test-drb

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101090 discussions

by wulfman＠wulfman.com

http://hackaday.com/2015/09/28/roundup-retro-computers-in-your-browser/?utm… -- The contents of this e-mail and any attachments are intended solely for the use of the named addressee(s) and may contain confidential and/or privileged information. Any unauthorized use, copying, disclosure, or distribution of the contents of this e-mail is strictly prohibited by the sender and may be unlawful. If you are not the intended recipient, please notify the sender immediately and delete this e-mail.

10 years, 7 months

Small glass capacitors polarized?

by tshoppa＠wmata.com

These are the small 0.01uF or smaller capacitors with transparent edges and you can see foil in the innards? If so, I think you are talking about "polystyrene capacitors". Yes, they were extremely popular in UK/EU for at-chip decoupling capacitors in the 1970's and 80's. They are not polarized. I'm not sure why polystyrenes were so popular for bypass/decoupling in EU and not so popular on this side of the pond. Here in the US we were more likely to see polystyrene in audio filtering/coupling locations where the cheapest ceramics had odd piezo properties and low leakage of polystyrenes were desirable. I do remember seeing polystyrene bypass capacitors on at least a few DEC boards of the 70's so they did make some inroads. There are real glass capacitors used where zero leakage and zero soakage are uber-concerns.

10 years, 7 months

Video tour of 1985 home automation system

by ball.of.john＠gmail.com

>> I wanted to share this because it's pretty neat: >> >> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0BHIknNa6Eg >> >> It's a ~6 minute tour of a home automation system from the 1980s that >> features graphical floor layouts and touch screen programming. The system >> is built into the house. > >That screen looks so much like my HP 150 that I keep wondering if that?s what they used >to build it. The IR grid for simulating a touchscreen wasn't really HP exclusive. I got a frame and control board here from Dale Electronics out of Nebraska from probably the same time period that interfaces to anything that supports RS-232. I really am quite fond of the idea of some simple machine in your basement with an X10 controller and a bunch of serial ports for terminals. Didn't they phase out Minitel terminals in France and now a lot of them are scattered about for pretty much free? Imagine having one of those puppies with the fold-out keyboards built into the wall of every room in your house. That interface looks like it would be easy to replicate with the extended ASCII character set. -John

10 years, 7 months

Resetting/bypassing P/OS password on DEC Pro 3xx series?

by derschjo＠gmail.com

Anyone recall what the procedure is for resetting or bypassing the password on P/OS? I *know* I was able to find this out before (in 2008 or so) because I did it on another Pro 350 I have, but I cannot for the life of me find anyplace that documents the procedure (the FAQ (http://www.deccomputer.info/2012/05) has no useful suggestions). I recall it required booting from a special floppy that had a few filesystem tools that'd allow replacing the password file; I'm sure I still have the disk image but I have no idea which one it is. I guess I should have saved the instructions somewhere (or maybe I did and I simply can't find them!). I must be getting old. I have a new Pro 350 in my possession which has a PC compatibility card; I'd like to see if the hard drive contains software for it (or anything else interesting) before I wipe it... Thanks, Josh

10 years, 7 months

would like to find blue dg et head looking terminal to go with small ecli...

by COURYHOUSE＠aol.com

Pretty futile to restore until I have manuals and a load tape if needed in front of me. The previous owner said it powered up and did not blow smoke so that is a good thing... but even still that was many many years ago. Unlike you Jay that has a 'mountain' of DG stuff in front of you to *wicker basket something together from... all I have is this one lonely rack! I have no familiarity with DG op/sys at all.... never ran one .. I did had an orig NOVA ( lo s/n no other suffix after it... about the first year I was in the computer business sold it to someone... I did try to track it back but they guy has scrapped it... as I found out 30 years later. BUT! I figure DG sould have some sort of representation here... and if it attracts MORE DG so be it!Least case it needs a terminal to display with it and ... yes... A POSTER! This month's 'make computer work ' project is HP-3000 related. In a message dated 9/22/2015 12:04:36 P.M. US Mountain Standard Time, jwest at classiccmp.org writes: Ed wrote... ---- Our Eclipse is not as grand as some photos ,,, and the tape drive is a small side by side reel unit that fits in the single rack here is a photo of ours.... http://www.smecc.org/data_general.htm ---- There's nothing non-grand about that. Nice non-blinken Eclipse with 6125 tape drive, and some type of disk unit in the bottom. Nice. And... ---- had it for years need manuals etc and maybe some sales lit. or scans of advertising material to display with it... but yea... it cries out to have a terminal with it! ---- No, it cries out to be restored and run rather than just sitting under a poster. But that's just me. J

10 years, 7 months

Looking for RX01/02 rack slides

by charlesmorris800＠centurytel.net

I just acquired an RX01 drive (and an RX8E) for my 8/A system. It wasn't too painful to get it going, as the RX8E had "only" one bad IC that was easy to find and I had a spare. Details on the DEC forum at vintage-computer.com. Then the RX01 started audibly working, but with new-old-stock 3M diskettes, showed 22 seek errors on the first pass to Drive 0, finding good headers with correct CRC but the wrong ones a track or two away. That cleared up promptly and 25 successive passes had no errors on either drive. So now I have two floppies with 487 free blocks each, built in OS/8 ;) However, the drive came only with the inner slides (that attach to the chassis), but not the outer rails that bolt to the rack. So I'm looking for either a complete pair of RX slides, or just the outer ones that I need. If they can't be had, I may have to find a heavy-duty rack shelf and set the drive on it. That would be inconvenient to service the drive but it should not need attention often. Can anyone help me find some? Thanks. -Charles

10 years, 7 months

PDP-11/05 restoration project - anyone has a M7810 or M781?

by mattislind＠gmail.com

Hello! I have started to work slowly with the PDP-11/05 I received a year ago. It is the big BA11-D chassis type machine. The power supply is now fixed and working fine. A few smaller capacitors were leaking. But also one of the big input filtering capacitors was bad and had to be replaced. The front panel have been cleaned and checked. The next step is to start looking into the the CPU itself. Unfortunately one of the CPU boards are marked "faulty" so there are certainly work to be done. The plan is to get it to work with the 8kW core memory, M7800 connected to a good old teletype and PC05 paper-tape reader / punch and then run paper tape BASIC on it or other paper tape software. The problem is that I am lacking in the M7810 board. Since I do have a M105 and M7821 a M781 could do as well. Does anyone has a M7810 or M781 to sell? http://www.datormuseum.se/computers/digital-equipment-corporation/pdp-11-05 BTW. Does anyone have a BA11-D chassis and could help me take a photo of the top and bottom covers? Those are missing on my machine and it seems impossible find a drawing for the BA11-D chassis itself. It is not in the PDP-11/05 Engineering Drawings which I already have. And if someone also have a G231 I would be interested because that would mean that the machine can be fully configured with 16 kWords! /Mattis

10 years, 7 months

Regarding Manuals

by pontus＠Update.UU.SE

Hi I have more manuals than I really have room for. Lots and lots of VMS binders and softcover books. And now my employer is throwing out box upon box of SUN, Ultrix, tru64 and various literature. I'm trying to save what I think is useful and/or worth preserving. But It's damn hard to decide and damn hard to motivate filling up every inch of precious space. At the moment I thinking about just looking the other way and throw what is not directly useful to me. What is a collector/hoarder to do? Anyone who wants to turn up with a truck and fill with dead trees? Regards, Pontus.

10 years, 7 months

Small glass capacitors polarized?

by jnc＠mercury.lcs.mit.edu

Hey, everyone: those little glass capacitors (well, the casing is glass - I'm not sure what's inside) that one often sees used as per-chip noise/spike supression caps (often 0.01 uF or some such size) on 1970s/1980s vintage boards: are those things polarized, or can I put them in either way around? I tried looking online, but didn't get an answer I was fully acomfortable with (some of the 'glass capacitor' listings I found seemed to apply to a different kinda 'glass capacitor'). As always, thanks in advance for any help! Noel

10 years, 7 months

Big Alphas available

by pontus＠Update.UU.SE

Hi I need to make room for new goodies. So I'm offering two Alphas: * AlphaServer 2100 5/300 - Untested by me, good physical appearance. * DEC AXP 4000 - Was running when I picked it up. http://www.pdp8.se/bild/sthlm_haul/axps.jpg I can ship them, the probably need to go on a pallet. Regards, Pontus.

10 years, 7 months

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