test-drb

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101090 discussions

by michael.99.thompson＠gmail.com

I am fiddling with diskettes on my PDP-8/e. I booted COS-310 V8 and it asked for a date. I tried lots of date combinations, and none were accepted. Is this because I don't have an LTC installed? COS MONITOR V 8.00 DATE? . ERROR IN COMMAND .DA 10/04/74 BAD DATE COS MONITOR V 8.00 DATE? .DA 1/25/72 BAD DATE -- Michael Thompson

10 years, 7 months

Interlisp-D (Medley) "display font" disks for the 1186?

by jnc＠mercury.lcs.mit.edu

> From: Josh Dersch > a currently non-working 1186 with an installation of the Lyric release > of Interlisp-D installed on the drive > ... > I have made a disk image of the ad-hoc font disk I created Might be a good idea to make an image of the entire Lyric hard drive, in case that drive fails, we won't lose the bits. Noel

10 years, 7 months

Troubleshooting a 286.. oscope level!

by ethan＠757.org

Hello everyone, I'm working to troubleshoot a 286 laptop style computer. I've kind of hit the end of my knowledge and wondering if anyone has any insight. The computer in question I've never seen run. So I don't know normal behavior. There were a few caps inside that were leaking electrolyte, I cleaned it all up and replaced them. A few traces look a little bit corroded but test fine. First thing I'm thinking, is did the BIOS eproms loose a bit or two of data from age? Bit rot? I did read off the two BIOS chips (high and low pair I assume.) I can see text like Copyright Pheonix Technologies 1988, but I can see that for instance the first character of the text Copyright is wrong, it's a P in one file and 9A in the other. Second thing I hooked up Oscope and cut on computer. It never does a floppy seek. When I poke around the 27c256 EPROM I see constant activity on all address lines, and all datalines. This includes the OE pin as well. Would a normal runnng computer hit the BIOS that much? Any thoughts appreciated! -- Ethan O'Toole

10 years, 7 months

This is sad...

by COURYHOUSE＠aol.com

hmmm.... be careful of that core..... may contain launch codes <grin!> Ed# In a message dated 10/3/2015 10:02:45 P.M. US Mountain Standard Time, linimon at lonesome.com writes: On Sat, Oct 03, 2015 at 07:09:04PM -0400, Sean Caron wrote: > Software preservation is definitely important remember that with the latest US laws, that certain data (e.g. hard drives, magnetic media) *must* be destroyed on the supposition that they contain sensitive personal data. If you don't do so, you can create yourself a legal liability. (do NOT ask me about equipment sold by someone in South Austin who is now out of business, who should have been wiping drives.) mcl

10 years, 7 months

This is sad...

by mattislind＠gmail.com

http://www.ebay.com/itm/111410385883 10 left 27 sold. Once they could have been used by someone. Now they can only be used as a conversation piece hanged on the wall.

10 years, 7 months

Writing SCSI 9-Track Mag Tapes from Windows/DOS

by marc.verdiell＠gmail.com

Thanks, this looks perfect. And indeed my tape is ID 5 (brainwaves anyone?). Can you elaborate on the differences between E11 and SIMH? When is it the same, when will it not be compatible? Marc ================================ Date: Sat, 3 Oct 2015 02:52:36 -0400 From: John Wilson <wilson at dbit.com> My "ST.EXE" program (available from http://www.dbit.com/pub/ibmpc/util/ including source) runs on real DOS (not Windows) and can write from an E11-format .TAP file (which SIMH uses a garbled version of, but they're interchangeable for *even* record lengths which are 99% of the universe) to a real tape. It works on my HP 88780, and my Qualstar 1260S and even a DEC TZ30 or TK50Z-GA (which aren't quite full SCSI-1). Not picky at all. "st wput foo.tap" should write your image out. You need a DOS ASPI driver for your SCSI card, and you'll need to use something like "-f scsi5:" on the command line (or set the TAPE environment variable) so ST will know which SCSI ID (etc.) to use. John Wilson D Bit ===============================

10 years, 7 months

Troubleshooting a 286.. oscope level!

by jnc＠mercury.lcs.mit.edu

> From: Fred Cisin > Do you get any POST codes? How about beep codes? (A lot of machines give them out when things are too effed up to even display anything.) Noel

10 years, 7 months

IBM terminals update 2

by sales＠elecplus.com

Without taking the skids apart, rough counts are , terminals - 57 keyboards - 77 printers - 4 line printer - 1 servers - 3 misc parts - 1 skid replacement bases ect all of the equipment is nice and white not yellowed so it looks good He wants to move it as a lot. He does not give a price point. Located in WI. Cindy Croxton --- This email has been checked for viruses by Avast antivirus software. https://www.avast.com/antivirus

10 years, 7 months

A new Lisp-based OS that hearkens back to the old days of comprehensible computers

by jnc＠mercury.lcs.mit.edu

> From: Liam Proven I am _very much_ in sympathy with the complaints here; I too feel that modern computers are too complex, etc. (Although some of it, like the entire computer turning into a single chip, were/are inevitable/unavoidable.) I like the functionality of modern system, but I feel they are _more complex than they need to be_ to generate that level of functionality. However, one thing I am going to quibble with: > This is a nice explanatory quote: > The main reasons TempleOS is simple and beautiful are because it's > ring-0-only .. Linux wants to be a secure, multi-user mainframe. ... > It was simple, open and hackable. It was not networked. ... It was ^^^^^^^^^^^^^ > simple and unsecure. If you don't have malware and you don't have > bugs, protection just slows things down and makes the code complicated. Note the part I highlighted. If you want to have a system that's network-capable, which is pretty much mandatory for a _really_ usable system in this day and age, i) that means Web-capable, and ii) if it's Web-capable today, it has to be able to handle what I dub 'active content' (JavaScript, etc) - i.e. content coming off the network which contains code, which runs in the local machine. To paraphrase a certain well-known SF work, IMO active content is probably the worst idea since humans' fore-fathers crawled out of the mud. It's _potentially_ a giant, gaping security hole - one that in today's OS's is responsible for a huge share of security issues. (There _is_ a way to have systems which aren't as vulnerable, but it means having military-grade security on everyone's machine - and no, I don't mean crypto; probably not likely, alas.) I mourn the early days of the Web, when there was no active content - just text, images, etc, etc. But no, they had to add all sorts of flashy eye candy - and did so in a way that makes basically all modern machines horribly insecure. But let me dispense with the soap box... Anyway, the inevitable consequence is that if you want a networked machine, it's _not_ going to be simple. Alas. You're basically sharing the machine with _lots_ of other people - effectively, every Tom, Dick and Jane out there in the Internet. In other words, you need everything one normally saw/sees in a time-sharing machine. (And I'm not talking about wimpy ones like Unix/Linux. I mean industrial strength ones like Multics.) Noel

10 years, 7 months

Looking for RRD40 caddy

by jpw＠chocolatejollis.net

Hello all, I am looking for a CD caddy that is compatible with the DEC RRD40. Willing to pay for the caddy + shipping; haven't had any luck with eBay et. al. Thanks, JP Willis

10 years, 7 months

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