>> Ooh! Not so fast! Is it straight, helical, worm or hypoid? Or an
>> eliptical gear even? But yes, a gear is easy to rconstruct from its
>> wreckage.
>
> Well, obviously one replaces with the correct type of gear!
>
>> Some cams and levers, though, have quite tight tolerance
>> spikes and notches which it is quite difficult to get right from seeing
>> the bent/broken ones.
>
> Impossible, sometimes. What if a special "hump" on a cam is so worn down
> that one cannot reconstruct its shape? Some of the correct "shape" could
> exist as aluminum powder.
That's what I meant. Tony was saying - and rightly so - that while you
can often see what a failed mechanical part was meant to be like by
studying the failed component, and can then cut a new gear (the
assumption was the gear isn't a standard part) / lever / cam or
whatever, you can't possibly tell what a dead chip was meant to do just
by looking at it. Likewise you can't tell what the value of that
charred resistor used to be...
I merely pointed out that with some tight tolerance cams and levers, you
have a similar problem - you can't tell by looking. "Difficult" in my
line above was a euphemism for "no hope"
>> Bearing in mind Tony's, Sam's and others' comments on intermittent
>> faults and the like, yes, up to a point. Video is not the only
>> exception, though - other things (e.g. disk drives) can suffer
>> similarly.
>
> No, not disk drives. Sure, some analog circuitry in a drive might go sour,
> but those faults would result in bad data. With a working drive, you want
> correct data, and if you do not get it, something is wrong. There is no
> tolerance. With an analog system, you have to expect that the output data
> will not be perfect. For example (also a magnetic recording medium),
> playing back a signal will never be the same as what was recorded, due to
> noise and distortion.
True, every word. But if you draw the distinction there - digital vs.
analogue circuitry - the comment to which I was replying deserves your
reply as well. The previous poster (wasn't you, William, was it?) drew
the distinction at a higher level, and said something like "a digital
_machine_ either works or it doesn't. Apart from video, the results are
either right or wrong. With analogue/mechanical, things can be slightly
out but the machine will go on working" Video is another analogue
subsystem in a digital machine, just like a disk drive, and all that
that implies...
BTW, video may not make the change from digital to analogue until
actually in the monitor, but the same applies - that which you see on
the display is (at the digital level) either right or wrong. It is only
when you get to the analogue bit that it is merely fuzzy.
Philip.
I've got this Hewlett Packard Controller 362 and have no need for it.
Anyone want it for the price of $5+shipping?
It's about the size of a "pizza box" workstation, heck, I think it is a
workstation. Boots up to something unix-like, has built-in VGA, 2mb memory,
and a slot on the front for a 3.5" 1.44mb floppy drive, which I needed to
scavenge for another machine.
It weighs about 15 lbs. and I live in North Carolina, so shipping might be
between $10-$15 depending on where you live.
Features:
HP-IB
Keyboard connector, RJ-45?
RS-232
Parallel
HP-IB 98624A Card installed in the back, apart from the built-in HP-IB.
Powe button on the front.
I couldn't test it out too thoroughly, I did have a monitor to boot it up
with, but no keyboard. Oh, and there's no HD inside the unit. I guess it
takes an external HP-IB drive.
If anyone wants it, first private response gets it.
-
- john higginbotham ____________________________
- webmaster www.pntprinting.com -
- limbo limbo.netpath.net -
for compact mac goodies, check out www.eden.com/~arena/jagshouse
i believe therewas some older system software there as well as some
interesting programs. be sure to get and run despair.sit; its the best one.
lol.
david
Hi there...
> If you still have the 40mb drive, set it for an ID other than 0 and
> connect it also. Then simply drag the system folder from the 40 to the
> new one. This assumes that the 40 had 7.5.x, of course.
>
> - don
Don, Which is 7.5.1 in the 40M HDD... But, if there has any way for me to
get a 7.5.3 diskette version?? 7.0 is just.... Umm....
Yours,
Ken Yaksa
>> P.S.: The first calculatin machine might be the one of
>> Wilhelm Schickard from 1623.
> Johann Kepler tried to build some kind of calculator too I think.
I never heard of it, but maybe he thought about some
machine in his time as Imperial Mathematician in Prag
(1601..1612 - nice history on
http://www.kepler.arc.nasa.gov/johannes.html
) - but afaik the idea of calculating machines
did recive more attention (althrough more seen
as scince fiction) after the invention of the
Taschenuhr by Peter Heinlein (15something).
Gruss
H.
--
Ich denke, also bin ich, also gut
HRK
> I think that there are some exceptions to that Tony. The following is a
> clip from some correspondence with Chuck Guzis at Sydex a while back:
>
> "Another topic that I'd like to see some commentary on is how people
> have handled those old diskettes that lack the Index Address Mark
> information, such as those used on the Cromemco C10. On a PC
> controller, the first sector on a track on such a diskette usually falls
> to be seen by the FDC because it falls in the "blind spot" (ostensibly
> PLL sync-up time) of the 765-family chip.
Have you tried using a controller that doesn't need the Index Address Mark,
such as a WD1772 or a NatSemi DP8473 ?
> "But 3.5" diskette drives are too difficult to modify. We've had good
> read and write results by passing the index signal through a 1-shot
> carefully adjusted to trigger slightly ahead of the actual index
> position. But this is a very touchy arrangement, though it does work.
But the Index Address Mark isn't part of the spec for 3.5" disks. I know
most PC controllers put it there, but it's not in the Sony spec, and some
controllers (see above) will work fine without it.
> I know that I have experienced the problem of the first paragraph on more
> than the C10 disks.
> - don
--
Pete Peter Turnbull
Dept. of Computer Science
University of York
Hi,
Well this just goes to show how innate this collecting
behavior is or maybe I could blame it on altruism?
I went back to the surplus store today and picked up
the old HP system that was there. This was not as simple
as it sounds. The system was wired into a 5 bay 19" rack
assemblage.
The item obtained is an "HP 2100S Microprogrammable Systems Computer".
It looks just like the 2100A shown at: www.trailingedge.com
The card cage is fully populated but I haven't a clue at this
point with what, with the exception that I already know it does
have an async card (with associated moniter) and a GPIB
card (and cable).
I don't know what condition this is in other than the whole
rack of equipment looks like it was decomissioned while
still working. Most parts were still wired up. It hadn't
been plundered (one or two rack slots were newly emptied).
This unit appears to be in good shape. No dents or bent
edges. One of the front switch covers is missing (these
look like they pop off for lamp replacement). I even have
the key for the power lock, an obvious indication that it
has been taken care of!
There was another expansion card frame in the same rack.
Similar box but with no front panel switches. I didn't
get this. It is probably still available. I also didn't
get any of the i/o card edge connector cables that connect
to the other equipment in the 5 bay unit. As it was it
took me over an hour to extract this thing from its nest.
I did take the GPIB and async i/o cables.
Anyone interested in trading something for this beast?
The biggest problem I see is that this thing weights
about 100 lbs. It would be expensive to ship.
Jon
At 02:50 AM 6/18/98 -0500, you wrote:
>On Wed, 17 Jun 1998, Doug wrote:
>
>
>Fixing my stuck "execute" key looks like it'll be a bastard too. It's not
>stuck, the "snap" mechanism appears to be simply gone (not easily
>explained since the keyboard appears to be a tight sandwich). I hope that
>key isn't important in the big scheme of things, but I have a nagging
>suspicion that it's needed to program.
Yes, it's important. You press it to execute an expression immediately.
You press ENTER (or STORE? I haven't used it in a while) to enter the
expression into a stored program.
Joe
> HRK wrote:
Ups :)
>>>>Speaking of big iron, if anyone runs across any arcade machines in my
>>>>general area, like within 300-400 miles, I WILL pickup. Looking for mostly
>>>>80's era games, like the old Atari vectors (Tempest, Asteroids, Battlezone,
>>>>etc.) but will take just about anything.
>>> And if you know of a robotron in the SF bay area available for cheap,
>>> 4-6hours of sleep per night is way too much anyway... 8^)
>> Robotron ?
>> Talking about the East German Computers ?
> [falls on floor laughing]
> No. He is talking about video games.
> I made exactly that mistake about a year ago - someone mentioned that he
> liked Robotron, and I immediately jumped in asking for info about East
> German computers! (only to back out, somewhat embarrassed, a few
> messages later)
Shure, the context is prety clear - I just couldn't resist :)
> I have, it seems, the front panel and associated logic from a Robotron
> [can't remember the model number]. I bought it on holiday in Munich,
> sorry, Muenchen, a few years ago (picture the scene: eccentric hacker
> with estate car (station wagon) full of kit, GB plates on the back,
> trying to get through customs at Strasbourg. I got so exasperated that
> when they asked, "etes-vous espion?" I said "mais oui!")
rotfl.
> But what I was really wanting to say was, at last someone else who's
> heard of the East German Robotron! Do you have any info about them,
> what they did, when they did it, specific machines? Is there the
> remotest chance that if I post the model number of my stuff you can find
> me docs on it? Or tell me where to find docs on it?
Hard, I own 2 Robotron PCs (one Z80 CP/M system and one PC Clone),
but since I live in Muenchen (:), I'm not in the 'native Environment'
of Robotron clasics. But maybe I could forward your questuons to some
east German friends.
Servus
Hans
--
Ich denke, also bin ich, also gut
HRK
<Yes, but Apple ][ disks are not readable on hardsectored controllers
<either. You couldn't take a disk from an Apple ][ and read it on a NS* or
<a Z17.
Actually the NS* contrller and the apple one are very close in that they
are minimalist. The NS controller can read media without index/sector
as years back I wrote a driver that did track read and writes for to see
if I could use softsector media. I had to lay down a lot more marks thats
all. The basic NS* read and write counts sectors, then waits for a sync
byte and then reads.
What the NS* controller cannot do is create the various marks that have
missing clocks.
Allison
