Hi all --
At long last my Terak 8510/a is working again! I'd repaired the power
supply a couple of years back but the system simply would not behave
properly. I traced it down to some very unreliable IC sockets (they
were not high-quality when they were new, and the damp environment this
particular machine spent several years in before I got it did nothing to
help). I finally replaced about 40 sockets with some nice turned-pin
ones last week, and now the system is up and running and passing the
System Acceptance Tests with flying colors.
I do not have a keyboard or monitor for this system, and while it's
pretty easy to fabricate replacements (the video's just standard
composite, and the keyboard is an 8-bit parallel ASCII keyboard with a
few extra special keys) I'd love to find a set of originals.
If anyone has any spares in any condition, please drop me a line. (I'm
also interested in tracking down an original single-density floppy
controller just on the off chance...)
Thanks!
- Josh
Well maybe not, but the first in the 23-001A1 sequence of part numbers
was used in the PDP-8/e EAE. I was troubleshooting a problem with an
EAE in which the step counter wouldn't load. There are 2 fusible PROMs
in the circuit and I noticed they are 23-001A1 and 23-002A1.
Maybe there is a 23-000A1.
Apple II (Rev. 4) sold for $4,056. Sol-20 sold for $2,878. Both were
clean, autographed, and working. It is likely that bidders reached a
little deeper because we are a non-profit.
Hello list,
I recently got a bunch of boards from somebody who was either not able to tell me where they were from.
The boards seem to be unibus-based with numbers starting with X. I neither came across these before, nor could find any information in the web about it:
Type, P/N , Description
X029, 5013132B, AUC interconnect
X022, 5012197C, unibuswindow
X021, 5012181C, CD ROM control (did that ever exist for unibus?)
X020, 5012180B, data path
Two 16K mos memory modules M7847 came with the set.
No backplane, unfortunately.
Any hints about the type of system and application these boards were for?
Many thanks for any pointers.
Wish a nice weekend to all of you,
Pierre
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Pierre's collection of classic computers moved to: http://www.digitalheritage.de
Here's what I'm currently looking at (all 486's, but I'd consider 386s and
original Pentiums, too):
* Compaq Prolinea systems
* Canon ObjectStation
* NEC Powermate
* HP Vectra
* IBM Aptiva or PS/1
Not considering:
* Beige Packard Bell with Microsoft Sound System and a 1M graphics card.
:-)
I'm doing my Spring cleaning. I have way too much crap, and the particular
type of crap that's lowest on my list of "things to keep" is PeeCee crap.
I simply have too much and a lot of it are the parts I used to make PCs
bearable at the time (like combo serial/LPT cards). I'm not all that happy
that PeeCees even exist, yet I have over 20 of them last I checked. I
think I'm going to rid myself of the vast majority of gear that Greg
Douglas of Reputable system used to haze me for keeping, calling it
"PeeCee crap", and that was 16 years ago.
I was asking myself, why do I have all these junky plastic laptops from
the early 2k era? They are mostly soulless trash (except maybe my Sony
Picturebook - yes the cute one with the Transmeta Crusoe). Wouldn't I
rather purge a gaggle of laptops and a few old crappy PCs and instead have
a single "special" (but much slower) 486-era box ? Yes, I would. I'm
actually pulling stuff out and playing with it more. Warehousing crap is
becoming less and less an attractive pastime.
So, I'm thinking I'll consolidate as much of the fun hardware from the
1990's as I can in one box. That will make me feel better about ditching
the considerable horde of junk I'm looking at. To that end, I have a few
bits I believe are considerably more desirable compared to others and I
want to get as many as I can in one box. Chime in if you have suggestions.
So, here we go, in no real order:
* I want to stick with desktop or tower units only, no laptops, I'll
probably have to add some PCI cards to get to "ultimate" status :-)
* I'd use it with one of these OSs: *BSD, Linux, Solaris x86, OpenStep,
BSDi, Unixware, Minix, MS-DOS, DR-DOS, FreeDOS, or OS/2. Thus the more
compatible stuff is worth considering. Windows compatibility isn't
something I care about ('cept maybe for comic relief, which I can get
much more easily from politics these days).
* Anyone know of a box with a built-in (integrated) Gravis Ultrasound?
That'd save me a slot. However, there isn't much to compete with that
card from the 90's. The SB16 was ubiquitous and worked well enough, but
I didn't feel it could compete with a GUS. The SB16 wasn't the
"ultimate" for sure.
* Hmm, Symbios, LSI, or Adaptec on the SCSI controller.... OR! Maybe
someone knows of a cool PC that had a built-in SCSI controller. I don't
think I could abide PATA/IDE disks and for-sure no MFM/RLL drives (the
horror). The nice stuff in the 90's was always SCSI, IIRC. I remember
some NEC PCs that were pretty attractive and came with integrated SCSI.
* I hate machines that used custom RAM. I guess it wouldn't be a deal
breaker if it was already maxxed.
* I'd certainly prefer PS/2 keyboard ports.
* Slimline or other nice case designs are very much something I'll look
for, but I need at least one PCI slot, methinks. Unless I could get a
GUS and SCSI controller both integrated (man, wouldn't that be
something!). Anything different or spacey is preferable to a beige box,
even if it's just white or black.
* Hmm, what was the ultimate PC framebuffer from the 1990s? I guess it
depends on if you care about 3D or think it was too crappy in the 1990s
to consider. I'm mostly in the latter camp. So, I'm more inclined to go
for maximum 2D performance and maximum OS compatibility. Number Nine?
Orchid? I guess I need to find some 2D performance benchmarks from 1999
or something similar. Matrox might work out. The MGA Millennium II comes
to mind. I liked 3DFX, too, but I'm worried they were too 3D centric,
plus they were ignored by the commercial Unix players. More video memory
is great so it can run higher res where possible.
* I'll use a 3Com 3c905, but I remember there being even better stuff. I'm
just not sure which one is going to work best for all my OSs. Maybe the
3C509 is a better choice, but it's 10mbit and ISA, IIRC. I just remember
that card works in more OSs than anything I've ever seen. Realtek is
out. I won't use those PoSs ("fool me once" and all that). I'm also not
a fan of Broadcom (again they burned me too often).
* NTSC Video capability would be nice, but I'll probably just add it in
the form of an old Happauge PCI WinTV. I need to find out what OpenSTEP
and others supported. This is just a "nice to have" for me. I really
liked things like the MacTV (all-in-one with NTSC tuner) back in the
day.
* Since I'm mostly looking at 486's, I'm mainly targeting the 486/66. I
have nothing against Cyrix or exotic x86 processors from the era.
-Swift
I am going back to Dallas next week to sort 2 pallets of media and software.
The age runs from reels of tape (9 track? Dated 1989 and earlier) to LTO4.
Software, there are a LOT of MS Developer CDs from 2011 and much earlier,
Xilinx CDs, AIX CDs, Solaris CDs (the earliest I noticed off the bat was
version 6) and a lot of Dell server implementation disks. Also some things
on cassette tapes.
I need to know what is wanted. After next week it goes in the dumpster.
Cindy Croxton
Electronics Plus
500 Pershing Ave.
Kerrville, TX 78028
830-370-3239 cell
sales at elecplus.com
AOL IM elcpls
Can anyone identify this HP board (see link to pictures)?
https://goo.gl/photos/BBuAV1oozWNSqeUTA
It was at under the main board of a newly acquired HP 1000-E, next to the
firmware board. It says HP 54427-60050 Booster Microcode. It has 5 bitslice
SN 74S181 chips at the back. So I surmise maybe it's a late ALU booster
upgrade?
Marc
> From: Peter Corlett
Hi, thanks for helping me out here!
> Both are correct. There are 44 (rounded) frames per second, and 87
> (rounded) fields per second.
"fields per second" refers to interlaced displays, right? So the vertical
retrace frequence there is the 87 Hz number (since you get a vertical retrace
after only 768/2 lines are displayed). Or am I confused?
Although if I'm right so far, I'm puzzled as to how one could drive both
interlaced and non-interlaced monitors off the same video signal - wouldn't
the interlaced one need a video signal which has 'odd lines, then a vertical
retrace, then even lines, then a vertical retrace'?
Anyway, so which one is the one which is the number to look at when
considering if the refresh rate is so high it might be dangerous to an old
CRT monitor? I would assume it's the 'fields per second', since that's the
frequency of the vertical retrace?
E.g. my HP M50 manual says "Setting the screen resolution/refresh rate
combination higher than 1024x768 at 60 Hz can damage the display." Even
though the same document lists the vertical frequency range as "50-100 Hz"!
Noel
I got just another jewel to my collection, IBM 1620 Model I (G level). Machine has all internals intact, but table top and the typewriter are missing (probably doorway was too narrow back then, parts removed and forgotten somewhere on the journey... )
That table top can be made again, but I would need that right model typewriter. Anyone have a spare..?
Also I have another problem with it, memory is suffering wire corrosion (like these all does). So this can be a looooong shot, but if someone have a functional memory or just core array, I'm interested to buy or swap it to something.
Photos can be found my blog, link below.
Thaaaaanks!
- Johannes ThelenFinland
Before microcomputers blog (Finnish) http://ennenmikrotietokoneita.blogspot.fi/
On Thu, 6/16/16, Sean Conner <spc at conman.org> wrote:
> It was thus said that the Great Liam Proven once stated:
> > And Plan 9 went one better, and (mostly) eliminated that nasty old
> > unsafe mess, C, and it eliminated native binaries and brought
> > platform-neutral binaries to the game.
>
>? Um ... what?? Plan 9 is written in C.? And they still use binaries, just
> fat binaries (that is, the binary contains multiple code and data segments
> for each supported architecture0).
I suspect he was referring to Inferno when talking about the
byte code executables. But Plan 9 doesn't use fat binaries.
It keeps each architecture's binaries in a directory named for
the architecture. Then one uses the union mounts to build
a /bin that has the appropriate mix of binaries and shell scripts
for the machine hosting that process.
BLS