test-drb

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101090 discussions

by jnc＠mercury.lcs.mit.edu

> From: Guy Sotomayor Jr > There was a political fight within IBM and the Unix center of > competency moved .. All of the Series/1 Unix materials were destroyed > at that point I wonder if any of the engineers who worked on it kept a copy at home (as engineers will often do)? Noel

9 years, 8 months

Front Panel News - New production run coming up

by rodsmallwood52＠btinternet.com

Hi Our order for front panel blanks has now arrived. We have enough to make ten of each of PDP-8/e (A) PDP-8/e(B) PDP-8/f PDP-8/i * PDP-8/L * PDP-8/m * New - uses a 465mm x 150 mm panel I'm expecting production of PDP-8/e (A) and PDP-8/e(B) to start on Tuesday 31-MAY-2016 at one layer per day (allowing for drying time) plus set up and packing. The first panels should start coming off the line on or about 8-JUN-2016. PDP-8/f and PDP-8/m should start about the 13-JUN-2016 finishing about 22-JUN-2016 Followed by PDP-8/i Followed by PDP-8/L Followed by PDP-II/XX Price remains unchanged at USD150.00 per panel plus USD20 shipping. Payment to PayPal rodsmallwood52 at btinternet.com There's only ten of each type so one of each type per customer please Back orders ship first then in order received sequence. _*Just a quick note about production techniques. *_ The printing is done by hand on a printing table. Its a big heavy cast iron tray about a foot deep and five feet square. It stands about three feet high There are hundreds of small holes in the bottom to allow a vacuum to hold down whats being printed. On top of the table is an arrangement of bars and slides to allow one or more silk screen frames to brought down on a work piece held down by the vacuum. Next to the table is the drying rack. It looks like half a giant rolodex. You put your wet work between the pages.They are made of open mesh panels to allow air to circulate. You start by marking the position of the blank panel on the bottom of the table. Then the first screen is positioned over the work and horizontal movement locked. You can still move the frame vertically. Position your work between the marked guides on the bottom of the table. Bring down the frame and drag the ink across the screen. Put the wet printed blank in the drying frame and repeat for each panel in the batch. Wait 24 hours and setup your next fame for the next layer(color) Take first panel out of drying rack print and replace. Repeat for each board in the batch until done. Cycle time per batch about eight days elapsed. Rod (Panelman) Smallwood

9 years, 8 months

vintage computers in active use and restoring them

by wdonzelli＠gmail.com

> As far as I can tell, if I suddenly need a specific SLT module, the > odds of finding that specific module at any given time on eBay is > essentially zero. Stuff with standard SLT shows up on Ebay quite often. Not every day, but one could build up a decent pile of SLT cards in time to harvest from. > Some SLT modules are far more common than others. I don't know how > many different SLT modules are used in the 360/30, nor what percentage > of the SLT modules in that machine are common ones. For the standard (slower) families of SLT, their are only a few types of modules - I might guess only 15 or 20 types in something like model 30. They would likely all be 361xxx parts. Anyway, if one confines an S/360 restoration project to sources limited to Ebay and Digikey, one will have a bad time. Look around. IBM made a huge amount of this stuff, and a reasonable amount still survives. -- Will

9 years, 8 months

Servant .953

by roger.holmes＠microspot.co.uk

On 7 May 2010, at 08:25, cctalk-request at classiccmp.org wrote: > > Message: 2 > Date: Thu, 06 May 2010 16:06:37 -0700 > From: Al Kossow <aek at bitsavers.org> > Subject: Re: Servant .953 > To: cctalk at classiccmp.org > Message-ID: <4BE34B7D.6060902 at bitsavers.org> > Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed > > On 5/6/10 2:23 PM, Fred Cisin wrote: >>> Al Kossow wrote: >>>> I am interviewing Andy Hertzfeld tomorrow, and had hoped to talk about >>>> Servant, but I can't find a copy of it around anywhere tonight. > > A huge thank you to Nigel Williams who forwarded a working copy of .951 five > minutes before Bill and Andy arrived. We spent an hour talking about MacPaint > and Quickdraw (Apple has finally given CHM approval to make the sources available) > then another hour on Alice, Dali Clock, Servant, Hypercard, and Magic Cap. Could you please clarify, the QuickDraw source is available for what purpose? Could developers modify it any include it in heir commercial 64 bit Intel applications for instance? Is the source Pascal, Assembler, C or something else? Roger Holmes, Director of Microspot who has a Carbon application which compiles with over 10,000 warnings about deprecated QuickDraw calls.

9 years, 8 months

strangest systems I've sent email from

by swiftgriggs＠gmail.com

Here's my top 3 weirdest devices I've ever sent email through, just for fun: 1. The AlphaSmart "Dana" which was a strange laptop-like device which ran PalmOS. The email client was Eudora for PalmOS. 2. Sony eVilla BeIA appliance using some kind of (crappy) built-in mail application. 3. Sharp Wizard handheld organizer over a serial TTY connected to a 386/SX with optional math co-processor installed so it could run ... Xenix. Logged in via simple built-in vt100 terminal app on the wizard at 2400 BPS to the Unix box. Used 'elm' to send the mail. That Sharp Wizard was a helluva organizer for it's time. The main feature was that it takes AAA batteries and thus I was actually able to afford to run the thing in college by getting rechargables. It had a nice keyboard and the display was readable in the sunlight, too. No backlight, though. -Swift

9 years, 8 months

Bringing a VAX 750 and Nova from Canada to US: What to expect?

by ian.finder＠gmail.com

Self explanatory- asking other computer collectors here to see if anyone has experience. Will there be any trouble bringing them across? They look weird and big, but they have no real commercial value and are just going to my personal computer collection. Anything I need? I think both were manufactured in the US. Thanks- - Ian -- Ian Finder (206) 395-MIPS ian.finder at gmail.com

9 years, 8 months

Early 360 machines (Was: Front panel switches - what did they do?)

by jnc＠mercury.lcs.mit.edu

> From: Jon Elson >> I interned at IBM Bermuda, and they had a 360/20 as their main service >> bureau machine; it had (IIRC) ... a 4301 printer. > I'm guessing, maybe, that would be a 1403 printer? Ah, right you are! The old grey cells are, well, old! ;-) Those printers had an amazingly long life! They were first introduced in 1959 with the 1401 computer, and, like I said, the brand spanking new System 3 they got in ca. 1976 came with one! I wonder when IBM stopped producing them? Noel

9 years, 8 months

Front panel switches - what did they do?

by jnc＠mercury.lcs.mit.edu

> From: Swift Griggs > I'm curious about all these older machines with front panel buttons and > switches. What all did they do? In addition to reading/writing memory locations, and basic machine control (boot, start, stop, continue, single-step, etc), some machines had additional functionality, but what it was (if any) varied widely from machine to machine. E.g. the KA10, the first model of the PDP-10, had a front panel which also allowed you to (among other things): - execute the contents of the data switches as an instruction - either stop the CPU, or execute an interrupt (switch selected), when the address in the address switches was used for (switch selected): -- instruction fetch -- data fetch -- data write - repeat the previous key-press indefinitely (at a selectable speed) The latter one could be used for all sorts of things. I once watched someone halt the machine, put it in single-step mode, hit 'continue', and then 'repeat': by turning the 'repeat speed' knob up and down it was possible to cause the CPU to run at varying speeds, down to 1 instruction/second! I imagine that key could have also been used to clear memory by putting 0 in the address and data switches, hitting 'deposit' and then 'deposit next', and then 'repeat' (with the repetition rate turned to the max). You'd have to read the processor manual for each machine to know exactly what it could do from the front panel. E.g. some of the PDP-11's (/04, /34, /45 and /70, IIRC) had a mode where you could single-step the microcode. I recall using this on our /45 to debug it when the RETURN instruction broke... :-) Noel

9 years, 8 months

equipment & memorabilia available

by jwest＠classiccmp.org

This one is a little sketchy; location is Mont Vernon, NH. Situation is a lady's husband passed away and shes going through all his DEC stuff. She would like to sell it, but has no idea what it is all worth. I do not have a list that is really useful, so someone would need to contact her, go onsite, and see what all is there and make an offer. Below are just tidbits from several emails we exchanged. If you're interested and local to that area and willing to take on a "project recovery", drop me a line off-list. Please do not respond if you just want to cherry pick one or two items unless you're fully prepared to at least help her find a home for the parts you don't want. Best, J I have a pdp 11 in the basement and lots of old mouldy documentation......and who knows what else? I'm trying to clean it all out. also have an LA36, and who knows what else. My husband died in January and I've a whole house to readjust to. I can get you the model, etc. soon. I live in Mont Vernon, NH. Thanks for answerig...nice to know someone cares about the old stuff. I scoped out the basement for the pdp-11 and here's what I've come up with so far: 26 tape cylinders 12 RL02 1 Decscope 1 rx01 1 decdatasystem box 1 unknown grey metal box 1 Decwriter II 5 RT-11 oranger binders several LS11 System Service Manuals other binders, etc. I would like to sell this, but have no idea as to value, and would also like to find someone who wants them...so what do you think someone would pay for this? Also found a copy of a RSTS auto license plate with a note to (XXXX - husbands name) from Simon Szeto "for someone who also loves RSTS" ahhh...the good old days. Were you a part of them? I've found more documentation, old badges, bumper stickers, etc.

9 years, 8 months

Question about UNIBUS terminators, M9300

by jnc＠mercury.lcs.mit.edu

> From: William Degnan > Here is the layout starting from slot 9/11 of the expansion cabinet Just slot numbers by themselves aren't much use, because if there are any non-UNIBUS backplanes (e.g. custom backplanes for core memory, for an RH11 - which has its own custom backplane, you can't use a regular SPC/MUD 'UNIBUS' backplane to hold it), we need to know what those are, and where. Note that many boards can only go in a specific slot in a custom backplane, and vice verse - some slots in such backplanes will only hold a specific kind of card. Taking the RH11-AB as an example: it comes with a 9-slot custom backplane. Hex RH11 boards M7294 and M7295 go in slots 3 and 2, respectively (and nowhere else, and nothing else can go in those slots). UNIBUS A in is in slot 1, connectors A/B; UNIBUS A out is in slot 9, connectors A/B. UNIBUS B in is in slot 8, connectors A/B; UNIBUS A out is in slot 7, connectors A/B. The RH11 backplane has some slots which are not needed/used by the RH11; those are wired as SPC slots; slots 7, 8 and 9, connectors C-F (the A-B connectors in these slots are UNIBUS, per above), are SPC slots. That means that they need _at least_ a G727 single-width card (the little square grant continuity cards which jumper BG4-7) in them if there is no other device plugged in. If the NPG wire-wrap jumper on the backplane for that slot has been removed, you'd have to use a G7273 dual-width jumper card, to jumper NPG also. So, looking at your list; first, a comment about naming: 9/11: M9202 (1-2) 11: M7297 (3-4) 11: 7296 (5-6) This looks like slot 1 of an RH11 backplane. Standard practise it to use letters for the vertical, and numbers for the horizontal, for positive identification. So standard nomenclature would be to say that the M9202 is in connectors A/B, the M7297 in C/D, and the M7296 in E/F. (Individual pins are named xYZn, where 'x' is the slot, 1-N [where N is typically 4 or 9]; 'Y' is the connector, A-F; 'Y' is the pin, A-V using the 'DEC alphabet'; and 'n' is the side, 1-2. The NPG jumper is CA1-CB1 in all SPC/MUD slots, i.e. 1CA1-1CB1 in slot 1.) The stuff starting in slot '21' looks like a DB11 UNIBUS repeater, but I have no idea how large a backplane that is, and what the various slots/connectors in it are used for. It's almost certainly custom wired. It looks like slot 31 starts another backplane. Given the cards that are plugged in (LP11, DL11, etc), it's probably a 'UNIBUS' backplane (i.e. SPC or MUD slots). Noel

9 years, 8 months

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