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

by dm561＠torfree.net

Date: Wed, 25 Mar 2009 13:53:09 -0400 From: Sridhar Ayengar <ploopster at gmail.com> Subject: Re: Free MCA stuff To: General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts <cctalk at classiccmp.org> Message-ID: <49CA6F85.6020807 at gmail.com> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=windows-1252; format=flowed Liam Proven wrote: > By the way, if this is not the place, do let me know. Peter Wendt's > MCA site seems to have gone & I don't know any other points for MCA > collectors or fans - but if anyone does, do please let me know! There are indeed MCA collectors on this list. Peace... Sridhar --------------------------------------- Also lots of them on Vintage-Computers: http://www.vintage-computer.com/vcforum/index.php http://marketplace.vintage-computer.com/

17 years, 3 months

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Beehive DM5 and Teletype Model 43 terminals

by legalize＠xmission.com

Got some manuals recently: - Technical User Manual for Beehive DM5 Family of Video Display Terminals Looks interesting, although I've never seen one in person. An interesting feature is that it provides an escape sequence to download 8085 binary code directly into the terminal (as ASCII hex digit sequences). I'm wondering what it would take to load a space invaders game into it :-). Has anyone ever seen a Beehive DM5 display terminal? - Service Manual for Teletype Model 43 teleprinter Parts list, schematics, troubleshooting procedures, mechanical assembly drawings, etc. Basically, this is everything you ever needed for the Model 43 Teletype. If someone needs this scanned in order to diagnose a problem, let me know. -- "The Direct3D Graphics Pipeline" -- DirectX 9 draft available for download <http://www.xmission.com/~legalize/book/download/index.html> Legalize Adulthood! <http://blogs.xmission.com/legalize/>

17 years, 3 months

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list of nordisk data books and floppy disks

by bert＠brothom.nl

>> NOTIS-BG User Guide >> NOTIS-RG New functions in the E-version > ... > > Hello Bert, are these still available? Yes, everything from that list is still available.

17 years, 3 months

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parts of Cypher 100 tape drive available

by henk.gooijen＠hotmail.com

Hi all, I have a non-working Cyper 100 tape drive which I am going to dump. Before doing that, I offer any part of the drive for the cost of shipping (from The Netherlands). You can see the drive in the picture in the second row, at the right-hand side. It's the tape drive on the left above the PDP-11/55. (On the right side is the TU45): www.pdp-11.nl/pdp11-55/pdp11-55startpage.html Shipping the complete drive is too expensive, but if you need the transformer or the (big) logic board, or whatever, I am willing to disassemble it for you. I hate to throw it away but I need the space for DEC stuff, so on request I will even take a few pictures, if requested. If I have not had a reply within a week, the complete drive will be "old iron". - Henk.

17 years, 3 months

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Zebra Systems Videos...

by alhartman＠yahoo.com

In emptying the warehouse of Zebra Systems, we uncovered the original Betamax tapes of these two shows. I posted them on YouTube for your enjoyment. We also uncovered a load of books, tapes, and some TS-1000/1500/ZX-81 Hardware. We even found about 5 TS-1500 Computers that we'll be offering on eBay. But for now, enjoy these: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GtDG5cWmH8s http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=awUonjY_jcs Al Hartman

17 years, 3 months

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Extracting a 8049 (ROM) program

by melamy＠earthlink.net

take a look at this... http://www.sbprojects.com/projects/8049spy/8049spy.htm best regards, Steve Thatcher -----Original Message----- >From: Alexandre Souza <alexandre-listas at e-secure.com.br> >Sent: May 5, 2009 5:02 PM >To: "General Discussion: On-Topic Posts Only" <cctech at classiccmp.org> >Subject: Extracting a 8049 (ROM) program > > > Dear friends, > > Anyone has a clue of how to extract a 8049 program? > > This is for a Kenwood TS-430 radio. It uses a 8049 for entire rig >control, but got one fried. It would help a lot if I could extract a program >from a known good TS-430 and program a 8749 with that. > > Thanks > Alexandre >

17 years, 3 months

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Keeping the joystick dream alive

by aliensrcooluk＠yahoo.co.uk

Hi, An article (and video) featuring Paul Qureshi about his hacking of a Dreamcast Arcade controller, an old Atari Joystick, and an old Pacman arcade motherboard. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/8024182.stm Regards, Andrew B aliensrcooluk at yahoo.co.uk

17 years, 3 months

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Bitsavers size in historical units

by shoppa＠trailing-edge.com

Christian Corti wrote: > On Sat, 2 May 2009, Tim Shoppa wrote: >> I just noticed that the total size of the Bitsavers archive seems >> to have surpassed 100 Gigabytes in the past few days. > No it hasn't ;-) The current total size of Bitsavers (everything including > bits and pdf) is 96 GB on a ZFS "partition". Maybe I did not make myself clear enough. When I wrote 100 Gigabytes, I meant 10**11 bytes, because as I see the archive with rsync there are 100461300404 bytes in it. Certainly when I made the other calculations I used 10**11 bytes. I did not mean 10**8 * 2**10 bytes. I did not mean 10**5 * 2**20 bytes. I did not mean 10**2 * 2**30 bytes. I suspect your 96 GB is 96 * 10**3 * 2**20 bytes, i.e. what you call a GB is actually what a SI-sensitive person would call a KiloMebibyte. Tim.

17 years, 3 months

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Xerox 820-II diskette formats

by snhirsch＠gmail.com

All, Thanks to the kindness of Richard Lynch, I now have the 8" drive cabinet to go with my newly-repaired Xerox 820-II. The drive mechanisms were non-functional, unfortunately, so I need to scrounge together something >from my junk, err parts collection. I cannot find anything definitive regarding compatibility. I thought these machines could use DSDD drives (one site mentioned Shugart SA851s), but that would be 1.2M of capacity and everything I've found on the web indicates perhaps 1/2 of that. Can anyone tell me what will work with the unit and what low-level format it writes? Steve --

17 years, 3 months

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home brew S-100 backplane project

by lynchaj＠yahoo.com

[snip] > > Hi! The S-100 backplane PCBs have arrived. Please contact me if > interested in getting one. Thanks and have a nice day! > > Andrew Lynch [AJL>] Hi! I updated the N8VEM wiki with some pictures of the S-100 PCB and construction so far. http://n8vem-sbc.pbworks.com/browse/#view=ViewFolder&param=S100 I've partially built one of the units for testing. I've gone as far as I can go but some parts are on back order. What is missing is the power connector (0.200" spaced headers male). My plan is to finish assembly and test the active terminator section before installing the S-100 connectors. Some people have been concerned about availability of the S-100 connectors but they are plentiful and relatively cheap. At Mouser you can get EDAC parts which should work for $5 each. You can also substitute wire wrap connectors which sometimes can be found on eBay for $3 each. I test installed but did not solder some wire wrap S-100 connectors and they should work just fine. Thanks and have a nice day! Andrew Lynch

17 years, 3 months

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Chips that changed the world

by chrism3667＠yahoo.com

stupid list doesn't even include the Tandy 2000 boot roms. Please don't waster my time w/useless links in the future Rich. K?

17 years, 3 months

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Transistors...

by ajp166＠bellatlantic.net

> >Subject: Re: Transistors... > From: "bfranchuk at jetnet.ab.ca" <bfranchuk at jetnet.ab.ca> > Date: Tue, 28 Apr 2009 18:07:20 -0600 > To: General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts <cctalk at classiccmp.org> > >Scanning wrote: >> A friggin piece of wire has a gain of 1 !!!! >umm .999999 :) >> / steven > Voltage gain, Current gain, or power gain? Common base transistor has current gain of .99999.. and voltage gain >1 as well as power gain. Wire is .9999999.. for all those. Allison

17 years, 3 months

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home brew S-100 backplane project

by lynchaj＠yahoo.com

[snip] > > Thanks and have a nice day! > > Andrew Lynch Great pictures! (Once I figured out that I had to use IE vs. Firefox.) I had forgotten how huge those connectors are. It has been a very long time since I worked on the unit that our personal computer club at Recognition Equipment put together... Charlie Carothers -- -----REPLY----- Hi! Thanks! My hope is that this S-100 backplane will be a successful project and make available a tool that S-100 hobbyists can use to develop new peripherals and/or test and repair the ones they already have. The ideal persons for this prototype phase would be those with experience in building home brew S-100 systems and can identify and resolve issues with the backplane, suggest improvements, etc. There is very little S-100 development going on anymore so there appears to be a dearth of tools available such as backplanes, prototyping boards, power supplies, etc. Some new parts are needed, I think, for even the most basic repairs without using the legacy systems. Thanks and have a nice day! Andrew Lynch

17 years, 3 months

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slightly OT: NMOS gate identification

by keithvz＠verizon.net

I'm attempting a painful task of extracting logic from an image of a NMOS die manufactured in 1984. Initially, I'm only going after a small portion of logic from the chip. I have a block diagram which appears to roughly match the chip layout, a pinout, and an overall description of the logic. I have very little clue what I'm actually doing, but I'm trying to fix that. :) I'd like to develop a library of images of NMOS logic cells -- and perhaps using pattern matching later, try to automate the process. Does anyone here happen to know this stuff well enough to say, "there's a NOR", "there's an OR", "that's an inverter." etc? Anyone know the types of books I should be looking at to get this type of information? NMOS Chip fabrication? Much of what I've found talks about the actual process, but they normally show side-views of layers. I'm looking down on the chip through a few layers and need stuff from that perspective. I have a couple example shots here http://www.techtravels.org/snippet.jpg http://www.techtravels.org/snippet2.jpg Keith P.S. Yes, I know, I'm crazy.

17 years, 3 months

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More broken Apples...

by roger.holmes＠microspot.co.uk

>> >> To answer the question of why you'd want easy to use software, that >> push >> really does come from the corporate world. My favorite example for >> this > > My entire post was about differentiating "easy to use" v "easy to > learn". > The corporate push is for "easy to learn", since they don't want a > training expense for the digital sweatshop. > Apple's marketing pushes "easy to learn" while calling it "easy to > use". > "Easy to use" and "easy to learn" may occasionally overlap, but are > NOT > the same for those who are capable of learning. > > Conflation of the two phrases is detrimental to the well being of our > species. I agree with the confusion being bad. I do not agree with the rest. Ease of learning is important if you only want to use a program a couple of times. Ideally you do not want to learn anything, you want to get a job done and move on and not have irrelevant facts hanging around in your head for ever-more. Where the Mac UI really used to score over DOS and old Windows programs is that you learned a technique which would be valid in every Mac program you would ever come across, and so was worth learning. It did not matter if the application was word processing, CAD, 3D, spreadsheet, drawing, painting, photo retouching, page layout, music composing, video editing, disk utility or whatever, the techniques were the same. I find it very hard to get users to read a manual these days. If facilities are not visible they do not find them. I know most, probably all, of the people on this list are not manual avoiders but we are a small minority, to write application software today which could only be used after reading a manual would almost be commercial suicide. Quite a few of my users remark that it is so rare to have a printed manual available these days (we mail it out to users who pay a small amount for it). We sell mainly via download and also have a physical product we sell through the Apple stores and elsewhere, but it has to be a standardised box to fit their shelves, and the box is too small to fit the printed manual in. For programs to be used long term I think that user configurability is the key. There is no point hiding facilities as it makes learning harder in the first place but once users become experienced they will know which facilities they use most and can assign them short cuts. The software designer should not make permanent choices on these, though an educated guess which can be overridden can save time. There does need to be a host of features but without impeding ease of learning, this can be very tricky and itself takes years of experience by the designer. Not that my opinion is worth any more than anyone else's. Roger Holmes.

17 years, 3 months

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ZN428E chip need pinout

by kendricksellen＠hotmail.com

and is it available craig

17 years, 3 months

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Bitsavers size in historical storage units

by shoppa＠trailing-edge.com

I just noticed that the total size of the Bitsavers archive seems to have surpassed 100 Gigabytes in the past few days. In historical storage units, that is 160000 miles, nearly one light second, of paper tape. That is 1.25 Billion punched cards. At about 143 cards to the inch, those punced cards would make a stack 137 miles high. Production of that many cards would require three major deciduous forests, which by my exchange table is also the same as one ship's peanut. That is 40000 RK05 carts. At about 10 pounds per cart, that's almost half a million pounds of RK05's. Great job, Al! Tim.

17 years, 3 months

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FS: HP keyboards

by feldman.r＠comcast.net

>Message: 12 >Date: Fri, 1 May 2009 12:56:29 -0400 >From: "Steve Robertson" < steerex at ccvn.com > >Subject: FS: HP keyboards >Yo, >I've got some original HP keyboards that need a new home. The models are as follows: <snip> >I'd like to get a couple of dollars ($10) each plus shipping if anyone is interested? >They are located in western North Carolina. >See ya, >Steve Robertson Since you want a couple of dollars each, the $10 must be in binary. :) Bob

17 years, 3 months

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Mac pointers and handles. Was: Chips that changed the world

by roger.holmes＠microspot.co.uk

> From: Ethan Dicks <ethan.dicks at gmail.com> > Subject: Re: Chips that changed the world >> Then of course there were those programmers that thought they were >> clever, using the top 8 bits to store flags in pointers, etc. ? >> Royally >> messed up when upgrading to 68020 and up. > > I remember reading a warning against such practices the original Mac > system manuals (the "hernia manuals"), but faced with 128K of RAM, > early programmers did not universally heed the warning. As I remember it, the warning was there because Apple had already used the top eight bits of pointers to hold flags for locked, resource, purge-able etc and if you wrote over them the OS crashed or made your application crash when it overwrote your flags. A big chunk of one the developer conference was going 32 bit clean, whereby developers had to use system routines to test and set the flags instead of system macros which had been compiled into our source code without us realising they were macros. For instance it was normal to get the status byte of a handle before locking it and instead of unlocking it, restore the status byte. As these had been done using macros they just went straight to the master pointer and acted on its top 8 bits. There were also system calls or macros for extracting the lower 24 bits which very few people had used as it worked without, but Apple wanted us to use them so they could redefine them to do nothing later. Saving a few bytes caused both Apple and its developers a huge amount of effort later on. Incidentally, you refer to the "hernia manuals". Do you mean the ring bounds ones? At least you could split them up, volume 5 was the problem one, it was a paperback about 2" x 8.5" x 11". Later there was a volume about OCE (IIRC, Open Connectivity Environment) which was as bad if not worse, but at least I never needed to read it, I think that technology died because the application programmers were intimidated by the size of the manual. Does anyone here happen to have a copy of the original loose leaf QuickDraw 3D manuals? Someone chucked out my copy at work thinking they had been supeceeded, but they were far better than the later documentation and still apply to the Quesa open source project I use in my work. I would be willing to pay for them to be copied or scanned, maybe they could go on BitSavers or be put in the official Quesa documentation at SourceForge. Roger Holmes.

17 years, 3 months

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More P112 boards coming

by dgriffi＠cs.csubak.edu

Enough people are asking about the P112 that I think I can justify taking preorders. I don't know exactly how much it'll cost for this run, but I'm fairly sure it'll be decently similar to how it was last time, which was US$165. I'll have the parts costs calculated out in a couple days. Then I'll know how many preorders will be needed to get things rolling. Stand by for more info. I anticipate three visible changes in the kit. 1) Depending on how many 32k chips I have left, I may go ahead and make 1M modules of the sort that Terry made up a while ago. 512k chips in DIP packages is very expensive, but for SMT packages, it's very cheap. The 1M module is nothing more than a daughterboard that plugs into the P112 and behaves exactly like a pair of DIPs. 2) Add two holes near the RTC crystal. I think it would be cleaner to use a loop of wire to hold the crystal down instead of a blob of epoxy. 3) Change the battery holder to something more compatible with add-on boards. -- 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?

17 years, 3 months

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machine room in a trailer?

by legalize＠xmission.com

Has anyone ever setup an appropriately controlled environment for a machine room in a mobile home type trailer? -- "The Direct3D Graphics Pipeline" -- DirectX 9 draft available for download <http://www.xmission.com/~legalize/book/download/index.html> Legalize Adulthood! <http://blogs.xmission.com/legalize/>

17 years, 3 months

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Apple II swift board

by shoppa＠trailing-edge.com

> I've never heard of the "Swift board for the Apple II". Googling > didn't turn up anything useful, although maybe I just didn't use the > right incantation. Try "SwyftCard". It's interesting to see how the concepts that were swimming around in Jef Raskin's head turned up and around into realizations in the 80's. Tim.

17 years, 3 months

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Looking for IBM PS/2 or PCjr Speech Adapter Tech Ref

by mbbrutman-cctalk＠brutman.com

The PCjr Speech Adapter sidecar is rumored to be identical to the PS/2 version, at least as far as the BIOS support on the adapter goes. I'd like to play around with mine, but the only programming notes I can find are in BASIC using some assembler hidden in some DATA statements. If I get really desperate I can extract the relevant code from the DATA statements, but I'm hoping somebody has the tech ref. Thanks, Mike

17 years, 3 months

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Bitsavers size in historical storage units

by quapla＠xs4all.nl

> I just noticed that the total size of the Bitsavers archive seems > to have surpassed 100 Gigabytes in the past few days. > > In historical storage units, that is 160000 miles, nearly one light > second, of paper tape. Hmm, how big/high would the pile of chad be? > > That is 1.25 Billion punched cards. At about 143 cards to the inch, > those punced cards would make a stack 137 miles high. Production of that > many cards would require three major deciduous forests, which by my > exchange > table is also the same as one ship's peanut. > > That is 40000 RK05 carts. At about 10 pounds per cart, that's almost half > a million pounds of RK05's. > > Great job, Al! > > Tim. > -- Certified : VCP 3.x, SCSI 3.x SCSA S10, SCNA S10

17 years, 3 months

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head transformer for Sony disk drive

by ard＠p850ug1.demon.co.uk

This is a very long shot (but it's on topic), so here goes. I have some of those Sony full-height single-sided (single head) 600rpm 3.5" floppy drives -- the ones that are used in the HP9121, HP9133V, early Apricot PCs, etc. Now, on the main board of these drives is a little ferrite-cored transformer. This is the only drive I've ever worked on that doesn't have a centre-tapped read-write head, and this transformer frovides a balanced signal into the read amplifier chain. It's surrounded by transistors that are involved in the read/write switching (this is not done with diodes as is conventional). Unfortunately, I've mechanically damaged (read 'ripped it off the PCB') this trnasformer in one drive of one of my HP9121s (long story...). So I need to do somehtign about it. I can't find a 'spare' single-head drive in my junk box, and I can't get a double-head one to work in the 9121 (this may be because the double-head drive I found has a fault, I've not seriously tested it). I can't use parts of the double head drive to repair the single-head one, the double head drive is conventional with a centre-tapped head, diode switching and no transformer. So what I am looking for is : A new transformer (no chance!). A working or defective-somwehre-else logic PCB (it's labelled 'FC-6' in the silk-screen). No I am not going to try to desolder the transformer >from it (the thing is _very_ fragile), but I could, say, take the microcontroller off my existing PCB if necessary Such a floppy drive with a fault other than in the transformer. Winding details (yes, I am prepared to have go at making one...) And while I'm on the subject, did anyone ever do serious repairs to such drives and have the special tools (compliance-testing weight, alighment pinion driver, etc). I have a load of quesitons on those... -tony

17 years, 4 months

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free/pick-up: Origin 2000 sgi 2400, Tilburg, The Netherlands

by jason＠havnet.net

Ahh but Jules, We know something you dont know !! ... ner ner ... Watch this space for some good news regarding the museum (apart from addition of an SGI Origin 2000 obviously) We had a great time and the Gadget Show Live a few weeks ago See : http://www.computinghistory.org.uk/news/4058/Gadget-Show-Live-2009-Awesome/ which has helped gain us some much needed support ... Anyway, does anyone know where I can get signed drivers for Windows Vista that support the Origin 2000? :-) Jason Curator & Chief Geek The Centre for Computing History -----Original Message----- From: jules.richardson99 at gmail.com Sent: Wed, 29 Apr 2009 16:42:05 -0500 To: cctalk at classiccmp.org Subject: Re: free/pick-up: Origin 2000 sgi 2400, Tilburg, The Netherlands Joost van de Griek wrote: > On Apr 29, 2009, at 20:29, Joost van Baal wrote: > >> The machine will be rescued by the Centre for Computing History >> (www.computinghistory.org.uk) near Cambridge, UK. (It might even get >> hooked up >> on the internet, within a couple of months.) Thanks locutus for help in >> mediating. See http://abramowitz.uvt.nl/sgi.txt for latest status. Knowing that museum, I'm wondering where they're going to put it ;-) (I also believe it'll be well looked after, which is good news) cheers Jules

17 years, 4 months

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home brew S-100 backplane project

by lynchaj＠yahoo.com

home brew S-100 backplane project Doug Jackson doug at stillhq.com Hi Andrew, Could you please put me down for one. I am in Australia, so that has to be factored into the postage. thanks Doug -----REPLY----- Hi! Thanks Doug! I will do that. Shipping overseas would be $5 per PCB. Please contact me offlist so we can discuss further. Two of the eight PCBs available for the initial round of testing are already claimed. I will post pictures of the PCBs and my build progress on the wiki. Thanks and have a nice day! Andrew Lynch

17 years, 4 months

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home brew S-100 backplane project

by lynchaj＠yahoo.com

> -----Original Message----- > From: Andrew Lynch [mailto:lynchaj at yahoo.com] > Sent: Sunday, April 19, 2009 2:29 PM > To: 'cctalk at classiccmp.org' > Subject: RE: home brew S-100 backplane project > > > > > -----Original Message----- > > From: Andrew Lynch [mailto:lynchaj at yahoo.com] > > Sent: Friday, April 17, 2009 10:29 AM > > To: 'cctalk at classiccmp.org' > > Subject: home brew S-100 backplane project > > > > Hi!? I've been working on a home brew S-100 backplane as a side project > [snip] > > Hi! The experimental prototype S-100 backplanes will be available in > about 3 weeks. They will cost $32 each plus shipping which should be $2 > in the US and $5 overseas. All the parts are common and available from > the usual suppliers such as Mouser, Digikey, etc. > > Thanks and have a nice day! > > Andrew Lynch [AJL>] Hi! The S-100 backplane PCBs have arrived. Please contact me if interested in getting one. Thanks and have a nice day! Andrew Lynch

17 years, 4 months

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Found a Apple IIGS UPgrade

by chris89＠wowway.com

HEY, I HAVE AN A2S6001 AND LOOKIN TO SELL IT.

17 years, 4 months

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FS: HP keyboards

by steerex＠ccvn.com

Yo, I've got some original HP keyboards that need a new home. The models are as follows: 46011A (qty 2) 46010A C1400A All of them are in excellent cosmetic condition but, the operational condition is unknown. I've had them for many years and they were all working when they were last connected to working system(s). IIRC, they work with HP dumb terminals and are generally not interchangable. You'd have to do some searching to find out if they would work in your situation.. I'd like to get a couple of dollars ($10) each plus shipping if anyone is interested? They are located in western North Carolina. See ya, Steve Robertson steerex [at] ccvn [dot] com

17 years, 4 months

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MSV11-J

by rodsmallwood＠btconnect.com

Hi Is there anybody out there who has or knows where I can get a MSV11-J (M8637-E(E OR F)) ? I may be able to get my pdp11/94 running as an 11/84 if I can get a PMI card. Rod Smallwood

17 years, 4 months

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pdp11/15 find

by bob＠theadamsons.co.uk

As an unexpected freebie while I was picking up another pdp8 I've acquired a small pdp11/15. I'm really an 8-man so this is a bit of a foreigner but it seemed a shame to let it be thrown away. It seems to be a fairly small system in a single box but beautifully clean for a change ;o). The configuration sheet shows KC11, KF11-A, DL11, KG11-A, MM11-F, MM11-f, DD11-A and H720F which seems to reflect the contents OK. I've started browsing around but I'd welcome anyone giving me a rundown on what these modules build up to. I was quite interested to see the construction method with the cards upside-down in the backplane and a snazzy rotatable rack mount for servicing - unusual (to me at least). Bob

17 years, 4 months

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Anyone willing to read some Amstrad/Amsoft 3" floppies?

by sethm＠loomcom.com

Hi folks, My aunt just emailed me to let me know she's got a friend with some old floppies that she needs to get files off of. They're Amsoft CF2 3" floppies, unfortunately something I've never had in my collection, so I can't really help. If anyone on the list has easy access to an Amstrad or ZX Spectrum system with a CF2 drive and would be willing to help (possibly for a fee, I have no idea whether/what they'd be willing to pay), please contact me off list, and I'll try to get you connected! Thanks, -Seth

17 years, 4 months

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Mystery Core

by mloewen＠cpumagic.scol.pa.us

Can anyone identify these boards? http://sturgeon.css.psu.edu/~mloewen/DSC01381.JPG http://sturgeon.css.psu.edu/~mloewen/DSC01382.JPG http://sturgeon.css.psu.edu/~mloewen/DSC01463.JPG They're stamped IBM, with etched numbers LBJ5360, LBJ5403 and LKJ12470. The owner says they were given to him in 1978, and were supposedly from North Bay, Ontario. Mike Loewen mloewen at cpumagic.scol.pa.us Old Technology http://sturgeon.css.psu.edu/~mloewen/Oldtech/

17 years, 4 months

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altair 8800b style switches

by aek＠bitsavers.org

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=250414411275 Looks like he has several lots. I'm pretty sure these are the ones used on the 8800B front panel.

17 years, 4 months

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More Apple II fun - 4116's

by tshoppa＠wmata.com

Mike asks: > My real question is - 9 faulty out of 48, spread across both machines, > seems very high. Are 4116s that unreliable? Or perhaps they're quite > sensitive to power supply problems? It isn't unusual to find that many years after manufacture, that a particular batch of DRAM chips aren't reliable anymore. DEC and other memory board makers used to keep internal lists of known good batches and known bad batches of chips, and even kept track of what brand/batch are shipped with each memory board for long-term reliability tracking. But it seems more likely that something marginal in the timing of the motherboards or the power supply or something else is causing your observed flakiness. I don't really understand what you mean about the Apple II's "wouldn't boot", though. They do not do an extensive (or any!) power-on memory test but maybe loading DOS 3.3 is hitting RAM hard enough at power on that it's turning somethng else up. As others have noted, just going into BASIC at power-up doesn't hit memory too hard, and the quickie tests of going into hi-res graphics and looking for flakiness on the screen is useful if not definitive. Tim.

17 years, 4 months

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DEC VT05 with OS/8 -- System handler?

by hachti＠hachti.de

Hi, I just try to get a VT05 working with my PDP-8/e. Having a tuned KL8E interface at 2400 baud. I need fill characters.... Found a KL8E.PA in the OS/8 V3D sources. It is a two page handler and works. But how do I get my system to use it as terminal handler? Or is there another one? Best wishes, Philipp :-) -- http://www.hachti.de

17 years, 4 months

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More broken Apples...

by roger.holmes＠microspot.co.uk

First sorry for the delayed response. Back when the Apple ][ Europlus were being sold new, and when Microspot was actively selling them, one of my favourite ways of finding RAM problems, was to type HGR2<return> and watch the screen. It switched to displaying a large chunk of the second 16k bank as pure raster graphics and then sets it all to black (zero). It only displays seven bits of each byte on a mono monitor but any dead chips in those seven shows up as recurring white (or randomly flashing) vertical lines. If there is a fault in the first bank then the machine probably will not start up, but if it does, typing HGR<return> displays the first bank similarly but with four(?) lines of text at the bottom. You can switch the RAM around to test bank 3 and the eighth bit of each byte. By using the Basic commands (moveto and lineto?) you can find out which bit has failed, or by switching RAM chips. On 26 Apr 2009, at 18:00, cctalk-request at classiccmp.org wrote: > > Message: 3 > Date: Sun, 26 Apr 2009 23:38:28 +1200 > From: Mike van Bokhoven <mike at fenz.net> > Subject: More broken Apples... > To: General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts > <cctalk at classiccmp.org> > Message-ID: <49F447B4.1000708 at fenz.net> > Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed > > Well, I dragged those Apple IIs out of storage, and spent this evening > poking at them, with some success. Thought I'd post my results here, > and > hope that someone has some suggestions for me. > > There are three machines in total; one an Apple II Europlus, the other > two generic II+ clones. > > The first thing I did was run them up - all dead, garbage on the > screen. > Same as last time I looked at them. Step 2 - pull all the cards and > try > again. After that, one of the clones ran up fine; turns out that the > 'language card' (16k memory expansion) was killing it. Good stuff - > one > running Apple II, even if it's not an original. > > Unfortunately, the other two weren't quite so cooperative. I decided > to > look at the other clone first, as its behaviour was pretty > interesting. > The screen was entirely full of apostrophes to begin with, but > randomly, > blocks of them would change to lower case 'p's, and back, flickering > very quickly. It responded to a reset by changing the pattern of ps, > though they tended to appear in the same place. I found the ASCII > values > interesting: > > ' = 0x60 = 0110 0000 > p = 0x70 = 0111 0000 > > So, on reset, perhaps it's clearing half the bits per byte, and the > other four have a problem. Reseting the machine tended to lead to > random > behaviour for a bit, such as random display changes, and speaker > clicks. > At one point, the display switched to high-res mode, and I could see > that a large amount of memory had the same sort of pattern through it, > and was flickering the same way text was; I guess the entire memory > space is like that. Perhaps bits 5 and 6 are permanently stuck. > > I checked the CPU's behaviour; on reset, the address and data lines > would run for at least a short time, so I'm guessing the CPU is likely > to be OK. Often they would continue to run, at which time I'd see the > flickering. Other times, activity would stop, and the flickering would > also stop, usually leaving a screen full of 's. > > So, my next step is to track down a schematic for the machine, and see > what I can figure out. I'm guessing I should look first at anything > that > deals with the high four bits of memory. Thoughts, suggestions and > intuitive guesses welcome!

17 years, 4 months

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machine room in a trailer?

by technobug＠comcast.net

On Wed, 29 Apr 2009 15:33:43 -0600, Richard <legalize at xmission.com> wrote: > Reasonable idea. I've seen surplus environment controlled trailers > for sale on govliquidation. This is a great way of going if you are willing to re-rack your equipment. The electronics trailers are specially designed to channel cooling to the racks - some having zone controls. Generally, there is also sufficient power distribution to handle the equipment you described. A number of years ago I outfitted a thirty-foot surplus equipment trailer with a Modcomp II, data recorders, printer, and data acquisition equipment for an atmospheric optical transfer function experiment. The trailer I came up with had a row of racks that covered one side leaving the other for a console and printer and room for everyone involved to escape the elements. We operated out of Tucson, Arizona with sites at Cape Canaveral in the summer, Lake Tahoe in the winter, and Bolder, Colorado in the summer. About 10,000 miles of travel in all with no equipment failures! There were two zones of cooling: one for the equipment in the bays and the other for the personnel space. There was over 100 Amps available in the racks with 3-phase 220/110V wiring. Another avenue to investigate are surplus equipment shelters. These shelters have environmental systems, racks, and power distribution. You hire a crane/big fork lift and a flatbed to move the beasts and generally will go for less than the trailers. CRC

17 years, 4 months

2
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Transistors...

by ajp166＠bellatlantic.net

> >Subject: Re: Transistors... > From: Fred Cisin <cisin at xenosoft.com> > Date: Wed, 29 Apr 2009 11:50:48 -0700 (PDT) > To: "General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts" <cctalk at classiccmp.org> > >On Tue, 28 Apr 2009, Allison wrote: >> Common base transistor has current gain of .99999.. and voltage gain >1 as >> well as power gain. Wire is .9999999.. for all those. > >Is common wire really THAT close (.9999999..) to 1.0? >I always assumed that wire losses were more than that. >Or does that require superconductors? Not quite but compared to many other things unless second order effects are important it's practical to use 1. Mostly as what you put in is what out get out for small systems at low curents and moderatly low frequencies. At grid tranmission line currents and distances even that .000001 part is significant. At RF, noticable at VHF and higher then the resistivity of the surface is more important than bulk due to skin effect. Thats a whole nother can of worms. Allison

17 years, 4 months

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free/pick-up: Origin 2000 sgi 2400, Tilburg, The Netherlands

by gyorpb＠gmail.com

On Apr 29, 2009, at 20:29, Joost van Baal wrote: > The machine will be rescued by the Centre for Computing History > (www.computinghistory.org.uk) near Cambridge, UK. (It might even > get hooked up > on the internet, within a couple of months.) Thanks locutus for > help in > mediating. See http://abramowitz.uvt.nl/sgi.txt for latest status. Joost asked me to communicate this to all of you, so here it is. .tsooJ

17 years, 4 months

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NRI 832 right link

by rborsuk＠colourfull.com

Hi All, I resent the message with an adjusted link. Never got through though. Here it is http://homepage.mac.com/irisworld/nri_832_computer.pdf Rob

17 years, 4 months

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Schematic for NRI 832

by rborsuk＠colourfull.com

Hi All, Does anyone have a schematic for the NRI 832 computer? (scan of adv at http://homepage.mac.com/irisworld/ebay_2009/ads_sinclair_watch.jpg) Thanks Rob Rob Borsuk email: rborsuk at colourfull.com Colourfull Creations Web: http://www.colourfull.com

17 years, 4 months

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HP 2564B "line printer" available in UK

by hp-fix＠xs4all.nl

It's for free or cost of shipping and living in Aberdeen, so if any one wants it, contact : <mailto:chas at cmac-sys.co.uk> chas at cmac-sys.co.uk -Rik

17 years, 4 months

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free/pick-up: Origin 2000 sgi 2400, Tilburg, The Netherlands

by gyorpb＠gmail.com

Someone with more room to spare than I have, please rescue this machine! Begin forwarded message: > Resent-From: debian-mips at lists.debian.org > From: Joost van Baal <joostvb+sgi at uvt.nl> > Date: April 28, 2009 15:26:14 GMT+02:00 > To: debian-mips at lists.debian.org > Subject: free/pick-up: Origin 2000 sgi 2400, Tilburg, The Netherlands > > > Hi, > > Tilburg University in the Netherlands wants to get rid of an Origin > 2000 sgi > 2400. It consists of 3 cabinets of about 2 meters high; width about > 22 inch. > Out of the 4 panels present, 3 are still fully functional. Is has > 48 GB RAM > and 24 CPU's running at 200 MHz. It's free for anybody willing to > arrange > transportation. Please reply to joostvb+sgi at uvt.nl if you're > interested (I am > not subscribed to this list). If you plan to use the machine for > Free Software > work, you'll get a priority handling :) > > Bye, > > Joost .tsooJ -- I got kicked out of Barnes & Noble once for moving all the bibles into the fiction section -- Joost van de Griek <http://www.jvdg.net/>

17 years, 4 months

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Ciarcia's Circuit Cellar

by ajp166＠bellatlantic.net

> >Subject: RE: Ciarcia's Circuit Cellar > From: "Andrew Lynch" <lynchaj at yahoo.com> > Date: Sat, 25 Apr 2009 14:20:28 -0400 > To: <cctalk at classiccmp.org> > >We'll see what Steve has to say about it. I think he has those books for >sale, doesn't he? > >I used to have my secretary xerox his columns (no, I didn't cut out of my >Byte magazines, though that collection has long since been deep-sixed) but I >don't know whether I still have those copies - probably "somewhere" but I'll >be damned if I know where that "somewhere" is. > >I've built a number of Steve's projects. In my workshop a few days ago I saw >his EEG project waiting to be revived. > >But there is so much to do.... > >Vern Wright > > > >-----REPLY----- > >Hi! Steve and Sean generously released BYOZ80C to allow online publishing. >I very much enjoyed his book and commend him for both writing it in the >first place and also releasing it so as to help keep the home brew computing >tradition alive. > >http://www.scribd.com/doc/13388965/Build-Your-Own-Z80-Computer > >You can see the full description of the release statement on the first page. > >Thanks and have a nice day! > >Andrew Lynch Also a most useless site. Despite all claims of down loadable document it plain doesnt do it. Sites like this have a habit of disappearing and taking the content with it. Far too much stuff has gone lost over the years. Allison

17 years, 4 months

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Apollo Domain 3000 on ebay

by legalize＠xmission.com

Seems reasonably priced at $99.99 item # 370191254420 I think this is a 680x0 based Apollo, right? -- "The Direct3D Graphics Pipeline" -- DirectX 9 draft available for download <http://www.xmission.com/~legalize/book/download/index.html> Legalize Adulthood! <http://blogs.xmission.com/legalize/>

17 years, 4 months

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Transistors...

by mtapley＠swri.edu

At 12:00 -0500 4/28/09, Jonas wrote: >Two diodes connected back to back will never be anything but two diodes >connected back to back. No current gain *at all*. Is 1.0 (as in, output current = base current times 1.0) a "gain"? I suppose it's a legitimate value of hfe (I grant, it's not a useful value). -- - 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.

17 years, 4 months

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What to use a 4.5" B&W TV for?

by thrashbarg＠kaput.homeunix.org

Hi, Throw some ideas at me. I've got an old 4.5" B&W portable television which I can use for something fun, such as a portable Pong game, portable TRS-80, or whatever. What would you like seen done with it? I'm all ears. Alexis.

17 years, 4 months

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Want list(s)

by brianlanning＠gmail.com

It looks like my this post from a few days ago vanished, so I'm sending it again. My apologies if you get it twice. I visited Mike Lee today and brought home an Apple iie and iigs. (thanks mike) He and I were talking about lists of wanted hardware. I think it might be useful for people to send around a list once a month or some other interval listing what we're after and maybe what we have to trade. Maybe we can bring it to the meeting later this month. (is that still on?) So I guess I'll start. :-) Here's what I'm willing to trade: A working amiga 2000 with a hard drive card and two floppy drives. I can include a mouse, but not a keyboard. I also have a Commodore 128D. Here's what I'm after: Commodore 64c with a 1541c, 1541-2, or 1571 A few dead (or alive) 1571s that I can hack Amiga 500 Working Amiga 600 keyboard Amiga 1200, dead ok. CPU upgrades for the 2000 (040+) or any for the 1200 Really, any amiga peripheral or upgrade A board that would allow some sort of hard drive on the iie and iigs, so if you have something like a vulcan or scsi controller lying around... :-) Internal scsi devices that aren't fixed disks or tape drives, so things like zip or jaz drives, etc. An NEC Multisync 3D monitor A clean IBM 5150 case I can hack A clean IBM 5170 case I can hack 3.5" and 5.25" double density floppies I can feed to the catweasel One of those 200-400 disk dvd changers A smallish audio mixing board

17 years, 4 months

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Possible Corvus IBM XT Mirror

by lynchaj＠yahoo.com

Here's one that sold on eBay recently: http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=160322759943 Look familiar? --Chuck -----REPLY----- Hi! Thanks Chuck! Yes, the PCB pictured is almost exactly the same as mine. Mystery Solved! Thanks! Have a nice day! Andrew Lynch

17 years, 4 months

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Circuits good enough to eat

by tpeters＠mixcom.com

I'd love this just for the url. But it's better than that. Edible circuits! Combining two of my best things. http://www.evilmadscientist.com/article.php/circuitsnacks ----- 454. [Humor] I played a blank tape on full volume. The mime who lived next door complained. So I shot him with a gun with a silencer. --Steven Wright --... ...-- -.. . -. ----. --.- --.- -... tpeters at nospam.mixcom.com (remove "nospam") N9QQB (amateur radio) "HEY YOU" (loud shouting) WEB: http://www.mixweb.com/tpeters 43? 7' 17.2" N by 88? 6' 28.9" W, Elevation 815', Grid Square EN53wc WAN/LAN/Telcom Analyst, Tech Writer, MCP, CCNA, Registered Linux User 385531

17 years, 4 months

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Ciarcia's Circuit Cellar

by vern4wright＠yahoo.com

OR, It IS possible, looking at the release statement (inserted below) in the .pdf, that scribdb and Andrew Lynch and Bill Bradford may have an interest in where the book is hosted. Dunno. Vern Wright "A Note about this book and its free availability online Readers are encouraged to download this book of design guidelines and application notes from Steve Ciarcia, founder and editorial director of Circuit Cellar magazine. Although the original title first appeared in 1981, pre-dating Circuit Cellar ?the magazine,? I still get a number of purchase requests each year from electronics enthusiasts. Some are just interested in Steve?s brand of designing and ability to overcome obstacles, while others still find themselves tweaking projects that use parts described in Steve?s projects. Please note: The original work was only available as a hard copy. Thanks to Andrew Lynch and Bill Bradford for their work in creating the PDF and getting permission from copyright holder Steve Ciarcia to release it. Scanning done by Bill Bradford. You will be pleased to know that the same style of embedded computing articles can be found each month through Circuit Cellar magazine. Please visit www.circuitcellar.com to learn about this monthly resource for professional designers and electronics enthusiasts alike. Please enjoy ?Build Your Own Z80 Computer? as a great blast from the past. Its style is the foundation on which Circuit Cellar magazine was built and continues to grow. I look forward to seeing you become a part of the ongoing Circuit Cellar success story. Sincerely, Sean Donnelly, Publisher ? Circuit Cellar circuitcellar at circuitcellar.com"

17 years, 4 months

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SGI Origin 2000 at the Univerity of Tilburg.

by locutus＠puscii.nl

First thing, this is not my machine, but someone i know who asked me to post this. -- Tilburg University in the Netherlands wants to get rid of an Origin 2000 sgi 2400. It consists of 3 cabinets of about 2 meters high; width about 22 inch. Out of the 4 panels present, 3 are still fully functional. Is has 48 GB RAM and 24 CPU's running at 200 MHz. It's free for anybody willing to arrange transportation. Please reply to joostvb+sgi at uvt.nl if you're interested. If you plan to use the machine for Free Software work, you'll get a priority handling :) Here's a picture of what these things look like: http://db313.ath.cx/~sp/auctions/SGI-O2000_main_large.jpg And here's a description of such a machine: http://cgi.ebay.com/Silicon-Graphics-SGI-Origin-2000-Full-Rack-Server-Runs!… 3 racks, each of them is _probably_ : Width Height Depth Weight 71 cm 185 cm 102 cm 317 kg (28 inches) (73 inches) (40 inches) (700 lb) The racks have once been lifted by 6 strong man. --Joost van Baal, 2009-04-28 --------------- I think it allmost falls within the 10 year rule ;-) (origin's started shipping in what, 97?)

17 years, 4 months

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Looking for an old 1U/2U server

by dzubint＠vcn.bc.ca

on Tue Apr 28 13:36:34 CDT 2009 silvercreekvalley wrote: ... > server - ie something around 400MHz clock speed. Anyone > have anything available in the UK that they would like > to get rid of? Its for testing performance on low > end systems. Wow ... 400MHz ... I'm not sure any of my classic computers are that fast. I have lots of 75-80MHz ones and a few 750KHz ones, but sorry nothing above 100MHz :-)

17 years, 4 months

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Looking for an old 1U/2U server

by silvercreekvalley＠yahoo.com

I could do with an older PC compatible rack mountable server - ie something around 400MHz clock speed. Anyone have anything available in the UK that they would like to get rid of? Its for testing performance on low end systems. Ian.

17 years, 4 months

2
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Ciarcia's Circuit Cellar

by ajp166＠bellatlantic.net

> >Subject: Re: Ciarcia's Circuit Cellar > From: Ethan Dicks <ethan.dicks at gmail.com> > Date: Sun, 26 Apr 2009 11:07:38 -0400 > To: "General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts" <cctalk at classiccmp.org> > >On Sat, Apr 25, 2009 at 4:44 PM, Allison <ajp166 at bellatlantic.net> wrote: >>>Hi! ?Steve and Sean generously released BYOZ80C to allow online publishing. >>>I very much enjoyed his book and commend him for both writing it in the >>>first place and also releasing it so as to help keep the home brew computing >>>tradition alive. >>> >>>http://www.scribd.com/doc/13388965/Build-Your-Own-Z80-Computer >> >> Also a most useless site. ?Despite all claims of down loadable document >> it plain doesnt do it. > >I had no problem with a Mac and Firefox getting a PDF to download. I went to the mac using safari and that worked. Firfox on the NT4 box, Ubuntu8.04 and even Ubuntu 9.04 however clicking the down load button was a do nothing from Firefox. >> Sites like this have a habit of disappearing and >> taking the content with it. Far too much stuff has gone lost over the >> years. > >Too true. I have a massive abount of stuff I've downloaded form locations like that (also oak.oakland, Simtel and ..) and when I send people to the location it's not there anymore so it's fortunate I have the downloaded image. The nastiest things is a the cases where Geocities was consumed and material lost and later AOL hometown. the best example si try to find P2DOS, used to be on simtel and Oakland to name a few now mostly dead links or not at all. Allison

17 years, 4 months

4
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What kind of IC is this

by lehmann＠ans-netz.de

Hi, My Zilog S8000 Winchester Controller board carries 2 ceramic DIL16 packaged chips labeled (beside a logo) just with the two lines of text. The chip looks like this (tried to ASCII-art the logo in front of the text) +----------------------------------------+ | +-------+ | | |----- | | \ | > ----| 6306-1J | / |----- | 8147 | | | > ----| | | +-------+ | +----------------------------------------+ I guess the 2nd line means: 81 == 1981 47 == calendar week 47 So I wonder what 6306-1J stands for? I've not analyzed the circuit to see if it is a PROM or something like that. It is put in a socket so I guess it must be something (onetime?) programmable... Maybe you can tell... -- Oliver Lehmann http://www.pofo.de/ http://wishlist.ans-netz.de/

17 years, 4 months

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cctech Digest, Vol 68, Issue 45

by jonas＠otter.se

On 4/26/2009, ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk (Tony Duell) wrote: > >Message: 1 >Date: Sat, 25 Apr 2009 19:27:20 +0100 (BST) >From: ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk (Tony Duell) >Subject: Re: Transistors... >To: cctalk at classiccmp.org >Message-ID: <m1Lxmay-000J3RC at p850ug1> >Content-Type: text/plain > >> > If you wire two diodes in series (PN->NP), it isn't the same as a >> > transistor (PNP), at all. >> >> It is. A PNP is just the same thing as a PN-+-NP. > >In one sense it is, but I can assure you that if you connect 2 diodes >together in this way (no matter what sort of diodes you use), you will >not get a transistor. The resulting circuit will not show any current gain. > >IIRC, what you need is a sufficiently thin base region (the 'N' in the >example you gave) that electron-hole recombination does not occur. You >can't join 2 n-type pieces with a bit of wire and get this. > >> possible space wise anyway, not even considering characteristics. But >> that don't change the fact that you get a working transistor with just >> two diodes. > Excuse the bluntness, but that is utter and complete bollocks. You do *not* get a transistor with two diodes. Tony's comment above is correct, for a transistor to work, the base needs to be thin enough that electron-hole recombination does not occur (to any significant degree at least). Two diodes connected back to back will never be anything but two diodes connected back to back. No current gain *at all*. >I am not convinces. If you have got this to work, can you please tell me >what sort of diodes you used, and I will try to recreate it (if I see it >working on my bench, I'll be convinced!) > >-tony > /Jonas

17 years, 4 months

1
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Possible Corvus IBM XT Mirror?

by lynchaj＠yahoo.com

Hi! I recently obtained a "mystery" IBM PC board. It has a Z80 CPU, two CTCs, 8K of SRAM, and a bunch of 74LS logic. I *suspect* this board is one of those VCR backup boards from the early 1980's. The only text on the board is described by its previous owner on Vintage-Computer.com forums: QUOTE i don't think the EGA cards used a Z80bCPU chip or a 12mhz crystal... i did find some numbers on the card... Audio Visual Laboratories, Inc. 27122 R0I M14A 94V0 Serial Number 1518 i know i looks like an EGA card, but it doesn't even try to initialize a monitor on the rca jacks or the 9-pin port... UNQUOTE The ROM (AM27S29PC, 512x8 bipolar PROM) has a label that says "GENESIS 7-11-84" I did some research on Audio Visual Laboratories and apparently they are related to the old Eagle computer people. According to Wikipedia, Eagle had a relationship with Corvus for hard drives and backup so I am thinking this board *may* be a Corvus XT Mirror board relabeled by AVL. That is a guess though. http://n8vem-sbc.pbwiki.com/browse/#view=ViewFolder <http://n8vem-sbc.pbwiki.com/browse/#view=ViewFolder&param=AVL> &param=AVL Does anyone recognize this board? Does anyone have software and/or documentation for the Corvus IBM XT Mirror? I already checked bitsavers.org and Howard's archive. They mention the existence of an "IBM XT Mirror" board but almost no other information on it. Any help is much appreciated. Thanks in advance. Have a nice day! Andrew Lynch

17 years, 4 months

3
3
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Electro-mechanical device lubricants

by chd_1＠nktelco.net

I have been gathering information on how to clean and properly lubricate a DEC PC05 and an ASR 33. The teletype manual calls out KS-7470 oil and KS-7471 grease. Googling, I find that there are a great number of lubricants with KS numbers. What is the origin of this number? It seems like it is some kind of directory of lubricants, but I can't find a listing. I found a cross for KS-7471 in an old AT&T purchasing document, but none for KS-7470. -chuck

17 years, 4 months

2
1
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Brazilian mix-ups

by alhartman＠yahoo.com

I wouldn't call the TK-81 a "mix-up". Google the Timex/Sinclair 1500. Al ----- Original Message ---- From: "Alexandre Souza" <alexandre-listas at e-secure.com.br> Since I wrote about the brazilian apples, I'll write a bit about the brazilian mix-up clones. A "mix-up" is a clone with a whole different cabinet, copied from another computer. Here we go: TK85 (microdigital) - ZX81 with 16K and some circuit enhancements, Cabinet from Sinclair Spectrum

17 years, 4 months

1
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The General Approach to Computing - A Ramble

by bqt＠softjar.se

Eric J Korpela <korpela at ssl.berkeley.edu> wrote: > On Thu, Apr 23, 2009 at 1:04 PM, Warren Wolfe <lists at databasics.us> wrote: >> > That many >> > orders of magnitude of complexity have come and gone since the IMSAI days >> > are good, in terms of what one's money will buy today, but bad in that one >> > is much less likely to be able to fix one's own equipment to component >> > level. It's not as satisfying to say "Hmmm. You need a new video card" as >> > to hold up the offending transistor and cackle. Or is that just me? > > Maybe I'm seeing this from a different angle... I don't see a lot of > difference besides the complexity of the devices. A transistor is a > device that you buy because you can't make one yourself without > spending way too much money. A video card is essentially the same > thing. You can make one yourself. Some day we will be forced to in > order to keep our machines running. The main difference is that the > theory of operation of a transistor can be expressed in a 1 page > document. The theory of operation of a video card is a small book > that requires references to other books. And herein is a big problem. People today don't even know what a transistor is. The difference compared to a video card is huge, but you need to know all this to understand that. Yes, you can build your own transistor. It isn't difficult, and it isn't expensive (well, compared to a transistor I guess it might be, but we're still talking close to no money). All it requires is two diodes. That's all it is, really. A transistor (and now I'm just talking about bipolar transistors, since it's the easiest, and they are very common) is extremely simply to understand and build. But why do that when someone have already done it for you? The big point, however, is that a transistor is very small, extremely cheap, and easily replaceable. A video card have none of those attributes, and that's the real point here. You can't "fix" a video card. You replace it. Whatever is build with discrete transistors however, can be fixed. If the transistor breaks, you replace it. Fixing a video card is extremely difficult at best, and in the future I suspect that will be a lost cause. Fixing whatever item made of discrete components will easily be done a 100 years from now, I dare say. Johnny -- Johnny Billquist || "I'm on a bus || on a psychedelic trip email: bqt at softjar.se || Reading murder books pdp is alive! || tryin' to stay hip" - B. Idol

17 years, 4 months

7
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What kind of IC is this

by ajp166＠bellatlantic.net

> >Subject: Re: What kind of IC is this > From: ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk (Tony Duell) > Date: Wed, 31 Dec 2008 22:50:52 +0000 (GMT) > To: cctalk at classiccmp.org > >> > If you're lucky, eitehr th microcontroller is old enough not to >> > have any >> > security features, or they're not used. In which case you remove >> > the chip >> > from the PCB and stick it in a suitable programmer. >> >> Even the original Intel 8051/8751, circa 1980, has security >> bits. :-( There are ways to get around (at least) those, though. > >Yes, but IIRC the 8048 series (common in classic computer stuff) doesn't... > >-tony My fractional portion of currency is that the 630x is a hitachi varient of the 680x (6800 single chip mpus). I've seen and have some them from older hard disks and DC300 tape drives that had mechanically expired. Allison

17 years, 4 months

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The General Approach to Computing - A Ramble

by roger.holmes＠microspot.co.uk

> From: ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk (Tony Duell) > Subject: Re: The General Approach to Computing - A Ramble > >> And, while I like playing with the old computers, and fixing them, >> nothing beats screaming speed in a personal computer. > > Now that's something that's never bothered me .If my machine takes 10 > minutes to complie my program, so what? I just do something else while > it's compiling. And it gets me to check my code before compiling it, > hopefully ending up with a etter program (the 'poke and hope' brigade > worry me -- changing things until the program compiles and/or runs) It depends on the size of the program. I work on a a program which used to have a million lines of source code and on a 2GHz Intel MacBook Pro takes around 10 minutes to compile for debugging. Building the final version on our PowerPC server for two target architectures take a good half hour. You can imagine how long it would take to compile on my 1301 where the shortest instruction (NOP) is 12 microseconds and the longest (multiply with both operands of 12 non zero digits) is 3784 microseconds. I have recently constructed an RS232 interface for my 1301 (Just a level changer and one bit input the processor can sample, no fancy UART or SCC) and using a USB to serial converter on the Mac have connected the two. A six instruction bootstrap hand keyed into Flossie (my 1301) and a download and go high level assembler in the Mac mean I can write software whenever and wherever I happen to have a few minutes free. Back at home I can power up Flossie and usually find the core memory still contains my bootstrap, then assemble and squirt the program down the serial port at 9600 baud, which wouldn't take long, even to load the entire 2000 words (48 bits) core store. So far my biggest program is only about two hundred words. When I fill the core I'll have to start overlaying off drum or tape, or even Mac when I get serial output working too. I am hoping to retrieve software from about 100,000 punched cards via the check reading brushes of the card punch, which is much more gentle on old cards than the real card reader. Then it will be time to start on the programs on magnetic tape, but first I have to get a higher speed parallel interface working so I can read the tapes without stopping between blocks and risk stretching/breaking 40 year old tapes. I have been looking into getting the line printer working. There are 120 off 100 microfarad 100v capacitors which hold the energy required to fire the print hammer solenoids. Each on is about an inch diameter and three inches long. The modern equivalent is tiny and will not even reach between the holes in the PCB, but the leads can be extended. Of course they don't look right, maybe I should think about opening the old cans and putting the new components inside. Maybe there are harmful chemicals inside. When a transistor or diode fails I don't have the option of buying new ones, but fortunately I have ample spares of used ones of most types. Most times I can replace the whole card (four AND gates, one flip flop, one inverter and re-inverter, a clock gate or dozens of types of amplifiers/attenuators). Occasionally the fault is with the wiring or wire wrap or soldered joint. All these are very reliable but there are literally millions of them so the odd one failing is not really surprising. Core failures are a totally different problem. The official method is to use a spare row or column which has worked fine so far though long term I am worried about running out. I don't think my eyesight would be up to remaking a whole core plane but one day it might be necessary to get it done. I enjoy the intellectual task of finding the location of a logic fault but not mechanical problems, they are just something which has to be done, a pain in the backside.

17 years, 4 months

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Xerox 820-II troubleshooting - need advice

by snhirsch＠gmail.com

I purchased an 820-II from eBay, but the seller did a horrible packing job and it arrived with the case completely smashed. Incredibly enough, the CRT was not shattered and once I diassembled it and spread things out, it nominally fires up. I get the monitor sign-on and a beep, but no keyboard response at all. I've already tried reseating everything on the system board and fixed a bad solder joint on the crystal for the keyboard MPU. No luck. I have some schematics from the web, but they are extremely fuzzy and hard to read. Can anyone help with theory of operation for an 820 keyboard? I gather that it's a parallel data interface, but past that I'm a bit in the dark. I should mention that I'm running without a disk drive. The seller "lost" it and I have the carcass of another on the way from a kind cctech group member. Still, I would think there'd be some response to keyboard input without the drive on line. Steve --

17 years, 4 months

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MDS Series II service documents

by aek＠bitsavers.org

A few new documents are up under http://bitsavers.org/pdf/intel/MDS2 including the service manual (which unfortunately has two sheets missing which describe part of the IOC board). Clean copies of the schematics are there, though.

17 years, 4 months

2
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Transistors...

by bqt＠softjar.se

Jim Battle <frustum at pacbell.net> wrote: > Johnny Billquist wrote: > ... >> > It isn't difficult, and it isn't >> > expensive (well, compared to a transistor I guess it might be, but we're >> > still talking close to no money). > > Maybe it is possible to build a transistor that has poor gain, low > bandwidth, and poor stability, probably like the first transistors made. > > Jeri Ellsworth built some FETs and simple gates at home -- but she said > it took two years to figure out how to make it work, and she needed some > equipment (like vacuum chambers) that few people have at home. It was > far from simple. > > http://trail.motionbased.com/trail/episode/view.do?episodePk.pkValue=8067618 > > Yes, that is a FET, not bipolar. If you have some links for making > simple bipolar transistors, please supply some. It will make for some > interesting reading. > > I recall reading how IBM spent a lot of money and a lot of brainpower > building their own transistors back in the early days. If it really was > all that simple, I doubt that IBM would have wrestled with it as much as > they did. I purposely picked bipolar since they're easy. I haven't looked at what it would take to make a FET. Don't think it's that relevant to reply with stuff about FETs to a post about bipolars. :-) >> > All it requires is two diodes. That's >> > all it is, really. > > If you wire two diodes in series (PN->NP), it isn't the same as a > transistor (PNP), at all. It is. A PNP is just the same thing as a PN-+-NP. The things left that vary is the areas between the PN and NP layers, which would be equal if you just jused two diodes, but usually are dissimilar in a transistor. That can be solved by using different diodes, or putting two in parallel. What else? Yeah, the amount of doping is also relevant. All this ends up to is that different transistors have different specs (just as different diodes do). You'd hardly replace a transistor with a couple of diodes on a card anyway, since it would be so much trickier soldering wise, and possible space wise anyway, not even considering characteristics. But that don't change the fact that you get a working transistor with just two diodes. >> > A transistor (and now I'm just talking about bipolar transistors, since >> > it's the easiest, and they are very common) is extremely simply to >> > understand and build. > > I've heard of people disassembling a diode and making a point contact > transistor, but that is already leveraging a lot of technology that put > the $.10 diode in your hand to begin with. Well, I did say that you'd have to use diodes. If you consider it cheating to use diodes, then I plead guilty. It's very difficult to make a transistor if you're only allowed to use copper, aluminium and silicon. However, all this was just an exercise in sidetracking. The real point was that something built with transistors can be repaired by just replacing the transistor. A very standard, small and cheap component that you probably still can get a hundred years from now. A graphics card will never be at that situation. If it's broke, you replace it. Ten years from now, that will not even be an option, since those graphics cards are no longer manufactured, and even the bus which they interface to is probably obsolete, meaning no other graphic card can be found either. And it is not possible to repair it, since it's just a bunch of highly intergrated ICs on it, which you cannot obtain, nor diagnose which one of them actually is busted. They are also close to impossible to remove. Johnny -- Johnny Billquist || "I'm on a bus || on a psychedelic trip email: bqt at softjar.se || Reading murder books pdp is alive! || tryin' to stay hip" - B. Idol

17 years, 4 months

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designjet 500ps rescue (repair)

by rescue＠hawkmountain.net

I inherited a HP Designjet 500PS. It has earlier in it's life a magenta printhead explosion... so was a mess inside (nobody bothered to properly disassemble and clean the printer.... Did that, including disassembly and reassmbly of the service station. However, yellow stopped working... so it can't align print heads.... so I picked to primed tubes... but that needs a set of setup printheads that I don't have.... and I can't get out of that step even with a power cycle.... couldn't try to 'clean' the heads either.... as it needs to align the heads first ... which fails as yellow is not printing.... so I've gotten myself into a realy catch 22 situation with it.... And now I'm stuck w/o setup print heads. So, does anyone have or know where to cheaply get a set of setup printheads for a designjet 500, 500PS, 800, or 800PS (should all be the same). A replacement ink tube spare part would have the carts as well. This is the 25" variety, but other than the spare ink tube kit being different for 25" vs 42", the setup printheads would all be the same. Anyone have a service station... this one fails sometimes when it tries to ratchet the big wheel on the left side of the service station... Could also use a set of print heads. Thanks, -- Curt

17 years, 4 months

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Ciarcia's Circuit Cellar

by stekster＠gmail.com

>From: Vernon Wright <vern4wright at yahoo.com> >Subject: Re: Ciarcia's Circuit Cellar > >I've built a number of Steve's projects. In my workshop a few days ago I saw his EEG project >waiting to be revived. I was the prime instigator in the HAL-4 project. When I lived in CT I was a member of the CT Computer Club with Steve. He was always looking for ideas for his monthly column. Being a psychologist (but almost EE major) I had worked with biofeedback and thought a low cost EEG unit would be cool. I wrote the specs for the hardware and software and the non-technical parts of the article while 2 other club members did the hardware and software respectively, and Steve Many hundreds of these kits were sold over the years - I know because I enjoyed a $3/unit royalty on each one :-) Never-before-revealed-fact: I spec'd the design to have two switches which the operator could use to signal awareness of up to 3 internal states to see if they could be correlated with the brainwave pattern. In fact, I was inspired by Tim Leary's 'experiential typewriter' which he speculated could be used similarly when he first started experimenting with LSD. Brainwave feedback and analysis have progressed greatly in the past 20+ years and there's no reason why the PC software couldn't be re-written, though not many people have a serial port to which to connect HAL. I suppose an inline serial USB converter could be used. I believe there is still open source hardware specs and description available on the web. Bob Stek Former Saver of Lost Sols

17 years, 4 months

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Mosaic for Mac OS X

by spectre＠floodgap.com

(On topic, as NCSA Mosaic was killed in 1997.) So, I have nothing to do on weekends except sit on highway overpasses and snipe cars with a high powered rifle. Because of the terms of my probation, I had enough time this weekend in Corcoran to work on this: http://www.floodgap.com/retrotech/machten/mosaic/ This is another update of NCSA Mosaic, based on 2.7b5. I started with that and fixed a couple seriously crippling bugs for 2.7ck6, and in this version 2.7ck7, there are more improvements to the HTML core, fixed a lot of bugs with Gopher support, and cleaned up the source so that it would also compile under Mac OS X. There is a Universal binary for 10.4+ (requires X11 and OpenMotif, download links are on the page), plus source, and source builds on Power MachTen and most versions of OS X in general. If people build this successfully on other systems like Linux, *BSD, etc., I would like feedback. I'm considering porting this to A/UX next, but I will not have access to A/UX in San Quentin, so I'd better hurry up. -- ------------------------------------ personal: http://www.cameronkaiser.com/ -- Cameron Kaiser * Floodgap Systems * www.floodgap.com * ckaiser at floodgap.com -- I had amnesia once -- or twice. --------------------------------------------

17 years, 4 months

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AUI cables needed

by scheefj＠netscape.net

Hello all, Does anyone have any AUI cables they do not need? I could use about five or six and the shorter, the better. The minimum is 2 meters, I believe. Cables at 2m or 3m would be ideal. This would be a contribution to the "worlds most complex network" that is growing in my basement. Also a source for some thick Ethernet cable would be a big help. Contact me off list if you can help. Jim

17 years, 4 months

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Ciarcia's Circuit Cellar

by adamg＠pobox.com

The first three volumes of the Ciarcia's Circuit Cellar books are now available for online viewing (but not downloading) at Google Books. These books collect Steve Ciarcia's 70s/80s Byte columns - lots of interesting stuff. Links here: http://www.circuitcellar.com/newsletter/0409.html I have no relation to these scans but thought I'd pass the link along since these books come up now and then on the list and have lots of classiccmp-relevant content. -- Adam

17 years, 4 months

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Ciarcia's Circuit Cellar

by lynchaj＠yahoo.com

We'll see what Steve has to say about it. I think he has those books for sale, doesn't he? I used to have my secretary xerox his columns (no, I didn't cut out of my Byte magazines, though that collection has long since been deep-sixed) but I don't know whether I still have those copies - probably "somewhere" but I'll be damned if I know where that "somewhere" is. I've built a number of Steve's projects. In my workshop a few days ago I saw his EEG project waiting to be revived. But there is so much to do.... Vern Wright -----REPLY----- Hi! Steve and Sean generously released BYOZ80C to allow online publishing. I very much enjoyed his book and commend him for both writing it in the first place and also releasing it so as to help keep the home brew computing tradition alive. http://www.scribd.com/doc/13388965/Build-Your-Own-Z80-Computer You can see the full description of the release statement on the first page. Thanks and have a nice day! Andrew Lynch

17 years, 4 months

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PCs for "real" work? (was RE: CDC Remote Calculator, circa 1965)

by IanK＠vulcan.com

For me, the decision wasn't about Windows vs. whatever else. It was cheap, crappy commoditized PC hardware. For years, I'd upgraded my home desktop machine at such time as I wanted some new toy that wasn't supported on the existing hardware, or I felt I needed more performance/resources/heating. :-) That would happen, on average, every two years or so. Over the past year, I tried to upgrade three times, to be foiled by hardware failures each time. The last motherboard would not even boot up an OS. These weren't cheap bargain-table motherboards, either - they were from reputable vendors, midrange in their price ranges. (I don't need insane gamer perf features.) One burned up, one had quirky, fatal flaws (couldn't detect more than one graphics adapter) and one just never got off the dime. Now don't get me wrong, I'm not afraid of hardware. I hack deep into hardware both for a living and as a hobby. But if I'm going to spend time hacking hardware, it should be at least twenty years old - in other words, I should be doing it because it's FUN! Then, when I need to see if Bitsavers (thank you!) or Google can help me dig out some obscure fact or figure, I want my desktop to be a reliable appliance. It should Just Work. That's how I ended up with Macs. It's not the OS, although I do like the idea of Unix under the hood rather than a compromised derivation of VMS. It's the hardware. It's the integration. It's the appliance-like nature that, I must admit, I ridiculed for years. But when I want to check my email or Google a part number, my Macs always work. Of course, not to be a complete conformist :-) I don't have an Intel-(de)based Mac in the house. I'm typing this on a PowerBook G4, and my main desktop is a pair of dual G4 PowerMacs, each running two monitors and sharing mouse and keyboard through Synergy. (One of these days, I'm going to improve their integration so it looks like multimon a la Xinerama.) If they weren't so stinkin' expensive (even with being four years obsolete), I'd have G5s, but the G4s are just fine for email, etc. If I can't do it on my Macs, I probably don't need to do it. Of course, I'm planning to rebuild my VAX 4000/300, and I plan to put SMTP on it this time. I know VMS will always get me my email.... Cheers -- Ian ________________________________________ From: cctalk-bounces at classiccmp.org [cctalk-bounces at classiccmp.org] On Behalf Of Jochen Kunz [jkunz at unixag-kl.fh-kl.de] Sent: Friday, April 24, 2009 11:50 PM To: cctalk at classiccmp.org Subject: Re: CDC Remote Calculator, circa 1965 On Fri, 24 Apr 2009 09:18:46 -0700 "Chuck Guzis" <cclist at sydex.com> wrote: > A PC isn't a "real" computer? PeeCees are no "real" computers. PeeCees are a pile of cheap junk. At least when compared to proper personal computers like e.g. Sun, HP or DEC workstations or even a Mac. But this gets religious now. ;-) -- tsch??, Jochen Homepage: http://www.unixag-kl.fh-kl.de/~jkunz/

17 years, 4 months

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pdp11/70 front panel frame

by bqt＠softjar.se

micheladam at theedge.ca wrote: > > ----- Original Message ----- > From: Johnny Billquist <bqt at softjar.se> > Date: Thursday, April 23, 2009 4:48 am > Subject: Re: pdp11/70 front panel frame >> > If I remember right, the RDC panel reused the 11/70 panel frame, >> > by the way. >> > > [...] > > You remember right. I was a computer operator on an 11/70 in the late 70's. When the DEC service technician came by to switch out the standard front panel and replace it with the remote console, only the panel was replaced, not the frame. > > Should have kept it. It was pristine... What? You mean that DEC took the original 11/70 front panel? That's interesting. I have two RDC panels (as well as two original fronts), and both of the RDC panels had some sticker or text saying "Property of DEC. Must be returned if removed from contract." (or something like that) implying that the customer didn't own the RDC panel, and the original front panel were to be reused when the machine went off service. So they couldn't very well take that panel. It was the property of the customer. I thought that was standard procedure. Interesting... Johnny -- Johnny Billquist || "I'm on a bus || on a psychedelic trip email: bqt at softjar.se || Reading murder books pdp is alive! || tryin' to stay hip" - B. Idol

17 years, 4 months

2
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San Diego Wondering

by lynchaj＠yahoo.com

Am I the only classic computer enthusiast left in San Diego? [snip] If so, drop me a line. Don't mean to sound needy - but it's lonely down here. San Diego was a major epicenter of the development of the S-100 CP/M computer. We're all getting older but it can't be that of 3 million people I'm the only one left?!? Vern Wright -----REPLY----- Vern, I think the focus of S-100 system development has moved away from the local area and is now more of an internet phenomenon. CCTALK, Vintage-Computer.com forums, comp.os.cpm, is where a lot of activity takes place. There are vintage computer festivals and ham radio conventions where hobbyists meet but I think the bulk of the communication is via the internet. If you'd like to see active S-100 development take place once again, have you considered starting a home brew hobbyist S-100 project? I started a home brew computing project a couple of years ago (N8VEM) and it has been quite successful. There is a lot of interest and all sorts of people have built their own systems. I've had ideas of expanding the N8VEM system into S-100 for some time now and am building a hobbyist S-100 backplane. With the availability of low cost EDA tools and PCB fabrication its possible for home brew hobbyists to make their home brew systems available for everyone. Maybe if S-100 hobbyists would design and manufacture a completely open and free system similar to the N8VEM. Recently, a hobbyist made a completely new S-100 prototype board. I recall others (Dan Roganti?) designing new S-100 boards months ago too. For example, start with a backplane, another hobbyist makes a linear or SMPSU power supply PCB, another a CPU board, yet another builds a SRAM board, someone else a serial UART board, etc. Many hands makes light work so maybe it could happen. I am optimistic its possible although I am aware of the many hobbyist projects that have been attempted on CCTALK. I think it would be fun and might recapture some of that "lightning in a bottle" magic from the early home brew microcomputer community. Andrew Lynch

17 years, 4 months

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CDC Remote Calculator, circa 1965

by rosemarypettit＠comcast.net

Chuck, As part of the promotion of this product, each Sales office got one. I was in Atlanta at that time (1966). So I got some time on it and hauled it out to Lockheed for a dog and pony show. Was called the 6060. No manual that I ever found even though I looked for years. I remember how heavy it was, a real back breaker to lug around. Eventually we had to send it back for "updating" and it was never returned. Billy Pettit

17 years, 4 months

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In the Bay Area

by wdonzelli＠gmail.com

As was last year, 2009 brings me to the Bay Area for all sorts of foolishness and relaxation. I will be in town generally from 3 MAY thru 7 MAY, and would be interested in meeting with anyone that would like to show off their collections, or even just meet for dinner and a beer. Any interest? -- Will

17 years, 4 months

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Silicon Genesis: Interviews

by roger.holmes＠microspot.co.uk

On 23 Apr 2009, at 11:26, cctalk-request at classiccmp.org wrote: > > Stumbled across this today and don't recall it having been mentioned > on the list before. > > "Welcome to Silicon Genesis, a unique collection of oral history > interviews with pioneers of the semiconductor industry. For access > to streamed versions of the videotaped interviews, see the > complete listing of interviews." > > <http://silicongenesis.stanford.edu/complete_listing.html> Too modern for me, my classic semiconductors are Germanium :-) Perhaps they allow the relay/valve/germanium generation (which does NOT include me by the way) to contribute too.

17 years, 4 months

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CDC Remote Calculator, circa 1965

by cclist＠sydex.com

Ad for a CDC 6600 remote calculator terminal on ePay, item 390046087434. Has anyone seen one of these in the flesh, or was this a trial balloon that never flew? --Chuck

17 years, 4 months

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San Diego Wondering

by tiggerlasv＠aim.com

My PDP-11 is so lonely out here in Las Vegas, it has been sneaking out of the house at night. I've had to drag it out of at least two casinos already. I knew I should have never compiled that blackjack program. ;-(

17 years, 4 months

2
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San Diego Wondering

by vern4wright＠yahoo.com

Am I the only classic computer enthusiast left in San Diego? Since Will Rose decamped for England, and Don Maslin died, and Bill Bailey died last year, it seems that there is no one here who shares my/our interests. It's all Windoze (oh, I wish OS/2 had made it!) and Linux. No aspersion cast on either (well, even though I write for both, you get my feeling from my spelling of the former) - but there is no one here who has the slightest interest in anything before y2k! Local groups consider "technical" playing with the latest piece of hardware from Fry's. Just wondering if there are any lurkers here who are in a similar situation, and would like to resurrect my old Dina-SIG in the form of talking, playing with, experimenting with classic computers. Maybe developing new ideas (Bill Bailey and I, before he died, were working on concepts for biological computers).... If so, drop me a line. Don't mean to sound needy - but it's lonely down here. San Diego was a major epicenter of the development of the S-100 CP/M computer. We're all getting older but it can't be that of 3 million people I'm the only one left?!? Vern Wright

17 years, 4 months

3
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DEC, Kennedys available

by wdonzelli＠gmail.com

It so happens that a man in Boulder, CO has one, possibly two DEC H960 racks with Kennedy 9000 1/2 inch tape units. The racks look to be in very nice condition, no sides, but have the plain DEC purple/magenta headers on the tops, also in nice condition. The Kennedys are mounted in these racks, but could come out. One Kennedy is troubled, the other is believed to work. I am in Boulder today and tomorrow, and can deliver these to the Bay Area in CA during the first week of May (3 thru 7). I think he would like $100 for each rack, and probably something very much less for the tape units. Nothing is bundled - buy one or both racks, and/or buy one or both tape units. Any interested people should not dawdle on this - please let me know tonight, or at latest early tomorrow. There might be some bargaining room on price - or maybe not. Regardless, I might need something for hauling this stuff, to pay for gas. -- Will

17 years, 4 months

1
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pdp11/70 front panel frame

by micheladam＠theedge.ca

----- Original Message ----- From: Johnny Billquist <bqt at softjar.se> Date: Thursday, April 23, 2009 4:48 am Subject: Re: pdp11/70 front panel frame > Paul Anderson <useddec at gmail.com> wrote: > > > I think I have a few front panels left, including the RDC, but > not sure of the frames. Are they the same as an 11/40 or 11/45? > > I don't think so. It's been very long since I played with an > 11/40, but > the 11/40 and 11/45 have way fewer switches than the 11/70, and > the > frame lines up with the switches on the 11/70. > Can't remember for sure the exact details of the 11/40 I played > with, > but it must have had some kind of filler on the panel, to get to > the edges. > > If I remember right, the RDC panel reused the 11/70 panel frame, > by the way. > [...] You remember right. I was a computer operator on an 11/70 in the late 70's. When the DEC service technician came by to switch out the standard front panel and replace it with the remote console, only the panel was replaced, not the frame. Should have kept it. It was pristine... Michel Adam

17 years, 4 months

1
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pdp11/70 front panel frame

by bqt＠softjar.se

Paul Anderson <useddec at gmail.com> wrote: > I think I have a few front panels left, including the RDC, but not sure of the frames. Are they the same as an 11/40 or 11/45? I don't think so. It's been very long since I played with an 11/40, but the 11/40 and 11/45 have way fewer switches than the 11/70, and the frame lines up with the switches on the 11/70. Can't remember for sure the exact details of the 11/40 I played with, but it must have had some kind of filler on the panel, to get to the edges. If I remember right, the RDC panel reused the 11/70 panel frame, by the way. By the way, I could kill whoever broke an 11/70 just to have a panel. And that panel on ePay looks really clean (but that's just me, and I don't like ePay at all anyway). Johnny > On Wed, Apr 22, 2009 at 6:39 PM, David Griffith <dgriffi at cs.csubak.edu>wrote: >> > >> > Does anyone here know where I could obtain a front panel frame for a >> > pdp11/70? >> > >> > -- >> > 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? >> > -- Johnny Billquist || "I'm on a bus || on a psychedelic trip email: bqt at softjar.se || Reading murder books pdp is alive! || tryin' to stay hip" - B. Idol

17 years, 4 months

4
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Missing Fig 2. from IMSAI front-panel modifications...

by derschjo＠mail.msu.edu

Well, while I'm waiting for various things to arrive to aid my resuscitation of my 11/40, I'm back to working on my IMSAI 8080. The front panel does not work quite right with the combination of CPU and RAM I have in the machine, so I've been debugging various things and have made some decent progress. Now Examine and Examine Next work properly. Deposit/Deposit Next, however, do not. Reading through the CPA manual I got from http://www.classiccmp.org/dunfield/imsai/cpa.pdf, there's a modification that needs to be done to get the front panel to work with non-IMSAI RAM cards -- this has not been done to my front panel. Seems that that might be at least part of the problem. But step 3 (see pg 26, for those following along at home) refers to Fig 2, referencing points A & B. Figure 2 is not in the PDF. There is a schematic on page 28 outlining the change, but it's unreadable. Anyone have a copy of Fig 2 they can share? Thanks! Josh

17 years, 4 months

3
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Tektronix catalogs now on bitsavers

by legalize＠xmission.com

In case anyone didn't notice from the RSS feed... <http://bitsavers.org/pdf/tektronix/catalog/> -- "The Direct3D Graphics Pipeline" -- DirectX 9 draft available for download <http://www.xmission.com/~legalize/book/download/index.html> Legalize Adulthood! <http://blogs.xmission.com/legalize/>

17 years, 4 months

7
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Spring cleaning books

by cclist＠sydex.com

See http://vintage-computer.com/vcforum/showthread.php?p=99080 for a complete list of this batch. Most of this stuff is PC-related (80's- 90's). --Chuck

17 years, 4 months

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Archiving 8" RT-11 floppies to CD-ROM?

by fjkraan＠xs4all.nl

Ethan Dicks <ethan.dicks at gmail.com> wrote: > On Wed, Feb 25, 2009 at 1:36 PM, F.J. Kraan <fjkraan at xs4all.nl> wrote: > >> Just recently I was able to read my MiniMINC (a PDT-150) floppies with an 8" >> drive connected to an AHA1542B (capable of single density) with Dave >> Dunfields ImageDisk. >> > > Good to know. I have at least one 1542B running around, and an old > DOS box I can use to stuff it all into. > > What 8" floppy did you use? I think I have a Tandon one (TM848?) I > can borrow from a non-DEC Qbus box. > The drive is a NEC 1165, very flexible. It allowed me to write to a disk with only the wrong index hole, so the MiniMINC wouldn't see it. Writing RT-11 V3b to the right disk it booted . So writing with this setup is also possible. The 5 1/4" to 8" interface can the one from Dave Dunfield or the CP/M faq. I will try it with a Catweasel one day, but the current setup seems more common, and a MiniMINC doesn't do RX02 anyhow :-). Would posting an URL with the images of the disks be ok? Fred Jan

17 years, 4 months

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On epay : Digital PDP 11/73 in OEM Ausführung

by hp-fix＠xs4all.nl

Found on epay Germany : 250411957103

17 years, 4 months

1
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Reforming caps and CRTs

by chrism3667＠yahoo.com

I haven't followed this thread, but at least at one time (circa 1995) there was an outfit near or in Philly that would cut the neck off of yer crt and presumably meld a new face (?) to it. Sounds like fun. You work the buzzsaw and I'll be in the other room checking on your medical coverage.

17 years, 4 months

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pdp11/70 front panel frame

by dgriffi＠cs.csubak.edu

Does anyone here know where I could obtain a front panel frame for a pdp11/70? -- 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?

17 years, 4 months

6
5
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p112 and zsdos manuals updated

by dgriffi＠cs.csubak.edu

I've updated the p112 and zsdos pdf files to fix some stupid errors that I never noticed. I also widened the text area. They're at http://frotz.homeunix.org/p112/files/ -- 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?

17 years, 4 months

3
5
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Silicon Genesis: Interviews

by legalize＠xmission.com

Stumbled across this today and don't recall it having been mentioned on the list before. "Welcome to Silicon Genesis, a unique collection of oral history interviews with pioneers of the semiconductor industry. For access to streamed versions of the videotaped interviews, see the complete listing of interviews." <http://silicongenesis.stanford.edu/complete_listing.html> -- "The Direct3D Graphics Pipeline" -- DirectX 9 draft available for download <http://www.xmission.com/~legalize/book/download/index.html> Legalize Adulthood! <http://blogs.xmission.com/legalize/>

17 years, 4 months

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wanted: pdp 11/70 front panel with frame

by dgriffi＠cs.csubak.edu

I'd like to get a pdp 11/70 front panel with frame. Would anyone here take a Northstar Horizon 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?

17 years, 4 months

2
2
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Odd DEC terminal?

by jim＠g1jbg.co.uk

I've just been handed a small DEC badged unit, which I think is a terminal. It appears to have been made by Termiflex. It is a handheld unit with a two line LED display, a 4x5 keypad, three unmarked buttons on one side, and a wheel device on the other. It has a 25 way D type and a 3 pole AMP connector. Does anyone know anything about it? Jim.

17 years, 4 months

10
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Odd DEC terminal?

by ethan.dicks＠gmail.com

On Wed, Apr 22, 2009 at 5:16 PM, Robert Jarratt <robert.jarratt at ntlworld.com> wrote: > Far from exhaustive, but I do find this page useful: > > http://www.netbsd.org/docs/Hardware/Machines/DEC/vax/sections.html That is a good list of some of the newer stuff. It obviously misses out on much of the pre-1972 hardware, but it's a good start to understand DEC's patterns. -ethan

17 years, 4 months

1
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Reforming caps and CRTs

by korpela＠ssl.berkeley.edu

Some of the smoke came out of my Osborne 1 this weekend. It doesn't appear to have been fatal, as it was still functioning when I cut the power. I'm giving the CRT some time to fully discharge before I open it up, probably next weekend. It was probably a failing capacitor, although it didn't explode, it merely got really warm over a period of hours. But since there are some similar machines that I haven't recently used, this question came to mind. I've used the variac technique to reform capacitors, but thus far haven't done this on a machine that contains a CRT because I don't know what the reduced voltage is going to do to the CRT. The next machine to power up on my list is a Compucolor II. Dare I power it at 15 volts for a few days before starting the slow ramp up to 115? Or do I need to go in and detach the CRT circuitry before I try anything like that.?

17 years, 4 months

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Oracle To Buy Sun Microsystems

by aliensrcooluk＠yahoo.co.uk

Hi, Since noone else seems to have sent this to the list yet, I thought I would send a snippet and a link for those who might be interested in this. Snippet: NEW YORK, April 20: The world's number two software company, Oracle Corporation, today agreed to buy hardware provider Sun Microsystems Inc for $7.4 billion, or $9.50 per share, in cash, pushing the software company into high-end computing system. ?We expect this acquisition to be accretive to Oracles earnings by at least 15 cents on a non-GAAP?basis in the first full year after closing. The business will contribute over $1.5 billion to Oracles non-GAAP?operating profit in the first year, increasing to over $2 billion in the second year,? Oracle president Ms Safra?Catz?said in a statement. Source: http://www.thestatesman.net/page.news.php?clid=12&theme=&usrsess=1&id=251752 Regards, Andrew B aliensrcooluk at yahoo.co.uk

17 years, 4 months

9
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