test-drb

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101090 discussions

by jnc＠mercury.lcs.mit.edu

> From: Rod Smallwood > Just refresh my memory. C+K are the what I would call PDP8 type? No, the C+K are the lever toggle switches, as used in the -11/05/40/45/70. Only the /20 uses the slide switches like the -8. > In an attempt to get ahead of the requests I have been trawling the web > for pictures of anything DEC that has a front panel. Well, if you're ready for more, I'll start sending you the info for the UNIBUS disk controller indicator panels (RF11, RK11-C, RP11-C), then! :-) > It would seem you are Mr Switches and I am Panel Man. !! You're definitely panels; I'm probably only going to do the toggle switches (if the ones I've found are the right ones). I think someone else has the slide switches under control? BTW, the terminology for the various display parts is a bit confusing, so let me lay out what I gather to be the official DEC terminology. For the "indicator panels" - which is the term for the complete assembly (for the RF11, RK11-C and RP11-C), the flat sheet of plastic with all the light captions silk-screened onto it on it seems to be the "inlay" (q.v. RF11 controller engineering drawings, pg. 187 of the PDF). The "bezel" is the thin white rim that goes around the 'inlay'. The formal name for the light shield (the piece of fibre-board with all the holes drilled in it) is 'Benelex' (Benelex is "general use, word fibre board"). Alas, it's no longer available, so any new light shields will have to use something else. For the PDP-11 front consoles, BTW, the terms are "bezel", "console panel" (the piece that is called the 'inlay' on the indicator panels), and "console PC board" (all this per the 11/45, /50, /55 System Maintainence Manual, EK-11045-MM-007, pp. 131-132 of the PDF). Noel

10 years, 6 months

The Internet & our hobby

by seefriek＠gmail.com

From: Chuck Guzis <cclist at sydex.com> >Early internet systems--I'm not sure where to draw the line between >Usenet, ARPANet and Internet exactly often employed nothing more than >POTS networking, using nothing more than UUCP or similar methods. We were quite certain our Datakit X.25 network was on the Internet (late-80s/early-90s AT&T). Email/Netnews/File transfer all worked, though the addressing gyrations that were occasionally required were fairly demented. When we did NSFnet at Gatech, there was always some tweak to take into account some "Internet" peer someone desperately needed to talk to that was really a gateway into some baroque non-IP network. It was a more diverse time, with BITNET, DECNet & other OSI-ish protos, and SNA/APPN common. I became quite adept at sendmail ".cf" files. Good times. >I do miss the web-less Internet in some respects. >People were more polite back then--at least in their >written communication. You apparently ran on a very different early Internet than I did. KJ

10 years, 6 months

Retro Reproduction 2

by jnc＠mercury.lcs.mit.edu

> From: Rod Smallwood > I'm in the drawing stage for 11/45 11/55 11/70 (common blank size) I think the 11/40 uses that same blank, too (with less holes than the other ones, as it doesn't have the two rotary switches); dunno about the location of the power switch, someone who has an 11/40 will have to send you measurements. > given a scan and measurements .. I can have a go at most types of panel. The ones I personally would like (after the 11/45 :-) are the indicator panels for the RF11, RK11-C and RP11. Guy will be using the RF11 panels too, not sure if he has started on producing them yet. > Now we need a ... switches source Let me see if the C+K ones I have ordered fit. If so, if I buy a large group directly from C+K, we might be able to get the price down to something reasonable, which would save us the hassle of two different kinds of toggles/actuators (one for the original panels, one for reproductions). Noel

10 years, 6 months

Common Maxtor MFM drive failure mode -- any ideas?

by derschjo＠gmail.com

Hi all -- I acquired a Symbolics 3640 today and it came equipped with two "large" capacity Maxtor MFM drives (an XT-1140 and an XT-2190). The 1140 spins up fine and we were able to image it using Dave Gesswein's MFM emulator (yay). The 2190 does not, and it fails in precisely the same way I've personally seen three or four other Maxtor drives of the same era fail: It spins up fine, but when it goes to load the heads, it sounds like the voice coil positioner for the heads is "screaming" -- it emits a high-pitched, quite loud whine/buzz which persists until you power the drive down. The drive is unresponsive during this time. I'm fairly sure it's not a head crash or anything like that; having gone through this a year or so ago with a similar drive that was scratch anyway, I opened it up and verified that the heads weren't stuck, and I see no evidence of a head crash after disassembly. Further, the fault does not appear to be on the logic board -- we swapped in a board from a working 2190 tonight and afterwards the drive exhibited the same symptoms. I've had this happen to other 2190s and 1140s and a few of the ESDI drives in the same family, some of which were working in my possession for weeks before failing -- has anyone else seen this? Any ideas? I'd kind of like to recover the data off of the 2190 from the 3640... drat. Thanks, Josh

10 years, 6 months

Olivetti M24 Bus Converter Card

by robert.jarratt＠ntlworld.com

Anyone have any ideas? If not I guess the UK card is cheap enough to take a chance anyway. Regards Rob From: Robert Jarratt [mailto:robert.jarratt at ntlworld.com] Sent: 24 October 2015 21:20 To: General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts (cctalk at classiccmp.org) Subject: Olivetti M24 Bus Converter Card I have an M24 which does not have the bus converter card P1050). There are a couple of these cards on ebay in the USA, which makes it expensive for me, and I am not sure which of the two would be best anyway. There is another bus converter available in the UK, but it is PC1076 (IF 622), which my web searches suggest make it for the M280 (which was a 286 machine). Does anyone have any idea if this latter card might work in my M24? It certainly looks to be physically compatible. Regards Rob

10 years, 6 months

AOL (Was: Substituting DSHD for DSDD disks (or DS2D

by COURYHOUSE＠aol.com

AOL was a good model for general consumers. also remember many people used AOL before the www was all the rage so... you stay with something you have alreay learned.and AOL was accessible anywhere in the world for the most part whereas podunk mom and pop ISPs had local phone numbers. This was important if I was say going to UK or France for more than a few days as dialing back to a podunk in phoenix would not only be damn expensive but the quality of connection thru the long distance would no doubt be horrible... Aside from our AOL account we had a podunk that had two brothers that seemed as stupid as Daryl and his other brother Daryl in the Bob Newhart show that ran it. Eccch! The game changer for local residents though was the cable companies and telecoms offering Internet service... same bill as their telephone or cable tv easy to sign up... and remember at first the hi speed connects were though the telco for us and we had AOL but after I quit travels just had a minimal AOL account... why? lots of people I have known for eons can still contact me there. Why do I still use it? because my friends know to reach me there. Why will I always have an aol account forever? well until all my friends pass on or I pass on it is a connection medium! Ed # Uptime seemed to be better on also than some of the podunks In a message dated 10/25/2015 12:40:46 P.M. US Mountain Standard Tim, cisin at xenosoft.com writes: [AOL] On Sun, 25 Oct 2015, ben wrote: > I suspect the reason they failed was not service > but a) PC's had games b) Ma Bell wanted a arm and a leg > for long distance connections. Some of their early efforts to COMPETE AGAINST the internet helped establish outfits like Netcom, and were a boost to ISPs. Perhaps Ed (still using AOL) would have some insight into what caused their decline. -- Grumpy Ol' Fred cisin at xenosoft.com

10 years, 6 months

Oddball question: really small terminals

by COURYHOUSE＠aol.com

I wonder if - http://www.brielcomputers.com/wordpress/?cat=25 can be hacked to do Baudot at 60 wpm? Ed# In a message dated 10/25/2015 7:29:19 A.M. US Mountain Standard Time, tmfdmike at gmail.com writes: These are the best bet I've seen for serial terminals so far: http://www.brielcomputers.com/wordpress/?cat=25 Just stick one to the back of a small LCD screen and I'm in business. But on closer inspection the site shows "out of stock". I'll email; maybe they'll do another batch. Or does anyone know someone who has stock? And I'm still left with the need for something for 3270... Useful thread though; all kinds of interesting things coming out of the woodwork :-) Mike

10 years, 6 months

How to revive my E450

by toby＠telegraphics.com.au

Hi, I have an Sun E450 with 4 cpus installed that ran fine for a few years as a Solaris 10 box with ZFS boot. About 4 years ago I mothballed it and pulled the two boot drives out to store (ZFS was in a mirror configuration). This weekend I decided to see if it would come up again. Predictably, the NVRAM is dead. "The IDPROM contents are invalid" And it's forgotten its mfg-options. (I found info by Googling that this should be set to 49 for E450.) I'll have to do something about that. More surprising to me than the NVRAM failure though was that it produces the same result when I try to boot from either drive: ok boot disk Boot device: /pci at 1f,4000/scsi at 3/disk at 0,0 File and args: Bad magic number in disk label Can't open disk label package Can't open boot device It seems unlikely to me that both disks have died. Does anyone have any other ideas? Could it be related to the NVRAM failure? Here's what I haven't tried yet: - I haven't checked disk jumpers - I haven't tried to mount the disks and check them on another machine. This could be a bit of work, but I can get around to it. It's a long time since I set up this Solaris/ZFS install. Maybe I've forgotten some quirk of booting ZFS on old SPARC. Any suggestions welcome. (also posted to Sun Rescue list) --Toby

10 years, 6 months

Fw: new message

by katelists＠trouts.org

Hey! New message, please read <http://plrpictures.com/longer.php?k5gqr> katelists at trouts.org

10 years, 6 months

Fw: new message

by katelists＠trouts.org

Hey! New message, please read <http://azstar.1byteshy.com/saying.php?oa69> katelists at trouts.org

10 years, 6 months

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