test-drb

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101090 discussions

by ckaiser＠oa.ptloma.edu

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27 years, 8 months

PDP-11/35 looking for a home

by mbg＠world.std.com

27 years, 8 months

PRO-350 looking for home...

by mbg＠world.std.com

Posted on comp.sys.dec.micro, contact the person listed, not me: - - - - - Hello, I've got the following stuff I'd like to get rid of - time to clean out the closets - a PRO 350 with a RD52 with the graphics adapter and a net card, plus it's got daughterboards with the one meg conversion I installed and a monitor and keyboard. Works fine. I'm willing to part this thing out as it's too heavy to actually ship anywhere whole . . . . please email jboldway(a)cottagesoft.com - - - - -

27 years, 8 months

MfM and Dll

by lwalker＠mail.interlog.com

I picked up an HDD made for the Atari ST by ICD. It is a shoebox form and has space and connectors for 2 HDs. The highly proprietory HD interface by Atari (ATASCI ?) is usually directly converted to SCSI in most newer HD adapter interfaces for STs. In the Atari and ICD HDs the DMA output was converted to SCSI by an ICD card and then to MFM or DLL. via an Adaptec 4004 (MFM) or 4070(RLL) controller. This one has an Adaptec 4070. The 1 drive present is a Miniscribe 3834P . I understand that some MFM drives could be coded by a RLL controller if they were fast enough, etc. I have an ST4096, which according to the specs I have seen is an 80 meg MFM , as well as several other smaller MFM HDs. According to a spec sheet the 4096 would work with Perstor Systems ADRT controllers to double the storage which would seem to indicate it was of high enough speed and quality to stand the tighter coding.. Anyone know if this is also true with an RLL controller or what MFM drives do work with RLL ? ciao larry lwalker(a)interlog.com

27 years, 8 months

Old ASCII (was: Re: Stupid CP/M question)

by Philip.Belben＠PowerTech.co.uk

> (including the square brackets) after the PIP command. The syntax is wierd > but that's the way DEC did it in all of their operating systems, which CP/M > is based on. (Actually, they use the underscore which according to the > pre-1968 (?) version of ASCII looked like a leftward-pointing arrow.) PET has a left arrow for that code as well. Sensible, since underscore is available elswhere in the character set (shift-$ IIRC) but I never knew it used to be standard ASCII. What other changes have there been? Is there any precedent for PET using up-arrow instead of circumflex? Philip.

27 years, 8 months

"Non-manufacturers"

by mbg＠world.std.com

>Bell and Howell (Hell and Bowel, Ball and Howl, etc.) made plenty of >their own stuff (mainly peripherels), however. Affectionately (?!) referred to as 'Belch and Growl' by members of Techno-fandom. Megan Gentry Former RT-11 Developer +--------------------------------+-------------------------------------+ | Megan Gentry, EMT/B, PP-ASEL | Internet (work): gentry!zk3.dec.com | | Unix Support Engineering Group | (home): mbg!world.std.com | | Compaq Computer Corporation | addresses need '@' in place of '!' | | 110 Spitbrook Rd. ZK03-2/T43 | URL: http://world.std.com/~mbg/ | | Nashua, NH 03062 | "pdp-11 programmer - some assembler | | (603) 884 1055 | required." - mbg | +--------------------------------+-------------------------------------+

27 years, 8 months

Stupid CP/M question

by allisonp＠world.std.com

<some forms. There was precedent. But the guy hacking <DOS was just messing around, trying to do a slightly <better CP/M (as was Digital Research, who GAVE AWAY the <whole stinking computer world to Bill Gates on a silver Specifically it was seattle computer that needed a 16bit os for their S100 8088 box. They literally took CPM1.4 disassembled it and lofted it to run on 8088 and called the result Q-dos. They had no incentive to improve it and cpm1.4 was actually behind V2.2 (then current!). Billy took it and modified it some say per IBM to go from the CPM allocation scheme to FAT (Billy had used that in their disk basics). <For crying out loud, the first versions of UNIX ran on <minis that didn't have any more memory space than micros. <(OK, so they had 16 bit processors, I know. So did the <PC! Sort of...) Unix had been on DEC pdp-11s for years when the Altair rolled out. It was a $24,000 source license and even though the PDP-11 is 16 bit the instuction set, memory managment and disks were about 10 years ahead of the PC. Unix wanted memory and it wanted a hard disk of some size to work well. What si forgotten is the path to unix(linux etal) was via C language for micros. To that Scot Guthry(Tinyc) was the starting point for Smallc and later SmallVM. Those things were the catalyst needed to get people interested in C (adverse to BASIC and PASCAL) as a language. With a systems language people were thinking about Unix (written in C). concurrent to this DRI was working on and delivered GSS Kernal, GSS-80, and GEM which was influential in presenting graphics to the desktop as part of the OS. Others were doing it but as standalone apps aimed at specific hardware. This was the early to mid 80s where the PC went from XT to AT, DOS to desktops and integrated applications and the z80 was still giving them a hard run for the money. It wouldn't be until the late 80s and the advent of the 386 before the battle lines were starting to clear. In the mid to late 80s the SUN, Apollo and DEC (others too) workstation war would extend to the PC market via apple and the Mac and push 32bit cpus, graphics, networking and performance. I's more than Gates getting dos, it was opportunities and near disasters in the industry that got us here. Even Gates saw a few really bad years in the mid 80s when dos3.3 was really the harbinger pointing at an end of the line with something new/better needed. Graphics we know were not going to happen on PDP11 or most other 16bit cpus as they don't address enough space. OSs were driven by the environment and it's tasks plus space needs. Allison

27 years, 8 months

new to the list

by mbg＠world.std.com

>>the list (which is supposed to be very single-minded) contains a number >>of people who actually are single-minded (Tony Duell, Allison Parent, >>Megan Gantry, Pete Turnbull, maybe others). This is good! Don't >>misunderstand me. It's the way it's supposed to be. > >I resent that! I go off topic when the mood or whatever suits, like now. > ;-) I'm not 'singled-minded', I'm *focussed* :-) some would say obsessive-compulsive... :-) and I, too, will respond off-topic... Megan Gentry Former RT-11 Developer +--------------------------------+-------------------------------------+ | Megan Gentry, EMT/B, PP-ASEL | Internet (work): gentry!zk3.dec.com | | Unix Support Engineering Group | (home): mbg!world.std.com | | Compaq Computer Corporation | addresses need '@' in place of '!' | | 110 Spitbrook Rd. ZK03-2/T43 | URL: http://world.std.com/~mbg/ | | Nashua, NH 03062 | "pdp-11 programmer - some assembler | | (603) 884 1055 | required." - mbg | +--------------------------------+-------------------------------------+

27 years, 8 months

new to the list

by jonathan＠canuck.com

Hi, folks. I'm new in these parts, having been referred to the list during a quest for some (very) old Data I/O programming equipment. Before I stray from that subject, if anyone has any "Programming Paks" and accompanying socket adapters, I'd appreciate hearing from them by mail. I need a number of particular sets for 1702, 5204, and 6653 EPROMs. If'n anyone's interested, they're for an original Intel MCS-4 (4004) development system, National SC/MP, and Intersil 6100 (the pdp8-compatible one) respectively. I'd also like to hear from anyone who has or is familiar with any of these machines. After a couple of days lurking, I'm finding the endless discussion of Altair prices and email "formats" dreary. The former was a rather badly built piece of crap compared to the IMSAI (though we obviously have to acknowledge the Altair's historical importance - right BEHIND the Mark 8), and the latter has nothing to do with antique computers. I should think that the list owner should have clamped off that discussion some time ago. In other news, Miles O'Neal (meo(a)netads.com) queried: > I'd really like to get hold of a functioning > (or close) Compucolor or Intecolor from the > early 80s. The ones we used at Georgia Tech > were all in one unit (I think), a big color > monitor console sort of thing, like God's own > ADM3a, in technicolor. (I could be wrong, > but that's what I seem to remember.) I'd > prefer one with a disk drive. > > I think this was the coolest thing ever for > learning graphics stuff. > > Anyone have one a mere mortal can afford? I can't imagine why you'd want one. The big Intecolors were mildly interesting, but the 8-track cartridge tape drive was junk of the first order. The later Compucolor IIs (in the hacksawed portable television case with the 5" floppy where the tuner used to be) was one of the most unreliable hacks of the time. I serviced them circa 1980, and they were really bad news. One of the worst excuses for a roll-yer-own switcher I've ever seen, and nonexistent development software. Words of advice: If you want to learn graphics, go track down an SGI Indigo - the purple cube. They're down in the couple-of-hundred-bucks zone now, and one of the most elegantly built machines I've touched in almost 25 years in the biz. On the subject of home-supers, I'd be interested as well in hearing what's out there. We're anticipating getting our hands on a Cray YMP-EL/98 soon, and it appears there are a number of these air-cooled boxes being dumped in various parts of the world. Jonathan Levine

27 years, 8 months

supers

by jonathan＠canuck.com

William Donzelli <william(a)ans.net> desperately wished to know: > > That's why we're after our first Cray, > > Please tell... Not much to tell yet. It's a YMP-EL/98, the 8-cpu version of the air-cooled "baby's first Cray" series. It's been promised to us, but there's a certain amount of corporate bureaucracy left to clear. Apparently we're going to be asked to vow not to sell the machine - or cycles - to terrorists or other unsavory sorts. Whether participating in distributed crypto challenges (like RC5) qualifies as "unsavory" is yet to be determined. At the moment, we know of two other machines of the same family that are now in private hands. More news when we've got it. Jonathan

27 years, 8 months

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