -0500, cctalk-request at classiccmp.org wrote:
> I seem to recall that the Tadpole AlphaBook performance is roughly on
> par with the DEC Multia, which is to say, not very good.? Though I
> don?t think I ever got OpenVMS running on my Multia.
>
> Zane
I did get it running on mine for a while. I remember it wasn't fast and
was kind of annoying - the VMS-capable SRM had a peculiar bug where if
the NVRAM battery died you had to failsafe-load the official Multia
firmware then load the VMS-capable one otherwise the framebuffer would
never initialize, not even after the battery was replaced. Finally got
a DEC 3000 and passed the Multia off.
Wish that some of the DEC gear that was showing up was nearby... ah
well.
Thanks Mattis - watching an AR11 making that
oscilloscope display brings back a lot of
memories from my PDP-11 programming days. Had
heard of spacewar in 1980, but was more
interested in playing around displaying data on
screen of a scope. One of my jobs was to clean
up electrophysiology data for publication and
that meant removing noise in signal so had a
joystick system which could move and click on
point on screen I wanted deleted. 11/34 was fast
enough that we had an EE summer student create a
dot matrix character set so we could put captions
on our oscilloscope images. Of course, only way
of getting hard copies of those was with an oscilloscope Polaroid camera.
Looking at the printouts that you're dealing
with, I had a hard time making out some of the
characters. Can see individual dots in a number
of the characters and haven't found any OCR in
past that works well on them. Had my MSc thesis
printed on and IBM lineprinter and looks good
>from afar but couldn't get any OCR program to
digitize it properly. At least the spacewar code is relatively short!
Boris Gimbarzevsky
>Today I finally got the SPACEWAR version for PDP-11/10 running again on my
>PDP-11/05 with AR11 board. I played a couple of rounds together with my
>daughter. She was better than me. Quite hard game IMHO.
>
>https://youtu.be/fTiHRAKjyho
>
>Bill Seiler and Larry Bryant wrote this version in 1974 and submitted it to
>DECUS. It was believed to have been lost to history. But Bill had saved the
>printouts from the PAL11 assembler. He sent me scans of these printouts as
>pdf files. I then transcribed it into source files and iterated several
>times in SimH to get a clean build and link. I got some help from people
>here doing OCR on some files. But the lines mostly confused the OCR process
>so a lot of errors was introduced. It turned out that it was easier to just
>transcribe the whole lot by hand than finding and correcting errors.
>
>The AR11 is somewhat different to the AD01 and AA11 that Bill and Larry
>used. AA11 has a 12 bit 2???s complement D/A while the AR11 is only 10 bits
>and not 2???s complement. I did some patches and eventually got everything
>right.
>
>I also connected a couple of analogue joysticks. The fire button is just
>short ciruiting the viper of the potentiometer to the 5V supply lead. The
>screen is a HP1332A vector screen.
>
>All the transcribed code, AR11 patches and build instructions are available
>on github. https://github.com/MattisLind/SPACEWAR
>
>It should be possible to adapt it to orher types of A/D and D/A hardware if
>anyone wishes to do so. However the gameplay might be harder when running
>on a faster PDP-11?
>
>Have fun!
>
>/Mattis
