test-drb

test-drb@ccmp.vtda.org

101090 discussions

by shadoooo＠gmail.com

Hello, I'm a modest collector of DEC and PDP11 stuff, I always thank who wrote the PDP11 field guide with the almost complete list of all the existing boards... Now comes the idea: could be useful having a website where the field guide assume a graphical aspect, including pictures of the parts, descriptions, and so on? Of course it would be almost impossible for one alone to do all the work, but I'm thinking of a sort of wiki, where subscripted users can upload pictures, informations and documentations. Maybe something similar already exists? Thanks Andrea

10 years, 1 month

Giving away 0.35 metric tons of books*

by alexey.toptygin＠gmail.com

*some restrictions apply :-) Evan Koblentz pointed me to a rescue here in the triangle, NC area back in August 2015. Some items were set aside for VCFed, but there were A LOT of books and other media that were up for grabs. Because I'm a sucker, I took and then carefully cleaned and catalogued them all. The master list is here: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/19UYeJlhiVYVExCAO2NSzcAkBww0kEeAYrEG… There really are 17 boxes, and they really do weigh 780lb or approximately 0.35 metric tons. They're mostly books (from the 80s and 90s), but there are some floppies, some boxed sets, and even a small box of VHS tapes. The previous owner stored all this stuff in abysmal conditions, so there was a lot of mold (and some dead insects and some live insects, and... you know how it goes). I cleaned every item as much as possible. Some items had to be disposed of for safety reasons. That which made it into the cataloging stage is at least scanable, but if it says 'mildewed' on it, and you have a mold allergy, you don't want it. I don't know if any floppies are readable, and unless the catalog says it comes with media, I haven't got the media. Luckily most items survived relatively intact. You can have anything in the spreadsheet free of charge provided: 1) You are willing to take WHOLE BOXES at VCF East XI, you let me know by Weds 4/13/16, and they fit in my car when I pack for VCF. OR 2) You want to come to Durham to pick them up at a prearranged time after VCF OR 3) You are willing to wait until the next VCF East, and let me know far enough in advance that I can set items aside for you. If you want single items, and you don't want to wait until VCF East 2017, I'll do my best to mail them to you after this VCF is over, but you'll need to pay for shipping. I would prefer not to ship whole boxes; they're sturdy moving boxes but they weigh 40-60lb each and I'm pretty sure if you drop them hard enough the contents won't like it. I'm in Durham, NC 27701. I don't want any of this to go to recycling, so I'll try to hold it for at least a year or the next VCF East after this one. After that, all bets are off. Let me know if you are interested in any of this stuff, or if you have questions; in case the mailing list(s) eat it, my email is alexey.toptygin at gmail dot com. Thanks!

10 years, 1 month

AT&T 4425 (Teletype 56D) repair

by lists＠loomcom.com

About a month ago I was given a very nice AT&T 4425 terminal, which was AT&T's OEM of the Teletype 56D. Alas, the terminal suddenly died on me last week and I'm going to have to dive in and figure out why. It appears to be something going wrong with the digital board, not the analog, since sometimes I can get strange characters to show up on the screen (but not always). I did my normal searches of BitSavers and Google, but I haven't found any schematics for the 4425. I don't suppose anybody has them? At least it looks easy to work on. Kudos to whoever designed the innards, it comes apart very easily and cleanly. -Seth -- Seth Morabito seth at loomcom.com

10 years, 1 month

VCF East update - three keynotes, TWO original Apple 1, etc.

by cctalk＠snarc.net

Hi classiccmp'ers. VCF East starts in just 8 days from now. It's at the InfoAge Science Center in Wall, New Jersey, USA. Three keynotes: John Blankenbaker (Friday), Stewart Cheifet (Saturday), Ted Nelson (Sunday). Three dozen hands-on exhibits. TWO original Apple 1 computers, including one up-and-running. Oh and there will be a Kenbak-1 also. :) A dozen-ish tech classes. 8-bit game programming competition sponsored by Hackaday. Consignment room. And the on-site, year-round computer museum is now TWICE as large as before. Come see awesome stuff such as our circa-1965 UNIVAC 1219B mainframe. Kids get in free on Saturday/Sunday. All the details, along with online ticketing, are at http://vcfed.org/wp/festivals/vintage-computer-festival-east/.

10 years, 1 month

RSX-11M trouble

by mark＠matlockfamily.com

> Date: Mon, 04 Apr 2016 20:44:26 +0200 > From: supervinx <supervinx at libero.it> > To: "General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts" > <cctalk at classiccmp.org> > Subject: Re: R: RE: RSX-11M trouble > Message-ID: <1459795466.2891.10.camel at PIV-Ubuntu> > Content-Type: text/plain; charset="UTF-8" > > Il giorno dom, 03/04/2016 alle 19.33 +0200, supervinx ha scritto: >> Il giorno dom, 03/04/2016 alle 14.59 +0200, supervinx ha scritto: >>> Hmmm.... RSX-11Mplus 4.2 aren't recognized as TSK images by "normal" 4.2 >> Well... the files have been correctly transferred... i did a DMP on both >> sides >> so definitely I need a 4.2 non plus. > I SYSGENed the 4.8 image on simh, and transferred ICP.TSK, just to do > another try... > > The newly inserted task, showed the same parameters, using TAL ...AT., > but issuing a @command causes the same big crash, dropping me on the > initial ODT monitor. > > I did another test, with DMP. > Only three blocks of the original ICP.TSK are unreadable: > o73, o107, and o177 (all numbers are in octal), with the usuale I/O > error -101, and no mention in ELI DU0:/SH > > I'm angry: the damaged ICP.TSK is TCP.TSK;3 and I did a purge to make > room on the disk the first day I got it. Can't remember if another > version was present... > > I've a couple of questions: > 1)VFY gives me two error I can't clearly understand. > 000541,000226 owner [1,54] > file is marked for delete > > 000647,000000 > I/O error reading file header -101 > > How can I associate xxxxxx,yyyyyy to a file name? > I tried PIP /FI:xxxxxx:yyyyyy/LI with no luck This is a good question but I do not know the answer. > > 2) the .tpc images found in the net, if converted to .tap, are suitable > for use in TU85em? Having no tape unit, I could try to install > everything from scratch using a tape emulator. I would use Simh to boot a BRUSYS tape then copy the tapes to make a bootable disk. > > But the best would be to have 4.2 (*not* plus) tape images or someone > with a running installation so kind to give me the four damaged files. > > VFY seems not to be able to repair the FS... > > Thanks The closest RSX11M (not Plus) distribution I can find is an RL01 distribution of RSX11M V4.1 Since it is disk and not tape it can be directly booted with Simh and it does have a ICP.TSK that should be pretty compatible with V4.2 since it is from V4.1 Baseline. You can find this RSX11M V4.1 distribution at: ftp://ftp.trailing-edge.com/pub/rsxdists/rsx11mplus_4_0_netkit_aq-ew97b-bc.… It will unzip into 6 RL01 disk images and 3 update E disk images. Below I mapped the first two disks and found a copy of ICP.TSK on the 1 disk which is a Baseline image that should run on a range of different hardware. sim> sh rl RL RLV12, address=17774400-17774411, vector=160, 4 units RL0 2621KW, attached to rsx11m41_1of6_rsxm35.ax-d518e-bc, on line write enabled, RL01 RL1 2621KW, attached to rsx11m41_2of6_excprv.ax-d521e-bc, on line write enabled, RL01 RL2 2621KW, attached to rsx11m41_3of6_rlutil.ax-d522f-bc, on line write enabled, RL01 RL3 2621KW, attached to rsx11m41_4of6_mcrsrc.ax-h927f-bc, on line write enabled, RL01 sim> b rl0 RSX-11M V4.1 BL35 124.K MAPPED (BASELINE) >RED DL:=SY: >RED DL:=LB: >MOU DL:RSXM35 >@DL:[1,2]STARTUP >* PLEASE ENTER TIME AND DATE (HR:MN DD-MMM-YY) [S]: 20:36 5-APR-86 >TIM 20:36 5-APR-86 >* ENTER LINE WIDTH OF THIS TERMINAL [D D:132.]: >SET /BUF=TI:132. >ACS SY:/BLKS=512. >@ <EOF> > >mou dl1:/ovr/pub/vi Volume Information Class: Files-11 Device: DL01 Volume label:EXCPRV Pack serial: 00000273341 Owner: [1,1] Protection: [RWCD,RWCD,RWCD,RWCD] Default: [RWED,RWED,RWED,R] Processor: F11ACP >ins $pip >pip [1,54]i*.tsk/li Directory DL0:[1,54] 22-APR-83 18:16 ICP.TSK;1 142. C 22-APR-83 17:48 INI.TSK;1 58. C 22-APR-83 17:48 INS.TSK;1 60. C 22-APR-83 17:48 Total of 260./260. blocks in 3. files >from the RL01 image you should be able to PUTR read and then write to an RX50 as you have done before. Good Luck, Mark

10 years, 1 month

KY11-LB prints, and versions

by jnc＠mercury.lcs.mit.edu

So I'm in the process of repairing a couple of M7859 KY11-LB -11/04-34 Programmer's Console boards, and the existing FM Print Set was kind of hard to read in some areas, so I looked online for another set, and although I didn't find one, I noticed several other people with the same issue - asking for a better set. My brain did eventually turn on, and I remembered DEC's habit of putting prints for included devices in with print sets for computers, and with that in mind, I managed to locate another set in the -11/34A print set; that one is a lot clearer. To my surprise, they showed a slightly different board from the one in the existing FMPS available online: in the later version, the four 8093 quad tri-state buffers between the UNIBUS data lines, and the internal bus, are replaced by 74173's. I'm not sure quite what motivated this change - no documentation that I know of refers to the existence of two different versions. The PCB is slightly different, but the ROMs are apparently all the same, so >from the point of view of the i8008, the two versions must look the same. (And given where the change is, it can't make any difference to the interface between the card and the front panel, CPU boards, etc, so either version should work anywhere.) Anyway, the version in the -11/34A prints didn't include the actual front console, plus to which the prints there had been heavily marked up by someone at some point. So I have produced a new set of prints: http://ana-3.lcs.mit.edu/~jnc/tech/pdp11/MP00015_KY11-LB_Jan78.pdf which includes the front console pages from the earlier set, and a cleaned up version of the pages from the -11/34A set for the M7859; hope this is useful to someone! Noel

10 years, 1 month

What do members do for substitute monochrome monitors ?

by pete＠petelancashire.com

I'll soon be powering up a HP 9000/310 (98561-66525) but do not have an a single monochrome monitor. Suggestions ? -pete

10 years, 1 month

Document treasure trove

by Paul_Koning＠Dell.com

While looking for DECnet documents, I noticed that there's a very large collection at http://manx.classiccmp.org/collections/antonio/dec/ . Probably not news to many, but in case some had not seen it... Among other things, there are two CD collections MDS-1997-10 and MDS-2000-01. The former contains a rather obscure document, the DECnet Phase IV Token Ring datalink spec. That also includes the Phase IV routing layer tweaks necessary to support token ring -- or other datalinks if you don't want to use the AA-00-04-00 prefix. paul

10 years, 1 month

MEM11A Status

by ggs＠shiresoft.com

Hi, The board layout is complete and has passed all of the design rule checks from the board house. I?ll be ordering some boards for me to assemble and test next week. I have also received a quote for ?turnkey assembly? where I hand them the files and get back fully assembled boards. In order to get the price reasonable I have to have 25 *firm* orders for the boards. I?ll be charging $395/ea + shipping. If folks could let me know (private emails please) as to the quantity that they want (don?t send $?s yet) so I know I won?t be $1000?s in the hole on this before I order the boards. The timing is that I?ll probably place the order for the boards (assuming sufficient interest) in mid-May. I?ll let folks know when I have the minimum quantity. BTW, this is for the MEM11A 128KW SPC memory board (not to be confused with the UMF11). TTFN - Guy

10 years, 1 month

RSX-11M trouble

by mark＠matlockfamily.com

>> The closest RSX11M (not Plus) distribution I can find is an RL01 distribution of RSX11M V4.1 >> Since it is disk and not tape it can be directly booted with Simh and it does have a ICP.TSK >> that should be pretty compatible with V4.2 since it is from V4.1 Baseline. >> You can find this RSX11M V4.1 distribution at: >> >> ftp://ftp.trailing-edge.com/pub/rsxdists/rsx11mplus_4_0_netkit_aq-ew97b-bc.… >> > > Perhaps you did a cut and paste of the wrong link? > > Maybe you meant this one instead: > > ftp://ftp.trailing-edge.com/pub/rsxdists/rsx11m41_and_update_e.zip Glen, Yes, I did paste an incorrect link. Thank you for catching my mistake. Yours above is the correct one. Mark

10 years, 1 month

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