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

Info on Amstrad 40095/A / DRMD20A12A MFM HDD

by technobug＠comcast.net

On Sun, 05 Jun 2011 00:19:24 +0100, Philip Pemberton wrote: > On 04/06/11 23:00, Phill Harvey-Smith wrote: >> Doh! We've all been there and done that :( > > I also managed to lean over a powered up CDC Wren-II/HH 5.25in > half-height drive while I was probing the DiscFerret's STEP line with my > scope. > > For those of you who have never seen a Wren-II/HH, they have a pair of > small-ish HDA interface PCBs on the back of the 'drive enclosure'. There > are a dozen or so metal pins joining these two boards. > > I wear a metal watch. > > No points for guessing what happened. Back in my high school days, a friend working on his relay computer science project laid his metal watch band across a selenium rectifier and managed to cauterize all the veins and such in his wrist - taught me to never wear jewelry and the like. While on my military stint, a gentleman jumped from a truck catching his wedding ring on the deck and completely deboning that finger - taught me to never get married. -> CRC

15 years, 2 months

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DEC Haul Update.

by chr15bailey＠yahoo.co.uk

Adrian Graham? witchy at binarydinosaurs.co.uk? ( Ely, Cambridge) ? - DEC pro 350 (x2) - Vax Console? -? Boxes of 115v fans - Paper tapes - Microfiche + reader - V3201 monitor - ? ? ? Rob Jarrett? robert.jarratt at ntlworld.com? ? -? Microvax II - ? ? John Shadbolt?Documentation, handbooks.??john_shadbolt at talk21.com?? (BT, Martlesham Heath Ipswich). ? - ? ? ? VRxxx + VTxxx - Paul Anderson useddec at gmail.com? (awaiting payment for postage) ? 1. Cook Book on Vax desktop monitors (general lists & Parts lists for all monitors) 2.?VT330 Pocket service guide 3. VT240 series -?Pocket service guide (two copies) 4. VT220 Pocket service guide 5. VT220 Programmer pocket guide 6.?VT102 Programming reference card 7. VT101 series - Pocket service guide 7. VT100 User guide 8. VR330 Pocket service guide 9. VR319 Monitor service guide 10. VR290 Colour video? monitor (illustrated service guide) Also -?VR14 CRT display illustated parts breakdown + troubleshooting procedures for VR14/VR20.+ VT50 (some?paperwork) ? ? PDP12 documents?? Owen Sharp? ohh at panix.com?? (Seattle, Washington USA) ? ? PDP12? - Demo/Monitor/users guide (A4 paperwork inc spacewars, kalidescope info?etc) PDP12??- Instruction List LINC mode (card) ? Boxes Of TU 58's DECtapes? Barry Moyer? iamvirtual at gmail.com?? (Langdon, Calgary,?Canada)? ? ? ? PDP-8 Documents. + boxes of IC's? Gerhard Kreuzer ?gerhard.kreuzer at liftoff.at? (Vienna, Austria) ? 1.?PDP8?????Diagnostic programs index by options (1973) 2. PDP8???? Product summary (1979) 3.?PDP8?????Software Components catalogue (July 1979) 4. PDP8?????Pocket reference card (two copies)? 5. PDP8/a? Miniprocessor handbook (two copies) 6. PDP8/a? Minicomputer handbook 7. PDP8???? Introduction to programming (two copies) 8. PDP8/e, PDP8/m, PDP8/f? Small computer handbook 9. PDP8/e & PDP8/m? Small computer handbook (1972) 10. OS/8? Operating system RTPS (pocket reference card) 11.??PDP8? Intro to Prog (A4 paperwork) -?Inc. - Front panel exercise ????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????? ?- Loading exercise ?????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????? - ODT?exercise. 12. PDP8/a circuit diagrams (Paper drawings) ? ? ? Microvax info?? Peter Coghlan? ?PETER at beyondthepale.ie? (Dublin, Ireland) ? MIcrovax - Maintenance info Vol 2 - Enclosures DECStation 3100 & VAXstation 3100 Maintenance guide & info VAXstation 2000 & Microvax 2000 Maintenance guide.

15 years, 2 months

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OT: Old high school physics lab meters

by chd＠chdickman.com

The local high school physics teacher was told to clean out the lab of all the "old junk." She has a bunch of meters that she is supposed to dump, but she wanted to know if there was any market for "antique" meters. I have not seen them, but the way she describes them they are single function meters (galvanometers, AC voltmeter, DC voltmeter, etc.) in slope from cases with binding screw terminals on top. She thought the cases were Bakelite. Is there any value to such things? Is there an on-line market that might let me determine a value, if any? I know she is thinking that if it is worth anything she can use the proceeds to buy supplies. -chuck

15 years, 2 months

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Usenet is officially dead from May 20th ?

by spedraja＠gmail.com

... or at least is what I've read this morning in 'El Pais', the main newspaper in Spain. What's about this ? -- Saludos - Greetings - Freundliche Gr??e - Salutations Sergio http://www.linkedin.com/in/sergiopedraja http://www.quora.com/Sergio-Pedraja https://www.xing.com/profile/Sergio_Pedraja ----- No crea todo lo que ve, ni crea que esta vi?ndolo todo

15 years, 2 months

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Info on Amstrad 40095/A / DRMD20A12A MFM HDD

by classiccmp＠philpem.me.uk

Hi guys, Someone has just donated an old ST506 hard drive to the DiscFerret project... This time, it's an Amstrad drive, with part number 40095/A "DRMD20A12A". Thing is, I can't seem to find any information on it -- and at the very least I need to find out what the CHS settings are in order to create a DriveSpec file. Here are a couple of photos: Top of drive: http://twitgoo.com/2bnvcy / http://i52.twitgoo.com/n7yp.jpg PCB: http://twitgoo.com/2bnvdl / http://i53.twitgoo.com/2cgzc0k.jpg Major chips are: Hitachi HD63B01Y0P SanKen STA435A Hitachi HA13426 CF77143FT SSI 540-3CH S8714 32119.1.1F Hybrids: SC619 and SC628 Text at top corner of PCB near power connector: PY349C Head stepper motor is labelled: TYPE 103-4902-0320 10.5VDC 0.26A 0.9 DEG/STEP LOT NO. 05709I 6035095-1 Form factor is 3.5-inch, half-height (about the same height as a 5.25 HH MFM drive) From what I can gather, it's a 20MB MFM drive, with four heads -- there's a sticker on the top which reads: DEFECT:CYLINDER HEAD0 HEAD1 327 386 426 504 HEAD2 HEAD3 216 (The numbers are handwritten -- badly) There's a second sticker along the edge: W A R N I N G WARRANTY VOID IF THIS SHIELD BROKEN Does anyone have any idea what this thing might be? Thanks, -- Phil. classiccmp at philpem.me.uk http://www.philpem.me.uk/

15 years, 2 months

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free for the cost of shipping : Apollo DN 4500 +extra's

by hp-fix＠xs4all.nl

Free for shipping or collecting a Apollo DN 4500 with network and SCSI interface, working is unknown (I never tested it, but the previous owner sayd it's in working condition) Including : keyboard, mouse(cable isolation in bad shape) and video cable. And also included about 30 tapes containing System and Mentor Graphics IC design software. The only thing I'm asking from the new owner is : he is willing to make a binary image of the tapes for Bitsavers.org I promised it to Al, but my workload and other obligations are in the way of completing this task. Everything is located in the Netherlands, but I'm willing to ship worldwide probably 2 heavy boxes. -Rik NB. It's shipping as one lot, I'm not going to part this up.

15 years, 2 months

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SIX Button BA23 Front Panel

by tiggerlasv＠aim.com

>>On 01/06/2011 03:21, Jerome H. Fine wrote: >> For those of you who have heard about a mythical >> SIX BUTTON FRONT PANEL for the BA23, >> it does exist and actually works. > Mythical? I've probably seen more BA23s with a 6-button panel than > without, and both my BA23s have 6-button panels. Most of the BA23's I ran into over the years had the plain old (white) 4-button panels, and occasionally the (black) 4-button panels. Some had guards around some of the buttons to prevent accidental fat-fingering. If I needed more than 2 drives, I just soldered resistors onto the back of the 4-button panel. Granted, the extra drives were always write-enabled and ready, but how many people really make their drives read-only? I much prefer the 10-button BA123 chassis anyway. ;-) T

15 years, 2 months

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Fwd: Seattle Retro-Computing Society inaugural meeting June 25th

by aek＠bitsavers.org

-------- Original Message -------- Subject: Seattle Retro-Computing Society inaugural meeting June 25th Date: Sat, 4 Jun 2011 20:16:11 -0700 (PDT) From: SRCS Admin <searetcompsoc at gmail.com> Organization: http://groups.google.com Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers I am pleased to announce... the Seattle Retro-Computing Society's inaugural meeting, on Saturday, June 25th, 2011! Do you do any of the following with old computers near Seattle? + Use them + Collect them + Play games on them + Write programs for them + Develop new hardware for them + Help other people do any of the above If your answer was "yes," as I expect it will be if you're reading this near Seattle, then the SRCS is for you! We exist so you can show off your awesome stuff, bounce ideas off of fellow enthusiasts, and be inspired by one another's achievements, plans and aspirations. No idea is too big or too small, and we're not picky about what flavor of vintage machine you prefer! Come on down and tell us about it! The meeting is graciously hosted by the Living Computer Museum, a relatively new organization which is building a computer museum in Seattle's SODO neighborhood. There will be refreshments, presentations on various vintage topics of interest, and enough table space & power to set up anything you may want to show off! For further details, please see our page at http://srcs.nfshost.com/. Hope to see you there!

15 years, 2 months

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Info on Sharp CS-4801?

by derschjo＠mail.msu.edu

Hey all -- I picked up an oddball calculator/computer -- it's labeled on the bottom as a Sharp CS-4801 "Electronic Calculating Machine." At first glance, it looks like a standard desktop 4-function printing + stat function / memory calculator, but it also has a small QWERTY keyboard that slides out from the front. The display is a 20-character alphanumeric VFD. Opening it up reveals a Z80 CPU, 32K of RAM and an EPROM, so there's clearly more than meets the eye here. Unfortunately, I can't get the machine to do anything other than normal calculator functions. I haven't yet dumped the EPROM, but I plan to later this weekend. Anyone know anything about this series? Thanks, Josh

15 years, 2 months

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SIX Button BA23 Front Panel

by tiggerlasv＠aim.com

Jerome Fine wrote: > If possible, it would also be "nice" to have those 2 extra > LEDs for the floppy drives displayed on the 6 button > panel (or at least added somehow). ISTR that the RQDX3 doesn't have the drive circuitry to support the front panel LED's. Only the RQDX1 and RQDX2. T

15 years, 2 months

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Ferguson BigBoard I & Microcornucopia Magazine

by elazzerini＠interfree.it

Hi at all, this email to remember my website with the hope to can to contact and to maintain alive all possible about and around this (but not only) great old board. For the Bigboard: <http://web.tiscali.it/enrico.lazzerini> http://web.tiscali.it/enrico.lazzerini <http://www.fergusonbigboard.altervista.org/> http://www.fergusonbigboard.altervista.org/ For the Magazine: http://enricolazzerini.interfree.it Regards Enrico - Pisa (ITALY)

15 years, 2 months

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Reading TOPS-10 and maybe TOPS-20 9 track magtapes?

by dbetz＠xlisper.com

Does anyone on this list, preferably close to the Boston area, have the ability to read TOPS-10 9 track magtapes? I have a friend with a few tapes from which he'd like to extract the contents. Thanks, David

15 years, 2 months

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SIX Button BA23 Front Panel

by bqt＠softjar.se

On 2011-06-01 10.00, Ethan Dicks<ethan.dicks at gmail.com> wrote: > On Wed, Jun 1, 2011 at 3:19 AM, Pete Turnbull<pete at dunnington.plus.com> wrote: >> > On 01/06/2011 03:21, Jerome H. Fine wrote: >>> >> >>> >> For those of you who have heard about a mythical >>> >> SIX ?BUTTON ?FRONT ?PANEL for the BA23, >>> >> it does exist and actually works. >> > >> > Mythical? ?I've probably seen more BA23s with a 6-button panel than without, >> > and both my BA23s have 6-button panels. Yeah. Nothing mythical about the 6-button panel. Glad to see that I'm not the only one thinking so. > I remember_trying_ to put two hard disks in one machine for quick > disk-to-disk copies. I have a fuzzy memory that it didn't work for > me, but I don't remember whacking either drive to the point that they > didn't work when returned to their former homes. As far as I know, the BA23 backplane distribution panel can *not* be used for two disk drives. I know there is a DEC note/article about this not working. You need the external distribution board for the RQDX3 to use two drives. If you use the BA23 backplane distribution panel with two harddisk drives, you have a high chance of corrupting both disks. (If I remember right, the write gate signal somehow goes to both disks, no matter what, which cause the disk to possibly start writing when the disk is seeking, for example. Very bad.) The BA23 backplane distribution should only be used for one harddisk, and possibly one floppy. Johnny

15 years, 2 months

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SIX Button BA23 Front Panel

by tiggerlasv＠aim.com

I've run BA23's with either an RX50 or TK50, and a pair of piggy-backed RD32's. It seemed to work well. I had soldered a pair of 2.2K (?) resistors onto the back of the 4-button panel to force the 2nd drive "ready" and "write enabled" full-time. I may have the details on that particular modification tucked away in my documentation somewhere. I also worked up instructions a while back to construct a ribbon cable to go from an RQDXn controller directly to an RX50 or RX33. I should be able to dig that up as well, if anyone is interested. T

15 years, 2 months

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Is Classiscmp working?

by jhfinedp3k＠compsys.to

I don't seem to be receiving any posts? Does anyone else have the same problem? Jerome Fine

15 years, 2 months

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seeking PC-DOS 2.0

by mcguire＠neurotica.com

Hey folks. I'm looking for floppy images (or actual floppies) of PC-DOS v2.0. Can anyone point me in the right direction? Thanks, -Dave -- Dave McGuire Port Charlotte, FL

15 years, 2 months

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Usenet is officially dead from May 20th ?

by cisin＠xenosoft.com

> "For many years it maintained an almost vegetative life, but on 20 > May, Duke University, Durham (USA), decided to unplug the server host > that kept it alive: Usenet, the online network of discussion groups > formally signed death . It was a precursor to the Internet, but mail, > RSS, and especially Facebook and Twitter have sustituidoel service > they provide." "precursor to the internet"????? If Cern were to shut down their server, would WWW die? -- Grumpy Ol' Fred cisin at xenosoft.com

15 years, 2 months

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SIX Button BA23 Front Panel

by bqt＠softjar.se

On 2011-06-02 07.56, <arcarlini at iee.org> wrote: > Johnny Billquist [bqt at softjar.se] wrote: >> > As far as I know, the BA23 backplane distribution panel can*not* be >> > used for two disk drives. I know there is a DEC note/article >> > about this >> > not working. You need the external distribution board for the >> > RQDX3 to > I used several configs in the DEC lab with 2 RD54s in a BA23 for years > and never hit a problem. (Mind you, I also had a KDA50 in a BA23, so > I'm not saying you should do this at home :-)). It's not an issue with two drives, per se, but an issue with the built in distribution panel. > If there's a note, I'd like to see it sometime ... I'll try to locate it. I know I have it somewhere in paper form, but hopefully it's been scanned somewhere on bitsavers, since all my papers are far from me. On 2011-06-02 07.56, "Rod Smallwood"<rodsmallwood at btconnect.com> wrote: > Two hard drives in a BA23? Like I said above. It's not the question of two drives in the BA23 as such. It is the built-in distribution panel that is the problem. > Provided you don?t want to connect to another BA23 or use a non-DEC disk > controller then a brace of DEC SCSI drives and a flat SCSI cable will do it. SCSI disks have even less to do with it. :-) > I think the drive power cables come direct from the PSU. If so, then you can > rip out the backplane and card guides. The guides can be used to make > storage units for PC cards. You can use the back plane to make a real 'open' > system i.e. one you can get at the pc cards. Yeah, the power cables comes from the PSU, and yes, there was an issue with those on some BA23. But that is something else. And just using the box as a shelf is obviously also not a problem. On Thu, 02 Jun 2011 08:20:11 +0100 Pete Turnbull <pete at dunnington.plus.com> wrote: > On 01/06/2011 18:23, Johnny Billquist wrote: > > >> >> I remember_trying_ to put two hard disks in one machine for quick > >> >> disk-to-disk copies. I have a fuzzy memory that it didn't work for > >> >> me, but I don't remember whacking either drive to the point that they > >> >> didn't work when returned to their former homes. > > > > > > As far as I know, the BA23 backplane distribution panel can *not* be > > > used for two disk drives. I know there is a DEC note/article about this > > > not working. You need the external distribution board for the RQDX3 to > > > use two drives. If you use the BA23 backplane distribution panel with > > > two harddisk drives, you have a high chance of corrupting both disks. > > > (If I remember right, the write gate signal somehow goes to both disks, > > > no matter what, which cause the disk to possibly start writing when the > > > disk is seeking, for example. Very bad.) > Although some manuals do mention that you should only use one hard drive > in a BA23 (eg the Maintenance Manual) I've seen several systems -- > including mine -- do so with no problem. I've never seen a problem with > Write Gate, nor would I expect to. Like all other ST412-type > interfaces, the M9058 distribution card has the same write gate signal > wired to all the 34-pin HDD connectors in parallel. In fact the /only/ > control signals not wired strictly in parallel on those connectors are > some of the drive selects. The M9058 is the RQDXE. Don't anyone ever read what I write, or am I really that bad at expressing myself? I wrote "the BA23 backplane distribution panel". That is *not* the RQDXE. With the RQDXE it works just fine. > What I do know is that the docs say you must draw no more than 7A from > the 12V supply in a BA23, and one RD51 takes 4.5A. So 2 x RD51 would > overload it. I believe that's the only restriction, because putting a > second RD5x in a BA23C expansion box, connected via an RQDXE, was > supported -- and AFAIR the RQDXE doesn't do anything clever with the control or status signals. Yes, the power supply is a separate issue. And yes, there is no issue putting two drives in the same BA23 if you use a RQDXE. However, if you plug in two drives using the built-in backplane distribution panel, you will have a disk crash, which I unfortunately have first hand experience of having to clean up after. The formatting of one, or both drives, will be destroyed, and you will need to reformat the drive to be able to use it again, if reformatting is possible. I never tried that, as I wanted to get as much data as possible off the two drives, and afterwards, the machine got SCSI drives instead of the RD drives, as you might as well upgrade when you were working on it. Johnny

15 years, 2 months

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SMS FWT0100 dual 8" floppy for PDP or LSI-11

by chrise＠pobox.com

I'm investigating some SMS (Scientific Micro Systems) dual 8" floppy units that were built for PDP- and LSI-11 systems. They are model number FWT0100 and, similar to an RX02, have a "formatter" board inside the box with the floppy drives. Then there is a 40-pin ribbon cable that goes to a host controller in the PDP or LSI which can be either a Unibus or a QBus interface. I am wondering if anyone knows if the box+formatter is electrically and protocol compatible with the real RX02... such that you could connect the box to an RX11 or RX211 controller if you do not have the actual SMS host adapter? The documentation for the OEM version of the SMS box (which is out on Bitsavers) talks about the unit being interface and protocol compatible with the RX02 but it is not clear if they are talking about the complete system including their controller in the host or if they are meaning that the interface to the formatter is compatible. The thing has two modes... normal and enhanced and in enhanced mode, there are extra capabilities that the RX02 can not do and I fully expect that you need the SMS controller to operate in that mode... but the normal mode is still a question. I have an RX211 and no real RX02 drives and I now also have one of these SMS boxes so I'm trying to do a little investigation of their compatibility before I just plug them together and see what happens. The RX211 end is pretty well documented. The SMS end... with details of the formatter board... not so much. There is also a FWT1100 version of the SMS box which has a single 8" floppy and an 8" Winchester in it. These work with the same SMS host controller but then for sure run in enhanced mode in order to support the Winchester capabilities. Does anyone have more info or experience with the SMS dual 8" floppy boxes? Chris -- Chris Elmquist

15 years, 2 months

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search for SDI and SMD disks (in europe)

by shadoooo＠gmail.com

Hello. To restore a couple of old machines I'm searching for fixed and/or removable disks. For one machine (a DG Nova 4 upgraded to MV7800) I would need an SMD disk or cartridge drive. For the other machine (a DEC PDP11), I need an SDI disk unit. If anybody has some to sell a reasonable price, please let me know. Thanks in advance Andrea

15 years, 2 months

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Have some Core memory made by Fabri-Tek - trying to find what system this came from.

by ragooman＠gmail.com

I have some Core memory from a guy who worked at Four Phase. They're made by Fabri-Tek and he remembers these being used in some IBM system - the best he can remember. The really cool thing about this is that it's assembled in a way where it folds up. I have some pics at the links below. I'm hoping somebody might know what system this came from. I also have closeup pics of the board, serial, and part numbers too. Then maybe I can find a manual for this. With some luck and some hacking, I can then wire an interface to this for my homebrew PDP-8. http://www.flickr.com/photos/ragooman/5788472143/in/photostream http://www.flickr.com/photos/ragooman/5788471265/in/photostream http://www.flickr.com/photos/ragooman/5789025174/in/photostream http://www.flickr.com/photos/ragooman/5788469637/in/photostream http://www.flickr.com/photos/ragooman/5788469117/in/photostream http://www.flickr.com/photos/ragooman/5789023250/in/photostream =Dan

15 years, 2 months

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SIX Button BA23 Front Panel

by jhfinedp3k＠compsys.to

For those of you who have heard about a mythical SIX BUTTON FRONT PANEL for the BA23, it does exist and actually works. NOTE that the first hard disk drive MUST be set to DS3 and the second hard disk drive MUST be set to DS4. You will almost certainly destroy the format for BOTH hard drives if they are both set the same. A SIX button front panel for a BA23 had been sitting on my bench of spare parts for more than a decade. I finally had an opportunity to use it yesterday for the first time to make a backup copy of an RD51 to a second RD51 Both READ ONLY buttons operate independently and can be turned off and on at any time - as expected, but now verified. There is a simple work around which requires a bit of soldering to a short piece of 10 pin cable, but then the READ ONLY button can't be used very well and is not independent for both drives. I imagine that Tony could add a bit more with a switch that would work much better. If you don't ever use the READ ONLY button, then the simple work around will be sufficient. While I first backed up the RD51 to a TK25 before I installed the SIX button front panel, being able to directly copy (and compare) the two hard disk drives (especially an RD51 which takes under 3 minutes) is much more convenient. This is just to let anyone who is interested that if you are using an RQDXn with a BA23, you actually are able to place two hard drives in the same box. If I am also using the RX50, then I usually run extra long cables out the front of the BA23 and keep the RX50 outside the BA23. If the BA23 backplane is full and you are also using a TK70, then I put both the RX50 and the TK70 inside the BA23 and use the extra long cables to the hard disk drives PLUS I use a spare PC power supply for the hard disk drives so that I don't overload the BA23 power supply. NOTE that my experiments using a BA123 and ESDI Hitachi hard drives which tend to run rather hot and also require their own fans (when I used an external PC power supply), I found that the TK70 MUST use the internal power supply from the BA123. I imagine that the same would apply to the BA23 box for both a TK50 and a TK70. Yes, I occasionally do work with real DEC hardware. Jerome Fine

15 years, 2 months

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Perkin Elmer 7300 Pro System Museum Quality!

by mail.list＠analog-and-digital-solutions.com

Here's one some of you might like. Perkin Elmer 7300 Pro System Museum Quality! http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=2738081449 Current bid US $9.99

15 years, 2 months

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What to do with Transputer Equipment?

by tshoppa＠wmata.com

> 10 GOTO 10 > Parallelize THAT. By the 1970's many timesharing and batch type compilers would kick out the embarrassingly useless programs without even trying (the environment well tested by millions of college student's programming attempts). I think the line between embarrassingly useless and embarrassingly parallel may not always be obvious. In many university-type batch processing systems, student programs that ran for more than 5 CPU seconds were summarily terminated as "obviously being stuck in some kind of infinite loop that the compiler can't catch yet". Just a few years later the same problems probably qualified for Grand Challenge grants :-) I remember when a very big fear of the US govt, was that the Japanese would wipe us out with Fifth Generation computers. (The WMD of the 80's) Boy, did that miss the mark. The Japanese came up with the Fuji Eagle (perhaps the most defining commodity-computing storage element ever) and today teraflop-class vector processors are in every fanboy's computer and they're called "graphics cards". Tim.

15 years, 2 months

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new Z180 based SBC beta testing

by lynchaj＠yahoo.com

new Z180 based SBC beta testing Michael Kerpan madcrow.maxwell at gmail.com On Mon, May 30, 2011 at 9:34 PM, Randy Dawson <rdawson16 at hotmail.com <http://www.classiccmp.org/mailman/listinfo/cctalk> > wrote: > I didn't know you could still get the TMS9918 > > Heart of the TI 99/4 > > A cool add on board for those of us that started with the TI9900 'University Board' trainer, a video card that plugged on top from Eyring Research I suspect that TMS9918s have to be sourced from dead MSX-1s or 99/4s. BTW, does anybody know if the Yamaha 9938/58 enhanced clones were pin-compatible? The extra colors and hardware acceleration might be nice to have if they'd fit... Mike -----REPLY----- Hi! The TMS9918A and AY-3-8910 are both optional components on the N8. They are both available through multiple vendors and consistently on eBay. They are relatively common and low cost if you look around a bit. The initial build and test team mostly used the bare Z8S180 CPU with its dual serial ports for debugging the boot ROM and CP/M. However, adding the video and audio are very handy debugging tools so I would not discount their usefulness. The V9935/V9958 are not pin compatible but are software backward compatible. They use the Shrink DIP-64 so they are about the same physical size but more complex to trace route. I won't consider upgrading the N8 to use the V9938 or V9958 until after our N8VEM S-100 VDP board comes out based on the V9938/V9958 and verifies the design. The separate N8 design is too far along for such a radical change and the TMS9918A is sufficient for usable NTSC composite video comparable to Commodore 64, Apple II, Atari 800, Jupiter ACE, Timex/Sinclair 1000, etc. Thanks and have a nice day! Andrew Lynch

15 years, 2 months

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new Z180 based SBC beta testing

by lynchaj＠yahoo.com

Hi! The new N8 (pronounced "innate") Z180 based SBC will be going into beta test at the end of June (estimated). This is what used to be called the N8VEM home computer which was mentioned a couple of times in the "FreeCP/M" thread on comp.os.cpm The N8 is an "all in one" design with Z8S180, 1 MB SRAM, 1 MB EPROM or 512KB Flash, dual serial ports, parallel printer port, PS/2 keyboard and mouse ports, RTC and NVSRAM (DS1302), composite NTSC video (TMS9918A), audio (AY-3-8910), dual joystick ports, IDE port, FDC port, SD socket, optional CSIO port, optional RS-485 networking port, and ECB bus expansion. It can be powered from a 9VDC wall supply or from a scrap PC power supply and fits on a 10"x6" PCB. The N8 is wrapping up its initial round of build and test and I will be ordering the second batch of prototype boards in one week. If you would be interested in participating as a beta tester please let me know. If there is enough interest I can expand the prototype board order to accommodate additional builders. I anticipate the final board to come out sometime this fall. Note this is a PCB only and you will have to source your own components to keep the costs low. Schematics, PCB layout, and part list including supplier information are available on the N8VEM wiki in the "N8" folder. Thanks and have a nice day! Andrew Lynch

15 years, 2 months

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What to do with Transputer Equipment?

by jkunz＠unixag-kl.fh-kl.de

Hi. In a recent dumpster diving session I rescued three "IMS B012" boards. These are "VMEbus Master Motherboards" with 16 slots for TRAMs (TRAnsputer Modules). The three B012 are equiped with a total of 29 TRAMs. Each TRAM consists of one T800 Transputer chip and 1 MB of DRAM. In addition there is a single B420 Vector Processing TRAM. So, what to do with this stuff? There is a lot of documentation out there on the net. This covers topics like theory of operation, programming languages, libraries, ... but no "how to get started with real hardware" guide. I have a VME chassis to put them in. Currently this chassis houses a MVME68k machine running NetBSD. But as I understand the documentation on the B012 it uses the VME form factor, but has no real VMEbus interface. So my hope to use the MVME68k (or one of my Sun3 / Sun4 VME machines) as a host is lost. It would have been cool to add the transputers as a co-processor to my Sun 4/110 or 4/610... If I can't get any use out of the Transputers I would like to trade them for some more ordinary QBus stuff for my PDP-11. I need a M8061 RLV12 RL01/RL02 disk controller, QBus memory (at least 1 MB) and perhaps a M7559 TQK70 TK70 controller. Alternatively a MVME160x PPC VME CPU board would be nice. -- \end{Jochen} \ref{http://www.unixag-kl.fh-kl.de/~jkunz/}

15 years, 2 months

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Data I/O manual sought in PDF format.

by geoffr＠zipcon.net

Looking for the Calibration/Service manual for the Unipak 2B unit, it has schematics in it and the calibration procedures. Since some of the adapters are unobtanium, with the service/cal manual it should be possible to reverse engineer some of the adapters :)

15 years, 2 months

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minuteman II computer D17C / was Re: minuteman guidance computer D17B

by jtp＠chinalake.com

> And then there is the D37D of the minuteman III. TI and the minuteman related bits: http://www.ti.com/corp/docs/company/history/timeline/defense/1960/docs/62-sp ecial_ics.htm D37D onboard was used in the initial minuteman III missile guidance set (MGS), the NS-20 configuration. It was about 1/4 the size of the D17, still contained a disk and was/is visually less interesting. It has been replaced with the 16-bit missile guidance computer (MGC) in the current NS-50 MGS. The MGS contained the computer, gyro system, amp and guidance set. In the NS-50 configuration the amp is part of the MGC. The MGS is contained in a slice that sits below the reentry system (warhead and associated support systems). Although START [treaty] dramatically reduced the number and capabilities, there are 400+ MMIII ICBMs that remain operational.

15 years, 2 months

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new Z180 based SBC beta testing

by lynchaj＠yahoo.com

Alexandre Souza - Listas pu1bzz.listas at gmail.com ________________________________ > The N8 is an "all in one" design with Z8S180, 1 MB SRAM, 1 MB EPROM or > 512KB > Flash, dual serial ports, parallel printer port, PS/2 keyboard and mouse > ports, RTC and NVSRAM (DS1302), composite NTSC video (TMS9918A), audio > (AY-3-8910), dual joystick ports, IDE port, FDC port, SD socket, optional > CSIO port, optional RS-485 networking port, and ECB bus expansion. It can > be powered from a 9VDC wall supply or from a scrap PC power supply and > fits > on a 10"x6" PCB. Are you building a "MSX on a card" ? :oD -----REPLY----- Hi, I am not sure what you mean by your comment but I'll assume it is a serious question I'll take a try at answering it. The intent of the N8 is to be a unique all in one home brew computer with the major functionality built in such as CPU, memory, video, audio, basic IO, and disk storage. Unlike the N8VEM SBC V2 most builders will probably not want to expand it using the ECB backplane although that is retained as an option. The N8 is a little like a combination of a high performance Z180 system like a SB-180, YASBEC, or P112 and an MSX computer. You can plug the N8 into an ECB backplane although it is much larger than the usual Eurocard 160x100mm format board. It has the Z8S180 CPU and a lot of integrated peripherals like the SB-180, YASBEC, and P112 although all DIP/PLCC plated through hole PCB construction for easy hobbyist assembly. Only a couple optional SMT parts are used. In theory the CPU is capable of 33 MHz operation although since the CPU clock is also used for serial baud rate calculations 29.4912 MHz or 24.576 MHz are probably realistic. The N8 has some MSX hardware compatibility and can run many MSX games particularly at BIOS level compatibility. However hardware compatibility is not 100% so it is not an MSX clone computer. There are several major differences such as the use of PS/2 keyboard and some IO peripherals are at differing locations. There are a lot of builder photos and videos present on the N8VEM wiki in the N8 folder so feel free to review them. Also the schematics, PCB layout, and parts list are also posted although not the most current version. Thanks and have a nice day! Andrew Lynch

15 years, 2 months

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FS: S100 transformers

by dgriffi＠cs.csubak.edu

I have five transformers marked "Morrow" that appear to be intended for building linear power supplies for S100 machines. If anyone wants one, they're $20 each shipped. -- David Griffith dgriffi at cs.csubak.edu A: Because it fouls the order in which people normally read text. Q: Why is top-posting such a bad thing? A: Top-posting. Q: What is the most annoying thing in e-mail?

15 years, 3 months

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What to do with Transputer Equipment?

by tshoppa＠wmata.com

> Well, yes. A lot of early attempts at *anything* kind of sucked. We > are now 20 odd years past the MPP "boom" of the mid 80s - I certainly > hope technology would have marched on during those years. If your problem isn't embarrassingly parallel, you're doing the wrong problem. Really. Tim.

15 years, 3 months

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Radio Shack Science Fair manuals

by kf5eqz＠cox.net

Brian, You had posted back in 2006 that you have the manual for the Radio Shack 300 in one Science Fair. Could you email me copy of the manual? It would be greatly appreciated. I haven't been able to find one online anywhere. Thanks so much. Grant

15 years, 3 months

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Dec M9401 module available

by quapla＠xs4all.nl

Found during sorting out some stuff, a Dec M9401. Text says 'mirror image cable connect module for LSI-11' It has 2 50 pin berg connectors Eur 10 + postage (send from NL) Msg me off list if you have questions Ed -- Dit is een HTML vrije email / This is an HTML free email.

15 years, 3 months

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TK25 Problem

by jhfinedp3k＠compsys.to

After 20 years, I need to use my TK25 again. I now remember why I switched to the TK70. I takes about 4 minutes every time I need to change a tape. Now there is a hardware problem. When I insert a different tape, the tension cycle shows a flashing (left side of the front panel) green light until the cycle is complete. I am confident that the light changed to solid green in the past, but now the light stays unlit and the unit is not ready. At first, I tried to boot RT-11, but no luck. By accident, I needed to turn off the power, and then turn it back on. The TK25 power was left on and as soon as the PDP-11 started the boot cycle, the green light on the TK25 turned solid green. After RT-11 had booted from the hard drive, the TK25 is ready and everything works. Any suggestions? Controller? Drive? Cable? Since it takes 4 minutes for the tension cycle, having to boot again (less than a minute) is not a deal breaker. Also, now just a boot turns the green light on. Thank you in advance for any suggestions? Jerome Fine

15 years, 3 months

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Collection is cleaned out, gone...

by trash3＠splab.cas.neu.edu

Hi all, Thanks for all the responses and offers. William Donzelli took everything, including all the manuals and handbooks. Quite a haul. My thanks to Will for keeping this stuff from the dump. If there was somehting particular you were looking for, you might want to send him a note. Joe Heck

15 years, 3 months

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D 17A FRONT PANEL CONSOLE

by rlaag＠pacbell.net

I HAVE A FRONT PANEL CONSOLE FOR A D 17A IF ANYONE NEEDS A PICTURE...

15 years, 3 months

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FS: Sony SDT-S9000 DDS3 External SCSI, also 2 CR-ROM caddies

by jtp＠chinalake.com

Sony SDT-S9000 DDS3 External SCSI drive Pulled from storage where it was bagged with desiccant. Clean, no dings/dents/fading I have a few cleaning tapes somewhere, all real media was shredded. Comes with a passive term (AMP type, DIGITAL logo). $30USD OBO Metro-west Boston, MA. Will ship from 01888 (~6lbs packed) Probably have a cable around if needed. Also have two CD-ROM caddies. Clean, usual tan, clear top w/ metal centre cap. Few bucks + shipping would be nice. -Jim (jtp at chinalake.com)

15 years, 3 months

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Tunne machine video

by csquared3＠tx.rr.com

For those interested, there is a new Tunne code breaker machine video available. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-13566878 Enjoy, Charlie Carothers

15 years, 3 months

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program for authoring ASCII animations?

by legalize＠xmission.com

Is anyone aware of an open source program for authoring ASCII animations and playing them back on different terminals at different baud rates with maximum fidelity? Ideally it would be something that stores the animation as meta data and not as raw escape codes for the terminal on which the animation was authored. -- "The Direct3D Graphics Pipeline" -- DirectX 9 draft available for download <http://legalizeadulthood.wordpress.com/the-direct3d-graphics-pipeline/> Legalize Adulthood! <http://legalizeadulthood.wordpress.com>

15 years, 3 months

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Debugging styles (was 'scopes)

by mark.kahrs＠gmail.com

You know, it all depends on the person. Personally, I call the logic analyzer the "tool of last resort" or "the dreaded logic analyzer". When you need it, you need it and nothing else will do. But often you can get a long way with a 'scope and a logic probe (in the ancient days when strobes were easily accessible). When you're debugging a 32 bit bus and you've got probes hanging all over the place, then you know you are deep in hell --- one of the circles that Dante didn't describe.

15 years, 3 months

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Loading software onto a real PDP11

by doug＠doughq.com

Hi everybody, I am sure that this has been solved, but I can't see a single cohesive way of doing it so I thought I would ask. I have a PDP11/04, with a RL01 disk drive. Ther are real physical hardware (about 40Kg each....) The hardware now operates - I can boot the custom software that is on one of the RL01 disk packs. It boots and displays "SYS5 READY~" then hangs - The system was used for a race track display board, so some of the custom hardware is not there. There are a couple of other packs that I have verified that don't boot, so what I would love to do is to load some useful software (RT11 or Basic or Forth....). I can not figure out how to actually do that - I have simulated images for SIMH, and can get SIMH to actually boot RT11, but I can't figure out how to actually move the data onto the nice, big, physical disk... Can somebody provide some advice? Doug (In sunny Canberra, Australia)

15 years, 3 months

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program for authoring ASCII animations?

by tshoppa＠wmata.com

Back in the early 80's we created such animations by writing Fortran codes that had hardcoded strings to set up the static parts and used DO loops to emit the escape characters to do the animation on the terminals of the time (first VT52 then VT100). As necessary for regulating the speed of playback, NUL's and other "do nothings" would get inserted along the way in the DO loops. In my circle it was, by definition, being done on a DEC machine (either a -11 or a VAX, sometimes taking advantage of easy portability of the Fortrans). Some guys did this on PDP-10's but the Hollerith strings were not so portable between -10's and the -11/VAX platforms. There wasn't really much abstraction going on in those programs. Fortran was great for do loops etc. but a little bit ugly when it came to emitting character strings. It was often a kludgey combination of Hollerith strings stored in integer variables or arrays, format statements, and (where we had F77 later on) CHARACTER datatypes. We had absolutely no inhibition at using a 4-byte integer to store an escape sequence and then through the ugliness of equivalence statements making one of those bytes be the index of a do loop, and emitting it as a Hollerith string. Usually we did whatever was easiest so it was very common to see multiple approaches mixed together often inside the same format statement :). After making a file containing the escape sequences for an animation it was "released" by putting it in a public directory and/or copying it from site to site via DECNET. VMS Mail could (for a while) be used to send ASCII animations in the body of the message but most sysadmins eventually disabled control characters in message bodies (details of this... oooh I used to know but it escapes me now.) After my time (e.g. by the late 80's and early 90's) the animations were done by younger guys who knew C and some of them even used termcap libraries.

15 years, 3 months

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Edusystem-25 BASIC (was Re: PDP-11/03)

by ethan.dicks＠gmail.com

On Wed, May 25, 2011 at 11:29 AM, Dave McGuire <mcguire at neurotica.com> wrote: > On 5/25/11 9:34 AM, Jerome H. Fine wrote: >> >> You are either unaware of Multi-User Basic under RT-11 >> or you may have not remembered. > > ?About MU-Basic, another listmember just sent me a copy. ?I've not seen it > in about twenty years, and never on one of my own systems. ?I know what I'll > be doing this afternoon! :-) This thread got me looking for the PDP-8 equivalent (thinking back to Dave Ahl's original (pre-MSBASIC) edition of "101 BASIC Computer Games") and I found this... http://www.bitsavers.org/bits/DEC/pdp8/papertapeImages/russ.ucs.indiana.edu… ... but every copy I've found has what looks like some corruption halfway through (just below the label "FOGO2"). Has anyone ever gotten a working version of this? The comments up top suggest a rare but not-impossible-to-assemble set of hardware requirements (especially in emulation)... /EDUSYSTEM 25 BASIC IS FOR THE PDP-8/E, -8/F, -8/M, -8/I, -8/L WITH /12K OR MORE MEMORY AND EITHER THE DC02 OR PT08(KL8E) OPTION /AND TC08 DECTAPE CONTROLLER WITH TU56 OR TWO TU55 TRANSPORT(S) /NOTE: START ADDRESS IS 15200. A bit of brief reading of the code suggests that it could handle up to 8 terminals. I don't happen to have a TC08 (only a TD8E), so it's unlikely I'll ever take it any farther than emulation, presuming an intact version of it is still floating around out there. -ethan

15 years, 3 months

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Varian Data Machines

by keith＠smartdev.demon.co.uk

Hi, I used to be a field service engineer for VDM in Europe. Did you get the 620L100 working? Was the Tektronix a 611? If so it could have been an early nuclear medicine system. Regards, Keith -- Keith

15 years, 3 months

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identify this equipment?

by legalize＠xmission.com

OK, you guys were so good at identifying that other equipment from its photo, how about these? They look like HP cabinets, but I didn't feel like digging them out to look closer, just snapped a photo. <http://www.xmission.com/~legalize/tmp/Photo_BC168B00-4C04-E083-3201-B6DAC37…> -- "The Direct3D Graphics Pipeline" -- DirectX 9 draft available for download <http://legalizeadulthood.wordpress.com/the-direct3d-graphics-pipeline/> Legalize Adulthood! <http://legalizeadulthood.wordpress.com>

15 years, 3 months

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OT: HRFS information

by cclist＠sydex.com

I've got what I believe to be a drive with a Vxworks HRFS filesystem on it. Anyone know of a quick way to verify this (by peering at the raw data)? Are there any third-party utilities that might let me mount this under Linux or (shudder) Windows? TIA, Chuck

15 years, 3 months

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Ancient VMS for an ancient VAX emulator

by madcrow.maxwell＠gmail.com

If you follow the SIMH list at all, you may have heard that the preliminary version of a VAXstation 2000 emulator has been released upon the world. Judging from what I've heard on the VMS newsgroup, a system like that really works best with an older (4.x-era) version of VMS along with the VWS workstation software. I've been able to find DECtape II images of an upgrade only version of VMS 4.7 for use with an 11/750, but can't seem to find anything that has the whole hog? Does anybody know of a place where TK50 images of VMS/MicroVMS 4.7 as well as a few other basics like VWS and maybe Pascal or Fortran or BASIC might be found? Ideally, I'd like to get the setup process written up and a few screenshots made for the curious, so any help that can get me started would be most apprectiated. Mike

15 years, 3 months

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Borland Turbo Assembler doc? Ping Al Kossow

by vintagecoder＠aol.com

This is sort of addressed to Al but if anybody else has a scanned copy or knows where to find one that would be great. Al, do you have a copy of the Borland Turbo Assembler doc for v5? I check bitsavers once in a while and have not found it. Do you have any Borland doc you have not put up on the site and if so do you have a list and any ETA? Thank you. -- +------------------------------------------------------------------------+ | Vintage Coder America Online ivagntrpbqre at nby.pbz <ROT13> | | | | Collecting: DOS assemblers, compilers, & books (Z80, M68X, 6502, 808X) | | Software & doc for IBM S/360 through OS/390 | | | | Can't find: Ada 95 compilers for MVS/ESA & Solaris (Sparc) | | PL/I X Optimizing Compiler for MVS, APL/SV for MVS | |---------------------------------------+--------------------------------| | Powered by Slackware 64 & Solaris 10 | Powered by Hercules | |=======================================+================================| | PGP Key 4096R 0x1CB84BEFC73ACB32 Encrypted email preferred | | PGP Fingerprint 5C1C 3AEB A7B2 E6F7 34A0 2870 1CB8 4BEF C73A CB32 | +------------------------------------------------------------------------+

15 years, 3 months

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Loading software onto a real PDP11

by captainkirk359＠gmail.com

As an idea to get RT-11 onto your RL01; why not try using a TU58 emulator, with oversized tape images? There's a modified driver file out there - very easy to find too - that'll let you have RT-11 think the DECtape II tapes are the size of an RL02, which will let you boot the RT-11 V5.3 installation pack on the emulator. From there, just install RT-11 to the real RL01 as you would normally install RT-11. It's simple to setup (and if you don't want to fiddle around with disk images, asking will get you one from me or whoever else has done it this way), and all you need on the PDP-11 side of things is a second serial line. Also, it's relatively painless, as the RT-11 install isn't all that difficult. (Honestly, the entire installation of RT-11 via the emulated, oversized, TU58 would be: INITIALIZE/BACKBLOCK DL0: COPY/SYSTEM SY:*.* DL0:*.* COPY/BOOT:DL DL0:RT11SJ.SYS DL0: BOOT DL0: And that's it, you're in RT-11 SJ on your real RL01, SYSGEN it if you wish to tailor your RT-11 install.) Cheers.

15 years, 3 months

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Heavy, Heavy Metal.

by ittybittybytes＠gmail.com

So I finally got my hands on a pdp8/a at the University auction. It's the omnibus model that's built into a desk and called the Classic, short for CLASSroom Interactive Computer. I had no idea it was so heavy as it was loaded for me into the back of my pickup. I discovered it must be real heavy as the my F-150 groaned when loaded and when I came home and unloaded I almost herniated myself. There it sits, almost complete (without the VT52) but has an extra RL01/RL02 board. Is it the desk that gives it the weight. I know the dual RX01 are heavy, but the are the cage, power supply and boards real heavy in these things or is the DESK to blame. Until I put it on something that I can move around, it will sit in my driveway. I can run a terminal cable and an extension cord out to it to maybe boot it up after I do some more research on it to see if all the boards are there. One thing is not clear.n looking at the board numbers, it seems it doesn't have a memory board, but it might have memory aboard the CPU card. Is this right? It uses the newer cmos memory. It has the three board set that also was used in the KIT-1, but it also has a variety of other boards that I'll write down as soon as I can. Cheers Tom

15 years, 3 months

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identify this computer?

by legalize＠xmission.com

Sorry for the slight blur, it was taken with a camera phone. <http://www.xmission.com/~legalize/tmp/Photo.jpg> Any ideas? -- "The Direct3D Graphics Pipeline" -- DirectX 9 draft available for download <http://legalizeadulthood.wordpress.com/the-direct3d-graphics-pipeline/> Legalize Adulthood! <http://legalizeadulthood.wordpress.com>

15 years, 3 months

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Ferro Resonance transformer and IBM

by michael.99.thompson＠gmail.com

> From:?h.j.stegeman at hccnet.nl > Date:?Tue, 24 May 2011 17:08:31 +0200 > > I am restoring an old IBM terminal with a ferro resonance transformer. > I slowly increase the prim voltage with a variac. > At the same time I measure the sec voltages. > The normal voltage at the prim site is 240V > > At +/- 130V (prim) I have already normal voltage at the sec site. > (+5V , -18V etc) > The sec side is loaded and contains no regulators. > > Anyone any idea why at 130v everything is normal. > I don't dear to go to 220V > > Thanks for all your replies. > > Henk-- I just repaired two DEC ferroresonant power supplies that are 115VAC input. From 45VAC to 115VAC input the +10/-15VDC output is at the normal voltage. What you are seeing is the ferroresonant circuit at work. Our power supplies lasted just a few hours before the AC capacitor failed. I was able to find replacement "run" capacitors on eBay. You can't use "start" capacitors because they are not designed for a 100% duty cycle. Michael Thompson

15 years, 3 months

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How much do you like your PDP11?

by dgriffi＠cs.csubak.edu

I was looking around for pictures of PDP11 front panels and stumbled across this page. I think mass quantities of alcohol were involved. Have your eyebleach at the ready. http://www.schlabonski.de/zwiebeltuete.html -- David Griffith dgriffi at cs.csubak.edu A: Because it fouls the order in which people normally read text. Q: Why is top-posting such a bad thing? A: Top-posting. Q: What is the most annoying thing in e-mail?

15 years, 3 months

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"Stan Veit's History of the Personal Computer" audiobook podcast

by david＠classiccomputing.com

"Stan Veit's History of the Personal Computer" audiobook podcast, chapter 4 http://bit.ly/izfPBD Loads a little slow - subscribe @ iTunes I would just like to bring this to everyone's attention. It is such a great book, and I have completed another chapter. I intend to start getting new chapters posted much sooner. Please also consider reading about Stan in the article I wrote last year, "Remembering Stan Veit" at http://classiccomputing.com/CC/Blog/Entries/2010/9/3_Stan_Veit.html Best, David Greelish, Computer Historian President, Historical Computer Society Classic Computing The Home of Computer History Nostalgia http://www.classiccomputing.com Retro Computing Roundtable podcast Stan Veit's History of the Personal Computer audiobook podcast Classic Computing Show video podcast Classic Computing Blog

15 years, 3 months

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Oscilloscope Recommendation

by jonas＠otter.se

> > The guidance I have had is that for a PSU an analogue 'scope is fine. > For > logic then a logic analyser is what you need. Are you talking about > some > other category of hardware? > > Regards > > Rob > IMO, keep it simple for the moment. If you are not used to using a 'scope and you are only intending to repair your PSU at the moment, stay with an analogue dual-beam 'scope with a bandwidth of 20 MHz or so. There are excellent ones available cheap on eBay or other places. Philips, Gould, Hameg or Kenwood made decent 'scopes. It will also do fine for audio and even some video work, should the need arise. Learn to use that, then if you really think you need something better, replace it. Tektronix 465 is a lovely 'scope but IMO overkill for what you need at the moment. OTOH, if you anticipate getting deeper into repairing stuff, by all means get a Tex 465, 475. HP 180 'scopes are nice too. /Jonas

15 years, 3 months

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Oscilloscope Recommendation

by technobug＠comcast.net

On 5/24/11 11:45 PM, Brent Hilpert wrote: >> Of course, just for vintage warm fuzzies, little can challenge an old >> Tektronix scope. I recently acquired a Tek 561A from a friend locally. >> Mmmm, vacuum tubes.... Turn on the scope, go get a beer while it warms >> up, measure and test with confidence. -- Ian > > Our radio museum here has several old 500-series tek scopes that I'd > love to refurbish and get working. There's a 4-channel plug-in in one of > them, too. Size, maintenance and fan noise might make them not-so-great > for regular use but it would be nice to be able to use them on occasion. > I loved the crispness of the trace and the blue tint of the phosphor in > the CRTs of that series. I wonder why Tek didn't continue using that > phosphor. The P11 phosphor was available on the 7000 series crates and the 400 series (455,465,475) portables as options. My 7844 has the pretty blue traces from the two-gun CRT as well as a 400 MHz backplane. I still make room and haul it out to make measurements requiring one of the off-the-wall plug-ins with which Tek populated that line of scopes. -> CRC

15 years, 3 months

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How much do you like your PDP11?

by tiggerlasv＠aim.com

On Wednesday, May 25th, at 2:01 CDT, Eric Smith wrote: > Does it really surprise you that some people love old computers? It doesn't surprise me that he loves his PDP-11. . . after all, who wouldn't ? . . . but a Sony Vaio? That's just sick. Hehe. T

15 years, 3 months

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Augat boards on eBay

by wmaddox＠pacbell.net

This fellow has multiple units of NOS Augat wire-wrap boards for $29.95 each. Seems like a good price given what the gold scrappers are paying these days, which is where they will likely end up if some vintage homebrew hobbyists don't snap them up... Item # 250823044454 http://cgi.ebay.com/Mupac-TLR8922-Proto-Board-Gold-Recovery-/250823044454?p… --Bill

15 years, 3 months

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9-track Tapes gotta go

by mtapley＠swri.edu

All, I still have an office full of magnetic tapes that I need to get rid of. If you need some, let me know. I'll box and mail to you if you are willing to pay postage. I'll put the rest on eBay and/or VCM soon if I can't give them away here, and if that doesn't do it, I'll (sadly) trash them. The tapes are reel-to-reel, mostly 10" full-size reels (~2500 feet of tape) but some smaller. Mostly 800 bits/inch, but some 1600. Some Black Watch, many other brands. All are used; the data on them is not proprietary or secret (a lot is UARS satellite data) but I don't know generally what it is or what format it's in. Most reels include the white surround clips with hooks to hang on racks. The tapes are in pretty good-appearing shape, and were stored in climate-controlled storage since new (I believe). Shipping will be from San Antonio, TX, area code 78254. Pick-ups welcome. Please respond by email here, and tell me what you want. I can't be much more specific than "soon" about when I'll start to auction or trash, so promptness would be good (but tardiness probably won't cost you much, if you are willing to prowl auction sites for them). -- - Mark 210-379-4635 ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Large Asteroids headed toward planets inhabited by beings that don't have technology adequate to stop them: Think of it as Evolution in Fast-Forward.

15 years, 3 months

1
0
0 0

Genuine gonkulator cable

by dgriffi＠cs.csubak.edu

If anyone's looking for a gonkulator cable for your DEC VAX, check out Ebay auction number 200609594604 -- David Griffith dgriffi at cs.csubak.edu A: Because it fouls the order in which people normally read text. Q: Why is top-posting such a bad thing? A: Top-posting. Q: What is the most annoying thing in e-mail?

15 years, 3 months

5
4
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OT : M3*0.6mm pitch screws

by tshoppa＠wmata.com

>> However, I am not sure 5-40 UNC screws are any easier to find (at >> least not over here, as I said, even getting the 'mormal' 2-56, 4-40, >> 6-32, 8-32 is difficult). And it's not 'right'. I might as well spend >> a couple of afternoons in the garage making the right screws. > There are some application-specific wierdnesses too. For example, > tacquets on US-made piston valvesets for musical instruments are 3- > 48. Fortunately, I do have a set of taps and a die for that > thread. ??? 5-40, 3-48 etc. are all perfectly "normal" sizes (any decent hardware store will have them, although I wouldn't place any bets on finding the odd numbers at say Home Depot) And Tony, maybe instead of calling it a 6-32 you would have better luck in the UK asking for a "computer case screw." The demise of "decent hardware stores" is perhaps a different thread. Tim.

15 years, 3 months

2
1
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OT : M3*0.6mm pitch screws

by tshoppa＠wmata.com

> As for the pitch, I used those pitch guages which conssit of little > strips of metal with accurately cut teeth in one edge. Alas my metric set > doesn't include 0.6mm ( which is odd, since it's common for M3.5 screws), > hut the imperial one that fits is 42tpi. 42tpi is about 0.605mm pitch. I > could beleive 0.6mm (it's not that accurate after all). The 40tpi > imperial gauge doesn't fit at all. I'd still bet a donut, that a 5-40 would fit just fine for anything without a long engagement. Tim.

15 years, 3 months

6
6
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DEC Scrap

by pspan＠amerytel.net

Hi All, I thought I would post to everyone at one time with this list rather than an individual emails, for expediancy. 6 ea LA 120's with keyboards, it looked like only the #7 button missing from 1 keyboard 3 ea LA 120's w/o keyboards 6 ea Dual 8" floppy drives made by SMS 3 ea combo 8" floppy and 10 mb Hard disk by SMS 6 ea dual 10mb bernoulli drives (IOMEGA) (also have cartridges) I also have 8" floppy drive media which was DEC formatted, though digging that out might be a little challanging. I think there is enough stuff here for everyone to get a little. Phil PS Please keep in mind that this stuff has been in a non-temp controlled storage for at least 6 years!!!!

15 years, 3 months

3
2
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Seeking : HP 13037D - HP 9706 inter connection cables

by hp-fix＠xs4all.nl

I'm looking for the inter connection cables to connect my HP 9706 drive to the 13037D MAC controller and to the HP 2114E. I'm also looking for cables to connect the HP 7970 tape drive to the HP 2114E. In return I can offer a trade with HP equipment or some kind of a beer fee. -Rik

15 years, 3 months

1
0
0 0

Small racks for DEC gear

by silvercreekvalley＠yahoo.com

Hi Paul, Mine is the BA11-K (PSU at back). It is quite a deep case so needs the full size rack, but as I'm hoping to use a relatively small SCSI drive (with the appropriate card) dont need a CAB. I'm looking for something small with casters.

15 years, 3 months

1
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OT : M3*0.6mm pitch screws

by ard＠p850ug1.demon.co.uk

This is OT, in that they're not going to be used in a classic computer, but people here tinker with other devies too... I am repariign an old French office telephone at the moment, It is missing a number of screws, whih looked to me M3. I therefore (incorrectly) assmed there'd be no problem replacing them. Alas they are not standard M3. After measuring up some of the exisitng screws, they appear to be 3mm in diamter, 0.6mm pitch (standard M3 is 0,5mm pitch). A look in a 1943 Machinery's Handbook suggests this is a French metric thread. Does anyone know of a source of such screws? If I can't get them, I will have to make them I guess (and I think I can get a suitable die which will make life a lot easier), but I'd prefer to buy them. Ideally slotted cheese head, but I would consider just about anything. -tony

15 years, 3 months

5
12
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OT : M3*0.6mm pitch screws

by jonas＠otter.se

>> It is a French telephone after all ;-) >> > > I am not sure if you're implying that that's why a 'French Metirc > Thread' > is likely to be correct or if you're saying 'It's French, it's bound > to > be odd'. Having maintained Citroen car for 13 years, I came to the > conclusion that French engineering is often strange, but equally it's > often very good (and ingenious). > I totally agree with you. I have no problems with French engineering at all. I have spent a lot of my childhood and adolescence in France and I love it. But they do like to do things their own way, so to speak ;-) Very good engineering but usually not like anybody else's. /Jonas

15 years, 3 months

2
1
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Small racks for DEC gear

by silvercreekvalley＠yahoo.com

I'd like to put my PDP 11/35 into a small rack - say a 12U, something that isnt too out of place in an office environment. This needs to be 'full size' ie having the required depth for a PDP 11, and also able to take the weight. Has anyone tried this? Most of the smaller racks I've seen tend to be for music gear, so are light weight and also not as deep as a 'full size' 19" rack.

15 years, 3 months

2
1
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Ferro Resonance transformer and IBM

by h.j.stegeman＠hccnet.nl

Hi all, I am restoring an old IBM terminal with a ferro resonance transformer. I slowly increase the prim voltage with a variac. At the same time I measure the sec voltages. The normal voltage at the prim site is 240V At +/- 130V (prim) I have already normal voltage at the sec site. (+5V , -18V etc) The sec side is loaded and contains no regulators. Anyone any idea why at 130v everything is normal. I don't dear to go to 220V Thanks for all your replies. Henk

15 years, 3 months

3
3
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844.8 KHz crystal on DEC board

by les＠frii.com

Colorado Crystal would make one for you, don't know much that would cost. http://www.coloradocrystal.com/ Les > On 5/23/2011 6:50 PM, Adrian Stoness wrote: >> got any odd XT searial cards theres a potential for there being one on them >> i have been told >> > > > Good idea but no luck so far, all of the old serial cards I could find > have an 18.432 MHz oscillator. > > I remember seeing many more Apple II's connected to Teletypes than PC's > so I'll check old Apple serial cards next. >

15 years, 3 months

1
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Looking for an Ann Arbor Ambassador terminal

by ian_primus＠yahoo.com

Well, it's been a good couple of months, and I've managed to acquire a couple of things I've been looking for for a long time. One elusive bit of hardware that I'm still trying to track down is an Ann Arbor Ambassador terminal. Unlike my "big" terminal grail (Tektronix 4010/4014), I've never seen one of these on eBay. I haven't seen one at all in a very, very long time. It probably doesn't show up simply because it's really not all that interesting from a historical perspective. Also, I'm not so sure they were very reliable. It's an ASCII only terminal, no graphics. I don't believe it's VT100 compatible. But it's got some neat features, it's fast, and has a very nice keyboard. So, does anyone even have one of these? I'd definitely be interested in acquiring one, but even if you don't want to part with it, it would be nice to know that there are still some out there. -Ian

15 years, 3 months

1
0
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Scraping DEC Equipment

by pspan＠amerytel.net

Hello all, I have several LA 120's with and w/o keyboards. All equipment has been in storage for many years. I am tearing apart for scrap. If anyone wants parts and is willing to pay shipping from Wisconsin and a small stipend for the parts and packaging, email me privately. Phil PS Later on VT 100's and 220's will be going. Other equipment such as 8" floppy drives and media.

15 years, 3 months

8
7
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OT : M3*0.6mm pitch screws

by tshoppa＠wmata.com

Fred writes: > On Mon, 23 May 2011, Shoppa, Tim wrote: >> I'd still bet a donut, that a 5-40 would fit just fine for anything >> without a long engagement. > Are you suggesting that ARD should use screws that are "almost the right > size"?? I was the same guy who once recommended that one should scavenge a spare board to get a terminal working, rather than repair the existing board :-). The moral equivalent here would be to have a "parts phone" that one strips for screws as necessary. Tim.

15 years, 3 months

2
1
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Oscilloscope Recommendation

by tshoppa＠wmata.com

> Before DSOs we had analog storage-tube scopes. Add this to the permutations: I've used a DSO to repair a Tek 4010 storage-tube terminal.

15 years, 3 months

1
0
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pdp things that are not pdp

by dgriffi＠cs.csubak.edu

Am I the only one who is mildly annoyed at all the various things with "pdp" in their model names that have nothing to do with older computers >from DEC? Compaq and Panasonic seem to be the worst, naming memories, power supplies, and toner cartridges with pdp-blahblahblah. -- David Griffith dgriffi at cs.csubak.edu A: Because it fouls the order in which people normally read text. Q: Why is top-posting such a bad thing? A: Top-posting. Q: What is the most annoying thing in e-mail?

15 years, 3 months

7
6
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Scraping DEC Equipment

by CCTECH＠beyondthepale.ie

> >> I'm looking for a flyback transformer for a VT220 - I'm in Dublin, Ireland. >> >> As far as I can tell, there are at least two different types but hopefully >> only the mounting arrangements differ. > >I did some research on this a while back. In one model the flyback is an >easy field replace unit but in the other model the flyback is soldered >to the power board. > Mine is soldered to the board but I'm happy enough to adapt the other type to fit if it's the only one I can get. The other components seem to be the same so I am hopeful that the transformers do not differ electrically. Regards, Peter Coghlan.

15 years, 3 months

1
0
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How much do you like your PDP11?

by bqt＠softjar.se

On 2011-05-22 22.54, Roger Pugh<rogpugh at mac.com> wrote: > On 05/22/2011 10:15, David Griffith wrote: >> > I was looking around for pictures of PDP11 front panels and stumbled >> > across this page. I think mass quantities of alcohol were involved. >> > Have your eyebleach at the ready. >> > >> > http://www.schlabonski.de/zwiebeltuete.html > OK... own up.. Who has a PDP in their bedroom??????? LOL I used to live with a PDP-8/A in my bedroom for about 10 years. Running 24/7 for lots of those years... Nowadays, I'm more lazy, and only have a PDP-11/93 in the bedroom. The rest of my machines are in the cellar. Johnny

15 years, 3 months

1
0
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Scraping DEC Equipment

by CCTECH＠beyondthepale.ie

> >PS Later on VT 100's and 220's will be going. Other equipment such as 8" >floppy drives and media. > I'm looking for a flyback transformer for a VT220 - I'm in Dublin, Ireland. As far as I can tell, there are at least two different types but hopefully only the mounting arrangements differ. Regards, Peter Coghlan.

15 years, 3 months

2
1
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PR1ME Computer SE50M

by michael.99.thompson＠gmail.com

> From:?Dennis Boone <drb at msu.edu> > Date:?Tue, 17 May 2011 13:10:04 -0400 > The CPU boards are in the upper backplane, the two or three boards > connected via top-hats. ?They'll have a label on the back edge giving > the board model number. ?I can probably look them up from that. > > The numbers will be in one of two formats: 9999-999, or TLA10999-999. Upper CPU Board, P/N 6282-401 Lower CPU Board, P/N 6281-401 Upper Two Memory Boards, P/N 12512-E8 Middle Two Memory Boards, P/N 7615-902 Lower Two Memory Boards, P/N 230-010-904 I/O Boards 2034-901 TLA10019-0012 2302-004 4005-901 2384-004 2301-901 In a box 6105-402 Pictures and part numbers of the boards are at: https://sites.google.com/site/ricmwarehouse/Home/equipment/prime-computer-s… It would be nice if you could also identify the memory and I/O boards. Thanks for your help. There doesn't seem to be much hardware documentation available for Prime systems. -- Michael Thompson

15 years, 3 months

1
0
0 0

seeking pdp 11/70 front panel

by dgriffi＠cs.csubak.edu

Once again, I'm checking around to see if anyone has a pdp 11/70 front panel with bezel they'd be willing to sell or trade. I have some IMSAI front panels, an Altair or two, and several complete S100 systems to offer in trade. -- David Griffith dgriffi at cs.csubak.edu A: Because it fouls the order in which people normally read text. Q: Why is top-posting such a bad thing? A: Top-posting. Q: What is the most annoying thing in e-mail?

15 years, 3 months

3
2
0 0

OT : M3*0.6mm pitch screws

by tshoppa＠wmata.com

> Alas they are not standard M3. After measuring up some of the exisitng > screws, they appear to be 3mm in diamter, 0.6mm pitch (standard M3 is > 0,5mm pitch). A look in a 1943 Machinery's Handbook suggests this is a > French metric thread. Maybe wrong side of the pond but: Is it possible that they are 5-40 thread? (3.1mm major diameter, 0.635mm pitch). 5-40 is still common today on barrier strips and I know was even more common on US phone and telecom equipment from 60, 70 years ago. I would not be surprised if barrier strip screw sizes had crossed the pond 70 years ago. Reminds me of the Russian hi-tech chilled water cooling unit we had delivered in the 80's, we thought from the drawing it had some funky metric thread and we called around to all the US metric specialty houses without luck, before we figured out that it was just standard garden hose thread :-) ! Tim.

15 years, 3 months

2
1
0 0

OT : M3*0.6mm pitch screws

by jonas＠otter.se

On 2011-05-21 19:00, Tony Duell wrote: > I am repariign an old French office telephone at the moment, It is > missing a number of screws, whih looked to me M3. I therefore > (incorrectly) assmed there'd be no problem replacing them. > > Alas they are not standard M3. After measuring up some of the exisitng > screws, they appear to be 3mm in diamter, 0.6mm pitch (standard M3 is > 0,5mm pitch). A look in a 1943 Machinery's Handbook suggests this is a > French metric thread. It is a French telephone after all ;-) Some quick Googling on French sites tells me that this is an old standard ("S.I.") which does not seem to be used any longer, not even in France. This is a table of those threads:http://www.cijoint.fr/cj200809/cijkUPkub5.jpg They do not seem to be easily obtainable, not even in France. You will probably have to make them yourself, unfortunately. /Jonas

15 years, 3 months

2
1
0 0

S-100 PCBs

by lynchaj＠yahoo.com

Hi! All the S-100 Console IO and S-100 4MB SRAM/FLASH PCBs are gone. If you were looking to get one please let me know and I will add you to the waiting list for the next batch. I still have a couple S-100 parallel ASCII keyboard interface, about ten S-100 EPROM/SRAM/EEPROM/FLASH, and a whole bunch of the S-100 Dual Serial IO, USB, and voice synthesis PCBs left. The good news is I am steadily plowing through the stack and getting these boards out to their builders. The next new boards will be the S-100 IDE V2 (improved dual IDE), S-100 8086 CPU, and S-100 6502 CPU. These will probably be done in the next few weeks. Please contact me at LYNCHAJ at YAHOO.COM if you have any questions. Thanks and have a nice day! Andrew Lynch

15 years, 3 months

1
0
0 0

Vintage Portable Computing Suggestions?

by feldman.r＠comcast.net

>Message: 21 >Date: Wed, 18 May 2011 14:07:09 -0700 (PDT) >From: Fred Cisin < cisin at xenosoft.com > >Subject: Re: Vintage Portable Computing Suggestions? > >Howzbout: >HP95LX The 95LX runs MS-DOS 3.0, has a non-standard serial port, and non-standard screen, so I would go with the 200LX. >The tablet that Fujitsu came out with when they bought out Poqet This Poqet (the Poqet Plus, IIRC) can use more PC cards than the two earlier models (PQ165 and PQ181), but might be hard to locate. You will almost certainly need to rebuild the rechargeable NiCad battery. The earlier models use 2 AA batteries. >Antikythera!! I don't think that was programmable and I doubt that you can find one for sale. >iPaq pocket computers with Windoze CE ?(Palm Pilot competitor) > >You could probably install Windoze 3.00 on a Poqet! ? 8086??, CGA video Yep, I have Windows 3.0 on my Poqet PQ181 (the middle model). Works nicely with a Barbie (as in the Mattel doll) pen mouse, which might still be available from California Digital, but the serial port adapter is hard to find. If anyone is interested, I think I still have the artwork I made up to make a serial port adapter from printed circuit board. As to the HP LX palmtops, since they run MS-DOS, you can use any number of programming languages. I have used MASM and Turbo C 2.0 on both the 95LX and 200LX. I have a 200LX and?3 Poqets (only one is working, though), but I have heard good things about the Psion 5. Bob

15 years, 3 months

3
3
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OT: Kingston SDHC in SPI mode?

by cclist＠sydex.com

I'm putting this out because I know there are some who tinker with microcontroller applications on the list. I can't really get an answer from web searches. At any rate, I've got an ATMega AVR that I'm using with SDCards in SPI mode. I've got a random assortment of MMC and SD and SDHC cards and they all seem to work as expected--until I ran into a bunch of Kingston 4GB Class 4 SDHC cards (model SD-K04G). Then things fall apart. The cards function normally in SD mode. SanDisk 4GB SDHC cards work just fine. Here's the SPI conversation from its start: Sending: 40 00 00 00 00 95 Receiving: 01 Sending: 48 00 00 01 AA 87 Receiving: 05 Sending: 41 00 00 00 00 01 Receiving: 05 Note that both CMD8 and CMD1 fail with "illegal operation". I'm running the SPI clock at about 250KHz, so speed isn't the issue. Can anyone shed any light on this? --Chuck

15 years, 3 months

1
0
0 0

pdp11 CPU on S100 board

by lynchaj＠yahoo.com

pdp11 CPU on S100 board? jim s jws at jwsss.com <mailto:cctalk%40classiccmp.org?Subject=Re%3A%20pdp11%20CPU%20on%20S100%20bo ard%3F&In-Reply-To=%3C4DD317BE.4050704%40jwsss.com%3E> Tue May 17 19:50:06 CDT 2011 * Previous message: pdp11 CPU on S100 board? * Next message: pdp11 CPU on S100 board? * Messages sorted by: [ date ] [ thread ] [ subject ] [ author ] ________________________________ I have raised the issue of documentation for the Soviet parts with a fellow who posted here recently who lives in Moscow. He will help with getting documenation translated if it can be had. I passed him three auctions with the parts I believe people here could bid on and obtain. He also looked for some information and sent it to me. [snip] -----REPLY----- Hi Jim! Thanks! I appreciate your enthusiasm for the S-100 PDP-11 CPU board project. I am willing to capture a schematic in KiCAD, layout a PCB, and get some prototype boards for build and test. At S100computers.com and N8VEM home brew computing project we have a substantial library of free/open source S-100 board designs we could reuse and borrow from to reduce technical risk. However we are missing an important part of this project -- someone to the design the board! I know almost nothing about PDP-11 and certainly not enough to design an S-100 CPU board based on one. Nearly any S-100 CPU board is a significant design effort even with the mere 8080 which the S-100 supports almost natively. Were someone to send me a handwritten schematic I could capture it in KiCAD and send it out for review. Hopefully the datasheets can be made available or translated. That would be helpful. Also, a reliable source of the chips would be helpful too. However, I would like for people to have realistic expectations. This project won't happen unless an actual designer steps forward. This is a substantial project and it will require many skilled and able hands. It would also need someone to write and/or modify an existing free/open source PDP-11 operating system to use existing S-100 peripherals. I suspect that is a major task as well for which we have no volunteers. I would like to see this project happen but it is missing key participants to make it work. Thanks and have a nice day! Andrew Lynch

15 years, 3 months

6
6
0 0

8" floppy containers

by shumaker＠att.net

response was surprising - everything is spoken for! Steve

15 years, 3 months

4
3
0 0

This is a test.

by ian_primus＠yahoo.com

This is only a test, if this were a real message, then it wouldn't be a test. Just testing, for some reason, the last two times I've tried to reply to a list message, I get a bounce: Remote host said: 553 5.3.0 Spam blocked -Ian

15 years, 3 months

2
1
0 0

Does anyone have a Zenith Z29?

by ian_primus＠yahoo.com

I've recently acquired a Morrow MDT 60, which, as far as I had always known, is basically just a Zenith Z29. Playing with it, it seems to have a rather brain damaged control character scheme, and insists on using parity no matter what. If you want a laugh, look at the MDT60 User's Manual, available on Bitsavers, and check out page 2-4 (PDF page 21). Even though switch 3 is defined as parity enable/disable, it's *also* defined in the table below, selecting which kind of parity to use... Therefore, it seems to me that disabling parity simply is not possible... Anyway, I took the back off and took a look at the board. Interestingly enough the logic board itself says "Morrow Terminal Bd", even though the casing and keyboard are clearly the same as the Zenith Z29. The monitor section itself definitely appears to be Zenith. I'm wondering if anyone has a Z29, if you could remove the back and take a picture of the logic board. It's really easy - three 1/4" hex cap screws and the rear pan just folds down. For bonus points, I'd love a copy of the terminal's ROM. I'm wondering just what is going on with this terminal. Did Morrow have Zenith make them? The other way around? Are the logic boards of the two terminals the same, with only different ROMs, or are they totally different devices? Is there any way to make the MDT60 not use parity and otherwise play nice with *nix systems? -Ian

15 years, 3 months

3
3
0 0

empty 8" floppy containers

by shumaker＠att.net

Anyone interested in several cartons of empty 8" floppy boxes? A few are cardboard but most are the typical plastic unit. There are at least several dozen. Last chance before the recycler..... steve

15 years, 3 months

3
2
0 0

pdp 8a loader?

by tdk.knight＠gmail.com

hi is there something like a abs loader for the pdp11??? reading my manual see somthing called rim loader but i think i am missing it inless its one of these? http://img859.imageshack.us/img859/8412/tapes4.jpg where its curently at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gDwBZPX_Qjo

15 years, 3 months

3
5
0 0

empty 8" floppy containers

by shumaker＠att.net

wow - unexpected response! steve: the large flat rate is 12x12x5.5 so 3 will just fit on the short dimension... Adrian: not sure if flat rate goes to Canada - let me check Erik: I'm in Boulder Creek so we could meet someplace for the rest... steve

15 years, 3 months

2
3
0 0

[OT] more Palm-hosted compilers

by vintagecoder＠aol.com

Here's an interesting freebie. I haven't tried it yet but it looks worth trying. Still actively developed, the guy is porting it to Android. http://www.ppcompiler.org/index.php?lng=en

15 years, 3 months

1
0
0 0

WARNING! Avoid Craters and Freighters

by tshoppa＠wmata.com

>>>They demolished the >>>units of drawers, and who knows how much type they lost as they moved the >>>stuff half way across country (I'm told that there was loose type in the >>>truck and on the ground when they unloaded). I know it's easy to critique the craters mistakes but there is a point To be learned and I think it's fundamental: High density objects that May normally OK at rest in their usual low density containers, do not travel well unless measures are taken to prevent them from rattling around. Type in drawers is one example, but a more relevant one for this group would be big iron transformers on aluminum or steel sheet metal chassis. That chassis may be Perfectly fine at rest, but keep in mind that its Very likely the transformer was originally shipped separate from the chassis when The unit was new, 30 or 40 or 50 years ago. Every single instance I've seen where a supposedly professional packer/crater Screwed up, it was a high density object that wasn't taken into account that did The damage. I was not so much angry to see the damage inflicted by the transformer Rattling around in the chassis, as I was sad. Tim.

15 years, 3 months

3
3
0 0

Vintage Portable Computing Suggestions?

by feldman.r＠comcast.net

>Message: 8 >Date: Wed, 18 May 2011 12:23:23 +0100 >From: Mark Wickens < mark at wickensonline.co.uk > >Subject: Vintage Portable Computing Suggestions? Get an HP LX 95, 100 or 200. The 200 is readily available, runs for weeks on 2AA batteries, and has MS-DOS 5 and a decent serial port. Screen is not backlit, but is fairly readable in daylight. Keyboard is calculator style, but has a numberic keypad in addition to the alpha keys and is not bad to use. Bob

15 years, 3 months

1
0
0 0

WARNING! Avoid Craters and Freighters

by healyzh＠aracnet.com

Thanks to past comments here, I recommended the Library use Craters and Freighters to move a hot-press machine, and two units full of drawers of type. Big mistake. They dismantled the machine, after being told not to, and who knows if the damage they did can be repaired. They demolished the units of drawers, and who knows how much type they lost as they moved the stuff half way across country (I'm told that there was loose type in the truck and on the ground when they unloaded). Sounds like the only things they didn't demolish were the bolts of fabric. I've not been able to get over to view the carnage, and I'm not looking forwards to it. I also found that if you're using them to move stuff like computer equipment you have to sign off that they're not responsible for any damage they do. WTF! Zane -- | Zane H. Healy | UNIX Systems Administrator | | healyzh at aracnet.com | OpenVMS Enthusiast | | | Photographer | +----------------------------------+----------------------------+ | My flickr Photostream | | http://www.flickr.com/photos/33848088 at N03/ |

15 years, 3 months

3
5
0 0

Going to Dayton?

by pat＠computer-refuge.org

I'm going to be going to Dayton again, with a pretty good mix of new, old, and non-computer stuff. I'll be in the same spaces as last year - FE3224/3225. Who else is going? -- Patrick Finnegan

15 years, 3 months

2
1
0 0

WARNING! Avoid Craters and Freighters

by spedraja＠ono.com

This is surrealistic. Sergio 2011/5/18 Zane H. Healy <healyzh at aracnet.com> > Thanks to past comments here, I recommended the Library use Craters and > Freighters to move a hot-press machine, and two units full of drawers of > type. Big mistake. They dismantled the machine, after being told not to, > and who knows if the damage they did can be repaired. They demolished the > units of drawers, and who knows how much type they lost as they moved the > stuff half way across country (I'm told that there was loose type in the > truck and on the ground when they unloaded). > > Sounds like the only things they didn't demolish were the bolts of fabric. > > I've not been able to get over to view the carnage, and I'm not looking > forwards to it. > > I also found that if you're using them to move stuff like computer > equipment you have to sign off that they're not responsible for any damage > they do. WTF! > > Zane > > > > -- > | Zane H. Healy | UNIX Systems Administrator | > | healyzh at aracnet.com | OpenVMS Enthusiast | > | | Photographer | > +----------------------------------+----------------------------+ > | My flickr Photostream | > | http://www.flickr.com/photos/33848088 at N03/ | >

15 years, 3 months

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Important Xref data question.

by geoffr＠zipcon.net

Hey! I?m sick and tired of trying to find a good Xref database for componants, and am considering making my own. What information do you consider critical in cross referencing a part?

15 years, 3 months

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