- test-drb@ccmp.vtda.org - classiccmp.org

Desperately need BA11-N/BA11-S Technical Manual

by jnc＠mercury.lcs.mit.edu

> From: tony duell > Do you have a URL for the prints (to save me going through all possible > candidates on bitsavers)? Yeah, as per my 'where are subsystem prints' page, they are in the 11/23 print set MP00740, pg. 81-87 (schematic on pg. 87): https://archive.org/details/bitsavers_decqbusMP0_10391074 (Doesn't seem to be on BitSavers?) > What is the fault with your board? First, I should explain that I do have a working PM board, so we can swap back and forth to see what a working one looks like. It also verifies that the fault is on that board, since the working one is fine in that chassis. Anyway, on the bad one, both ACLO and DCLO (BPOK and BDCOK, I guess the QBUS guys call them :-) are being pulled low. Looking at the board, D5 (the Q3 end) is at ground, the other end is at around ~-3V; with D4, both ends are at ground. On the good board, both ends of each diode go to -12V shortly after the machine powers on. (Advance thanks for any help! :-) Noel

10 years, 9 months

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Backups [was Re: Is tape dead?]

by couryhouse＠aol.com

Well then we have hp 3000 stuff from 23 years ago...?Was ?then..?But soon we will see if these tape sets live.. it will be good if so as there is hp software ?of unique ?nature ?that only existed being saved on our tape sets..... then there ?is the older hp 2000 stuff.... ?5 fascinating unique things ?some were rewritten for 3000. But a few not and if you want ron on a 2000 you can not go backwards. ..need more hp2000 and 3000 hardware help! ?Ed# ?www.smecc.org Sent from my Verizon Wireless 4G LTE smartphone -------- Original message -------- From: Chuck Guzis <cclist at sydex.com> Date: 09/16/2015 11:54 AM (GMT-07:00) To: "General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts" <cctalk at classiccmp.org> Subject: Re: Backups [was Re: Is tape dead?] On 09/16/2015 11:20 AM, Al Kossow wrote: > On 9/16/15 11:15 AM, couryhouse wrote: > >> We have 10 years of backups.ed# >> > ever verified them? Mine go back to sometime around 1980.? I have customer records that go back to 1987.? Curiously, we got a note from a fellow needing an update to CopyQM.? He registered his product in 1992.? We found it and provided him with a 1999 update--the last we did before the sale of the software (the terms of sale allow us to support existing customers). Just keep carrying the stuff forward.? I've even provided other authors with copies of their own source code after they'd lost track of it. You never know when having complete archives will come in handy.? But you already know that, Al! --Chuck

10 years, 9 months

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Backups [was Re: Is tape dead?]

by couryhouse＠aol.com

Enough repeated material over time just in case but yes,at one point random did . BACK UPS on backups ?on backups in my cases. Of course if one orig source file is bad from 10 years ago ?the backups of said file are eckky too. ?I await the dvds made of stone stuff I like to stash backups off site scattered about the country too. Geographical diversity is great... az though saver than calif ...earthquakes. ..and safer than areas with floods and huricanes.. I guess it is all a roll of the dice ?though. .. ?but just do it lots and cast it far and wide. I have no only museum stuff to worry ?about but also the news service stuff we do.....Ed# www.smecc.orgSent from my Verizon Wireless 4G LTE smartphone -------- Original message -------- From: Al Kossow <aek at bitsavers.org> Date: 09/16/2015 11:20 AM (GMT-07:00) To: cctalk at classiccmp.org Subject: Re: Backups [was Re: Is tape dead?] On 9/16/15 11:15 AM, couryhouse wrote: > We have 10 years of backups.ed# > ever verified them?

10 years, 9 months

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Backups [was Re: Is tape dead?]

by couryhouse＠aol.com

We have 10 years of backups.ed# Sent from my Verizon Wireless 4G LTE smartphone -------- Original message -------- From: Robert Feldman <r_a_feldman at hotmail.com> Date: 09/16/2015 10:40 AM (GMT-07:00) To: cctalk at classiccmp.org Subject: re: Backups [was Re: Is tape dead?] >From: Mouse <mouse at Rodents-Montreal.ORG> > >> I think a more important issue in backing up is "How many GENERATIONS > >to you keep around?" > >For many purposes, that's an important consideration, yes.? There's >something (small) I back up weekly for which I keep the most recent >seven backups, the oldest backup in each of the most recent twelve >months, and the oldest backup in any year.? I'm considering something >of the sort for my house backups - live replication to a backup host, >with a once-a-week freeze of the replica, storing past replica drives >on a scheme somewhat like the above. There is a ramsomware variant that encrypts the files but silently decrypts them when they are accessed. It does this for six months before deactivating the on-demand decryption and displaying the ransom message, the theory being that by that time all of the backups will be of the encrypted files, and thus will be useless for restoring good versions. As to how one can become infected, see http://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/08/27/malvertising_feature/?page=1. Major sites, such as The New York Times, Reuters, Yahoo!, and Bloomberg, have been serving malware -- including ransomeware -- through hijacked advertisements. No need to click on anything, the ad serves up the malware. BTW, where I work got hit with ransomeware in December. We were lucky that it first hosed the accounting/time tracking database, which generated errors when someone tried to enter her time. When I went to restore a backup of the database, I noticed the ransomware's html ransom note file and shut down the system before too many more files were encypted. We were able to restore everything (except the originally infected user's computer, which we wiped and reinstalled) from an unconnected backup drive. Bob ?? ?

10 years, 9 months

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PDP-11 manuals scanned/scanning

by jnc＠mercury.lcs.mit.edu

> From: Noel Chiappa > I have also gone through my set of manuals and prepared a list of all > the ones which aren't online. > ... > EK-1184A-TM-PR4 11/84 Technical Reference (Preliminary) > EK-1184E-TM-001 PDP-11/84 System Technical and Reference Manual > EK-1184E-MG PDP-11/84-E User's and Maintenance Guide So I spaced. 1184E-TM-001 _is_ online; not sure how I missed it! > From: Henk Gooijen > I would be very interested in the 11/84 docs, as far as not available. I'm not sure there's much in the other two which isn't in the other 11/84 manuals which are already online - I think the content is mostly the same, just arranged differently. A few minor tweaks (e.g. that sentence I found a while back about the BIAK/BDMG jumpers on the 11/84 backplane), but nothing major. I'll get to them at some point - alas, I bound them, so now I have to un-bind them before I can scan them! Oh well!! > I have EK-KK11A-TM-001 "KK11-A cache memory technical manual" Lyle Bickley made that one available a couple of months back. It doesn't seem to have made it into the repositories, though? Should I upload a copy to my web site, and send along the URL? > From: Jerome H. Fine > However, both of the directories at the next level up are blocked. If > there is any possibility that both these directories could be made > available to allow the other PDF files to be viewed Err, there are no other PDF files there, except the 11/73 CPU board prints, which I mentioned here recently and have now been mirrored. > If not, a list of the actual links to the other PDF files which are > available to be viewed would be appreciated. I should probably throw together a web page with links to all the PDP-11 files there (e.g. the one I just put together, of print sets that are available inside other print sets), and link to that from my home page. > Also, do you have any files of source code or binary distributions of > RT-11 files? Alas, being of the MIT persuasion, we never did anything with DEC software (except TWENEX, on the DECSystem20's), so I have nothing of anything to do with DEC software - Unix all the way! ;-) Noel

10 years, 9 months

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12" Floppy Disks

by binarydinosaurs＠gmail.com

Morning folks, I've been contacted by a teacher who's looking for any information about 12" floppies. Am I imagining that they really existed? I'm sure I've seen one or seen adverts for them, maybe at Bletchley Park. Others he's contacted think he's getting confused with 12" laser discs but I'm not so sure. Anyone? -- adrian/witchy Owner of Binary Dinosaurs, the UK's biggest home computer collection? www.binarydinosaurs.co.uk

10 years, 9 months

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Desperately need BA11-N/BA11-S Technical Manual

by jnc＠mercury.lcs.mit.edu

So, I'm trying to fix a broken Power Monitor Boards (the thing that drives ACLO/DCLO) in an H786 (BA11-N power supply), and although I have the prints, I can't make head or tail out of them. (The circuit is a maze of op-amps and 555's. OK, OK, so maybe an analog guy can take one quick look, and understand instantly how it works. But I don't have that gene! :-) So I'm looking for a BA11-N or BA11-S Technical Manual, to explain it to me (my experience is that the DEC Tech Manuals for power supplies are _really_ good at that). (Either the BA11-N or BA11-S since, although the PM boards have different part numbers in the two - 54-12528-0-1 in the BA11-N/H786, and 54-15048-0-1 in the BA11-S/H7861, the circuits in the two seem to be pretty much identical, looking at the prints.) Alas, neither seems to be available online. (The BA11-N is EK-BA11N-TM-001; the BA11-S is in the "PDP-11/23B Mounting Box Technical Manual", EK-23BMB-TM-001.) I have clues to the existence of a couple of copies of the BA11-N one, though. A "David Powell" (then at ICUKnet in the UK) sent out a message saying he had one, but the email address for him at ICUKnet no longer works - I haven't (yet) tried to find him via LinkedIn because it's a common name. I don't suppose anyone here knows him, do they? Also, this page: http://ed-thelen.org/comp-hist/Book-Catalog.html which claims to be the "Book Catalog (incomplete) of the Computer History Museum, as of July 27 2002" says they have one. Would it still be there, and is there any chance that, if so, it can be scanned an put online? Many thanks, in advance, for any help with this - I'm pretty desperate! Noel

10 years, 9 months

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Still seeking 3B2 information

by lists＠loomcom.com

Hi everyone, I've made tremendous progress on my 3B2 emulator. It's being implemented under the SIMH simulator platform, which has been a huge help. My WE32100 core is getting closer to being complete. I'd consider it alpha quality right now, but it has enough instruction coverage to pass the 3B2's power-on self tests and to (barely) run some of the 3B2 firmware mode tools. Implementing the WE32100 core has been thanks to the processor manual and assembly language manuals that are available on BitSavers, but outside of the CPU, virtually all of my understanding of the 3B2's architecture has come from studying the ROMs and the SYSVR3 source code. I've also been helped by having remote access to a running 3B2 so I can assemble and disassemble code using the real AT&T tools. Beyond that, I have found precious little documentation. I'm at the point now where I'm pretty well stuck until I can find more information. I understand large chunks of the memory map now and should be able to do things like simulate the floppy and hard disk controller, but there are large gaps in my understanding. There are many undocumented registers that are used by the firmware, but don't appear in the SYSV source code anywhere. What they mean and what they're for is anybody's guess. I've just stubbed them out for now. If anybody has access to schematics, architecture docs, or other memory map information, I'd be eternally grateful if you could share it! -Seth

10 years, 9 months

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PDP-11 manuals scanned/scanning

by jhfinedp3k＠compsys.to

>Noel Chiappa wrote: >OK, so I finally got set up to scan manuals, with a scanner with a document >feeder, so I don't have to sit there and feed the beast! So now I can scan in >a number of 'missing' (online, at least) PDP-11 manuals which I happen to >have. > >The first thing through the machine was the DZV11 Technical Manual (which >Paul Anderson was gracious enough to loan out, to enable it to be put online >- thanks Paul!), now available here: > > http://ana-3.lcs.mit.edu/~jnc/tech/pdp11/EK-DZV11-TM-001_Jun78.pdf > >(as always, please download/distribute/replicate to other repositories). >I also did the 11/34 cache board user manual, now here: > > http://ana-3.lcs.mit.edu/~jnc/tech/pdp11/EK-KK11A-UG-001_Oct78.pdf > I was able to look at both manuals. THANK YOU!! However, both of the directories at the next level up are blocked. If there is any possibility that both these directories could be made available to allow the other PDF files to be viewed, that would be appreciated. If not, a list of the actual links to the other PDF files which are available to be viewed would be appreciated. Also, do you have any files of source code or binary distributions of RT-11 files? I have a number of RT-11 DOC sets which I am no longer using: V05.05 RT-11 DOC set V05.04G RT-11 DOC set V05.02 RT-11 DOC set I am not positive about the latter two, but the V05.05 RT-11 DOC set is probably available unless Jay West wants it now rather than waiting for the V05.07 RT-11 DOC set. Since not of these dead tree RT-11 DOC sets are bound, they would be easy to (automatically) scan - except that each of the RT-11 DOC sets is approximately 5,000 pages and both sides must be scanned for a total of about 10,000 pages each. Since the V05.07 RT-11 DOC set is already scanned and available as many PDF files, there may not be any interest in the prior versions. Please let me know. If no one is interested, then I will start discarding them in a few months. I have promised to send the dead tree version of my V05.07 RT-11 DOC set to Jay West, but that will wait until I am on the other side of the green rug - or at least close enough. Jerome Fine

10 years, 9 months

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Clearpoint Q-RAM 11 chip locations

by jnc＠mercury.lcs.mit.edu

Documentation for the Clearpoint Q-RAM 11 board seems to be rather scarce; all I could find was a user manual, with no technical info (manual or prints or other documentation) online. (I'd be glad to be proved wrong! :-) So as part of a project I needed to figure out which memory chips were which; now that I've worked it out, I'm putting that info online here in the archives, where eventually Google will find it, and make it available to anyone who needs it. So, looking at the card from the component side, with the handle at the top, and the contact fingers at the bottom, there's an array of memory chips 12 columns wide, and 6 rows high; I see no ID system on the card, so I number the columns A-L (from the left), and the rows 0-5 (from the top). The card can have 4 banks of 128KB each, for a max total of 512KB. The chip-bit relationship is pretty random: Bank 0 - Columns A, E, I: 01 I2 02 E5 04 I3 010 A5 020 A4 040 A2 0100 A0 0200 A1 0400 E3 01000 A3 02000 E0 04000 E4 010000 E1 020000 E2 040000 I1 0100000 I0 Bank 1 - Columns B, F, J: Bank 2 - Columns C, G, K: Bank 3 - Columns D, H, L: The banks 2/3 column assignments are a guess, not verified as yet. The bit allocation seems to be the same in all banks; I tried a few in bank 1, and they matched the ones in bank 0 (suitably offset in column, of course). Noel

10 years, 9 months

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release dates of early microcomputer operating systems, incl. Intel ISIS

by jnc＠mercury.lcs.mit.edu

> From: Dave G4UGM > although ENIAC first ran a program it was stored as acoustic waves I don't think ENIAC used acoustic delay storage? Perhaps what you're thinking of is that in the original ENIAC usage, there was no 'program' as we now think of that term; the machine had to be configured (via connecting up computing units with cables) for each separate problem, i.e. more 'configurable' than 'programmable' (at least in the Turing machine sense). Hence the debate over whether it or the Baby was the first 'computer'. Noel

10 years, 9 months

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A poltergeist in my machine?

by jnc＠mercury.lcs.mit.edu

> From: Jerry Weiss > Check if the -5v charge pump is stable and supplying the correct voltage. > I recall a problem ... in which the on board pump went slowly bad. > Depending on the data content and tolerance margins for the memory > chips, we saw very erratic problems. That doesn't sound like my problem; this board was _consistently_ failing hard (would not write _any_ data, no-how, no-where), and then *poof* it was pretty consistently totally working (passing memory diags, etc). And the change from 'consistently not working at all' to 'working completely' happened when I 'touched' (see below) that pin with a probe. So either i) it was pure coincidence (possible, I suppose), or ii) there was some wierd causality. > From: Jon Elson > 1. There was a conductive hair on the board, and you knocked it off > with the probe. I'd brushed the board pretty comprehensively with a toothbrush to get all the dust off. (Yeah, I know, static - but it's pretty humid here right at the moment! ;-) > 2. There was a bad solder joint and the pressure of the probe broke > through the oxide. ... This is my highest probability guess. ... > 3. The chip has a bad internal wire bond, and the pressure on the lead > made it work. Well, I was using a DIP clip, so the pressure on the pin was pretty consistent before and after. Yeah, attaching the 'scope probe to the second pin would have wiggled the clip a tiny bit, but I'm still dubious. My current best guess, after sleeping on it, relates to the fact that the 'magic' pin was an output from a delay line. Delay lines, in that era, were apparently potted confections of inductors and capacitors. So maybe the extra current drain with the probe on somehow affected one (or more) of the capacitors in the delay line? A total WAG, but it's very mysterious! Noel

10 years, 9 months

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release dates of early microcomputer operating systems,

by Wayne.Smith＠warnerbros.com

> Date: Tue, 15 Sep 2015 03:03:05 -0600 > From: Eric Smith <spacewar at gmail.com> > To: "General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts" > <cctalk at classiccmp.org> > Subject: Re: release dates of early microcomputer operating systems, > incl. Intel ISIS > > Are you sure ISIS (one) didn't have disk support? I thought that was > shipped with the first Intel MDS-DOS floppy systems for use on the > MDS-800 in 1975. A 1975 edition of the MDS-DOS Operator's Manual is > listed among other Intel manuals at: > > http://www.intel-vintage.info/aboutme.htm Looked up the copyright registration for the manual and related items: A712678. MDS-DOS diskette operating system operator's manual 79 p. Add. ti: Intel diskette operating system microcomputer development System MDS-DOS operator's manual. (c) Intel Corporation; 22Dec75. A712670. Intel diskette operating system microcomputer development System MDS-DOS hardware reference manual. 1 v. (c) Intel Corporation; 15Dec75.

10 years, 9 months

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DEC Alpha 3000 Model 600

by rodsmallwood52＠btinternet.com

I thought it might be nice to have a DEC based graphics work station. I had the Alpha, a high res monitor and the Hobbyist Media CD for ALPHAVMS 8,3. (yes the system supports 8.3) SFSG .. So CD in the drive and switch on. First a nice colour graphics demo/test. Then the nomal system level stuff. >>> prompt, enter SHO DEV and our CD drive shows as DKA400 just where it should be. So Boot DKA400: and off we go. After a while a menu appears from which you can load layered products you need. It gets part way through the load and falls over with a data error. The cd is a real bought and paid for Media CD and is not a copy. Before I do a lot of tedious emaling (HP have taken the Hobbyist program in house) has anybody successfully loaded an Alpha with ALPHA VMS 8.3? Regards Rod

10 years, 9 months

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ZX Spectrum disk interfaces

by lproven＠gmail.com

A question born only of idle curiosity. In thge 1980s, I bought an MGT +D disk interface for the Sinclair ZX Spectrum: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%2BD In the end, I traded mine in for its upmarket cousin, the DISCiPLE: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DISCiPLE (I link to WP as I originally wrote those articles, IIRC. :-) ) I have noticed that multiple people have now cloned the +D: http://sintech-shop.co.uk/sinclair/-d-disk-interface-clone/a-6196/ http://www.rwapsoftware.co.uk/spectrum/spectrum_storage.html#plusd But this post, from FB, claims that the Beta Disk interface can handle high-density drives, giving 1.5MB per disk: https://www.facebook.com/groups/speccy4ever/permalink/1237322356346334/ Given that HD floppies and drives are far more readily-available than DD these days, how come most 8-bit interfaces can only handle DD? Is it purely a data rate issue? -- 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)

10 years, 9 months

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PDP-11 manuals scanned/scanning

by jnc＠mercury.lcs.mit.edu

OK, so I finally got set up to scan manuals, with a scanner with a document feeder, so I don't have to sit there and feed the beast! So now I can scan in a number of 'missing' (online, at least) PDP-11 manuals which I happen to have. The first thing through the machine was the DZV11 Technical Manual (which Paul Anderson was gracious enough to loan out, to enable it to be put online - thanks Paul!), now available here: http://ana-3.lcs.mit.edu/~jnc/tech/pdp11/EK-DZV11-TM-001_Jun78.pdf (as always, please download/distribute/replicate to other repositories). I also did the 11/34 cache board user manual, now here: http://ana-3.lcs.mit.edu/~jnc/tech/pdp11/EK-KK11A-UG-001_Oct78.pdf I have also gone through my set of manuals and prepared a list of all the ones which aren't online. I will slowly be scanning these in, but if anyone has a particular need for any of these, please let me know, and I'll move it to the top of the queue. They are: EK-881PC-UG-003 881 Power Controller User Guide EK-H9646-UG-002 H9646-AH/AJ Cabinet System User Guide DEC-11-H40SA-B-D PDP-11/40, -11/35 (21 Inch Chassis) System Manual EK-FP11C-OP-001 FP11-C Floating Point Processor User's Manual EK-1184A-TM-PR4 11/84 Technical Reference (Preliminary) EK-1184E-TM-001 PDP-11/84 System Technical and Reference Manual EK-1184E-MG PDP-11/84-E User's and Maintenance Guide EK-DHU11-TM-001 DHU11 Technical Manual (although IIRC that last is in a glued binding, so it's not really amenable to being auto-fed unless I rip it apart, which I am loathe to do). I also have: DEC-11-HR6B-D PDP-11 Conventions Manual but that's in print format (i.e. large pages), and I'd have to hand-feed that one through my A3 scanner. The auto-feed scanner I have is an older Epson, which I got on eBay for not very much. I'm using just the Twain driver from Epson; I'm doing my scanning >from IrfanView (a _very_ useful image tool, which if you don't have it, download it, it's free) which spits out the CCITT4 TIFF's directly - and can even number the output files backwards - incredibly useful when scanning hunks of double-sided pages on a single-sided scanner! If anyone wants to get set up to scan manuals, and wants to copy what I did, let me know, and I'll provide details. Noel

10 years, 9 months

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FS: PDP-11/55

by rob＠krten.com

Hi all, I have a PDP-11/55 for sale (Ottawa, Ontario, Canada). Bids open until 2015 09 15, buyer to arrange shipping, I will have it wrapped and ready to go. Please visit: www.krten.com/~rk/museum/index.html For pictures, detailed inventory and contact info. Sealed bids via eamil please. Winner will be notified 2015 09 16, machine will be ready to ship same day. Must be shipped / picked up no later than 2015 10 09. Sold AS-IS / where is, untested, unpowered since received. Comes with H960 rack and 2 side panels. Cheers, -RK -- Robert Krten Visit me at http://www.ironkrten.com

10 years, 9 months

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M8192 KDJ11-A ZKDJB2 XXDP Test Failure

by holm＠freibergnet.de

While checking my repaired KDJ11-A M8192 Board with xxdp I get the following error: BOOTING UP XXDP-XM EXTENDED MONITOR XXDP-XM EXTENDED MONITOR - XXDP V2.5 REVISION: F0 BOOTED FROM DL3 124KW OF MEMORY NON-UNIBUS SYSTEM RESTART ADDRESS: 152000 TYPE "H" FOR HELP ! .R ZKDJB2.BIC ZKDJB2.BIC ERROR WHILE TESTING BOARD FUNCTIONS ERROR # =001166 ERROR PC =040662 043632 @ The Board is working flawlessly otherwise. Can please someone with such a CPU can do a similar test and what does this error mean? I get this error with two different J11 Chips. In the Docs ( http://bitsavers.trailing-edge.com/pdf/dec/pdp11/xxdp/PDP11_DiagnosticHandb…) is shown thatthe test should ask for a Switch Register setting, in my case it doesn't. Is the test defective? Regards, Holm -- Technik Service u. Handel Tiffe, www.tsht.de, Holm Tiffe, Freiberger Stra?e 42, 09600 Obersch?na, USt-Id: DE253710583 www.tsht.de, info at tsht.de, Fax +49 3731 74200, Mobil: 0172 8790 741

10 years, 9 months

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R: Re: 12" Floppy Disks

by supervinx＠libero.it

May be he's a fisherman :) They tend to oversize everything :D -------- Messaggio originale -------- Da: Fred Cisin <cisin at xenosoft.com> Data:15/09/2015 14:01 (GMT+01:00) A: "General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts" <cctalk at classiccmp.org> Oggetto: Re: 12" Floppy Disks On Tue, 15 Sep 2015, Adrian Graham wrote: > Morning folks, > I've been contacted by a teacher who's looking for any information about > 12" floppies. Am I imagining that they really existed? I'm sure I've seen > one or seen adverts for them, maybe at Bletchley Park. Others he's > contacted think he's getting confused with 12" laser discs but I'm not so > sure. > Anyone? First, how old is he? If he is under 50, then he may be looking for the EARLY_PERCEPTION 12" floppy.? "Man, those things were HUGE! ENORMOUS! When my elementary school teacher brought one into class, it was bigger than my foot!" What he is misremembering is an 8" disk. If he is over 50, then he may be looking for the FADED_MEMORIES 12" floppy.? "Man, those things were HUGE! ENORMOUS!" What he is misremembering is an 8" disk. Or, he may be looking for the CREATIVE_MARKETING 12" floppy. When TVs were round, the measurement was the diameter.? When they stopped being round, the measurement was the diagonal, or largest length.? More recently, they've started to round up.? And, now, I think that they are measuring the diagonal of the box that it is shipped in.? The diagonal of an 8" disk jacket is about 11", rounded up to 12" Very large objects tend to be remembered as even larger.? I have a [damaged] 24" platter from a hard disk.? When mentioned later, most people remember it as being "three or four feet diameter!" We have had numerous prior queries about the 12" floppies.? One tipoff is that sometimes the person asking will remember that floppies had TWO sizes, "five inch" and "twelve inch".? 3.5" will either be called "three inch", or "hard disks"!? It is simply a misremembering of eight inch. As Eric pointed out, floppies STARTED at 8", and went DOWN from there. But, could we be wrong? Of course. But, I'm willing to bet $20 that nobody can send me a 12" floppy. -- Grumpy Ol' Fred???? cisin at xenosoft.com

10 years, 9 months

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Even more PDP-8/A weirdness (was: Re: PDP-8 diagnostics SR settings?)

by charlesmorris800＠centurytel.net

More testing this evening. Drive 1 ran for 8 ten-minute AJRLIA read-write passes before I stopped it, with a single error flagged during pass 6: WD1 0235 WD2 0000 ER 4001 CB 1117 indicating a Data CRC error and a Read header without CRC command. Not completely unexpected, a lot of data is being read and written and there is a soft error rate of 1 in 10^9 bits and hard error rate of 1 in 10^12, IIRC. Meanwhile I keyed in the Oscillating Seek program from the RL01/02 Users Guide manual (page C-6) and set it for 511 cylinders. It seeks without any problems swinging the head from Track 0 to Track 511 and back, on both drives. No Fault, no nothing except seeking. Perhaps I was overthinking the "wrong command" theory. I did reseat the 2708 EPROM (state machine) on the controller card. One VERY interesting thing I learned from a close reading of the manual and this test program though: The controller reports Ready status *immediately* when a seek command is given, even though the seek has not completed!! (pg. 5-15, para 5.3.4) And that seek can take up to 100 ms for 511 tracks on an RL02. A long time in computer terms, even at 1.6 us per instruction cycle... Now I'm wondering if AJRLHA diagnostic doesn't wait long enough for the seek to complete before trying something else. The Oscillating Seek does (by calling for a dummy Read Header command). Still don't understand the Write error that shouldn't have been there from that diagnostic... Not happening tonight though. I can run RL2FMT on either drive, boot OS/8 with no problems (other than the brief flash of both Fault lights), PIP files from one drive to the other. Could OS/8 do its initial Seek without waiting long enough for it to complete, too? Would love to hear from any experts on the internal workings of OS/8 especially relating to RL02's. -Charles

10 years, 9 months

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Even more PDP-8/A weirdness (was: Re: PDP-8 diagnostics SR settings?)

by charlesmorris800＠centurytel.net

Recall that the other day, I was seeing this on running AJRLHA.DG: STATE NOT 5 AFTER SEEK WITH 0 DIFFERENCE (this error and register dump prints twice in succession. State 5 = Lock-on, keeping on track). WD1 0317 (lower head, heads not out, spin-down) WD2 0204 (write data error, write gate error). This one worries me. WDE is "write gate on but no transitions on write data line". The drive should never be trying to write when there is no data being sent, and this diagnostic program does not do any writes to disk! So a fault, head retraction and shutdown is the proper response to this fatal error. I'll have to put a logic analyzer on the appropriate bits and see why it thinks it's supposed to be writing... or where the command came from. ERROR FLAG SET ER 2000 (Operation incomplete within 200 ms). Probably because the drive shut down when the WDE error occurred. CB 0003 (Seek) Today the fault immediately on starting the test is still present (and yes, Henk, it did occur to me that there might be something wrong with the diagnostic because all the others work! Has anyone got the source code for AJRLHA?) However, there are different initial errors today! Diagnostic starts (Fault light comes on immediately): Prints this block twice: Error flag set ER 2002 (Operation incomplete, Drive error) CB 0103 (12-bit data mode, Seek state). <--- This seems to be OK, 8-bit mode is required for Maintenance, Get Status or Read Header, but not Seek command) then Error flag set ER 2000, CB 0103; (same as above but no Drive error) Fault light goes off; then ER not as expected but error flag not set: WD1 0235 (Heads out, upper head locked on track) WD2 0002 (volume check bit) ER 0003 (Drive error; Drive ready); WD1 0335 (same except lower head) WD2 0002 (volume check bit) ER 0003 (Drive error; Drive ready); Per the user's manual, the Fault light only comes on with the following errors: 1 Drive-select error, 2 Seek time-out error, 3 Write current in heads (during sector time) error, 4 Loss of system clock (this condition is not latched and not represented in status word), 5 Write-protect error, 6 Write data error, 7 Spin error. I am confident that the reported fault is not 1, 4, 5 or 7. The drive is being selected properly, works except on initial test, the write protect switch is not set, and the drive stays spinning with Ready light on when not being accessed. However, that still leaves a seek time-out (reported today) or a write error (seen two days ago) when there shouldn't *be* any writes. I really want to find out why the drive previously thought it was being told to write, at the wrong time. I just had a new idea: What if a command register is being corrupted between the setting by the program, and the drive electronics? Say a Write Data command (CB xxx5) is erroneously received by the drive but the proper registers for a write have not been set up. That would Fault the drive and the diagnostic would report an error. Another example: The diagnostic is issuing the proper Seek command (CB xxx3), but the drive is actually receiving something else, so the expected seek would time-out in the diagnostic, and depending on the command the drive actually is reading, could light the Fault too . When attempting to run Dumprest for RL during the previous session, I had to add retries for seeking because the program would halt with a seek error there too. So I'm now suspicious of an intermittent or partial short (another whisker?) between the command registers and the drive. Maybe it's not "hearing" the controller properly! It's even got the correct expensive DEC cables between the card and the drives, and a terminator on the farthest drive. Jon wrote: >I'm pretty far away from competence on PDP-8s anymore, but the symptoms >sound like maybe the drive faults on LONG seeks, but as long as the seeks >are short, it works OK. There might be a one-shot in the controller that >allows so many ms for a seek to complete, and due to aging capacitors, the >delay is now too short. But, that's a totally wild guess, there could be >troubles in the drive seek electronics that only occur on longer seeks. That's an interesting SWAG, thanks :) I checked the 22 uf capacitor (and 39K resistor) that provide the timeout delay. They are OK. If anything the 22 uf is well on the high side, thus giving a longer delay. Time to toggle in some more programs I guess. What really bugs me is that this whole system was completely working for years... up until it didn't :P

10 years, 9 months

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Control Data 160

by bpettitx＠comcast.net

Chuck Guzis <cclist at sydex.com> wrote: Subject: Re: Control Data 160 Ebay I believe the eBay lister stated that it was a 160, not the -A. So no return jump for you... --Chuck Which would make it even more scarce. There were only a little over a 100 of the 160 models made. And 40+ of them were rebranded as NCR machines. There were 495 160-As made officially. (There were also a small number shipped without serial numbers to the good people at Langley.) I know of at least 5x 160-As still in existence, besides my own. Which should be going to a museum this week if they can sort out shipping glitches. My system includes a 161-A Typewriter in lousy shape and a 167-2 Card Reader in perfect shape. Plus all manuals, software (with listings) and spare parts. Even the paper tape rewinder! I did not know any 160 machines survived, so who ever bought it has a unique item. I have looked for 15 years for an 8092 = the first true 8 bit computer. Haven't found even a hint or rumor of one. I am working with Al Kossow, to see that this material is eventually in his archives. Billy Pettit

10 years, 9 months

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M8192 KDJ11-A ZKDJB2 XXDP Test Failure

by jnc＠mercury.lcs.mit.edu

> From: Holm Tiffe > "Ensure that halt trap option is disabled (jumper W9 installed)." Well, either that was transcribed incorrectly, or the person who wrote it confused. On the M8192, per EK-KDJ1A-UG-002, pg. 2-1, W_5_ is the halt trap option, and W9 is... BEVENT recognition. One removes W9 to enable the LTC (using the QBUS BEVNT line). Which kind of explains your results... :-) Noel PS: BTW, the M8190 (KDJ11-B) in similar - the onboard ROM diagostics barf if the LTC isn't on (i.e. the switch on the chassis to enable BEVNT has to be on).

10 years, 9 months

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21MX proms (per request

by gerardcjat＠free.fr

That triggers again a question I had for a while ... HOW OFTEN theses old PROM fail ?? Who had been through this problem and does it "really" worth to have some blanks "just in case" ?? --- L'absence de virus dans ce courrier ?lectronique a ?t? v?rifi?e par le logiciel antivirus Avast. https://www.avast.com/antivirus

10 years, 9 months

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Control Data 160

by jnc＠mercury.lcs.mit.edu

> From: Mark Linimon > excellent post. Ditto. Thanks for sharing those memories, and history, with us, Mr. Pettit! Noel

10 years, 9 months

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Even more PDP-8/A weirdness (was: Re: PDP-8 diagnostics SR settings?)

by charlesmorris800＠centurytel.net

As previously posted, reseating the boot ROMs in their sockets cured the corrupted boot loader issue. Got lucky there :) In my system there are two RL02 drives. I will call them "Top" and "Bottom" here, after their physical locations. I put the OS/8 pack that had been acting strangely in the bottom drive (faulting the disk and halting the 8/A when OS/8 was interrupted with Ctrl-C) in the top drive, and switched unit plugs. It works perfectly there! Ctrl-C returns to the "." prompt as expected. The pack I formatted also still reads four 4000+ blocks partitions when switched to the bottom drive. As before, the AJRLHA diagnostic (Seek/Fctn) still faults and prints errors, but only at the start of testing the drive. Thereafter that drive shows no errors. Then the program will switch to the other drive and the same problem occurs. Specifically (edited and reformatted for clarity, with results interpreted from the RL02 user manual): (Ready light goes out, Fault light on) STATE NOT 5 AFTER SEEK WITH 0 DIFFERENCE (this error and register dump prints twice in succession. State 5 = Lock-on, keeping on track). WD1 0317 (lower head, heads not out, spin-down) WD2 0204 (write data error, write gate error). This one worries me. WDE is "write gate on but no transitions on write data line". The drive should never be trying to write when there is no data being sent, and this diagnostic program does not do any writes to disk! So a fault, head retraction and shutdown is the proper response to this fatal error. I'll have to put a logic analyzer on the appropriate bits and see why it thinks it's supposed to be writing... or where the command came from. ERROR FLAG SET ER 2000 (Operation incomplete within 200 ms). Probably because the drive shut down when the WDE error occurred. CB 0003 (Seek) (Fault light goes out) ER NOT AS EXPECTED BUT ERROR FLAG NOT SET (prints this block twice) WD1 0235 (heads out, lock-on, keeping on track) WD2 0002 (Volume check bit, no errors) ER 0003 (Drive Error and Drive Ready) CB 1004 (8-bit mode, Read Header) BAD STATUS RECEIVED FROM DRIVE (also prints this block twice) WD1 ACTUAL 0235 (heads out, lock-on, keeping on track) WD2 ACTUAL 0002 (volume check bit) WD1 EXPECTED 0234 (heads out, seek - track counting) WD2 EXPECTED 0000 (no errors) Some of these errors look like a "cascade"... because the first false-write error occurred, the others are flagged before the drive can become ready again. Then it goes on to run for about 10 mins, flickering the Ready light constantly so it's very dim, obviously accessing as fast as it can. No further errors. Next the program switches to drive 1 and the results are identical, except the "STATE NOT 5" message has WD1 0217 (upper head, heads not out, spin-down). So only the Seek diagnostic is giving errors... the AJRLIA diagnostic (Read/Write) and 'KA (Performance Exerciser) do not show errors. Writes the entire pack and reads it with no errors. I suspect it has automatic error retry but without the source code, that is speculation. Anyhow it may be time to break out the scope and RL02 service manual and check some settings and waveforms... But I still think this is actually a problem with the RL8A controller and not *both* RL02's, since both drives return the same errors, and never had problems like this before... Any help making sense of this mishmash of errors would be greatly appreciated :) -Charles

10 years, 9 months

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punchcard svg file available

by gerardcjat＠free.fr

@ simski, who wrote : >Hi, > Hmm. russian carsds. sounds interesting. I'm certainly interested in > their looks. could you post a scan of one of them? Well, they very much look ( and feel ) like original IBM ones, with : - Right angles : NO rounded corners - Characters printed : standard 0 to 9 row numbers with 1 to 80 column numbers over "0" ligne and "9" ligne - only two cyrilic "labels" (??) printed sideway at the leading and trailing edge of the card. Color is what ** I ** call light brown, but there is certainly a more accurate word for it, something like "bistre" ?? All the prints are printed quite "light" and I am not sure it will go through scan correctly (!!) . I will try next week ( scanner un-connected right now ;-) ) If interested ( as collector's item ?? ) , I may send a couple. PM me. --- L'absence de virus dans ce courrier ?lectronique a ?t? v?rifi?e par le logiciel antivirus Avast. https://www.avast.com/antivirus

10 years, 9 months

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Control Data 160

by bpettitx＠comcast.net

"wmachacek" <wmachacek at q.com>wrote: Subject: Control Data 160 I have a CDC "160 Computer Programming Manual" that I obtained many years ago when I was working with CDC equipment. This manual caught my eye and I squirreled it away since we were using the 160-A computers not the 160s. This manual has a publication number of 023a and a date of 1960. The picture shown inside the manual is pretty much like the one described herein. It shows the dropped side panels. The manual shows the Ferranti paper tape reader and the BRPE paper tape punch as standard equipment. As optional equipment it shows Ampex magnetic tape handlers (FR300 or FR400), an 80 column punched card reader (no maker listed), an 80 column card punch (no maker listed), a line printer (no maker listed), a Soroban-modified IBM electric typewriter, and a digital communications line buffer. This manual has 45 pages and shows a full view of the computer and a close-up of the front panel. I always kept this as a kind of a CDC oddity as I had heard that the 160s were a proto type and never actually went into production. At least that is what I heard back then. I hope this information kind of helps to better identify these computers. Bill ............................................... Bill, I have a copy of that manual here and was just looking at it. I believe I have all of the 160 and 160-A documentation and software. I have been giving it all to Al Kossaw to add to bitsavers. He is overloaded with so much that needs scanning, that it may be a while before getting posted. The early 160's used IBM punched card equipment. The 088 was the usual card reader of choice. Punching was via an IBM 523 or 521.. Printing was on a 1402 or 407. All these devices used an adaptor called the 1610. Later, printing shifted to the Analex 1000 lpn drum printer. Horrible machine to work on. A cheaper printer also became available: the 501 drum printer. It was made by Holley Carburator! I think it was their only venture into computerdom. Very unreliable machine, used Teflon hammer assemblies. I never saw a straight line of printing on any of those machines. Much of my early career at CDC was swapping out the foreign peripherals and replacing them with CDC ones. Including the Ferranti Paper Tape Reader. I'm a little hurt that the 160 is thought to never have gone into production. I was a customer engineer in the Twin Cities area and worked on lots of them, including some that went to NCR. Even Honeywell used them to test production .transducers. This was the first 12 bit machine, and went into production in 1958. It was extremely reliable. Other than paper tape gear and typewriter repairs, the only failures I can remember are burned out light bulbs and push button switches. Its main signifigance was the development of processing the peripheral operations so the large mainframes were freed up for the big jobs. That lead to the 6600, 7600 and the Cyber Series of computers. Even today, I/O is staged so the big processors are freed up. The 160 was a Seymor Cray design. The 160-A was designed by James Pederson in the early 1960's. It was at the request of several customers who needed more peripheral processing power in the fledling space industry. Most of the early 160-A sales were to the aerospace industry. I first worked on them while in the Army. They were used on missile engine test fixtures in Humtsville, Alabama. Incredibly reliable machines. My personal machine (s/n 190) is still working, complete with all origianl parts. Made in 1963. 52 yers old and still chugging along. Sadly, I had to give it up for health reasons. It's now on its way to a Museum. Billy Pettit

10 years, 9 months

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Tandy CoCo Joystick Adapter

by iridius＠yahoo.com

Greetings cctalk list .. I'm about to do a one time run of some CoCo 3 Joystick adapter PCB's. Using this simple PCB, along with one IC, 8 resistors, some wire and the two connectors, an adapter can be built to adapt an Atari style 9 pin Joystick to a CoCo 6 pin DIN, allowing one to use a digital joystick with their Tandy Color Computer. More info at .. http://www.lemon64.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=57859

10 years, 9 months

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C-64 / Epyx FastLoad bug(s)? Workaround?

by drlegendre＠gmail.com

Anyone here using (or have used) a C-64 with the venerable Epyx FastLoad cartridge? I'm running into a VERY annoying bug, and would like to know what if anything is known about it. Bug works like this.. Use the FL "$" command to display the disk directory. Immediately after, try to save a program to disk that has a certain number of chars in the filename in common with another filename on the disk. For instance [SAVE "PROGRAM03",8] when a file (or files) named "PROGRAM01", 'PROGRAM02", etc. already exist. The bug results in a 74 "drive not ready" error, and the save fails. Sometimes picking a more unique filename will allow a save. Other times, it seems no filename will allow a save. Only way I've found to get around the error is to load a different file.. which is no good, as it will overwrite the one in memory. So far, I've only noted the bug when working with BASIC files. What's up with this? Is there a workaround?

10 years, 9 months

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WTB: Teletype parts

by drlegendre＠gmail.com

Need the following items for an ex-Bell System Model 15 TTY: Keycaps - F K L C V B N with punctuation symbols, rather than fractions. I have a set with fractions to sell or swap. Keycaps - CARR RET and NULL (blank). These are missing. Platen crank - This is missing. Think that's all for now. I put out a word on Greenkeys but haven't had any luck, though I'd try the ever-helpful classicmp list! Please contact off-list where appropriate. Thank you!

10 years, 9 months

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Even more PDP-8/A weirdness (was: Re: PDP-8 diagnostics SR settings?)

by charlesmorris800＠centurytel.net

Update: The first thing I tried was removing and reseating the boot ROMs (465A2/469A2), since they did not use good machine-tooled sockets. Now the boot loader performs normally, no incorrect locations, and OS/8 boots from Drive 0 whether using the boot key or manual start at 0001. Great! So of course, ANOTHER new problem shows up... OS/8 boots and runs, will run PFOCAL, BASIC, give directory listings... But when I hit a Ctrl-C (for example, during a directory listing), Drive 0 Ready goes out, the Fault lamp lights and OS/8 halts. The last instruction showing on the display is 07605, 6213 (CDF CIF 1). I can hit the boot key and as soon as the drive becomes ready again, presumably relocating track 0, the system boots back to the "." prompt. The DF/IF logic is on the same Option 2 board with the bootstrap and auto-restart circuitry. Maybe there's yet another bad connection I have now disturbed... Time to start running diagnostics again! I am really feeling like I'm on a snipe hunt here... sigh. This system was working for many years up until about 2 years ago, then it all went to pot.

10 years, 9 months

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bendix GE-15?

by w2hx＠w2hx.com

I think someone on one of the lists was inquring about this. Some items that might be of interest http://www.ebay.com/itm/Rare-Vintage-Bendix-G-15-Mainframe-Computer-Circuit… http://www.ebay.com/itm/Rare-Vintage-Bendix-G-15-Mainframe-Computer-DA-1-In… and a bunch of magazine advertisements Eugene

10 years, 9 months

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information about the Bendix G-15 and Rice Research Computer?

by linimon＠lonesome.com

So I have finally been prodded by some people to put together a web page for the G-15 computer. As well, I am going to put up information about the Rice Research Computer (later known as the R1), and its intended succesor, the R2. Right now my web pages are pretty skeletal and mostly consist of some old G-15 documentation scans I did in early 2000. Apparently I have some things that are not on Bitsavers (yet). I have at least one more document that I need to scan, the Technical Manual. I do have some R1 documentation which I intend to scan and then send to either CHM or Rice University Fondren Library. To some of you that I have already contacted off-list, this will be duplicate information. Sorry about that. To the others, please let me know if you have any information about these computers that you would be willing to share publicly. Also, beta-testers of the website would be appreciated; email me off- list for the URLs. I mean, it it _really_ skeletal (e.g. 2 days old.) mcl

10 years, 9 months

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Even more PDP-8/A weirdness (was: Re: PDP-8 diagnostics

by charlesmorris800＠centurytel.net

>So, either something is corrupting the bus, or the memory is bad. > >Correct me if I'm wrong, but if I got this right, you wrote the boot >code by hand into memory, single-stepped it, and after a while, you had >bad contents in memory. > >Now, execution here would only be reading from memory, and not writing >to it. Furthermore, this is MOS, so it does not get rewritten on reads. >That would, to me, suggest that the memory board is the problem. >Do you have any other memory board around? > >Johnny I mistyped while doing many things at once. (It appears that the memory does NOT change while single stepping through it by hand. Fortunately.) See my update - reseating the ROMs fixed the boot corruption problem. I am not sure if the 32K SRAM board actually reads and rewrites - it does not do so internally, it's just SRAM and a couple of bus buffers. Whether the 8/A memory cycle does rewrite each time or not, I don't know. Now I've got yet another RL02 (maybe) problem to chase down... -Charles

10 years, 9 months

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Even more PDP-8/A weirdness (was: Re: PDP-8 diagnostics SR settings?)

by charlesmorris800＠centurytel.net

Since the computer doesn't mind doing boring, repetitive tasks, I set the 11/23+ to yet again remaking the bootable RL02 pack (3 hrs at 9600 baud while I did other things). Plunked it in (without the programmer's panel connected), hit the boot switch on the limited function panel, and it fired right up to the "." prompt. Did a directory of the free space which printed, set the date to 11 Sep 75, and had a phone call for a while. Back to the console, entered R BUILD (just to do the PR, not save it) and system halts. Reboot - back to the same crap of fault light flashes on the drives, no boot. Sigh. So I hooked up the programmer's panel, flaky though it may be, (just not touching the SR) and discovered that some of the bootstrap routine is being corrupted in zero page! And not the same Bit 4 as before, and not all the time... a 4027 (JMS IO) got changed to 4007, the constant of 0377 changed to 0017, the 6601 RL02 instruction was now a 6401, etc. Still always middle bits though. Now, the secondary bootstrap (from the RL pack) does overwrite the zero page including the running boot code. (The first read from the pack is 200[octal] words, or one page). The boot routine never sets the MA address register so it could be overwriting core starting at 0000. The boot listing comments say execution does not continue in the primary boot (at 0001-0035), from the last IO call at the point when the RLCB function causes the page of data to be read from the disk into core. But the changes I'm seeing aren't right, regardless. The OS/8 boot routine would never use a 6401 (an IOT for a secondary console device, in this case my Omni-USB)... Next I pulled the RL8A out of the backplane and tried manually entering and single-stepping through the boot code, skipping manually over the RLSD instruction in the disk IO subroutine. That didn't seem to corrupt the code. Hit the Boot key (with the RL8A still removed) and those three or four words are wrong again, the same way. Thus verifying that the changes are not coming from the secondary boot on the disk! If I remember correctly, the boot ROMs have to load the boot routine into core at 0001-0035 (done by hardware on one of the three-board set) and then start execution at 0001. I thought this might be bit-rot in the ROMs, so I tried toggling in the bootstrap code to those locations and single-stepping beginning at 0001 after a few loops through showed the code changed again. Remember, the RL8A is not present in the bus. So the fault can't be on that card! I'm thinking something else is loading part of the memory data bus when it should not be, which is either on the CPU or it's a problem with the 32K memory card itself. Now that I think about it, when I discovered the problem on our clone panel a couple of days ago, I also found a couple of core locations that had been corrupted in the restrl program, not in page 0 though. Figured that was also artifact of the buggy panel, but now it's looking like something else. The only things in the backplane now are the 3-board set, the 32k card, and the Omni-USB. Today I have discovered a pattern to the corruption! Addr Orig. Altered 0005 4027 4007 0011 6615 6415 0015 7325 7005 0021 1026 1006 0025 0377 0017 0031 6601 6401 Notice the middle 4 bits are always being set to 0000 which is an open-circuit (on the Omnibus a logic-1 is pulled down to 0 volts). I am not sure of the significance of the repeating address pattern yet. Not only that, those locations *only* are wrong after the BOOT key (or switch) is toggled. Running from loc. 1 by (0001, LA, RUN) does NOT corrupt the bootstrap in core (with the RL8A still removed, so the DMA facility doesn't factor into it). An even more important finding is that if I manually clear the bootstrap code by depositing 0000 in all its locations, when I hit the BOOT key, it deposits the "altered" version into core! No wonder the machine won't boot... still unsure as to why it did the first time yesterday, though. So now I need to look at the boot ROM circuitry which is on Option 2 board M8317. There are not three ROMs, DEC used some weird packing scheme to fit into two 256x4 ROMs. Most likely there is a 4-bit latch or an open-collector buffer chip that is flaky. I'd just yank the board and try booting without it, but the IF and DF registers (for memory extension beyond 4K) are also on that card so OS/8 would crash... And the best news of all so far: I keyed in the boot loader by hand, started it manually at 0001... and OS/8 booted from Drive 0 which confirms that the boot ROM area is the cause! Now to track it down... I sure hope it's not another solder whisker. Meanwhile, I used the system for over half an hour, running PFOCAL, formatting disk packs in Drive 1, checking the handlers loaded with BUILD. All working. -Charles

10 years, 9 months

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punchcard svg file available

by gerardcjat＠free.fr

Shall I understand that some of you guys, are looking for blank punch/punched cards ?? I have about a hundred ( here in .... France !! ) Let me know if this can help. These came from ex Soviet Union, and, as far as I can tell, they "fell and taste" like original IBM cards that was used to "play" with some 40 years ago. --- L'absence de virus dans ce courrier ?lectronique a ?t? v?rifi?e par le logiciel antivirus Avast. https://www.avast.com/antivirus

10 years, 9 months

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internet blocking problem ?

by hollandia＠ccountry.net

Per your request, I tried the URL: http://members.iinet.net.au/~daveb/simplex/simplex.html I did the search you requested, and tried the following URLs: http://members.iinet.com.au/~stepho/mick.htm http://members.iinet.net.au/~pontipak/redsquare.html http://members.iinet.net.au/~perthdps/convicts/stories.html http://www.iinet.net.au/~rmine/gctrebs.html http://www.iinet.net.au/~worcom http://members.iinet.net.au/~janwyllie/ http://members.iinet.net.au/~tom-hunter/ http://www.iinet.net.au/~gduncan/ http://members.iinet.net.au/~jacob/worldtp.html In every case shown above, the result was the same: The server at members.iinet.net.au is taking too long to respond. Only two of the sites I tried gave a different result. They were: http://members.iinet.net.au/~glrmc/ It gave me a blank page. and http://members.iinet.net.au/~margretr/ It gave the following error message: "XML Parsing Error: unexpected parser state Location: jar:file:///C:/Program%20Files/Mozilla% 20Firefox/browser/omni.ja!/chrome/browser/content/browser/aboutNetError.xhtml Line Number 335, Column 68: <div id="ed_connectionFailure">&connectionFailure.longDesc;</div>" My particulars are: 7:59 PM 9/10/2015 Gateway computer, connected by modem. Windows XP Professional v5.1 Firefox 35.0.1 Computer Country (ccountry.net) Medford, Oregon USA IP address: 12.73.18.147 You're welcome! Kurt > > So, I wonder if I can ask classiccmp members, especially in > the US, to check if they can view this page: > http://members.iinet.net.au/~daveb/simplex/simplex.html > > > If you want to do some more research, just Google > members.iinet and you will see a lot of hits of the form: > http://members.iinet.net.au/~some_name > > Thanks for any help or info you can offer! > > Jon > > >

10 years, 9 months

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FS: three PDP-11 boards

by charlesmorris800＠centurytel.net

I was going through my board collection and found three PDP-11 boards I've never used in years and don't see a foreseeable need. No idea of condition, but they're visually clean and neat, stored in antistatic bags. The serial cards came out of (my) working 11/23+ but I've not tested them (since I already have a 16-line card and only 2 terminals). I have (one each): M7957 DZV11-M Quad height 4-line serial card M8053 DMV11 "Microprogram Control" synchronous controller card Dilog CQ1610 16-line serial card. Make any reasonable offers. + shipping from US zip 65775. thanks Charles

10 years, 9 months

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Control Data 160

by wmachacek＠q.com

I have a CDC "160 Computer Programming Manual" that I obtained many years ago when I was working with CDC equipment. This manual caught my eye and I squirreled it away since we were using the 160-A computers not the 160s. This manual has a publication number of 023a and a date of 1960. The picture shown inside the manual is pretty much like the one described herein. It shows the dropped side panels. The manual shows the Ferranti paper tape reader and the BRPE paper tape punch as standard equipment. As optional equipment it shows Ampex magnetic tape handlers (FR300 or FR400), an 80 column punched card reader (no maker listed), an 80 column card punch (no maker listed), a line printer (no maker listed), a Soroban-modified IBM electric typewriter, and a digital communications line buffer. This manual has 45 pages and shows a full view of the computer and a close-up of the front panel. I always kept this as a kind of a CDC oddity as I had heard that the 160s were a proto type and never actually went into production. At least that is what I heard back then. I hope this information kind of helps to better identify these computers. Bill

10 years, 9 months

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PDP-11 architecture Was: internet blocking problem ?

by jnc＠mercury.lcs.mit.edu

> From: Jon Elson elson > I actually LIKED the PDP-11 architecture quite a LOT, but the limited > memory was a big killer. The good thing about the PDP-11 was the 16-bit word size. (It resulted in what's probably the most elegant architecture, in bang/buck terms, of all time.) The bad thing about the PDP-11 was the 16-bit word size. (For the reason you point out.) Noel

10 years, 9 months

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punchcard svg file available

by simski＠dds.nl

Hi All, just to let you know that i've made a vector graphics file for A hollerith punchcard. https://hack42.nl/wiki/Bestand:Punchcard.svg enjoy -- Met vriendelijke Groet, Simon Claessen drukknop.nl

10 years, 9 months

23
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internet blocking problem ?

by jnc＠mercury.lcs.mit.edu

> From: Jon Elson > so MANY others who could not access the members.iinet page were finding > they got stopped at cogentco. ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ Well, to be precise 'Cogentco was the last node on the route which responded'. It's impossible to say whether i) that node tossed packets that tried to go further; ii) it forwarded them to some other node (identity unknown) which did toss them (and didn't allow/handle traceroute), etc. One can't draw any conclusions about whether it's i) from the fact that it's _also_ still responding to traceroute packets sent to that address: one would have to know whether it does the a) 'is this packet to a destination I'm filtering' check before it does the b) 'I decremented the TTL and it's now zero', or the other way around. If b) it could be the node that's dropping the packets. But given that other 'last hops' are also producing similar results, I'm still thinking it's Ii.net which is tossing the packets, not the 'last hop' one can see on traceroutes. Noel

10 years, 9 months

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PDP-11 architecture Was: internet blocking problem ?

by jnc＠mercury.lcs.mit.edu

> From: Johnny Billquist > it really is a few bits short of perfect ... > .. when you look at the EIS and FPP extensions, which could not > retain the general instruction layout format because of a lack of bits. Well, if they'd tried to keep the same general layout, I don't think EIS, floating point, etc would have all fit in 16 bits. Maybe they should have made it a 18-bit machine? ;-) But I keep circling back to the observation that the -11 architecture's incredible flexibility/complexity ratio happened precisely _because_ it had to be crammed into 16 bits (along with a big dollop of genius :-). Given that I think the big challenge of the next generation of computer science is going to be managing complexity, it's too bad we don't teach more young CS students the -11 and UnixV6 - to show them just how much you _can_ do, with how _little_, if you put your mind to it. > I still would not consider overlays as any part of the PDP-11 > architecture. But maybe that is just me. No, I agree with you 100%. Plenty of PDP-11 OS's did not support them. Noel

10 years, 9 months

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IBM 026

by COURYHOUSE＠aol.com

who could be lucky enough to own 2 link 8s? Ed@ In a message dated 9/11/2015 10:22:34 A.M. US Mountain Standard Time, wdonzelli at gmail.com writes: Yeah, about those... Warning! Warning! -- Will On Sep 11, 2015 11:06 AM, "Paul Koning" <paulkoning at comcast.net> wrote: > > > On Sep 11, 2015, at 10:58 AM, Noel Chiappa <jnc at mercury.lcs.mit.edu> > wrote: > > > >> From: Ed Sharpe > > > >> well SMECC needs one hopefully to make work so we can show the youn'ins > >> how cards were punched! > > > > Well, here's an 029 (not quite what the OP was looking for, but good > enough > > for you all, I expect) for a not insane amount of money: > > > > http://www.ebay.com/itm/281796720725 > > Is that TWO Linc-eight systems in the background??? > > paul > >

10 years, 9 months

1
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IBM 026

by jnc＠mercury.lcs.mit.edu

> From: Ed Sharpe > well SMECC needs one hopefully to make work so we can show the youn'ins > how cards were punched! Well, here's an 029 (not quite what the OP was looking for, but good enough for you all, I expect) for a not insane amount of money: http://www.ebay.com/itm/281796720725 Noel

10 years, 9 months

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KDJ11-A/M8192 identified as PDT11/50 from resorc /a?

by holm＠freibergnet.de

..have repaired a HH725 Harddisk /TA7245BP was bad since a tantal Elko had a short) and booted now RT11 V5.07 with the new now repaired 1/73 CPU. Resorc /A give the following informations: .resorc /a RT-11XB (S) V05.07 Booted from DL0:RT11XB Resident Monitor base is 111774 (37884.) USR is set NOSWAP TT is set NOQUIET Indirect file abort level is ERROR Indirect file nesting depth is 3 PDT 11/150 Processor FP11 Hardware Floating Point Unit Extended Instruction Set (EIS) KT11 Memory Management Unit Cache Memory 50 Cycle System Clock Device I/O time-out support Multi-terminal support Hmm, is that normal that the CPU gets identified as PDT11/150? Interestingly it finds an FP11 but the Socket is empty. For an M8186 the output is more that what I've expected: .resorc /a RT-11XB (S) V05.07 Booted from DL0:RT11XB Resident Monitor base is 111774 (37884.) USR is set NOSWAP TT is set NOQUIET Indirect file abort level is ERROR Indirect file nesting depth is 3 PDP 11/23 Processor FP11 Hardware Floating Point Unit Extended Instruction Set (EIS) KT11 Memory Management Unit 50 Cycle System Clock Device I/O time-out support Multi-terminal support Regards, Holm -- Technik Service u. Handel Tiffe, www.tsht.de, Holm Tiffe, Freiberger Stra?e 42, 09600 Obersch?na, USt-Id: DE253710583 www.tsht.de, info at tsht.de, Fax +49 3731 74200, Mobil: 0172 8790 741

10 years, 9 months

3
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internet blocking problem ?

by jnc＠mercury.lcs.mit.edu

> From: Don North > Basically see no problems accessing any of the pages on sites. > ... > 12: be2019.ccr21.lax04.atlas.cogentco.com 22.400ms asymm 8 > 13: no reply > 14: no reply > 15: ae0.cr1.mel4.on.ii.net 217.966ms asymm 19 Oh, that's really interesting. A bunch of us get as far as Cogentco, and then it stops working. But you get through... which implies that the _route_ in Cogentco to Ii.net is OK. Which in turn implies that it's Ii.net who are blocking (via packet drop, I assume), based on the IP _source_ address. So it sounds like the earlier post (too lazy to track it down) which says this is Ii.net responding to complaints from others (since they haven't blocked access to _all_ of ii.net, just that 'members' site) is right. Noel

10 years, 9 months

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Amiga 2000HD spotted, STL

by jwest＠classiccmp.org

Local electronics haunt has an Amiga 2000HD on the shelf. I was in a rush so didn't get any particulars. It did not appear to have a monitor or keyboard. Didn't see a price tag, but just from past experience I'd guess the owner tagged it around $50. I'm not in to them, no interest.. But if someone is interested I'd be happy to look further, ship, etc. J

10 years, 9 months

2
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IBM 026

by COURYHOUSE＠aol.com

well SMECC needs one hopefully to make work so we can show the youn'ins how cards were punched! hopefully something to be gotten here in AZ but I am open.... Thanks Ed# _www.smecc.org_ (http://www.smecc.org) In a message dated 9/10/2015 5:27:02 P.M. US Mountain Standard Time, isking at uw.edu writes: Are you looking for one to buy, to use, to study for restoration...? I know some folks who have them, but they're not for sale. :-) On Tue, Sep 8, 2015 at 4:59 PM, <COURYHOUSE at aol.com> wrote: > wow... that is absurd! $24,999 > someone needs rehab... > > > In a message dated 9/8/2015 4:57:08 P.M. US Mountain Standard Time, > hilpert at cs.ubc.ca writes: > > > http://www.ebay.com/itm/RARE-VINTAGE-IBM-26-INTERPRETING-CARD-PUNCH-OWN-A-PI > ECE-OF-HISTORY-/161725243156?hash=item25a7935f14 > -- Ian S. King, MSIS, MSCS, Ph.D. Candidate The Information School <http://ischool.uw.edu> Dissertation: "Why the Conversation Mattered: Constructing a Sociotechnical Narrative Through a Design Lens Archivist, Voices From the Rwanda Tribunal <http://tribunalvoices.org> Value Sensitive Design Research Lab <http://vsdesign.org> University of Washington There is an old Vulcan saying: "Only Nixon could go to China."

10 years, 9 months

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IBM 026

by COURYHOUSE＠aol.com

wow... that is absurd! $24,999 someone needs rehab... In a message dated 9/8/2015 4:57:08 P.M. US Mountain Standard Time, hilpert at cs.ubc.ca writes: http://www.ebay.com/itm/RARE-VINTAGE-IBM-26-INTERPRETING-CARD-PUNCH-OWN-A-PI ECE-OF-HISTORY-/161725243156?hash=item25a7935f14

10 years, 9 months

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21MX proms (per request

by marc.verdiell＠gmail.com

>From: dwight <dkelvey at hotmail.com> >If I were doing it. >First you need to find out if it needs OC output. >There are many flash parts in surface mount that can have the higher speeds. >Add some 74LVC245 to give bus drive needed, also surface mount. >All on a little PC board. There would be a lot of wasted space in the flash but what the heck. >Put an edge connector on the board to deal with programming. >All will fit in a smaller space than the original part. >Dwight That would be great engineering fun! But at less than $4 for the blanks, using the old PROMs and the vintage programmer seems pretty straightforward, vintage correct, and low risk solution. Miraculously, my best offer got accepted on ebay, so semi-affordable vintage clunky Data I/O 29B Programmer and plenty of blanks are being shipped to me :-). I count collecting vintage tools for servicing your vintage machine as part of the fun too... Marc

10 years, 9 months

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ISO: Manual for Emulex CS21/H

by JoshD＠LivingComputerMuseum.org

Anyone out there have a manual for the Emulex CS21/H (or possibly the /U variant)? This is a UNIBUS DH11 clone. (There are also /FA, /FB, /FC, and /FD variants which are DMF32 clones - and we have the manual for these but it's of no use for our CS21/H boards :)). At the very least, if anyone has the dip switch settings for this, that would be an immense help. Thanks, Josh Sr. Vintage Software Engineer Living Computer Museum www.livingcomputermuseum.org<http://www.livingcomputermuseum.org>

10 years, 9 months

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DEC 8235 IC? (repost)

by simski＠dds.nl

As something went wrong in posting this question, I try to repost it here. please don't be offended by this. ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Hi all. is there a list of equivalents for DEC ic's? I've made a mistake in attaching our BA-8 to the PDP8/f and plugged in the ribbon cable connecting connector C and D the wrong way. some magic smoke came loose and there are a few chips broken . by comparing the signals on those connectors, I made a list of suspect chips on which some pins got-15v or +15v... The M8330 board got most of the blast, resulting in 4 burned chips, but other boards could well be affected. ----------------------------------------------------------------------- -- Met vriendelijke Groet, Simon Claessen drukknop.nl

10 years, 9 months

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Wyse 370

by jan＠work.de

for both serial ports I can configure a terminal session at my Wyse 370 ASCII terminal. But I don't have any idea how to switch between sessions. Any idea or any hint where I can find a manual for this terminal?

10 years, 9 months

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Wyse 370

by diegel＠work.de

for both serial ports I can configure a terminal session at my Wyse 370 ASCII terminal. But I don't have any idea how to switch between sessions. Any idea or any hint where I can find a manual for this terminal?

10 years, 9 months

2
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21MX proms (per request)

by marc.verdiell＠gmail.com

Absolutely (assuming you count your engineering time as free), not to mention it feels rewarding to use clever engineering tricks to solve a problem instead of money. But I want to keep my machine original and vintage if I reasonably can. My programmer ended up very reasonably priced, and it is recognized as one of the better vintage programmers of that era. So it fits perfectly in my collection of higher end, historically meaningful engineering tools. Two birds with one stone, so it was a pretty easy decision. Marc >Sean Caron <scaron at umich.edu>: >The median listing price for them on eBay for a 29B with pack seems to be around $3-400 which IMO is a little steep for a 30+ year >old PROM programmer. Hopefully your best offer successfully accepted was much lower! >I think the part cost on the PROMs pales in comparison. For the cost of the 29B, you could design a replacement for the original >PROM, have some boards fabricated, stuff them and you'd still be ahead a few hundred bucks ... >starts to make sense at those kind of prices, imo. >Best, >Sean

10 years, 9 months

2
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Control Data 160

by bpettitx＠comcast.net

William Degan wrote: Comparing the 160 and 160-A manuals with the 160 in the ebay auction (252070822992) Page 37 of the 160 manual from 1960 - smaller "160" marquee sign. Page 3-1 of the 160-A marquee says "CONTROL DATA 160-A" Ebay auction says "CONTROL DATA 160" So, there were two variations of the 160 marquee/sign above the numeric display. ---- Also, if a person is looking at the front of the computer, on the top left side, there is a square cut-out / slot? in the original 160 table (purpose?). This slot does not appear on the 160-A's table (from the 1963 programming manual), nor is it present on the Ebay auction. I am thinking this was originally a "later" 160 that was probably serviced well into the 160-A days. -- Bill vintagecomputer.net Only a few 160s used the 3 small inserts in the marquee. There were used to make it easier for the NCR rebrand. The later solid sign became the CDC standard. The cut out on the left was for the BPRE-11 punch. Only the early 160's and early 1604 machines had this. The punch table was spring loaded and could be raised up to the desk top to reload paper tape. Later on, the punch was mounted on a tray that slid out to the front. Another change was the replacment of the original paper tape reader with the PED 350. PED (Peripheral Equipment Division) was a CDC created company. Their first product was the 350 reader. Later, they made the 60X series of tape units and the 405 card reader. This was all part of CDC's effort to move away from other companys' peripherals. The early CDC systems shipped with Ampex tape units, IBM card equipment. The original paper tape reader was an inport from Ferranti in England. It was fascinating; used thyratrons as light sensors. I had one, but it disappeared in the last move. You can tell it from the 350 by the paper tape load arm. On the Ferranti, it is a steel rod. On the PED 350, it is a flattened V shaped plastic arm. Another way to tell early 160s from later units is the side drops. On the early units, the top formica also went down the left and right side about 12 inches. This stopped mid-life. Old memoriy says at s/n 43 but after 55 years, that is not hard data. The early 1604's also had this side drop of the desk top. You can see it in some early photographs. I did see one 161 typewriter stand with the side drop, but don't remember if it went into production. NO 160s were ever converted to 160-As. Not one. There are physical differences in the logic chassis. More cards slots were needed. The extra 4K bank of memory takes up a lot card space. The front panel would have to be totally replaced. The 160-A requires a lot more cable ports for the Buffer channel and the external memory (169). 160-A manuals would be useless for a 160. The card types are the same and about half the commands are the same. But that is it. By the way, bitsavers has an excellent description of the 160 in "System Programs For The 160 Computer". It includes a photograph showing the above differences. And pages 1 - 10 present good insight to Seymour Cray's thinking about his next machine, the 6600. It shows where the idea for the PPUs came from. The obsolete 160s were in use for many years after their demise. Usually for testing peripherals, copying paper tapes, etc. I last worked on one in 1980, almost twenty years after it was built. Billy Pettit

10 years, 9 months

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Problems with 8/A Programmer's Panel

by charlesmorris800＠centurytel.net

>Not sure what you mean by membrane keypad. My front panels certainly >have real buttons, which makes a clicking noise and feeling when I press >them. But maybe I'm confused and there is some membrane behind the keys >or something? > >Johnny That's my mistake. I've never actually seen or touched a DKC8-AA panel, just pictures of them in the manual :) Hoping to acquire one since I am trying to do other things with the 8/A than keep debugging its hardware! (such as getting Dumprest working for RL02). >The 74f parts may be too fast. Try adding damping resistors (10 to 30 ohms) >in series with the outputs to slow things down or just switch to 74ls > >Joe Thanks for the tip. That is what I was implying, not sure I said so explicitly :) But adding twelve resistors which may or may not fix the problem, and hacking up my board is not an attractive thought... but neither is changing three 20-pin unsocketed DIPs without proper desoldering equipment. Guess I should have used sockets in a prototype! Besides, the board really does need redoing with proper power and ground plane management. -Charles

10 years, 9 months

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Formatter for the EMULEX QD01 ST506 Controller?

by holm＠freibergnet.de

..the Subject says all.. I'm looking for the Formater Utility for an Emulx QD01 ..preferably for the PDP11/RT11. The Manual http://bitsavers.informatik.uni-stuttgart.de/pdf/emulex/QD0151001-C-QD01_Di… lists the Part Numbers for the Software as PX995180x-0y where x is 1 or 2 and y is between 1-4, dependig of the distribution tapei media. A RX50 Floppy with the PN VX9951804 should exist too.. Has someone images from that software handy? Regards, Holm -- Technik Service u. Handel Tiffe, www.tsht.de, Holm Tiffe, Freiberger Stra?e 42, 09600 Obersch?na, USt-Id: DE253710583 www.tsht.de, info at tsht.de, Fax +49 3731 74200, Mobil: 0172 8790 741

10 years, 9 months

1
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Control Data 160

by bpettitx＠comcast.net

Chuck Guzis <cclist at sydex.com> wrote: Subject: Re: Control Data 160 Ebay I believe the eBay lister stated that it was a 160, not the -A. So no return jump for you... --Chuck Which would make it even more scarce. There were only a little over a 100 of the 160 models made. And 40+ of them were rebranded as NCR machines. There were 495 160-As made officially. (There were also a small number shipped without serial numbers to the good people at Langley.) I know of at least 5x 160-As still in existence, besides my own. Which should be going to a museum this week if they can sort out shipping glitches. My system includes a 161-A Typewriter in lousy shape and a 167-2 Card Reader in perfect shape. Plus all manuals, software (with listings) and spare parts. Even the paper tape rewinder! I did not know any 160 machines survived, so who ever bought it has a unique item. I have looked for 15 years for an 8092 = the first true 8 bit computer. Haven't found even a hint or rumor of one. I am working with Al Kossow, to see that this material is eventually in his archives. Billy Pettit

10 years, 9 months

1
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Zendex ZX-200A firmware reverse-engineered

by spacewar＠gmail.com

The original proprietor of Zendex has put the firmware of the ZX-200A in the public domain, so I've put my reverse-engineered source code on Github: https://github.com/brouhaha/zx200a-fw The ZX-200A is a single-board Multibus floppy controller intended for Intel MDS (including Series II and Series III) development systems, replacing either or both the Intel dual-board SBC 201 single-density and SBC 202 double-density floppy controllers. Since it can do both densities, it can replace both Intel controllers simultaneously, allowing the same floppy drives to be used for either density, by using different logical drive numbers. We take it for granted that "modern" floppy controllers often support selectable density, but with those early Intel board-level floppy controllers that wasn't the case. Also, the Intel SBC 202 double-density controller uses an Intel-proprietary M2FM disk format, instead of IBM-compatible MFM. As such, none of the single-chip FDCs are compatible with it, with the possible exception of the Western Digital 1781 (with a huge pile of external support logic), and (less likely) the TI TMS9909. Unfortunately the original ZX-200A manual, which contained the schematics and source code, is not available, hence my project to reverse-engineer it. I'm working on tracing out the schematic, but as the board has 82 chips it is slow going.

10 years, 9 months

2
1
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Problems with 8/A Programmer's Panel

by charlesmorris800＠centurytel.net

Several years ago, Vince Slyngstad and I "cloned" the rare DKC8-AA Programmer's Panel for PDP-8 with some improvements (0.6 vs. 0.3" LED displays, real "click" buttons instead of that membrane keypad, and fixed a couple of bugs in the original design). Also, since 8235's were scarce even then, we used 74F244 buffers instead to gate the input vs. output of the switch register onto the bus back to the M8316 Option 1 board. That may have caused a lurking problem, since occasionally the SR will change bits when an address is loaded. Turns out an oscillation starts on the ground lines at about 20 MHz with certain entries at the keypad to LSR and LA (I can't see an obvious pattern). This parasitic is large enough (up to 2V p-p with respect to the chassis/rack) that it's clocking the D-flops used as the physical switch register! It can be seen in the 7-segment displays as a "flicker" which will change when I touch the ground on the board... attempts to add more grounds actually made the problem worse! I'm thinking of redoing the board layout with better attention to ground planes/power buses. There's a .01 uf decoupling cap at every IC and 12 out of 40 pins on each of the two connecting ribbon cables are dedicated to ground. 7 on one, 5 on the other are for +5 volts. On the other hand, I am tired of tinkering and considering just buying a real DKC8-AA if there's one out there. Anyone? ;) -Charles

10 years, 9 months

5
4
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New BBS in Maryland

by mokuba＠gmail.com

+1-410-734-6804 New hobby thing. ;) Wildcat! 4 running on it, stock out of box config. If you don't see all the menus except for help and send to sysop, wait till I validate users. When I get back home i'll set it to give non-validated users more permissions, though. -- Gary G. Sparkes Jr. KB3HAG

10 years, 9 months

12
26
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IBM 026

by misc4email＠yahoo.com

Can anyone help me to locate an old IBM 026 printing keypunch for a project on which I am working?I was an IBM Field Engineer many years ago and I used to service lots of Unit Record equipment at that time.Any help in locating a machine would be greatly appreciated.Thank you. AlEx-IBM Field Engineer

10 years, 9 months

2
1
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Schematics KDJ11-A / M8192?

by jnc＠mercury.lcs.mit.edu

> From: Holm Tiffe > Anyway, thanks for the schematics Eh, de nada. > I have the board running again. The fix was simple, the xtal was bad. You're lucky it was something so simple! (Although we've seen this kind of thing before - I had that 11/23 with a bad crystal.) I've got three dead 11/73 boards (from someone else), but none of them are that easy. Different symptoms on all three, but I suspect the State Sequencer gate array on all three. On one, at least, the ILOE latch control signal from that gate array is sitting at 2V (which I seem to recall is characteristic of a TTL input that's not being driven). Maybe it's just some corrosion, and re-seating the gate array (if I can work out how to unseat it - don't have the extraction tool) will fix it. Otherwise, I'm SOL. At least the J11 there are spares for - that gate array is surely umobtainium. Noel

10 years, 9 months

2
1
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BBC Model B with Raspberry Pi Internals

by mark＠wickensonline.co.uk

Bit of a tricky one to google this, so thought I'd consult the list - does anyone know of a documented project that replaced the internals of a BBC Model B with a Raspberry Pi (or MiniITX PC) interfacing with keyboard etc. to bring modern internals with a traditional interface? I don't even know if there is a word for these kind of projects? Thanks, Mark.

10 years, 9 months

4
3
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A poltergeist in my machine?

by jnc＠mercury.lcs.mit.edu

So I've mentioned how I've seen this wierd behaviour where QBUS memory boards that hadn't been used in a long time didn't work when first plugged in, but started working later. I just had something even weirder happen, and am curious if anyone has an plausible explanations. So I had a dead M8044 (MSV11-D), symptom was that you could write -1 to any location, it read back as 0. Quite repeatable, I can power cycle the machine, take the card in and out, etc, etc. So I throw it on an extender, and start chasing. I have a two instruction loop (write location 0, loop), and I'm watching the data going into the memory chips on the card, and it all looks good. So I add a third instruction (read location 0, after the write), and continue chasing. Data looks good coming out of the chips; then it goes to an octal latch. So I look at the latch enable, and that doesn't look so hot - just a tiny little ugly spike. So I look at the source of that, and it's a D flop. So I look at the D flop's clock input, and it's also a nasty little spike. So that comes >from the output of a triple-AND, and so I start looking at the inputs of the 3-AND. And when I put my 'scope lead on the second input... the memory suddenly starts working! Well, I could see that - the added resistance or capacitance or whatever of the probe might have had some effect on a circuit that was right on the edge. But here's where the ghost enters the machine. I pull the 'scope probe ..... and the memory keeps working! I can power cycle the machine, leave it off for 15 minutes, power it back on - and the memory still works fine! Does anyone have _any_ idea WTF is going on here?!?! I feel like I'm in some sort of AI koan... Noel

10 years, 9 months

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21MX proms (per request)

by marc.verdiell＠gmail.com

Thanks for the answers everyone, I am writing everything down... Marc

10 years, 9 months

3
2
0 0

Control Data ad: Omega 480 "370 compatible alternative" on eBay

by linimon＠lonesome.com

http://www.ebay.com/itm/VINTAGE-197X-RARE-CONTROL-DATA-AD-OMEGA-480-370-COM… Not that I'm going to bid on it, but ... I had never heard of this CDC product before. Does anyone have any idea if this was a real product, or just a way to poke IBM in the eye, or what? mcl

10 years, 9 months

4
3
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21MX proms (per request)

by jwest＠classiccmp.org

Several people asked, here's the scoop: The common proms for HP 21MX M/E/F are 1K, 4K, and 8K. 1K are used for either loader roms on the cpu board or microcode on the FAB 4K are used for microcode on the FAB or FEM 8K are used for microcode on the FEM The manuals you'll want to print and keep handy: HP 12992 Loader Roms Installation Manual, 12992-90001 (April '86) HP 1000 M/E/F-series Firmware Installation and Reference Manual, 12791-90001 (September, '83) I believe these are both on bitsavers. They are "must have" manuals. These are all bipolar proms, and most modern prom programmers will not be able to program them. I use a Data I/O 29B (with Unipak 2B), and it can program all these parts. Those programmers appear on ebay from time to time at around roughly $400. The blank proms are not terribly easy to find these days. Ebay has them occasionally, but your best bet is sites that cater to arcade machine repair. Here's a non-exhaustive but useful list of compatible parts for each: 1K parts MMI 6301 Harris 7611 Signetics N82S129 National 74S287 TI 24S10 AMD 27S21 Fujitsu 7114 (possibly 7052 as well, need to verify that) 4K parts Signetics N82S141 Harris 7641 MMI 6341 8K parts Signetics N82S181 Harris 7681 MMI 6381

10 years, 9 months

10
14
0 0

Control Data 160 Ebay

by billdegnan＠gmail.com

Anyone here get the Control Data 160 (Ebay 252070822992)? I must admit time, money, and space aside I would love to have had this one! (I have the manuals at least) -- Bill vintagecomputer.net

10 years, 9 months

5
4
0 0

'New' PDP-11 prints

by jnc＠mercury.lcs.mit.edu

> There are a number of things like that (e.g. the H786 power supply for > the BA11-N; [print sets] not available separately [online], but in the > 11/23 FMPS [online], if you know to look there): we ought to produce > some sort of registry, to collect such information in one place. So I have started such a registry. http://ana-3.lcs.mit.edu/~jnc/tech/FMPSOnline.html The concept is that eventually search engines will index that page, so people looking for, say, '"BA11-N" prints' will wind up there, and that page will tell them where to go. I went through a number of PDP-11 print sets which are online (11/05S, 11/23, 11/34, etc) to compile the initial list, but it's just a start. I will add others as I come across them; and if any knows of, or finds, any others (i.e. print sets which _are_ online, but do not show up when looked for in common search engines such as Google), please let me know, and I will add them. > I also found prints for the MF11-U, MF11-W, and MM11-Y; none of which > appear to be on-line (although the MF11-U ones might be in the 11/05S print > set, which ISTR is online). On looking at the 11/05S print set online, I think it has most of the MM11-Y prints, but some pages are apparently missing (it claims), so I think not everything is there. > I don't think the ME11-L prints are online either, but those I have in > my 11/05 print set - I'll have to see if that print set is online > somewhere, no point re-scanning them, if so. So it turns out that these don't seem to be online (in any form), but I have a set of hardcopy in my set "PDP-11/05 Engineering Drawings" (which is different from the 05S set which _is_ online), so I will scan them in and make them available at some point (especially since these seem to be the most common PDP-11 core memory boards). If anyone is desperately searching for them, please let me know, and I will accelerate that process. The situation with the ME11-L/MF11-L/MM11-L (which are all the same boards) is slightly complicated. The board set is called an MM11-L (or -LP, depending); G110+G231+H214 for non-parity, G109+G231+H215+M7529 for parity. The MF11-L seems to be a backplane, plus an MM11-L board set; the ME11-L seems to be an MF11-L in a box. Some CPU backplanes (e.g. the older 11/05's) can also take an MM11-L board set. (The _newer_ 11/05's have backplanes which take an MM11-Y - whether an MM11-L would work in them, I have no idea.) Noel

10 years, 9 months

2
1
0 0

'New' PDP-11 prints

by jnc＠mercury.lcs.mit.edu

> On looking at the 11/05S print set online, I think it has most of the > MM11-Y prints Err, make that the 11/04 print set. (Sorry!) The 11/05S has the MF11-U (or would that be MM11-U - I wonder if there's a system to the ME/MF/MM designators). Noel

10 years, 9 months

1
0
0 0

Reading ROMs

by gerardcjat＠free.fr

List of blank for 21MX and microcode : That would be very usefull. Thanks in advance --- L'absence de virus dans ce courrier ?lectronique a ?t? v?rifi?e par le logiciel antivirus Avast. https://www.avast.com/antivirus

10 years, 9 months

1
0
0 0

What kind of keyboard is this?

by wheagy＠gmail.com

I picked this up at Radio Shack about 25-30 years ago and have been hauling it around ever since. http://imgur.com/oNEcRFv,VacFqrY#0 (There should be two images...a link to the second.) It was a surplus thing that RS was selling on the parts wall and I grabbed on the off chance I'd need it someday. I lost the cardboard top to the plastic bag it came in, so I know nothing about it. Anyone have any idea? Thanks...Win

10 years, 9 months

3
2
0 0

Problem with RF73 DSSI disk

by holm＠freibergnet.de

Since the capacity of 2x RF31 and 1x RF71 disks is a little bit low for VMS with some compilersi (~400MB every disk), I've looked for a bigger disk, at least for the sytem itself. (I've already relocated the pagefile to the 2nd disk). Ok, there are RF73 available at ebay US for $100, but addiotional $50 and more for shipping is to much, I have to pay additional 19% of customs VAT on top of the sum from disk+shipping.. Maybe there are people that think that this prices are ok, but not me, not for an old 2GB disk for an computer with that power consumtion and that computing "power".. In the case there is someone in europe that want to give away such a disk for an acceptable price, please mail me.. Luckily an old friend of mine found 2 Disks in his stock, another RF31 (not tried jet) and an RF73. I've changed now the working but still almost empty RF71 in my VAX4000-300 against that RF73 disk and tried to integrate it to the system. It starts with all LEDs on (as the other do), begins to rattle a little with the head assembly (as the others do) but stops then and begins to reposition somewhere in 0.5s cycles. It never finishes doing that, it is not going to ready. The ready led is blinking for a short time after every 0,5s cycle. I've tried to talk with the disk using the KA670 Firmware with set host/dup/dssi/bus:0 2, PARAMS is working and STATUS is responding, the displayed last failure was 3304(X) and I don't know what that could be.. All other commands do work, but they are aborted since the disk is busy. The available RF72DUG8 gives the hint that the error codes are listed in the service manuals, but it seems that those manuals aren't available somewhere. What could the error be? Is the disk dead? Regards, Holm -- Technik Service u. Handel Tiffe, www.tsht.de, Holm Tiffe, Freiberger Stra?e 42, 09600 Obersch?na, USt-Id: DE253710583 www.tsht.de, info at tsht.de, Fax +49 3731 74200, Mobil: 0172 8790 741

10 years, 9 months

14
37
0 0

Fw: MITS Altair 8800b switches needed

by mhs.stein＠gmail.com

Oops: http://www.dailywell.com.tw/uploadpic/file/20130914143655f.pdf ----- Original Message ----- From: "Mike Stein" <mhs.stein at gmail.com> To: "General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts" <cctalk at classiccmp.org> Sent: Monday, September 07, 2015 12:41 AM Subject: Re: MITS Altair 8800b switches needed > Anything here you like? > > Might have to hunt for a distributor/retailer > though. > > m > > ----- Original Message ----- > From: "drlegendre ." <drlegendre at gmail.com> > To: "General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic > Posts" <cctalk at classiccmp.org> > Sent: Sunday, September 06, 2015 4:21 PM > Subject: Re: MITS Altair 8800b switches needed > > >> Since Erik brought it up.. >> >> I could also use a couple switches, but in my >> case they are for an 8800A >> model. (Well, it's sort-of a 'B' now as it was >> upgraded to the 'B' power >> supply, but it still has the original 'A' type >> D/C board). >> >> Like the 'B' it uses mostly Mom-Off-Mom >> mini-toggles, with panel mount >> bushing, and the long solder terminals that >> solder directly to the PCB (not >> the small eyelet type). But the handles are the >> standard mini-toggle bat >> handle - not the flatted paddles Erik >> describes. >> >> Any leads, feel free to mail me off-list. >> Thanks! >> >> -Bill >> >> On Sun, Sep 6, 2015 at 1:13 PM, Erik Klein >> <classiccmp at vintage-computer.com> >> wrote: >> >>> I am desperately seeking NOS, working pulls or >>> accurate replacement >>> switches for my MITS 8800b. >>> >>> These are flattened paddle switches, both >>> ON-OFF and MOM-Off-MOM type. >>> SPDT, Panel mount, solder post with a 15mm >>> actuator. This last part is the >>> pain as everything I've found is 10mm or less. >>> >>> I've checked every online source that I know >>> of plus all of the local >>> electronics and surplus shops with no luck. >>> >>> I'm sure someone here has a stash or knows >>> someone who does. I need at >>> least one of each type but would prefer a few >>> more as I do have a few >>> marginal switches to replace if I can. >>> >>> I'd even buy a complete 8800b D/C board if >>> that's what it took. >>> >>> Please email me at my webmaster@ >>> "vintage-computer.c0m" address if you can >>> help. >>> >>> Thank you! >>> >>> >>> -- >>> Erik Klein >>> www.vintage-computer.com >>> www.vintage-computer.com/vcforum - The Vintage >>> Computer Forums >>> marketplace.vintage-computer.com - The Vintage >>> Computer and Gaming >>> Marketplace >>> >

10 years, 9 months

1
0
0 0

MITS Altair 8800b switches needed

by classiccmp＠vintage-computer.com

I am desperately seeking NOS, working pulls or accurate replacement switches for my MITS 8800b. These are flattened paddle switches, both ON-OFF and MOM-Off-MOM type. SPDT, Panel mount, solder post with a 15mm actuator. This last part is the pain as everything I've found is 10mm or less. I've checked every online source that I know of plus all of the local electronics and surplus shops with no luck. I'm sure someone here has a stash or knows someone who does. I need at least one of each type but would prefer a few more as I do have a few marginal switches to replace if I can. I'd even buy a complete 8800b D/C board if that's what it took. Please email me at my webmaster@ "vintage-computer.c0m" address if you can help. Thank you! -- Erik Klein www.vintage-computer.com www.vintage-computer.com/vcforum - The Vintage Computer Forums marketplace.vintage-computer.com - The Vintage Computer and Gaming Marketplace

10 years, 9 months

4
4
0 0

seeking Burroughs B6700 manuals and software

by nw＠retroComputingTasmania.com

We would be glad to hear from anyone who might have new material related to the Burroughs B6700. We're on the hunt for any manuals or software related to the Burroughs large systems so we can build an emulator for the B6700. This search includes the B5000, B6000, B7000 families, since there is considerable overlap across these families and collateral from one system family can assist understanding another. Example models include B5500, B5700, B6500, B7500, B6700, B7700, B6800, and B7800. We were amazingly lucky with the B5500 to have so much of the critical documentation (thanks Bitsavers!) and a complete suite of system software, but even though the B6700 was more recent and produced in larger numbers we're not having the same level of good fortune finding artifacts. What we have so far is documented here: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1JnMsyE8ssJi_-MUsK0rT9LPtNpeJCpTv1Qr… If you're interested in this system then you likely remember that it had a particularly impressive front-panel display, seen here: http://www.retrocomputingtasmania.com/home/projects/burroughs-b6700-mainfra… This was known as the MDL display: Maintenance Diagnostics Logic display. Because the MDL had the 4 x top-of-stack registers down to the bit-level particular bit-patterns allowed words to be displayed. The early MCPs put IDLE into the display during IO waits, and subsequent releases: B for Burroughs, but sites quickly started putting their own company initials or the time. The Danish museum is so far the only place I've found that kept the MDL: http://datamuseum.dk/wiki/Genstand:11000045_Konsolpanel_Burroughs_B6700 Thanks to Finn Verner Nielsen for being so helpful and undertaking an expedition into their warehouse to locate and photograph the item for us. On that DDHF web-page you will see on the left of the picture the B7800 MDL they have too. My goal is to also construct a replica of the B6700 MDL. Steps undertaken so far: Posts to newsgroups Posts on LinkedIn, wikipedia, Yahoo groups Emails to a few dozen people who were involved with the system Trawling the Internet

10 years, 9 months

3
3
0 0

PDP-8 diagnostics SR settings?

by charlesmorris800＠centurytel.net

Johnny, I appreciate the thought, but there are over 1500 pins on this board and soldering them all would be a major undertaking in itself... I don't have a wave soldering machine ;) The first error flagged today is on D1 CA 3, the Command Register A bit 3. Scope loops definitely identify this bus as trouble and it's part of the disk address register too. The command register is two 'LS174 hex D-flops, and it drives the input of a '165 shift register (disk address) and the input of an 8234 (2-1 multiplexer/driver) back onto the data bus, and that's it. Should be simple... ha! The voltage on that output pin will go up and down as set by the loop until the board is flexed - then it will wander up to around 1-2 volts (measured at the pin with a DIP clip). However, I measured its ability to drive a 510 ohm load to 3.5 volts, and sink at least 10 ma (measured directly) staying below 0.8 volts. And the inputs to those two gates can be pulled to 0 with only a fraction of a milliamp, and go high when the driving D-flop is disconnected! I couldn't reproduce the problem while flexing the board either, but then I'd need three or four hands. So I changed the LS174 anyway. No luck - the card passes diagnostics until the board is flexed. All three of those chips are in the same general area of the board, too. Close inspection of the driven '165 shows a lot of black oxidation on its pins... don't those tend to grow crud inside the package and cause problems too? But... read on ;) After perusing the schematic several more times this evening, I found one more place I'd overlooked where D1 CA 3 (the "flaky" line) connects... to an AND gate E96 in the center of the card, that has a solderable jumper for RL01/02. I had moved that jumper to RL01 for testing by another member (as that is the drive he has), and back to RL02 when I got the card back from him. Lo and behold, underneath that piece of wire was a tiny solder whisker, at the moment shorting the CA 3 line to (something else?) but it was definitely continuity to another trace. Don't know how long that whisker might have been there, quite possibly from before I changed it for the test! Anyway I cleared it, and I've flexed the board numerous times while running AJRLAC controller diagnostic, and made 8 passes without an error. So far so good. So I connected the drives, booted up SerialDisk and can read their directories (only C & D, but that's a PIP version problem that I corrected on my RL02 image). Drives seem to be working :) ... of course R20A: (the SYS directory) is clobbered, so I'll have to remake the pack with my known-good image, but I was able to format the pack in Drive 1 without errors. Even wiggling the board several times. Now I'm running read/write tests (AJRLIA.DG) on Drive 1. No errors so far after two ten-minute passes :) THIS time maybe I really got it... CA 3 is the 4th bit of course where all the problems were occurring. Will let it run for a while longer. David Gesswein just sent me a version of dumprest for RL that he's just written, modified for my Omni-USB port at 40/41. If that works I'll be able to upload an entire RL02 in about 2 minutes instead of 3 hours with vtserver... -Charles

10 years, 9 months

1
0
0 0

Reading ROMs

by marc.verdiell＠gmail.com

Jay, Mike, John, Thanks for the helpful information. It just dawned onto me that these were "write once" PROMs, not modern EEPROMs. Duh. So you get one shot at doing it right... The Data I/Os on ebay seem to be quite a bit more than $100 right now, I'll keep looking. I guess none of the modern ebay Chinese ones would do? Also where can you get the blanks? Any modern equivalents here too? Marc ------------------------- Jay West wrote: The Data I/O 29B works perfectly for those old fusable link proms. John Robertson wrote: One can pick up a Data I/O 29B and Unipak II off eBay starting around $100USD (ish). There is a very good support group on yahoo groups: https://groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/Data_IO_EPROM Mike Loewen wrote: I used a Data I/O 29B programmer to burn the PROMs, with a Unipak 2B. The blank PROMs were variously Signetics N82S141, MMI 6341-1 and National 74S474. Along with the 12821A HP-IB board, you also need a Boot Loader PROM, 12992H (12992-80004). The boot loader PROM is a Signetics N82S129 or equivalent. For installation information about the firmware PROMs, see manual 12791-90001 (HP 1000 M/E/F-Series Firmware Installation and Reference Manual). For boot loader information, see manual 12792-90001 (HP 12992 Loader ROMs Installation Manual). ------------------------

10 years, 9 months

3
2
0 0

Data General 6050 Cartridge Disk Drive

by bcoleman3＠hotmail.com

I know this is a pretty long shot, but does anyone happen to have any service or maintenance manuals on the DG 6050 disk drive that have a procedure for adjusting the servo control circuit board? Or does anyone know anything about doing this? Thanks

10 years, 9 months

3
2
0 0

Tu10 pdp11

by jnc＠mercury.lcs.mit.edu

> From: Johnny Billquist > Early DMA controllers were all multiple cards, so having their own > dedicated backplanes were a pretty sane idea. Well, there was also that large intermediate generation which still had their own backplanes, but they were 'system unit' (for lack of a defined term for this form factor) backplanes (e.g. RK11-D, RH11, etc), which fit into e.g. a BA11-K, along with other 'generic' UNIBUS backplanes (i.e. DD11-C, etc). That first generation I spoke of (the one with backplanes that mounted directly in H960's) are marked by the use of lots of small Flip Chip cards, not the larger quad/hex boards that one finds in the 'second generation' (above). I guess the larger board versions were cheaper to manufacture, which is why they got rid of the first generation ones in favour of the second generation (which were often functionally identical to the first-generation ones they replaced, e.g. RK11-C and -D). Those first-generation one used very similar construction technique to the KA10 generation of machines, which also used that size Flip Chip (although a different series, mostly with individual transistors), and heavier wire on the bacplanes. What did KI10's use, does anyone know? I have this bit set that they used roughly the same kind of Flip Chips as the 'first generation' PDP-11 DMA devices, but I've never seen a KI in person. Noel

10 years, 9 months

5
6
0 0

Collection Reduction - Free for pickup

by wayne.smith＠charter.net

As a result of remodeling my house, I now have less space for the collection and need to thin it out a bit. The following items are free for pick-up in the Los Angeles area. Priority will be given to the first person who will take everything. Almost all of these are "portables" so it isn't that much volume. Some work; some don't and are projects. The Seequa (dual DOS-CP/M unit) and Access Matrix "Actrix" could be very cool pieces if brought into working condition. 1. Seequa Chameleon Plus: Powers up; no video - otherwise in nice condition 2. Corona ATP: Works, boots off floppy to MS-DOS 2.11 disc (included) - nice condition 3. Sanyo MBC-775: Powers up, no video; though external RCA video works - shows boot error in ROM - nice condition 4. Sanyo MBC-675: Works - missing one floppy drive - boots off floppy (not included) to MS-DOS 2.11, broken foot - rough condition 5. Access Matrix - Actrix: Powers up, video good, floppy drive B: cycles and won't boot (comes with case, manual and software) 6. Sony SMC-70G Genlocker: Works (tested RCA out), asks for system disk 7. NEC PowerMate Portable SX: powers up, no video, possible HDD crash based on screeching noise 8. Kaypro II: Lights flash on floppy drives, no video, constant beeping noise in sync with flashing floppy drive lights 9. Kaypro 2X: Works - boots to screen asking for disk (seem to recall that one of the floppy drives may need realignment) Please PM me if you are interested.

10 years, 9 months

1
0
0 0

Cheap board guy

by jnc＠mercury.lcs.mit.edu

> From: Ethan Dicks > That looks like a great haul. We're talking about the guy on eBay whom I posted a pointer to a couple of days back, the one with large lots of QBUS CPUs, memory, DLV11s, etc? > I hope they are working cards. All the ones I've gotten from the guy above which I was able to test (couldn't test, e.g. the RK05 cards 'cause I don't have a working RK05 yet) were OK - QBUS memory, 11/23's, etc. Noel

10 years, 9 months

4
3
0 0

Control Data 160 Ebay

by COURYHOUSE＠aol.com

was it a 160 or a 160A? Ed# In a message dated 9/6/2015 9:13:38 A.M. US Mountain Standard Time, coryheisterkamp at gmail.com writes: I'd be curious, too. I was *this close* to throwing in a bid seeing as this turned up within driving distance...until I was politely reminded that I have a few other projects around here. The coffee can of 'spare parts' also gave me pause. -C On Sep 5, 2015, at 9:08 PM, Jay Jaeger wrote: > On 9/5/2015 7:10 PM, william degnan wrote: >> Anyone here get the Control Data 160 (Ebay 252070822992)? I must admit >> time, money, and space aside I would love to have had this one! (I have >> the manuals at least) >> > > I would not be terribly surprised if that auction result flushed out one > or two more. Ya never know. > > JRJ >

10 years, 9 months

2
1
0 0

Schematics KDJ11-A / M8192?

by jnc＠mercury.lcs.mit.edu

> From: Holm Tiffe > Sorry, I couldn't find a mailing about Schematics for the KDJ11-AA, http://www.classiccmp.org/pipermail/cctalk/2015-September/011849.html > I've read that you got some documentation and want to scan it, 600dpi > with some TIFF compression or so.. that's all. Well, now I'm really confused, because AFAIK the message that talked about the 600dpi and TIFF is the same one that thas the URL for the FMPS. So I don't understand how you don't have them. Oh well. > No, I'm not reading every singe mailing from that list. I don't either - there's often too much. But I do read everything that looks like it could be DEC-related, and most of the other stuff too (it's kind of fun to read about the really old machines, etc). Noel

10 years, 9 months

2
1
0 0

'New' PDP-11 prints

by jnc＠mercury.lcs.mit.edu

> we now have the 11/73 prints, which I will be scanning Real Soon Now. OK, done: http://ana-3.lcs.mit.edu/~jnc/tech/pdp11/MP01890_KDJ11-A_Jan84.pdf Can the appropriate people please download this to all the right places (e.g. repositories)? Don't be misled by the svelte 1.5MB size; they were scanned at 600dpi, and there is a _ton_ of resolution in there (you can go way past the '100%' setting on Adobe Reader without getting pixellation). The originals were in really rough shape (torn, written on, etc), but I think the results are fully legible. I looked quickly, and found a couple of issues, where there was writing which obscured things on the scans, and fixed the images manually to show what's on the original prints. However, I didn't have the energy to look at every detail of every page, so if something comes up un-readable, let me know, and I'll issue a fixed set. (There are some places which aren't legible, e.g. lower right pins of E9 on K3, but the original prints aren't legible there either, so there's nothing I can do about that; it's possible to work out what the pin numbers are, though.) And a _HUGE_ 'Thank You' to Paul Anderson for lending me the print set so I could scan them for everyone! > That does leave us needing the 11/83/84 CPU prints, so if anyone has a > set... Can I repeat my appeal for these? They are for the KDJ11-B (M8190). With this board being so recent, surely someone must have a set? I'd be happy to do the work of scanning them, if someone has originals but isn't up to the scanning part. Noel

10 years, 9 months

2
1
0 0

Mostek MK8022 QBUS memory repair tips

by jnc＠mercury.lcs.mit.edu

So I have one of these Mostek memory cards, and it was non-functional, and a Google didn't reveal _anything_ online about them. The fault was a couple of picked bits, so I started off tracing the signal paths for those bits from the bus fingers, to the transceivers, to an octal latch, etc - and then it dawned on me that this card has two banks (i.e. it has a 9x4 array of xx64 64Kx1 chips; i.e. to provide 16 bits wide plus byte parity, there are two groups of 18 chips), and one bank was picking, and the other was not. So that meant that data paths were all OK, it was a simple matter of finding some bad memory chips. (It turns out that diagnostic heuristic is quite useful, since many PDP-11 semiconductor memory cards have two banks of xxKx1 chips; so if you have dropped/picked bits, look to see if both banks have the same fault. If 'no', it's pretty much guaranteed to be a memory chip, and it should be easy to find. I just fixed for someone an M8044 with this failure mode, without doing any hardware debugging at all; the symptoms, and the prints, were all I needed.) There was nothing to indicate which banks/bits were where on the MK8022, but by pulling memory chips (luckily, they were socketed, so this was pretty painless), I managed to work it out (unlike many memory cards, it's not semi-random). For reference for others, here it is: Low bank: 01 - H1 ... 0200 - H8 0400 - E1 ... 0100000 - E8 High bank: 01 - F1 ... 0200 - F8 0400 - D1 ... 0100000 - D8 D-H9 seem to be parity. If anyone has one of these cards, and it's busted and they're not up to dealing with it, let me know. Depending on the failure mode, I _may_ be able to help (no documentation of any kind, after all...) Noel

10 years, 9 months

1
0
0 0

Tu10 pdp11

by billdegnan＠gmail.com

Reading docs on DEC TU10 for pdp 11 one makes a serial connection, right? Not sure because I found little about baud, etc. I did not see any definitive controller card for UNIBUS pdp 11. Maybe I am missing something..can anyone share experiences? Bill Degnan twitter: billdeg vintagecomputer.net

10 years, 9 months

12
21
0 0

PDP-8 diagnostics SR settings?

by charlesmorris800＠centurytel.net

Looks like I spoke too soon. The dreaded RL8A failure has returned! I made a new OS/8 RL02 pack on vtserver (took the expected three hours at 9600 baud console speed). Booted up the 8/A, so far so good. But then Drive 0 faulted and OS/8 crashed... restarted and it crashed a few seconds later again. I flexed the middle of the RL8A upwards and the system worked. For a while. Then it crashed and wouldn't reboot. Back to where I was earlier in the week - won't even allow SerialDisk to boot if the RL8A is in the backplane. OS/8 on the SerialDisk virtual RK05 works flawlessly if the card is removed. Obviously there is still an intermittent which has come back. Maybe there's a tiny thread of something conductive stuck under one of the IC's and I managed to temporarily clear it as I described. Anyhow I am resuming my search for a good RL8A. I have wasted enough man-hours on this flaky board. thanks Charles

10 years, 9 months

2
1
0 0

Tu10 pdp11

by jnc＠mercury.lcs.mit.edu

> From william degnan > I was looking to see if references to the tm11 were "module/card" or > backplane interface. I think pretty much all that earliest generation of UNIBUS interfaces were stand-alone backplanes (i.e. 19" wide things that went in an H960 in a fixed location, and were filled with the small Flip Chip modules); the RK11-C, RP11-C, RF11, and TC11 all are. > I surprisingly found little commentary or threads about the TU10 / > TM11, other than DEC docs. I guess these are not super common Yeah, I think they were the first PDP-11 tape drives - not as rare as RF11's now, but pretty rare. Noel

10 years, 9 months

3
2
0 0

Control Data 160 Ebay

by jnc＠mercury.lcs.mit.edu

> From: Jay Jaeger > I would not be terribly surprised if that auction result flushed out > one or two more. Well, auctions like this are hopefully getting the word out that many of these old computers are worth a lot more than scrap value. Yes, it will cause some people to ask unrealistic amounts for them, but better that than the other way: someone's who's asking too much can always come down to reasonability, but someone who's scrapped a machine, well, it's gone forever... Noel

10 years, 9 months

1
0
0 0

Schematics KDJ11-A / M8192?

by jnc＠mercury.lcs.mit.edu

> From: Holm Tiffe >> Not reading the list much, are we? :-) > Huh? Have I missed something in the near past? That would be the implication, yes... :-) But yes, you're in luck. I'm scanning them as we speak. Noel

10 years, 9 months

2
1
0 0

8 inch floppies-Wang, TRS80, Peachtree, perfect software, much more. Some 8 inch drives also.

by useddec＠gmail.com

If interested, please contact me off list. Thanks, Paul

10 years, 9 months

1
0
0 0

Burroughs A 584 card reader available

by useddec＠gmail.com

If you are interested, contact me off list.

10 years, 9 months

1
0
0 0

George!

by evan＠snarc.net

Here's a new picture of "George" -- aka the Philbrick analog computer that MARCH rescued two months ago. It was used at M.I.T. from 1958-1970. http://snarc.net/george.jpg

10 years, 9 months

8
12
0 0

Tu10 pdp11

by jnc＠mercury.lcs.mit.edu

> From: David Gesswein > I have a working one on an 8. It took a lot of work to get it to that > state. > > http://www.pdp8online.com/tu10/tu10-repair.shtml Wow. That is a really awesome repair job you did there. My hat is off... Noel

10 years, 9 months

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Possible road trip....Illnois, Canada, Maine and back

by useddec＠gmail.com

I'm looking into a road trip from Champaign to Maine via Indy, Detroit, Windsor, Niagra Falls, Buffalo or 1000 Islands, Syracuse to Boston area, and up to Maine. Not sure about the return Route. I'll be leaving late Sep or early Oct. I have talked to a few list members about dropping off/picking up items. If anyone wishes to buy/ sell/ trade along the route, please contact me off list. I have a good size minivan and am trying to keep things down to a BA11-K or FL02 size, but that can change.I do have a few 42 inch cabs with q-bus boxes i could part with. I have a lot of 8A, 8E, qbus, unibus, VAX, boxes and parts, and LAXX, VTxx and VR units and parts. Thanks, Paul

10 years, 9 months

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test-drb