> From: Marc Verdiell
> thanks for taking care of a rare 026.
Actually, IIRC this was an 029 - thread drift, after LCM (IIRC) enquired
about a punch - for them, an 029 seemed as good as an 026.
> this community is about celebrating people that have an interest in
> saving old valuable hardware.
Indeed, this whole list is about people saving computers that don't really
have any _practical_ use any more. By definition, from a purely _functional_
perspective, their value is scrap. But our viewpoint is not that - we see
them as interesting and historic artifacts - and in that light, their true
value is set by that old mechanism, supply and demand.
So some antique computers go for what I find remarkably low prices (e.g. QBUS
-11 stuff) because there's a good supply, and other very similar machines go
for a lot (that 11/70).because they are un-common. And IBM punches are not
exactly common items...
Noel
At 05:57 AM 9/20/2015, Liam Proven wrote:
>On 20 September 2015 at 05:58, John Foust <jfoust at threedee.com> wrote:
>> Someone's demonstrated you can hide in the firmware of hard drives.
>
>And access the hypervisor layer of an OS in various ways from programs
>executing inside a VM.
Yeah, that too. The easy recombination and modularization of malware
makes it so much worse. I suspect there are quite a few easy ways that
malware could hold hostage the typical VMware / Hyper-V / Veeam / NAS / SAN
setups at many businesses, and easy money because it would be far easier
to pay the ransom than to perform full disaster recovery.
On a more classic-computer bent, though, I try to look backwards
for wisdom about how this problem could be solved, and it's such a
different world with the Internet and higher stakes and dependency
on networked computers... it's not easy to solve.
- John
Something like two and a half years ago, I got a copy of
EL-00032-00-decStd32_Jan90.pdf, a one-image-per-page scan of a paper
copy of the VAX Architecture Reference Manual. I don't know where I
got it, but bitsavers has a file of the same name with the same MD5
checksum at /pdf/dec/vax/archSpec/EL-00032-00-decStd32_Jan90.pdf now,
so it likely was there.
I played with trying to build character-recognition software to convert
it to text and eventually decided it would be quicker and easier to do
it myself.
I've just finished that. (I'm not sure whether it actually was quicker
or easier....)
The result is available from ftp.rodents-montreal.org in
/mouse/docs/DEC/VARM/EL-00032-00-decStd32_Jan90.txt for anyone who
would care to grab a copy.
/~\ The ASCII Mouse
\ / Ribbon Campaign
X Against HTML mouse at rodents-montreal.org
/ \ Email! 7D C8 61 52 5D E7 2D 39 4E F1 31 3E E8 B3 27 4B
On 20 September 2015 at 05:58, John Foust <jfoust at threedee.com> wrote:
> Someone's demonstrated you can hide in the firmware of hard drives.
And access the hypervisor layer of an OS in various ways from programs
executing inside a VM.
So, for instance, much malware self-inactivates if it detects that
it's running inside a guest instance, so that anti-malware
investigators cannot examine its behaviour.
What is now being investigated (doubtless by both sides) is malware
that can inject code into the hypervisor from within a guest. Once
you've reached x86-64 Ring -1, then you're a god, you can do anything
you like to any VM and no anti-malware in the VMs can prevent it.
There is also research into using the increasingly industry-standard
remote-management features in core chipsets to hide or distribute
malware, again out of reach of any OS-level task.
And there is the very controversial claim of malware that could
transmit itself from machine to machine using speakers and microphone.
It's a jungle out there, with all that that implies about parasitism,
zombieism, concealment and stealth and creepy disgusting infections
that hide for a lifetime then apparently explode out of nowhere.
--
Liam Proven ? Profile: http://lproven.livejournal.com/profile
Email: lproven at cix.co.uk ? GMail/G+/Twitter/Flickr/Facebook: lproven
MSN: lproven at hotmail.com ? Skype/AIM/Yahoo/LinkedIn: liamproven
Cell/Mobiles: +44 7939-087884 (UK) ? +420 702 829 053 (?R)
On Fri, 18 Sep 2015, John Foust wrote:
> As to why your antivirus didn't see it... there's always a few days
> before the latest infection mechanisms are documented and added to
> the AV updates.
CryptoLocker has been around for a year. I don't think that McAfee nor
AVG see it. "Well, it's not a VIRUS, . . ."
> When I first heard about Cryptolocker, I wanted to give up consulting
> and find a different career.
Is there a way to crowdfund a hit?
Todd,
Well, hopefully this community is about celebrating people that have an
interest in saving old valuable hardware. Not bullying them. Saving
substantial hardware involves a substantial personal investment in time and
money. So, Todd, well done, congratulations on your buy, and thanks for
taking care of a rare 026. And if you need any tips for restoration I would
be happy to help (I have an 026 and an 029, both fully functional now).
Marc
======================================
Message: 27
From: Todd Goodman <tsg at bonedaddy.net>
Subject: Re: IBM 026
Message-ID: <20150918235900.GF30683 at ns1.bonedaddy.net>
* Noel Chiappa <jnc at mercury.lcs.mit.edu> [150918 07:25]:
> So I see this sold - anyone know who got it?
>
> Noel
Yes. I did. I'll let people know what's up when I receive it. Though
i don't expect to get much time with it for a while.
Todd
Various items that will probably be of interest here.? No reasonable offer refused.
Hard copy??? You got it:DecWriter LA30? (modified to show lower case, yes it works).DecWriter LA36 (Decwriter II)
Sun 4/110 floor standing model, 36 megs (if I remember correctly).Two SCSI boxes that go with the Sun, I believe one has an operating system on it.Apple LaserWriter Plus, two (UNOPENED) toner cartridges for it.ADDS Viewpoint 3A terminal.
Just so you know it is "classic":JVC U-Matic (3/4 inch) video cassette recorder, with cables.? NTSC.
Sorry I can't ship these, they are currently located in zip code 95008.PayPal accepted at time of sale.
Make me an offer I can't refuse!
I would think the fixed head media swapped faster than the RK's
unlessthee fixed head media was really slow... Ed#
In a message dated 9/19/2015 10:45:53 A.M. US Mountain Standard Time,
aek at bitsavers.org writes:
On 9/19/15 9:44 AM, John Wilson wrote:
> later TSS/8s already supported RKs
> as data disks, unless I've gone senile). No idea how they managed that
--
>
UW-M's TSS/8 supported that. It should be in the monitor sources that we
read.
there was a time I really wanted a tss 8 system to use and even
started colleting stuff for it in the late 70s but along came the 2000 f
HP system I bought and I headed in that direction.. which gave be an
HP destiny not a DEC Destiny. but still ... would love to find a
tss-8 all together in the racks as used back then... Ed#
In a message dated 9/19/2015 1:45:44 P.M. US Mountain Standard Time,
wilson at dbit.com writes:
On Sat, Sep 19, 2015 at 12:30:13PM -0700, Al Kossow wrote:
>When did the 4K user space(s?) actually swap? Did they round-robin or swap
>based on activity? I would think they would stay in place until cpu-bound
>jobs reached their time quantum. With only a couple of people on a 32k
>machine, it may not even swap that much, depending on what the users were
>running. I'd guess BASIC was pretty big.
My understanding is that it's round-robin among runnable jobs, one time
slice at a time. I.e. the simplest possible way. IIRC the monitor always
takes up two fields (not swappable). One more field (so, 12 KW total) is
the minimum necessary to run at all -- SI, FIP, and all the users can share
that field with frantic enough swapping (which causes a pretty lights show
on the RF08 panel). Any more memory than that means less swapping (or
none), so it's kicking out the LRU job as needed. I have a hazy memory
that SI and FIP *only* run in field 2? Could be wrong.
BASIC runs in your 4 KW with you. I've never seen its sources so I don't
know how clever it is about overlays and/or keeping your program on disk.
It's a very limited BASIC. Strings are 6 characters. Not max -- *always*
6.
Line #s max out at 2046.
John Wilson
D Bit
Someone asked about uploading the SunOS 4.1 docubox I had scanned, so I finally
got around to doing that today, but discovered that I never scanned the part 1,
just the system calls of 800-3827. I suspect that I never had it. So if someone
has that or a Solaris 1.x docubox a scan would be helpful.
