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

by curtis＠hawkmountain.net

Glen Slick wrote: > Curt, > > I also have a 4000-200. There are faster desktop 3100 and 4000 > models, but I think it's kinda cool having the big Q-bus box to tinker > with. ... M7622-AT boards aren't > too expensive on eBay at times, but then you have to pay for shipping > too and that adds up. > ... Yes, but would M7622-AE from Microvax III work in a VAX 4000/200 (my same size module is M7622-AT) ????? > You don't have an ethernet board? Look for a M3127-PA DESQA-SA or a > M7516-PA DELQA-S. They can be cheap at times on eBay. > I have a separate ethernet board (DEC) that came with it but wasn't in it. Does the KA660 have on board ethernet, or no ? (I didn't even think to look) > Don't know anything about a SI-SC 1000. Power up the 4000-200 to the > >>>> prompt and do a "SHOW QBUS" and "SHOW DEV". That should help to >>>> > figure out what address(es) the SI-SC 1000 is at and whether it is > MSCP or TMSCP, or both. If it is MSCP it might support booting from a > SCSI CD-ROM. You could also look for a M5967 KZQSA which will support > booting from a SCSI CD-ROM. > > For the CXA16 and CXY08 you need breakout cable sets. I forget what > the part numbers for those cables are. > > An RF72 is 1GB, RF73 is 2GB, RF74 is ~4GB. They might all work fine > on a 4000-200 with VMS7.3. > Anyone have any DSSI drives 1G or larger for me to expand my storage with (cheap to free is best :-) ) ? > A TF70 is a DSSI TK70. > > Does the 4000/200 support TF70 (if so, why did they ship it with a TK70 and TQK70 controller (presuming it was shipped with them... I don't actually know that it was)) ? Anyone have a TF70 (or other DSSI tape drive) (same cheap to free requirement :-) ) ? I'd like to max the memory... anyone have memory boards for a 4000/200 ? Thanks, -- Curt > Have fun. I'm sure you'll get lots of other helpful responses. > > -Glen > > On Tue, Apr 29, 2008 at 8:04 PM, Curtis H. Wilbar Jr. > <rescue at hawkmountain.net> wrote: > >> I am the 'proud' owner of a VAX 4000/200. >> >> I have not tried to do much with it yet, first I'll indicate it's config, >> then my questions >> (as I'm 'new' to VAX (I admin'd one for a bit 14 years ago... but I deferred >> to several >> folk on campus as I was new to admin'ing VMS and I didn't stay in the role >> long enough >> to really pick much up)). >> >> M9715-AA VAX 4000 internal card (terminates DSSI and SCSI busses) >> M7626-AA KA660 CPU >> M7622-AT 16M Memory >> M7622-BF 8M Memory >> M3108-PA DSV11-S 2 Line Sync Comm >> SI-SC 1000 System Industries SCSI card >> M3118-YA CXA16-M 16 Async Line >> M3118-YA CXA16-M 16 Async Line >> M3119-YA CXA08-M 8 Async Line >> M3118-YA CXA16-M 16 Async Line >> M7559-00 TQK70 Tape controller >> >> are the cards present (from slot 0? (rightmost slot)) >> >> And it has 3 DSSI drives, 2 5.25" RF31 (381M) and 1 3.5" RF36 (in one of the >> 'rail' sets >> that will support 2 3.5" drives) (1.6G). >> >> the 2 RF31s are ID 0 and 1 >> the RF36 is ID 2 >> >> It also has a TK70. >> >> Now onto the questions: >> >> 1. How is 24M of RAM ? Should I be on the lookout for more ? >> 2. What releases of VMS, Vax Ultrix, etc should I limit myself to based on >> 24M and KA660 ? >> 3. Was there a DSSI version of TK70 ? >> 4. 4000/200 does not have SCSI, correct ? (other than someone added an SI >> SC-1000) >> 5. any idea if a SCSI CD can be booted via the SI SC-1000 ? (boot cmds >> would be ?) >> 6. This is supposed to have some version of VMS on it... I have no PW... >> pointers to 'break in' >> procedure and password reset ? What is the default sysadmin account as >> well ? >> 7. There is what looks like a 50 pin scsi terminator (small size like Sun >> 411 case) that I've >> identified as DSSI terminator., What is the 50 pin centronics style >> connector above that ? >> 8. What is a DSV11-S good for ? >> 9. Not that I plan to, but how do you make use of the async cards (they have >> 50 pin centronics >> style connectors) >> 10. Anyone got any more of the 2 3.5" drive mounting assemblies ? >> 11. Anyone got any RF36 or higher density DSSI drives available ? >> 12. Can the DSSI drive 'bus' be converted to SCSI ? >> 13. What is the largest drive/partitions supported on 4000/200 (DSSI or >> otherwise) ? >> 14. Have I asked enough questions ? (What have I forgotten to ask :-) ? ) >> >> How are the 4000/200 machines ? (Other VAXen I have is VAXStation 2000 and >> VAXStation 3100, neither of which is running (driveless))... I find the >> enclosure >> design pretty cool... and for a large box, has nice design (visually)... (I >> know it is no >> SGI... and that it is DEC beige.... but I like the design (doors, badge, >> etc)). >> >> Any drop in cpu/memory upgrades that are worthwhile (in the free to cheap >> territory >> of course :-) ). >> >> Thanks in advance for any cool info/pointers/etc... >> >> -- Curt >> >> >> >> > >

18 years, 4 months

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Tektronix Microlab I has been claimed

by hardware＠ees1s0.engr.ccny.cuny.edu

The Tektronix Microlab I has been claimed. -kurt

18 years, 4 months

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The collision of classic computer warez and politics

by spectre＠floodgap.com

For once, a political thread that is actually on topic! -- San Diego GOP chairman gets heat for his past as a Commodore 64 cracker. http://rawstory.com/news/2008/San_Diego_GOP_chairman_cofounded_internationa… We should expect more from our leaders. Like some good Apple II cracks also. -- ------------------------------------ personal: http://www.cameronkaiser.com/ -- Cameron Kaiser * Floodgap Systems * www.floodgap.com * ckaiser at floodgap.com -- When you're in it up to your ears, keep your mouth shut. -------------------

18 years, 4 months

2
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Osborne Vixen drawings

by silent700＠gmail.com

In sorting a small corner of my voluminous Stack of Stuff tonight, I uncovered something I thought I had lost - a stack of apparently original schematic drawings of the Osborne Vixen. I'm not sure how many pages there ought to be, but I have thirteen. I'm wondering: a) are these already scanned and out there somewhere? b) is there any interest in having them scanned and available? c) if (!a and b) and I can't get to an 11x17 scanner that won't destroy them, can anyone handle the scanning for me? (I would like the originals back, though.) Additional interesting trivia - when I found them they were in an official Atari "Petty Cash Reimbursement Envelope." -- jht

18 years, 4 months

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tektronix 4205

by Biddr6＠aol.com

LOOKING FOR TEKTRONIX TERMINALS EMAIL WITH YOUR INVENTORY THANKS MJ 801-487-9006 **************Wondering what's for Dinner Tonight? Get new twists on family favorites at AOL Food. (http://food.aol.com/dinner-tonight?NCID=aolfod00030000000001)

18 years, 4 months

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Free to a good home (UK) - bits!

by rtellason＠verizon.net

On Thursday 01 May 2008 18:00, Robert Jarratt wrote: > > -----Original Message----- > On Behalf Of James > > Sent: 30 April 2008 22:20 > > To: General Discussion: On-Topic Posts Only > > Subject: Re: Free to a good home (UK) - bits! > > > > > I would be interested in any 50-pin SCSI disks, especially any that are > > > 1.09 GB or less (can't remember the exact figure for sure but > > > thereabouts) and any larger 50-pin SCSI disk that are no more than one > > > inch in height. > > > Regards > > > Rob > > > > Hi Rob, I just checked and the smallest I have is around 2GB. However, I > > do have a few slim 50 pin disks. I'll list the numbers so you can check > > suitability: > > > > 4 * Seagate ST32171N (2GB) > > 1 * Seagate ST32272N (2GB) > > 4 * IBM DCAS-34330 (4GB) > > > > Let me know if you'd like any of these and you can either collect > > (Southampton) or I'll ship them if you cover the costs. > > > > Cheers, > > James > > They look fine. Contact me at rob underscore j37 at hotmail dot com. We can > discuss payment etc off-list. If there's interest, I have some number of "smaller" drives on hand as well, and will be making a list near-term. Any of you guys want some, feel free to email me off-list and we'll figure something out... -- Member of the toughest, meanest, deadliest, most unrelenting -- and ablest -- form of life in this section of space, ?a critter that can be killed but can't be tamed. ?--Robert A. Heinlein, "The Puppet Masters" - Information is more dangerous than cannon to a society ruled by lies. --James M Dakin

18 years, 4 months

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Mitsubishi Diamondscan 20m

by chrism3667＠yahoo.com

picked up one of these at a doofis computer flea market this past weekend. Didn't know anything about it in particular, but the switch settings specific to 8, 16, 64 color TTL led me to believe it would be applicable for vintage usage. I was right, following my looking up it's specs on the web. Problem is the thing displays nothing (although tube is emminently functional - considerable static on the face of the tube, and it flashes white when powered down), the only *sign* is the blinking diode next to the up/down contrast or brightness buttons (there's 4 in all, it probably doesn't matter, and I can't remember). Anyone have one, or a manual? It would be a shame if I couldn't get this puppy operational. ____________________________________________________________________________________ Be a better friend, newshound, and know-it-all with Yahoo! Mobile. Try it now. http://mobile.yahoo.com/;_ylt=Ahu06i62sR8HDtDypao8Wcj9tAcJ

18 years, 4 months

2
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Free to a good home (UK) - bits!

by james＠machineroom.info

> > I would be interested in any 50-pin SCSI disks, especially any that are 1.09 > GB or less (can't remember the exact figure for sure but thereabouts) and > any larger 50-pin SCSI disk that are no more than one inch in height. > > Regards > > Rob > > Hi Rob, I just checked and the smallest I have is around 2GB. However, I do have a few slim 50 pin disks. I'll list the numbers so you can check suitability: 4 * Seagate ST32171N (2GB) 1 * Seagate ST32272N (2GB) 4 * IBM DCAS-34330 (4GB) Let me know if you'd like any of these and you can either collect (Southampton) or I'll ship them if you cover the costs. Cheers, James

18 years, 4 months

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hey, have old computer stuff for sale, have to make some room here

by lgburbage＠woh.rr.com

I have a friend who is interested in an original Wico Command joystick for the Atari 800. Do you have one or access to one? Gary Burbage

18 years, 4 months

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NeXT MO Dump Offer

by mtapley＠swri.edu

At 12:00 -0500 4/28/08, Gavin wrote: >I have successfully repaired a NeXT MO drive and it is remarkably >reliable... Care to post details? I have two MO drives, both of which are (I think) non-functional... -- - 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.

18 years, 4 months

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LF: Information on "WordWizard" under NorthStar system

by dave06a＠dunfield.com

Hi Guys, I've been asked to try and recover documents from some Hard Sectored NorthStar diskettes - I'm told they were created with Advantage hardware. I've succesfully made images of the disks using my NST utility (So I know the disks are readable) ... however neither CP/M nor N* GDOS recognizes the disks - all I get it "garbage" when attempting to list the directory. Examining the data on the disk, they do not appear to contain a recognizable directory block. The all do however contain the string "WordWizard 1.2.0 JUN 16 1983P" at the same offset near the beginning of the disk. I'm guessing that "WordWizard" is a word processing package which maintains it's own disk structure, not using OS files. So - I'm looking for information: - Does anyone know what OS WordWizard ran under? - Does anyone have a copy of WordWizard for N* systems? - Any info about the disk structure used by this program? Thanks, Dave -- dave06a (at) Dave Dunfield dunfield (dot) Firmware development services & tools: www.dunfield.com com Collector of vintage computing equipment: http://www.classiccmp.org/dunfield/index.html

18 years, 4 months

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manual wanted for Scion Microangelo MA520, palette card

by eric＠brouhaha.com

The MA520 was a redesign of the MA512, using 64K DRAMs and 2732 EPROMs. It also fixed the problem that the MA512 consumed a block of 16 I/O ports even though it only actually used two. (That was awful if you wanted to use four or eight of the things for color.) I found a scan of the MA512 manual, but nothing on either the MA520 or the palette card. Does anyone have them? AutoCAD-80 apparently supported the Microangelo cards: http://www.fourmilab.ch/autofile/www/chapter2_14.html Does anyone still have a copy of that, or any other interesting software that uses the Microangelo? Thanks, Eric

18 years, 4 months

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free: Tektronix Microlab I with complete docs

by hardware＠ees1s0.engr.ccny.cuny.edu

People, I recently bought a Tektronix Microlab I on eBay. It was sold as is, and in fact does not work. If anybody wants to take a stab at fixing it, you can have it. It is some kind of combination trainer/emulator. It has RS-232 and audio in/out to be used by the monitor program for loading programs into RAM. It looks like a microprocessor trainer: hex keypad, LED display, buttons for stepping through and starting and stopping the program. It can support a variety of different processors via personality cards. The card that is in there is for the TI TMS9900. Good luck finding other personality cards. They definitely were produced. When it is powered up, it shows different things on the LED and never responds to user input. I have made no effort at further diagnosis. Who knows, it might just be a power supply problem (linear, I think). It comes with complete documentation on microfiche including schematics. If somebody is interested in fixing it, it's free. -kurt

18 years, 4 months

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MicroPdp-11 RQDX1 boot problem

by julianskidmore＠yahoo.com

Hi folks, I refitted the power supply and put the pdp-11 back together. However when I try to boot the pdp-11 from the hard drive it throws up an error 20 on the console, which says there's a controller error. I can't see what the problem is, though something's not quite right. The RQDX1's diagnostics pass on startup - it shows a sequence of leds, and after several seconds they all go off. The pdp-11 startup tests seem to be OK. My ribbon cables between the pdp-11 appear to be connected correctly. The RD52 drive light pops on briefly on boot (as I would expect if it initially spins up), but oddly I don't see a light popping on on the RX-50 drive (though I seem to remember it did). Any thoughts? -cheers from julz @P ____________________________________________________________________________________ Be a better friend, newshound, and know-it-all with Yahoo! Mobile. Try it now. http://mobile.yahoo.com/;_ylt=Ahu06i62sR8HDtDypao8Wcj9tAcJ

18 years, 4 months

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MicroPdp-11 H7864 power supply question.

by julianskidmore＠yahoo.com

Well, I can answer my own post this time! The J11 connector merely fits onto one of the fans. Thankfully I figured that out before I connected it all up and powered it on! -cheers from julz @P ____________________________________________________________________________________ Be a better friend, newshound, and know-it-all with Yahoo! Mobile. Try it now. http://mobile.yahoo.com/;_ylt=Ahu06i62sR8HDtDypao8Wcj9tAcJ

18 years, 4 months

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Cartifile

by quapla＠xs4all.nl

Hi All, I have an Unibus interface card for something called 'CARTRIFILE 20/40' >from Tri-data. I googled it, but very litte info is to be found. Can someone tell me more about it? It is a quad slot board with a connector on one side. Thanks, Ed

18 years, 4 months

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tape drives

by cclist＠sydex.com

> Date: Thu, 24 Apr 2008 14:20:17 -0400 > From: "Roy J. Tellason" > I saw some conversation going by in here recently about Exabyte drives, > only the numbers don't sound anything like what I have, which is marked > "Model: HH CTS". There are all sorts of other numbers on there, for > various aspects of it. Most Exabyte drives have model numbers of the form 8xxx, from 8000 to 8900, then the "Mammoth" models. The basic early 8200 will hold about 2.1G on a standard 8mm tape. Later models require different tapes to take advantage of larger capacities. Quality of the drives are all over the place, from the built-like-a- brick-outhouse 8200 and 8500 to the cheap-hunk-of-plastic 8700. > I'm told that these hold 20G on a tape. The guy I got 'em from > unfortunately doesn't have any tapes to go along with them. One of those > tapes would back up pretty much of what I have on my LAN here, or whole > machines, as they sit. I'm guessing that the interface I'll be looking > at after I take it off of the current mounting plate will be SCSI-wide, > like the CD drives and some of the other stuff I have with it. I suspect that that's 20G "compressed", which is the equivalent of "Chinese electric motor horsepower", i.e. extremely optimistic. > Think I can get 'em going under linux? :-) Sure--just be certain that the SCSI "flavor" matches what you've got on your controller. The general idea is that any SCSI tape drive that supports the standard command set will work with Linux--and probably many other platforms. It's been too long since I did "anybody's SCSI tape backup" software, but the only gotchas are packages that use nonstandard behavior such as read-after-write or strange varieities of tapemarks. Heck, even the command set for auto-changers is standard, being applicable to a little magazine that sits in your tape drive to a bunch of robots crusing racks of 1/2" reel-to-reel tapes. At least in theory, you can use anything from a 1/2" reel-to- reel drive to a DLT without changing software. Most SCSI tape drives feature read-after-write verification, which puts them way above the garden variety consumer "floppy tapes", most of which were garbage, IMOHO. While not as good as DLT, 8mm is head-and-shoulders above 4mm DAT as concerns reliability. The bottom of the barrel, IMOHO, was the Datasonix Pereos 2.5mm format. Cheers, Chuck

18 years, 4 months

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Sun 3/80 keyboard issue

by silvercreekvalley＠yahoo.com

I'm in the process of bringing a Sun 3/80 back to life. First - incredibly - the NVRAM on the 3/80 was still functional - ie there is life in the battery after - what -15+ years? Hard to believe, but as far as I can tell the settings are all correct. I'm however short on various items and wondered if anyone had any of these:- I'd like to get an original Sun PS2 to Sun type 4/5 keyboard converter these had the part number 370-2068. I've tried Belkin F1D082 and other more recent adapters with the 3/80 but none work. A borrowed Sun adapter did work though. I dont know what the difference is, but I suspect the Sun 3/80 is expecting the type 4 keyboard only. Secondly, I'd like to find a colour framebuffer for this machine, unfortunately they are not easy to find as the 3/80 had its own unique layout for the sockets, etc. Its somewhat hard to find part numbers for 3/80 colour framebuffers, most are the mono 501-1402 board, so I guess anything other than that might be colour. One known board is the 501-1443 cg4 colour card. I'd be happy to pay say up to $150 for one of those, or if you prefer I can exchange for my spare 3/80, your choice. Anyway - any help appreciated. Thanks Ian. ____________________________________________________________________________________ Be a better friend, newshound, and know-it-all with Yahoo! Mobile. Try it now. http://mobile.yahoo.com/;_ylt=Ahu06i62sR8HDtDypao8Wcj9tAcJ

18 years, 4 months

1
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CDP-1802 Bonanza

by jpvdg＠cybersmart.co.za

Please help.... I'm trying to purchase the CDP1802 processor and user manual to build the ELF. I have no idea where to get these items...if you can assist please let me know. Many thanks Jeanne-Pierre

18 years, 4 months

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Free to a good home (UK) - bits!

by arcarlini＠iee.org

Robert Jarratt wrote: > I would be interested in any 50-pin SCSI disks, especially any that > are 1.09 > GB or less (can't remember the exact figure for sure but thereabouts) Would this be for a VAXstation 3100 or early MicroVAX 3100? If so the magic figure is 1.073GB. I've used 50-68&80 adapters on VAXes with no problem. > and > any larger 50-pin SCSI disk that are no more than one inch in height. VAXstation 4000 VLC? The adapters I used only just fit in there - room is indeed very tight! Antonio No virus found in this outgoing message. Checked by AVG. Version: 7.5.524 / Virus Database: 269.23.6/1402 - Release Date: 28/04/2008 13:29

18 years, 4 months

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NeXT MO Dump Offer

by ball.of.john＠gmail.com

>Gavin Thomas Nicol wrote: > > I have successfully repaired a NeXT MO drive and it is remarkably > > reliable... I have been banging on it solid for a week and it hasn't > > died. Knowing how hard it is to find a working drive, I'd like to > > extend an offer to anyone on the list that has NeXT MO media: I'm > > willing to dump the media so long as you take care of postage both > > ways. I'll send you back a CDROM or DVD with dump, dump.old, tar and > > dd images, and the original media if you want it (I'd be happy to > > hold on to old media if you don't want it). > >Jerome Fine replies: >I use a Sony SMO S-501 MO drive with 5 1/4" media that hold >about 295 MegaBytes on each side for a total of 590 MegaBytes. >I have no idea if these media are the same, but within a few >years, I will likely want to sell most of them all along with >most of the drives. > >However, since I now rarely use the media (when DVD media are >4.7 GB or almost 10 times the capacity), I am confident that >I can start to dispose of many of the S-501 media. > >Anyone interested? Are the media for the S-501 and the NeXT >MO drives different? If they are identical, then there are >a lot of media available (more than 100) for $ 1.00 each >plus postage. > >Sincerely yours, > >Jerome Fine Unfortunately I too own an SMO S-501 and the NeXT OD cartridges are in no way compatible with the drive. The closest relative to the NeXT OD media and the NeXT OD drive is the Canon Canofile which uses proprietary hardware (the drives are a little different but the cartridges are the same). As for your offer I might go for it as I am in serious need of some more media. Where exactly are they and how many do you have? John.

18 years, 4 months

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"Vintage Systems" Engineer job at Vulcan

by sellam＠vintagetech.com

Well, here it is, an invitation to apply to your dream job :) Server Engineer (Vintage Systems) This role is responsible for the day-to-day operation and maintenance of a collection of classic and antique computer systems. Responsibilities include installation, troubleshooting, maintenance, and operation of vintage computer systems, including but not limited to PDP-10, PDP-8 and PDP-11 computers and related systems in conjunction with other Technology teams. Duties include software installation, configuration, maintenance, procurement of parts, and certification/performance testing of the various computer systems. When required and on occasion, responsibilities include assisting on special projects. This position also provides first through third tier support and troubleshooting for computer systems at the facility to ensure optimum performance for the clients. http://jobs.vulcan.com/default.cfm?szCategory=JobProfile&szOrderID=1541&szJ… Other requirements not listed in the description include desiring rain over 80% of the year and a preference for dressing in flannel (but I must say, Seattle has probably the best FM radio dial anywhere). -- Sellam Ismail Vintage Computer Festival ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ International Man of Intrigue and Danger http://www.vintage.org [ Old computing resources for business || Buy/Sell/Trade Vintage Computers ] [ and academia at www.VintageTech.com || at http://marketplace.vintage.org ]

18 years, 4 months

2
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8251 troubles

by ajp166＠bellatlantic.net

> >Subject: Re: 8251 troubles > From: Brent Hilpert <hilpert at cs.ubc.ca> > Date: Mon, 28 Apr 2008 13:22:08 -0800 > To: General at priv-edtnaa03.telusplanet.net, > "Discussion at priv-edtnaa03.telusplanet.net":On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts > <cctalk at classiccmp.org> > >dwight elvey wrote: >> >> Hi >> The routines SETUP and COUT are ROM routines. >> SETUP passes the first byte to the clock generator and the >> remaining to the command port of the 8251. The command/status >> port is 1 while the data is 0. >> COUT sends text to a video board. >> The second COUT never seems to get executed?? I give plenty >> of time between characters because I send then manually. >> The board can do interrupt driven serial but that didn't seem to >> work so I went for the simpler polling method. >> >> DI >> CALL SETUP >> ; .DB $01F ; 9600 >> ; .DB $01D ; 4800 >> .DB $01B ; 2400 >> ; .DB $019 ; 1200 >> .DB $0AA ; SYNC >> .DB $0AA ; SYNC >> .DB $040 ; RESET >> .DB $0CE ; 2STOP, NO PARITY, 8BIT , X16 >> .DB $010 ; CLEAR ERRORS >> .DB 0 >> >> MVI A,$027 ; RTD, DTR AND REC-EN TX-EN >> OUT 1 >> >> CALL TIN >> >> CALL COUT ; This works >> >> CALL TIN >> >> CALL COUT ; never gets here >> ...................................... >> >> TIN: >> IN 1 >> ANI 2 >> JZ TIN >> IN 0 >> RET > >I have the datasheet for the 8251A but not the 8251 here, so just some guesses: They are the same except for timing and some quirks/bugs. > - perhaps the 8251 (as opposed to the A) requires the receiver to be re-enabled > (not a full reset) after receipt of each character (an 'explicit ack') (?). Not required. > - .. check the error flags to see if a framing error is occurring? You don't have to but it's an idea. > - .. try sending a stream of (best random) characters at full rate, > as opposed to just 2 manually? This might get around some framing > inconsistency or such to at least see if a subsequent character can be received. ??why. > - (may be inconsequential, but in the init sequence the two sync characters > are not preceded by a mode byte (perhaps SETUP does this internally?)) Thats required only for SYNC mode not async. Allison

18 years, 4 months

3
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Using the TD8-E with the MS8-C memories

by bob＠jfcl.com

>Eric wrote: > However, some PDP-8/a configurations used the later revision of the >M8300/M8310/M8330-YA CPU along with semiconductor memory (usually >MS8-C or MS8-D). In this case, the engineering designation of the CPU is >KK8-F, to distinguish it from a KK8-E which might not have the necessary >stall support. AFAIK the only requirement for using a KK8-E in the 8/A chassis is that the M8320 timing generator board has to include a certain ECO. This is spelled out in the "PDP-8/A Operator's Handbook", p3-3. The rest of the 8/E board set is the same either way, and the modified M8320 still works in an 8/E chassis. I assume that at some point all the M8320s produced had this ECO and thus would work either way. This is the first I've heard about them having a special designation. The manual doesn't say specifically what the TG module ECO does, but it wouldn't surprise me at all if it had something to do with implementing NTS STALL. In any case the change can't have been too complicated since it could be done in the field as an ECO. Bob

18 years, 4 months

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Using the TD8-E with the MS8-C memories

by bob＠jfcl.com

Is it possible (i.e. is the CPU fast enough) to use a TD8-E in an 8A6xx machine (KK8-E CPU) and the MS8-C memory? I know the original MOS memories for the 8/A, the MS8-A, were _waaayyyy_ too slow work with the TD8E, but it appears that the MS8C is a lot faster. Thanks to David Gesswein I found a manual for the MS8-C here http://www.pdp8online.com/pdp8cgi/query_docs/tifftopdf.pl/pdp8prints/ms8-c.p df If I read it right, it seems to say that the MS8C has a cycle time of 1.2/1.4us (i.e. just as fast as the KK8-E) and that it does transparent refresh (i.e. the refresh doesn't slow down the CPU at all). And if I'm still reading right, it seems like the only time the MS8C uses NTS STALL is when the processor first starts up (i.e. goes from the HALT state to RUN), and that's just to synchronize the transparent refresh cycles with the CPU. If all that's correct, then it ought to be possible to use the MS8C with the TD8E. Does anybody know if this is true before I pull my hair out trying to get it to work? And if that works, is it also possible to use the KK8-A CPU (slightly slower than the KK8-E) in the same configuration? I have both CPU card sets, but the KK8-A takes fewer slots. Thanks, Bob Armstrong

18 years, 4 months

4
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Free to a good home (UK) - bits!

by james＠machineroom.info

Hi all, I'm having a clearout with a pending house move. All these bits are in Southampton, UK. I'd prefer them to go quickly as one lot but will consider any and all requests. No guarantee that all this works, but most of it I've used some time in the past! Please contact me off list if you're interested. Sun SS20 doesn't boot. Comes with a pair of Ross 150MHz CPU's and lots of memory that I never got around to installing. Sun ultra2. Has solaris 8 installed and works fine. 4GB disk, 200MHz CPU. Box of sun sbus cards - GX, network, SCSI, etc. Sun type 5 keyboard and 2 mice. 2 SGI Octanes. Single and dual R10K with SI gfx. Possibly a dual R12K if you can convince me to get rid of it :-) Iiyama 19" FST CRT monitor with VGA & 5*BNC connectors. Really, really nice picture but a few scratches to the glass. Selection of I-BUS PCI & ISA passive backplanes, including a 20 slot ISA monster! Most of these are PICMG (think that's it?) mixed ISA/PCI. DDS1 drive DDS2 drive 4 SCSI CD-ROMs 2 HP ProCurve 10/100 switches "Jeta" power supply. pulled from some system it comes with a basic hand-drawn pinout and does 5V at 80A, 12V at 6A & 12V at 10A Selection of small (<=9GB) SCSI drives. Mix of 50, 68 & 80 pin. Right, that's the boring stuff... More interesting is 3 crates from my rescued Whitecross WX9020 system. I'm keeping this as a working system with system controller and processing crates but getting rid of the 3 storage crates. Each is a 19" 6U unit and includes 4 disk "modules" (one of them is missing a module). Each module has 2 disks, each disk is 4GB and has it's own controller card. Each card has an Inmos T425 transputer, NCR SCSI controller and 16MB of ECC RAM. On the back of each crate are power boards to take the 48V system power to 5V and ??. The other cards in the crate I'll keep as spares for the rest of the system since they're of little use on their own. You could build a 22 transputer network with the disk controller cards - just apply power and patch in to the links. I've put some pics on Flickr (http://www.flickr.com/photos/17208732 at N00/sets/72157604779715870/) so you can get an idea of what I'm talking about :-) There's probably more to come. Probably some peecee rubbish too! Cheers, James

18 years, 4 months

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Some new additions

by quapla＠xs4all.nl

Well, Some nice items I picked up today: 2 rack config with 1 PDP-11/35 (10" box) & 2x RK05 2x spare PDP-11/35 (10" box) 3x spare RK05 20 RK05 packs 6 Unused RK05 packs small stack of system documentation 11/23+ No pics, I forgot to take the camera with me. Ed

18 years, 4 months

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NIB ADM-3A fetches $1625

by legalize＠xmission.com

ebay item # 230243733217 That's a record for ADM-3's on ebay, AFAIK. -- "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/>

18 years, 4 months

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3100 & DECwindows

by RodSmallwood＠mail.ediconsulting.co.uk

I have just about managed to get DECWindows up. All bar one thing. After logging in as a user in the DECWindows dialog box I get this error message. "No license is active for this product" The DW-MOTIF license is loaded and active. So what is it referring to to? Answers please Rod Smallwood

18 years, 4 months

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OT: Seeking older MP3 player products ($$$)

by sellam＠vintagetech.com

I have a new bounty out for the following items: 1. netDrives Brujo CD/MP3 player 2. AudioReQuest ARQ-1 MP3/CD Player I'm offering $200 for each unit. They must be working and with original firmware. Please contact me directly if you have either of these. Thanks! -- Sellam Ismail Vintage Computer Festival ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ International Man of Intrigue and Danger http://www.vintage.org [ Old computing resources for business || Buy/Sell/Trade Vintage Computers ] [ and academia at www.VintageTech.com || at http://marketplace.vintage.org ]

18 years, 4 months

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Woohoo! Straight-8

by evan＠snarc.net

Our user group and museum here in NJ -- the Mid-Atlantic Retro Computing Hobbyists (MARCH) -- owns a Straight-8 as of yesterday morning. This one is the desktop version (vs. the rack-mount version). Of course, "desktop" is relative -- it weighs about 250 pounds. It sat in someone's barn for a few decades, so it was VERY dirty ... but we put some effort into cleaning off the top layer. Inside we found mouse nest! But no mouse, whether furry or electronic. One of the two translucent plastic sides is broken. We plan to fix it, or rebuild it, or find a suitable replacement. We also picked up an ASR-33 and a plotter with the PDP-8. Gotta love transistors, core memory, and flip-chips. Best of all, we have the story that goes along with the computer -- see www.resistors.org -- here's an excerpt from the group alumni wiki: >>>> DEC donated a PDP-8 (original series with 4,096 12-bit words of core memory), and a model 33 ASR Teletype to the group. We went to Maynard, Mass. and picked these up from 'the mill' (the original headquarters building) and brought it back to the barn in someone's VW bus. The computer was mounted on a pallet with 4 handles so it could be carried like a sedan chair <<<< So, that's another good reason to come to VCF East 5.0, Sept. 13-14 .... you'll get to see our desktop Straight-8 with the original accessories (and manuals and paper tapes, etc.) - Evan

18 years, 4 months

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8251 troubles

by ajp166＠bellatlantic.net

> >Subject: Re: 8251 troubles > From: Brent Hilpert <hilpert at cs.ubc.ca> > Date: Tue, 29 Apr 2008 00:50:50 -0800 > To: General at priv-edtnaa04.telusplanet.net, > "Discussion at priv-edtnaa04.telusplanet.net":On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts > <cctalk at classiccmp.org> > > > >Allison wrote: >> >> > >> >Subject: Re: 8251 troubles >> > From: Brent Hilpert <hilpert at cs.ubc.ca> >> > Date: Mon, 28 Apr 2008 13:22:08 -0800 >> > To: General at priv-edtnaa03.telusplanet.net, >> > "Discussion at priv-edtnaa03.telusplanet.net":On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts >> > <cctalk at classiccmp.org> >> > >> >dwight elvey wrote: >> >> >> >> Hi >> >> The routines SETUP and COUT are ROM routines. >> >> SETUP passes the first byte to the clock generator and the >> >> remaining to the command port of the 8251. The command/status >> >> port is 1 while the data is 0. >> >> COUT sends text to a video board. >> >> The second COUT never seems to get executed?? I give plenty >> >> of time between characters because I send then manually. >> >> The board can do interrupt driven serial but that didn't seem to >> >> work so I went for the simpler polling method. >> >> >> >> DI >> >> CALL SETUP >> >> ; .DB $01F ; 9600 >> >> ; .DB $01D ; 4800 >> >> .DB $01B ; 2400 >> >> ; .DB $019 ; 1200 >> >> .DB $0AA ; SYNC >> >> .DB $0AA ; SYNC >> >> .DB $040 ; RESET >> >> .DB $0CE ; 2STOP, NO PARITY, 8BIT , X16 >> >> .DB $010 ; CLEAR ERRORS >> >> .DB 0 >> >> >> >> MVI A,$027 ; RTD, DTR AND REC-EN TX-EN >> >> OUT 1 >> >> >> >> CALL TIN >> >> >> >> CALL COUT ; This works >> >> >> >> CALL TIN >> >> >> >> CALL COUT ; never gets here >> >> ...................................... >> >> >> >> TIN: >> >> IN 1 >> >> ANI 2 >> >> JZ TIN >> >> IN 0 >> >> RET >> > >> >I have the datasheet for the 8251A but not the 8251 here, so just some guesses: >> >> They are the same except for timing and some quirks/bugs. > >Well, in general, differential quirks/bugs can go a long way to being a problem. >There's a fair set of differences listed in the A datasheet. I know, I was product engineer for NEC when 8251AC was released. > >> > - perhaps the 8251 (as opposed to the A) requires the receiver to be re-enabled >> > (not a full reset) after receipt of each character (an 'explicit ack') (?). >> >> Not required. > >OK. > > >> > - .. check the error flags to see if a framing error is occurring? >> >> You don't have to but it's an idea. >> >> > - .. try sending a stream of (best random) characters at full rate, >> > as opposed to just 2 manually? This might get around some framing >> > inconsistency or such to at least see if a subsequent character can be received. >> >> ??why. > >8251A doc says device is picky about seeing the STOP bit. >Suppose for example, there is an inconsistency between the framing being sent >and the rcvr cfg, returns first character ok but sends dev into error state, >and error state does something to subsequent characters returned. >In general, it might help tease out an otherwise consistent consequence of some >unexpected behaviour. It is a bit picky bit then that would creat a framing error and it will still recieve the next byte. The only "error state" is that the framing flag is set and if you didn't check it on a byte by bye basis you have no clue what byte caused it, it continues to recieve (async). Generally the device is very stupid. >> > - (may be inconsequential, but in the init sequence the two sync characters >> > are not preceded by a mode byte (perhaps SETUP does this internally?)) >> >> Thats required only for SYNC mode not async. > >As Dwight has explained they are there for a reliable init, even for async >mode. I was noticing that it's different than what is suggested for init in the >A doc, which is to write 3 nuls to the command register followed by a reset command. You do that for any 8251 on reset as a matter of course as you may not know the prior state and you always get to a initial command state. I always do it but I find for async unless you have a flakey hardware reset it's not usually required thing for async. Like I said I use it a lot as I have a potload of them (both A and non A) >from multiple vendors. I laso have many system that thats the primary serial IO. NS* horizon, NS* advantage, SBC880 and the companion 5 port serial card, Vt180 used 4 of them and I have load of them as well. I do use and program the part still. For Bisync its a disaster, for simple async the bugs are not near as annoying. I've seen far more problems with things like toasted 148x drivers/recievers (and DEC 963x) and one end as 8n1 with the companion system as 7p1! Other ways to break the part include no baud clock when programming, chip clock not at least 4.5x the baud clock. There are a few others. Allison

18 years, 4 months

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VCF Midwest

by silent700＠gmail.com

VCF Midwest happened, and a good time as had (by all?) I've posted a few pics and various commentary at the 'blog here: http://silent700.blogspot.com/ Today's post has link to a Flickr set with many more pics, and a short video. Many thanks to Pat and all others involved in making VCF-MW happen again this year! -j -- silent700.blogspot.com Retrocomputing and collecting in the Chicago area: http://chiclassiccomp.org

18 years, 4 months

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IBM 5150 maximum memory?

by cclist＠sydex.com

> Date: Sat, 26 Apr 2008 23:15:41 -0500 > From: Jim Leonard > I disagree somewhat, if only to present the evidence of the PCjr. Now > *that* was clearly meant as a home computer (cartridge slots, wireless > keyboard, small and light, built-in composite video) I use the introduction of the Peanut as proof that IBM was still suffering from the shock of having customers flock to buy the PC. As they discovered, even the unwashed public had its limits as to what could be passed off as an IBM product. Or maybe it was just the result of a drunken bet. You forgot the complete lack of DMA and, shall we say, "anemic" interrupt handling facility? How about the 1990's IBM "multimedia" computer system? Use it as a phone answering machine, fax machine, CD player, etc. The only problem being that you have to leave it on all the time. Toshiba made a similar blunder at about the same time with its Infinia machines--only to abandon the desktop business altogether. Cheers, Chuck

18 years, 4 months

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8251 troubles

by ajp166＠bellatlantic.net

This brings seeral questions about the hardware. What is the state of CTS/ (clear to send active low) if the state of the input is false it will never send. It effectively disables the transmitter and can be used for hardware handshake. Also the command instruction must have bits 0 and 2 set to enable Tx and RX repectively. Typical command byte would be 35H or 37H. Allison > >Subject: 8251 troubles > From: dwight elvey <dkelvey at hotmail.com> > Date: Sun, 27 Apr 2008 08:23:09 -0700 > To: "General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts" <cctalk at classiccmp.org> > > >Hi > I've got a funny problem with a 8251. > I've been writing 8080 code and seem to have a strange >problem. > I initialize the chip in async mode. I have a light box on the >serial wire. It is initialized to both send and recieve. > I send one character to the 8251 and it passes it to the software >on the 8080 side. I display it on the 8080 side. > I then send another character to the 8251. Nothing happens. >It won't receive until I reset it. > None of the status lights change. I can see the data light flicker. > It could be a bad part but it just doesn't seem that it would >work once and then fail to work for the second character. > It just doesn't make sense. > Is there something I'm missing about the 8251. >Dwight > >_________________________________________________________________ >Spell a grand slam in this game where word skill meets World Series. Get in the game. >http://club.live.com/word_slugger.aspx?icid=word_slugger_wlhm_admod_april08

18 years, 4 months

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disk drive

by semicon.auto＠pacific.net.sg

Dear Jason, Are you really looking for sony floppy drive model#MP-F52W-00D , Please be informed that I do have 2 unit of the above item. Kindly advise? Warmest Regards, Desmond Lwe/29.04.08 I am looking for a Sony floppy drive Model# MP-F52W-00D. Do you have any information on how I could obtain one? Please reply to both e-mail addresses in this message. Thank you, Jason

18 years, 4 months

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TU58-K DECTAPE IIs available

by jjhud72＠sonic.net

Hello, You wouldn't by chance still have those tu58-k tapes still available? I'm just taking a shot at it. Any response would be appreciated. Regards, Jim

18 years, 4 months

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Dulmont Magnum

by tcrews＠snoopa.net.au

Hi Phil Guerney Are you still interested in Info on the Dulmont Magnum Laptop? I was the designer. Terry Crews

18 years, 4 months

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Legal advice.

by lee＠geekdot.com

For nearly five years I have had some pages on my website regarding the MicroProfessor MPF-1. These pages included binary images from the ROMs and redrawn schematics along with other technical information. This was done with the understanding that I had a tacit agreement from Flite Electronics to so do having discussed these pages with a representative of Flite. Now I have received what can only be described as a thinly veiled threat from one of the directors of Flite demanding certain actions on my part but not, strangely, the removal of any of the disputed information. What I would like is some help on what I can freely publish without having to worry about any action from Flite. As Flite and I are both in the UK this at least does not include the problems of crossing any legal borders. And, just in case any Flite directors read this list, when you prefix the question "Indeed, I am being very polite and conciliatory?" with the threat of "?causation and damages? through your public domain exposure of our copyright material for so long." then no, you are not. Lee.

18 years, 4 months

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8251 troubles

by ajp166＠bellatlantic.net

> >Subject: RE: 8251 troubles > From: "Chuck Guzis" <cclist at sydex.com> > Date: Mon, 28 Apr 2008 11:22:58 -0700 > To: cctalk at classiccmp.org > >> Date: Sun, 27 Apr 2008 15:41:49 -0400 >> From: Allison > >> I have both in quantity. Generally it's the quirks of the >> "improved part"that are annoying but for simple Async serial IO >> they are identical enough. > >It could be that simple polled-mode async I/O works well enough, but >when I was trying to get a bisync package working with the 8251, I >wanted to chew my own arm off. Among the issues (other than the >occasional device "hang") that I had was the lack of double-buffering >and the indeterminate control logic (it was possible to disable the >transmitter in the middle of a character). The 8251A was *much* >better in that respect. > For async its ok bisync, you gotta be crazy. While the A helped bisync it broke the CTS/ CTS to inactive during a TX meant the character would be resent! The Fix was for both A and non A is a gate to interlock the external CTS/ with TXE. >In any case, Dwight has the NEC part which renders the topic moot. Not really as it had the exact same bugs. > >I found at the time that the Signetics 2651 was a far better chip for >most utility purposes than the 8251, having the benefit of an >internal baud-rate generator for async operation. It was better. Allison >Cheers, >Chuck

18 years, 4 months

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8251 troubles

by cclist＠sydex.com

> Date: Sun, 27 Apr 2008 15:41:49 -0400 > From: Allison > I have both in quantity. Generally it's the quirks of the > "improved part"that are annoying but for simple Async serial IO > they are identical enough. It could be that simple polled-mode async I/O works well enough, but when I was trying to get a bisync package working with the 8251, I wanted to chew my own arm off. Among the issues (other than the occasional device "hang") that I had was the lack of double-buffering and the indeterminate control logic (it was possible to disable the transmitter in the middle of a character). The 8251A was *much* better in that respect. In any case, Dwight has the NEC part which renders the topic moot. I found at the time that the Signetics 2651 was a far better chip for most utility purposes than the 8251, having the benefit of an internal baud-rate generator for async operation. Cheers, Chuck

18 years, 4 months

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vt52 nuggles

by dgriffi＠cs.csubak.edu

I was wondering if anyone out there has a VT52 they'd be willing to part with... As most of you are aware, I have oodles of goodies to trade. -- David Griffith dgriffi at cs.csubak.edu

18 years, 4 months

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Legal advice.

by lee＠geekdot.com

>> This was done with the understanding that I had a tacit >> agreement from Flite Electronics to so do having >> discussed these pages with a representative of Flite. > Do you have any of this in writing (or email)? I may have. This was nearly five years ago and I'm hoping that the emails from Flite are among those I have archived. > The information seems to be gone (or I'm looking in the > wrong place). As it was the easiest option it has gone for now at least. >> What I would like is some help on what I can freely publish >> without having to worry about any action from Flite. > Presumably nothing of theirs. That's what I need to sort out. Can I post a redrawn schematic? How about board pinouts, or system descriptions? > uk.legal might be the place to start. It may indeed, thank you. Lee.

18 years, 4 months

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Sharp Hayac 2900 needs new home

by dr.emiel＠xs4all.nl

I'm doing a bit of spring cleaning so I have a Sharp Hayac 2900 with disc's and manual looking for a new home. I like to trade it for HP stuff (printers HP-1000 interface or computers calculators ) I also have a MicroVax II for trade (this a BA23) with cpu 2Mb memory and disc and TK-50 controllers but no disc or tape drive. If you don't have any of this well maybe we can work someting else out. I live in the Netherlands. Rik

18 years, 4 months

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8251 troubles

by ajp166＠bellatlantic.net

> >Subject: RE: 8251 troubles > From: dwight elvey <dkelvey at hotmail.com> > Date: Sun, 27 Apr 2008 18:02:19 -0700 > To: "General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts" <cctalk at classiccmp.org> > > > > > >> From: cclist at sydex.com > >> Date: Sun, 27 Apr 2008 08:23:09 -0700 >> From: dwight elvey >> >> I'm going to assume that you have an 8251A, not an 8251. If the >> latter, either sell it to a collector or have it bronzed and made >> into a tieclasp. There are substantial differences between the -A >> and non-A parts, all annoying. > >Hi Chuck > The chip is a NEC 8251C. NEC part number are D8251C for intel 8251 and D8251AC for intel 8251A and the nec part have the same bugs for compatability (really!). >> >> Glancing at your code, I'm a bit puzzled by the final initialization >> byte of 0x10. Why isn't this, say, 0x37? Why would you disable the >> receiver? 8251A commands are bit-inclusive; that is, ALL bits in the >> command register are interpreted independently of one another. Thus, >> 0x10 sent to the command register doesn't just reset the error flags, >> it also disables the transmitter and receiver and drops DTR and RTS. > > I'd originally done a 37 but looking at some example code, >I thought I'd try separating out that bit. No change in results. >The data sheet seems to indicate that the flags will not effect >or stop operation. Be very careful with soft reset as that means sending the whole command string again and most users of 8251 reset the this many times (up to 3) then write commands and read the data input a few times to clear it. > >> >> The implication is that since the command register's write-only, you >> have to remember the last command you sent if you want to reset the >> error flag. One of the minor annoyances of a few early Intel >> peripherals. >> >> Anent that last one--make certain that your handshake lines >> (RTS/CTS/DTR) are set to the proper levels--an inactive CTS will >> prevent the 8251A from transmitting. > > At least at the port, there is no change. There could be something >at the chip. Since I've not even gotten to the sending serial, yet, CTS >isn't yet an issue. First assure your self that the RS232 input device 1488/1489 arent cooked and data is reaching RXD pin and there is clock and baud clock of the correct rates. Some 8080 code known to work. INIT: ;... LXI H,$7A37 USART 7 BITS, NO PARITY, HIGH-SPEED CALL SETURT INITIALIZE 8251 ;... * * INITIALIZES 8251 USART TO VALUE PASSED IN H-L * SETURT: MVI A,3 VALUE TO RESET UART OUT UCTL MAKE SURE. OUT UCTL UART IS RESET MVI A,$77 VALUE TO ENTER COMMAND MODE OUT UCTL ENTER COMMAND MODE MOV A,H GET HIGH BYTE OF NEW COMMAND WORD OUT UCTL WRITE TO CONTROL PORT MOV A,L GET LOW BYTE OF NEW COMMAND WORD OUT UCTL WRITE TO CONTROL PORT RET Allison

18 years, 4 months

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8251 troubles

by cclist＠sydex.com

Date: Sun, 27 Apr 2008 08:23:09 -0700 From: dwight elvey <dkelvey at hotmail.com> I'm going to assume that you have an 8251A, not an 8251. If the latter, either sell it to a collector or have it bronzed and made into a tieclasp. There are substantial differences between the -A and non-A parts, all annoying. Glancing at your code, I'm a bit puzzled by the final initialization byte of 0x10. Why isn't this, say, 0x37? Why would you disable the receiver? 8251A commands are bit-inclusive; that is, ALL bits in the command register are interpreted independently of one another. Thus, 0x10 sent to the command register doesn't just reset the error flags, it also disables the transmitter and receiver and drops DTR and RTS. The implication is that since the command register's write-only, you have to remember the last command you sent if you want to reset the error flag. One of the minor annoyances of a few early Intel peripherals. Anent that last one--make certain that your handshake lines (RTS/CTS/DTR) are set to the proper levels--an inactive CTS will prevent the 8251A from transmitting. Hope this helps, Chuck

18 years, 4 months

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IBM 5150 maximum memory?

by cclist＠sydex.com

> Date: Thu, 24 Apr 2008 22:25:49 -0500 > From: Jim Leonard > Wow, I can't see it being useful at launch with 16K -- the DOS 1.0 took up > about 11K if memory serves, and command.com 5K all by itself... I guess > that left 1.5K to run BASIC.COM and that was all she wrote... But with the 5150, the diskette drive (160K format) was optional. All you really needed was a CGA card to get going. You had BASIC in ROM and a cassette tape interface. The CGA card could be hooked to a modulator and make pretty pictures on your TV. IIRC, that's one of the configurations described in the IBM literature. As another poster has mentioned, it really did seem like the target was the Apple II and TI 99/4 type of market, rather than the higher- end "office" machines like the Morrow or Eagle. I almost bought a NEC APC after I first saw a 5150, thinking that I'd completely misunderstood IBM's marketing objectives. Those "pick your poison" expansion slots are what saved that box, which succeeded, sometimes it seems, in spit of IBM's worst efforts. Maybe someone remembers that the US 120v 60Hz models were availble quite a bit before the 220v 50Hz models were--and IBM charged a premium for the 220v models. I remember going to the local sales office on Arques and trying to place an order for a dozen of the 220v models. "Not available yet" was the answer. So, says I, "How about buying some US models and running them at 120v 50Hz via a transformer?" "That would void the warranty" was the response. Apparently IBM also refused to support US systems sent overseas to 50Hz land. It was very strange. We bought a bunch of US 5150s and shipped them anyway. They ran fine on 50Hz. Cheers, Chuck

18 years, 4 months

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8251 troubles

by ajp166＠bellatlantic.net

> >Subject: RE: 8251 troubles > From: "Chuck Guzis" <cclist at sydex.com> > Date: Sun, 27 Apr 2008 11:12:06 -0700 > To: cctalk at classiccmp.org > >Date: Sun, 27 Apr 2008 08:23:09 -0700 >From: dwight elvey <dkelvey at hotmail.com> > >I'm going to assume that you have an 8251A, not an 8251. If the >latter, either sell it to a collector or have it bronzed and made >into a tieclasp. There are substantial differences between the -A >and non-A parts, all annoying. I have both in quantity. Generally it's the quirks of the "improved part"that are annoying but for simple Async serial IO they are identical enough. >The implication is that since the command register's write-only, you >have to remember the last command you sent if you want to reset the >error flag. One of the minor annoyances of a few early Intel >peripherals. Yep, helps to have a table of set up variables. >Anent that last one--make certain that your handshake lines >(RTS/CTS/DTR) are set to the proper levels--an inactive CTS will >prevent the 8251A from transmitting. Yep, Allison

18 years, 4 months

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IBM 5150 maximum memory?

by cclist＠sydex.com

Date: Sat, 26 Apr 2008 20:58:36 +0100 (BST) From: Tony Duell > Another silly thing is that refresh was controlled by a DMA channel. I'm > sure it saved a couple chips, but it meant that errant, or > > And, indeed, using the 8237 DMA chip with a paging register (and not even > doing that as elegantly as the FTS-88 did, which at least had one paging > register per DMA channel) rather than using the 8089 'I/O processor'. The 5150 has 4 page registers, one for each DMA channel (an LS670 4x4 RAM). Of course that limits one to doing DMA inside of 64K physical blocks, but that's not too awful. The DMA-driven RAM refresh earned some writers beer money as they could write articles on how to alter the refresh rate to squeeze a bit more performance out of the basic box. On the PC-AT, the big design flaw in the DMA circuitry to me was the omission of handshaking for DMA memory-to-memory transfers. It would have made the memory above 1024K much more useful on the system without having to switch into protected mode. The "use DMA for refresh" wasn't an awful compromise. At least the video adapters had their own private memory and didn't load the system down refreshing out of system RAM (i.e., IBM didn't use an 8275 CRTC, thankfully). Given that the 5150 used 16K DRAMs on the planar, the Intel memory controller would have been the 8202, a miserable piece of silicon. It would also have made upgrading to 64K DRAMs a bit more of a chore (requires an 8203). The 8089 was pretty much of a dead-end product; limited to 20 bits of addressability, expensive, with only 2 DMA channels. I never did figure out why Intel introduced it. Our Intel sales engineer didn't even want to talk about it. I only vaguely remember the tamper-proof stuff on the 5150 PSU since I dug into it only a few days after I had the system. Reversed the fan--again, it was incredible that the case interior was kept at negative pressure. Suck all sorts of crud in through the floppy slots. I added a filter over the fan port on the case. I was still doing the same thing 20+ years later. In an odd twist of events, I also like to replace the cheap Chinese DC fans with nice Japanese AC line-powered fans. I've never had one of the latter develop fan noise--they're just better built. Cheers, Chuck

18 years, 4 months

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WTB: Emulex MT-02 controller

by cclist＠sydex.com

Date: Fri, 25 Apr 2008 22:18:59 +0100 (BST) From: (Tony Duell) > I was refering to critical timing between the hardware control lines. For > example I've used an interface (not QIC anything) where one device > asserted a signal, then the other device had to acknowldedge within a > certian (short) time (1us or so), otherwise there would be ig problems. The best known example of this in spades is the Pertec tape interface. "Here's the data, catch it!" type of interface. On read, there's a strobe asserted when data's ready, but no handshake or other means of throttling the flow. Same for the write side--a "data accepted" sort of signal, but the data must have been presented on the host side. Lost data conditions aren't diagnosed, unless the host decides to incorporate logic to do it (i.e. detect strobe before data accepted/ready). Given that there's no standard on tape block length, most Pertec controllers have a bunch of RAM or at least a good-sized FIFO to deal with the condition that the host may not be able to keep up with events. Data errors are detected by the drive, but presented during the course of a transfer, so again, the controller must be there to latch them when they occur. IIRC, QIC-02 uses handshaking; QIC-36 does not. > The QIC36 ISA card I have in my junk box appaers to be essentially a > QIC-02 host interfaxce and a QIC-02-to QIC36 bridge on the same PCB. I > keep it because the ASICs on the board are the same as those on a separate > QIC-02 to QIC36 bridge that I sometimes use with my PERQ, and thus the ISA > card is a source of spares... The QIC-36 ISA cards I have are Wangteks--they use an 8085 and a fair number of house-labeled ICs to do their dirty work. They're integrated units, though I suspect there's a fair amount of shared logic with the Wangtek QIC-36-to-02 controller, as it also uses an 8085 and has some of the same house-labeled packages on it. My QIC-02 cards are by Alliance Technology; nothing to write home about--just some LSTTL logic and maybe a PAL for address decoding. About what you'd expect--and apparently clones of the Wangtek PC-02. Cheers, Chuck

18 years, 4 months

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IBM 5150 maximum memory?

by cclist＠sydex.com

Date: Thu, 24 Apr 2008 13:45:10 -0500 From: Jules Richardson > Indeed - in the context of the discussion I got involved in (which was > actually about memory prices, not the PC specifically), we were just > interested in what could be done with a 5150 *when it was new* - and I > think all that IBM offered then was the 64K boards (and of course third > parties didn't exist!) Yup, but vendors like Quadram and Everex came along pretty quickly. Lots of folks realized that the 64K limitation was a huge one. > You know, I had a thought - I wonder if those 64K boards can't be > jumpered beyond the 256KB boundary? Maybe that's why I'm remembering a > 256KB limit on the original machines (and using original IBM expansion > boards). Getting around that would mean physically hacking the address > lines/decoding of the boards... There were also some hacks, since 64K DRAMs were available when the 5150 was launched (why IBM didn't design the planar with jumpers to select memory type is beyond me). If you were handy with a soldering iron and an Xacto knife, you could cut-and-jumper your way to 256K planar memory. The big pain was the soldered-in first row of 16K DRAM. I have a booklet from an outfitlled "Purple Computing" that marketed a little piggyback board that allowed one to leave the first row of DRAM in. It was basically 4 rows of sockets--you still had to do the cutting and jumpering, but without removing the 16K DRAM. Anyone wants the booklet can have it for postage. I was happy to retire my 5150 and get a genuine Taiwanese clone mobo with 256K and 8 slots. Still, PC-DOS would run in 64K. Cheers, Chuck

18 years, 4 months

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Selectric Mag Card Print Request

by Jon.Walkwitz＠rice.edu

Hello, I'm trying to find someone who can print an old mag card for a selectric typewriter ca 1973. I can't seem to find anyone around who has got or seen one of these in person (lately). Wondering if you can point me in the right place? Thanks for your help, Jon Walkwitz

18 years, 4 months

4
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Texas Instruments CC40

by mcguire＠neurotica.com

I just remembered that I'd wanted to mention this, but things have been busy and I forgot. My mother knows of my fondness for antique computers, and she keeps her eyes open at thrift stores and related places. She picked up a Texas Instruments Compact Computer 40 for me and presented it to me for my birthday a month ago. I had never heard of this machine, but now I've done some reading and I've played with it a bit. It's pretty neat! Has anyone else here messed with one? -Dave -- Dave McGuire Port Charlotte, FL

18 years, 4 months

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IBM 5150 maximum memory?

by Watzman＠neo.rr.com

Re: "I'm not aware of any other mainstream microcomputer introduced in or before 1981 that could support contiguous, directly addressable RAM configurations from 16KB to over 512KB." The Heathkit (Zenith Data Systems) Z-100 supported 768k of addressable contiguous RAM with full color bit mapped graphics video. Generally considered contemporaneous with the PC, but was actually introduced slightly later.

18 years, 4 months

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Amiga 4000 Kickstart 3.1 = Dead keyboard??

by snhirsch＠gmail.com

Hi, I just burned myself a pair of Kickstart 3.1 EPROMs for my A4000 and much to my surprise, it no longer recognizes my Northgate Omnikey keyboard! The Amiga keyboard from my 2000 is fine and the Omnikey works on the A2000. VERY strange. Can anyone shed light on this? Were there multiple revisions of 3.1 for the A4000 that I should try? Any help or guesses appreciated! Steve --

18 years, 4 months

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Inquiry on System Industries Qbus SCSI

by tiggerlasv＠aim.com

I had put a few feelers out there a few months ago, but was met with silence. It was ominous. You could hear crickets chirping. ;-) One company (Scottish Data Systems) may or may not have the manual; I offered them like $50 + S/H for a real copy, or $40 for an e-mailed copy, but never heard back from them. I may have another source for the manual, but I won't know for a few more weeks. I have not been able to get a FULL description of this board's capabilities. I do know that at least half of the board functions as a SCSI tape controller, with TMSCP emulation, and have been able to get that part of the functionality partially working. Here is what I have so far: SW-2 is a 10-position dip switch at the back of the board. The switch settings are backwards from the norm. Thus, OFF/OPEN switches are a logical "1". 1 = OPEN = OFF 0 = CLOSED = ON Here is the bit decoding: If you copy & paste this into a fixed font (not true type), this should line up properly. I use Notepad in Windoze. SWITCH 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 X 2 1 --------------------------------------------- BIT 1 4 2 1 4 2 1 4 2 1 4 O O C C O C O C - C C 7 4 5 0 0 Note the missing bit in the address selection, which correlates to the TMSCP addressing scheme. The 50-pin connector towards the front of the controller appears to be single-ended SCSI. The connector set further back is probably a differential SCSI interface, based on the DS75176's I see directly behind the connector. There are interrupt select jumpers at the back; the jumper closest to the edge is BR4. There is also a BEVENT jumper near the back, center of the board. I have no idea what the function of SW1 is. There is a row of jumpers along the right edge, which may be LUN selection. I'm guessing the jumpers at the front of the board are terminator / terminator power jumpers. So far, I've been able to get the controller address set, and have attached an Exabyte 8200 tape drive to it. When I attempt to boot a tape, it does seem to send commands to the tape drive, and the tape starts to seek. After several seconds however, the processor halts. If I boot RSTS/E, it hangs during INIT before ever getting to a prompt. Clearly, further poking around is required. If anyone has any insight, it would be appreciated, especially the current position of any of the jumpers on your board, and settings for SW1. I will keep you posted. . . T

18 years, 4 months

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IBM 5150 maximum memory?

by cclist＠sydex.com

Date: Sat, 26 Apr 2008 10:13:33 -0500 From: Jim Battle > Moore's law was at the time a well known trend, and it wouldn't take a > genius to calculate that the 16-fold increase in memory would be outrun in > just a few years. Yes, but this goes back to the question of "What was this machine intended for?". When one examines it in retrospect, and particularly with a view toward the competition, it's pretty clear that it was intended as a "home" computer for the kids to play educational games on and the adults to balance checkbooks and perhaps write letters on. Given its price, I can certainly appreciate the lack of enthusiasm >from IBM marketing. Indeed, had the same machine been introduced by, say, Tandy, at the same price, it would have met with a much cooler reception. In case of point, a couple of friends had a garage business manufacturing high-end bicycle racks. They needed a small office computer. I had just gotten my 5150 and showed it to them. Underwhelmed, they went out and bought a Morrow (MD2? MD3?) for less cash that was loaded with WordStar and (IIRC) Supercalc. It was ready to go right out of the box. Indeed, there were many other competitors for the "home office/small business" market that offered a much better price point and ease of setup when the whole package was figured in. Eagle II and III boxes come to mind in particular. Eagle used to hold competitions to see who could get from packing box to working system in the smallest amount of time--and I think it was measured in seconds. I think the 8086 caught on sooner in Japan. Mitsubishi and NEC both had offerings before the 5150. The NEC APC, in particular, was a very noteworthy design. Perhaps the need for manipulating Kanji was part of the picture. I suspect that if IBM was considering another CPU, it probably was the 8085. Nice reliable supply (Intel and second sources) and already used in the System 23 box. Given the market IBM appeared to be shooting for, there was no chance of a 68K PC. In marketing's eyes, it would have been overkill. Cheers, Chuck

18 years, 4 months

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IBM 5150 maximum memory?

by cclist＠sydex.com

Date: Fri, 25 Apr 2008 22:39:29 +0100 (BST) From: (Tony Duell) > Did very early machines have AC fans? All the later ones certainly had 12V > DC ones that would be independant of mains frequency, but an AC fan would > run slower on 50Hz and could cause the machine to overheat. Was it really > that marginal (Acutally, given it's the IBM PC [1], I could beleive it > was). Yes, they did, but the fans were rated for 50-60 Hz operation and impedance-protected. With the factory, what 62-watt?, PSU, I don't think it was possible to stuff the thing full enough of drives and cards to make it overheat (remember too, that there were only 5 slots) to make it overheat. Wasn't the (black) PSU on the original PC fitted with red tamper-telltales stuck on along the edge of the PSU clamshell? I can't remember exactly, but I think it was. As this was an IBM product, I fully expected that there would have been some provision for changing the AC input voltage. Certainly other personal computers of the time had the feature, and this wasn't supposed to be a product from "Fred's Personal Computer and Aluminum Storm Door Company". One expected a high level of engineering from IBM. [1] When I got my first IBM PC-family machine (a 5160), I took it to bits (what a suprise) and sat down with the TechRef. Every few minutes I'd exclaim 'They did WHAT???' as I found aother it of misdesign... I never understood the design that featured a complete lack of a clear airpath between the plug-in-cards. They must not have been expecting very much expansion. The MDA card was the most bewildering experience to work through-- circuit traces headed off to nowhere, ICs that seemed to perform no function. Perhaps it was designed for graphics operation originally and not completed and rushed to market. Similarly, one suspects that the printer port must originally have been intended as a full bidirectional design and then changed at the last minute--on both the MDA and the printer adapter, all the necessary circuitry was present for bidirectional operation. Cutting and jumpering a single trace was all that was needed. All in all, for as long as the 5150 was in the rumor mill, one would have expected a better thought-through design from IBM. Some aspects were pretty good--the original keyboard was very good; the casework with rolled edges was also notable, although the case design itself was questionable (particularly in mounting/unmounting disk drives). Many Taiwanese vendors improved on the case design by incorporating a hinged lid; I don't know if that met with Part 15 requirements, but it was very convenient. Cheers, Chuck

18 years, 4 months

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VT100 board horrors !

by tiggerlasv＠aim.com

Check out e-bay 280220921661 . . . VT100 logic boards, that someone decided to cut the card-edge connectors off of. . . *Sigh* T

18 years, 4 months

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help HP 16505A...!!

by fernando.codeel＠free.fr

Hi I've seen you searched the system operater for the prototype analyzer Hp 16505A My system has crashed and it's very hard to find it Can you help me Have you find one image disque for this one ? Thanks Fernando from Paris

18 years, 4 months

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Raytheon RAYCAS V Collision Avoidance System manuual

by hardware＠ees1s0.engr.ccny.cuny.edu

Dear cctalk members, I have the manual for the Raytheon RAYCAS V Collision Avoidance System. The sections include setup, operation, theory of operation, and maintenance which includes complete schematics. It is one three-ring binder about three inches thick. If anybody wants this manual, contact me. Historical note: If I remember correctly, it came up in the Exxon Valdez hearings that the disaster could have been avoided by the use of the RAYCAS system that was installed on the ship, but it was not enabled at the time of the disaster because Exxon found the system to be too expensive to maintain. -kurt

18 years, 4 months

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early RAM ICs

by hilpert＠cs.ubc.ca

Eric Smith wrote: > Jean-Marie Pichot wrote: > > This display terminal was designed in 1969, [...] Remember, > > in that time, there are no micro-processor, neither RAM chips! > > There were RAM chips in 1969. Most of them stored 16 bits or > less. I have not been able to determine when the first 64-bit RAM > appeared, but it might have occurred by then. Going back to a thread from a week or two ago, and just for the sake of providing a datapoint, while looking for some other IC data in a Motorola 1969 Semiconductor Databook, I noticed: MC1170L PMOS 64-bit RAM - organised as 16 words of 4 bits - binary addressable (4 address lines, 4-bidir data lines) Also ran across mention of: "Intel's first commercial chip, the 3101, a 64-bit static RAM using Schottky TTL" dated at 1969, at: http://homepages.nildram.co.uk/~wylie/ICs/monolith.htm (Nice page if one is interested in early IC developments.)

18 years, 4 months

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Inquiry on System Industries Qbus SCSI

by rescue＠hawkmountain.net

System Industries SI-QS 1000 .... Anyone know much about it ? Any docs/data on it anywhere ? This is the first I've heard of this one. Wonder if it is MSCP (I would think so) disk only ? tape only ? disk/tape ? Thanks in advance for any info/pointers. -- Curt

18 years, 4 months

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IBM DisplayWriter DOS

by billdeg＠degnanco.com

> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii; format=flowed > > I read that there was something sold to make the IBM DisplayWriter > DOS compatible? What would that take? > > I have two of these things with a letter quality daisy wheel and the > giant sheet feeder. SuperCalc and TextPack are boring. > > Is there anything else that can be done with them? CP/M? > > Grant > No. I used to teach Display Write 4 when I worked at IBM, and this came up from time to time in class. There may be a hack where you send the print output to a memory buffer, etc., but nothing official. Bill

18 years, 4 months

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Tektronix 7J20

by ericks＠esteinberg.com

Joe, I googled "Tektronix 7J20" and a posting appeared on which you asked a question about this unit. I know that it was 8 years ago, but do you still have your 7J20? Is it for sale? I repaired one of these for a friend and would like to get one for myself. Regards, Erick Steinberg Mill Valley, CA

18 years, 4 months

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WTB: Emulex MT-02 controller

by cclist＠sydex.com

Date: Thu, 24 Apr 2008 15:47:39 -0500 From: Jules Richardson > Hmm, maybe the designers were sensible, and any critical timings are > solely on the device response side - i.e. the host can take as long as it > wants to process things, but the device must respond within a certain time > period (and then just happily sits there until the host acknowledges). QIC-02 is buffered via drive-local RAM, so it's not really fussy on the host-side timing. These tapes are streamers, however, so you want to keep the tape moving; otherwise, it's back-up-a-piece-and- take-a-running-start-at-reading-the-next-block. Really slow--and hard on the tape. > Of course none of this probably helps Chuck, who quite possibly doesn't > want to be messing with designing hardware and writing driver software :-) > It's just nice to speculate that it could be done once QIC interface > boards are unobtainable... Oh, Chuck has both QIC-36 and QIC-02 ISA inteface boards. He just wants the convenience of not dealing with buggy NetBSD drivers (the Linux QIC-02 drivers don't work at all anymore) and not having to look for spare DMA and IRQs for the boards. A QIC-02 host interface board is scarcely more complicated than an IDE interface. OTOH, a QIC-36 interface is usually a full-length board, packed with a data separator, CPU, RAM and other logic. From the CPU side, both appear as pretty much the same thing. Cheers, Chuck

18 years, 4 months

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Ibm System 32 for sale.

by jos.mar＠bluewin.ch

A local (Switzerland) auction site lists an IBM system 32 for a very moderate 50 CHF ( 50 USD) I'd take it if my time & infrastructe budget would have had any room. Jos

18 years, 4 months

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IBM 5150 maximum memory?

by jules.richardson99＠gmail.com

Does anyone recall what the maximum memory was for an original IBM 5150 PC at launch time? The way I recall it, IBM only offered 64KB expansion cards back in the day (256KB ones came later) and the 5150 would only take four of them (wasn't the fifth expansion slot wired differently or something)? That still gives a maximum of 320KB of memory though (4 x 64KB, plus 64Kb on the motherboard) - yet I was remembering the maximum total memory as being 256KB. Maybe just bit-rot on my part. Or did the motherboard memory somehow get disabled if memory expansion boards were in use? Or was there some kind of maximum limit dictated by the 5150's BIOS? I'm sure other things could be done later on via third-party boards of course (or via the 256KB expansion boards), but in the context of the thread that I found myself involved in, the question was what the maximum memory config in a 5150 at launch time was... cheers Jules

18 years, 4 months

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IBM 5150 maximum memory?

by cclist＠sydex.com

Date: Thu, 24 Apr 2008 08:38:36 -0500 From: Jules Richardson > Does anyone recall what the maximum memory was for an original IBM 5150 PC > at launch time? Vividly. 64K of 4116-type DRAM chips. The first row was soldered in, the remainder were in sockets. It was possible to purchase a really-stripped-down 5150 through various sources (probably gray- market as I doubt that IBM sold them that way) with no cards or disk drives and only the first 16K installed on the planar. I believe that the San Jose Computerland offered that deal fairly early on. I was never able to determine if they purchased the boxes that way or canibalized the RAM for other machines. There was a DRAM shortage on at the time. Cheers, Chuck

18 years, 4 months

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Apple II Echo II card and speaker

by letiathome＠yahoo.com

Hello My name is Leti Meyer and teach Moderately Mentally Impaired folks in Chandler AZ. During the 80's a Company named Edmark made a great functional reading series for the Apple II. I have the soft ware - I have and apple IIgs computer and I have an Echo II card and speaker. What I don't have is drivers to install the echo II device and no clue what slot to put in the computer and how to get it to work. Can you help me??? I would be very grateful. I have 3.5 drive and 5 floppy drives but no way to get the appleIIgs on the web to download the drivers. I will send a picture of my students using it if someone helps me :)

18 years, 4 months

2
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digilog 800 protocol analyser

by hilpert＠cs.ubc.ca

I received a Digilog 800 protocol analyser a while ago. It's essentially a portable/luggable (50 lbs(!)) multibus-based computer from 1985 with: - built-in 10" colour monitor - flip-down keyboard - ST-2<something> hard-disk (ST-225?) - 3.5" floppy - 6-slot multibus backplane - three(!) 80186 CPUs along with an AMD 29116 and an 8085. The multibus boards all appear to be of proprietary design, rather than some off-the-shelf boards. I don't know why there are so many 80186's. I suppose one might construe it as an unintended comment on the computing power of the '186. A little googling finds some period marketing info: "the model 800 operates at 256 kb/s, is equipped with a 10-Mb Winchester disk and has nine soft-function keys and a 10.5-inch color CRT." and refers to it as a "4th generation protocol analyser". Powered up it goes though a couple of self-tests, fails on a Winchester boot problem, requests a system floppy be inserted (which of course I don't have) and hangs, and of course I received no manuals. On the one hand it was pretty good stuff for it's time, might be an interesting architecture, and speaks to a particular time and need in networking development. On the other hand, the lack of docs, complexity, and limited and outdated target application leave me with difficulty coming up with a compelling reason not to scrap it. Anyone know anything more about it, or have any interest in it? (location is Vancouver, B.C. area)

18 years, 4 months

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12 and 8 volt transformer

by dgriffi＠cs.csubak.edu

Someone on this list is buying an S100 chassis from me and had me remove the 18-pound transformer to save on shipping. This transformer is now available to anyone on this list for $10 plus shipping. Since it's small enough to fit in a flat-rate US Priority box, I presume shipping will be $8 to $10. Because it has two bobbins and was the only one in the chassis, I presume it outputs both 12 and 8 volts. And you, the buyer of the chassis, I've finally gotten to the bottom of the messes that were in the way of proceeding. More info is in your email spool. -- David Griffith dgriffi at cs.csubak.edu

18 years, 4 months

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SEIKOSHA SP1000VC

by g7460b＠ptd.net

i have the same printer. can you tell me what kind of cord it takes and if you know if it can be used on a current computer? Gary

18 years, 4 months

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WTB: Emulex MT-02 controller

by cclist＠sydex.com

Date: Thu, 24 Apr 2008 21:05:12 +0100 (BST) From: (Tony Duell) > I would be suprised if the QIC02 specificiation isn't avaiable > somewhere... Oddly, it's not on the http://www.qic.org site, but you can find both it and the QIC-36 signal descriptions in the Wangtek PC-02 and PC-36 tech manuals on bitsavers. Cheers, Chuck

18 years, 4 months

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wtd: IBM 3279 keyboard

by drb＠msu.edu

Anyone have a "spare" keyboard for an IBM 3279 terminal? Scored a kb-less terminal which seems functional from Salvage the other day. De

18 years, 4 months

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WTB: Emulex MT-02 controller

by cclist＠sydex.com

> Date: Wed, 23 Apr 2008 09:30:23 -0500 > From: Jules Richardson > Sigh.. no. I had it in my head that one of the OMTI 5300 / 5400 boards > would do it - I checked though and they *are* QIC-02, but the interface is > only SASI, not SCSI :-( Or "brain dead" SCSI, in the case of the 7400. Sigh. I'm not turning up anything on the web on QIC-02-to-SCSI bridges. > Hazy memory says that one vendor did do a QIC-02 - QIC-36 bridge, but > including one of those *and* a suitable SCSI bridge in whatever you're > doing might be a bit silly. I think the QIC-bridges go the other way. I've got a Wangtek QIC-36- to-QIC-02 bridge board (QIC-36 is the "basic stupid" interface, while QIC-02 is the "intelligent buffered" interface). > It does seem there were a few QIC-02 ISA tape controllers around, though - > so you'd think that someone must have done a SCSI bridge! That's mostly because there's nothing much on a QIC-02 ISA tape controller; just address-decoding logic and DMA and IRQ handshake; think something on the level of your basic IDE controller. The smarts are in the drive. Ah, well. Time to look for a nice SCSI QIC drive. Personally, I like Tandberg over Wangtek. Anyone have any other preferences? Cheers, Chuck

18 years, 4 months

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tape drives

by rtellason＠verizon.net

I saw some conversation going by in here recently about Exabyte drives, only the numbers don't sound anything like what I have, which is marked "Model: HH CTS". There are all sorts of other numbers on there, for various aspects of it. There are two of them, and this was a part of a whole IBM SSA system that I've been dealing with bits of here. Pushing open the little door I see something that sure looks like a helical-scan head, though somewhat smaller than the one normally seen in a VCR. I'm told that these hold 20G on a tape. The guy I got 'em from unfortunately doesn't have any tapes to go along with them. One of those tapes would back up pretty much of what I have on my LAN here, or whole machines, as they sit. I'm guessing that the interface I'll be looking at after I take it off of the current mounting plate will be SCSI-wide, like the CD drives and some of the other stuff I have with it. Does anybody have any tapes that will work on these, or can any of you guys point me toward where I could get a hold of some without getting into crazy expense? I'd sure like to make some backups with one of these units. Think I can get 'em going under linux? :-) -- Member of the toughest, meanest, deadliest, most unrelenting -- and ablest -- form of life in this section of space, ?a critter that can be killed but can't be tamed. ?--Robert A. Heinlein, "The Puppet Masters" - Information is more dangerous than cannon to a society ruled by lies. --James M Dakin

18 years, 4 months

3
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Bubble memory?

by wrb2＠pangolin.com

Dear Ken, I ran across your name while searching on the term "Tektronix Bubble Memory Cassette". I am looking for a Tektronix part number 020-1310-00, which is a Bubble Memory module for a Tektronix 370 curve tracer. Since it seems like you did something with Bubble Memory in a previous life, I am wondering if you know what's inside this "cassette" or where I might be able to find one? Best regards, William Benner

18 years, 4 months

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VT100 board horrors !

by dkelvey＠hotmail.com

Hi I doubt there is 39+13$ worth of gold on these boards. There have been a few items that were close. There was a pile of wire wrap pins. I figured that if the pins had 15 uinch of gold, one could cover shipping and still make about $2 on the deal. Most boards are to sparse to pay for shipping. Card edge connectors at least have about 20-50 cents worth of old. Scrappers rarely see that a board may have value as the original board. I had a neighbor once that was a scrapper. He had a pile of boards with one 80C187 on each of them. He'd crunched most down to dust before I'd seen them. Just one chip was worth more than the pile of dust he'd made. > To: cctalk at classiccmp.org > Date: Thu, 24 Apr 2008 01:14:24 -0400 > From: tiggerlasv at aim.com > Subject: VT100 board horrors ! > > > > Check out e-bay 280220921661 . . . > > VT100 logic boards, that someone decided to cut the card-edge > connectors off of. . . > > *Sigh* > > > > > T _________________________________________________________________ Spell a grand slam in this game where word skill meets World Series. Get in the game. http://club.live.com/word_slugger.aspx?icid=word_slugger_wlhm_admod_april08

18 years, 4 months

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CQD-440 manual?

by ahling＠eadc.se

Hi, In reading /searching the net for a manual for CMD CQD 440 / 443, I come quite close in an old writing of yours... You write something about the HTML version of this manual also. If that contains any more information than the text-file, (picturers/schetces and locations of the various connectors/switches for instance), would it be to much to ask for an E-mail? All my best, G?ran ?hling

18 years, 4 months

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82706 Data sheet

by grant＠stockly.com

I'm looking for a data sheet on the 82706 Intel VGA Controller. Does anyone know where I could get this? Sometimes data for a chipset is buried within a larger data book. Any ideas? If you don't know why I would want this... ; ) I've seen that chip on some 8bit ISA VGA cards. Unicorn Electronics sells them for $19.99, so its a plan! Grant

18 years, 4 months

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Fwd: [Electronics_101] Digiencabulator

by rtellason＠verizon.net

Thought this might be of some interest in here... :-) ---------- Forwarded Message ---------- Subject: [Electronics_101] Digiencabulator Date: Wednesday 23 April 2008 13:21 From: "Bob Hyland" <E101 at afterhoursit.com> To: Electronics_101 at yahoogroups.com FOLKS! In case anyone missed the recent announcement (on or about April 1st), Parallax has been working (in secret) on building a digital version of the original GE Turbo-Encabulator. Nuts & Volts magazine recently ran an article on the effort -- thereby breaking the veil of secrecy! I contacted N&V and obtained permission to post a link to the article that is hosted on their site: http://www.nutsvolts.com/media-files/905/042008-PersonalRobotics.pdf Their only request was that I post the link to the article instead of sending the article to people. So, if (and when) anyone passes along the article, please send the link and not the physical PDF file. Enjoy! Bob H. (moderator Electronics_101) P.S. Does anyone have the specifications handy for the original, 1962 version of the Turb-Encabulator? The best copy I could find is here: http://www.floobydust.com/turbo-encabulator/ge_turbo-encabulator.pdf ------------------------------------ Please trim excess when replyingYahoo! Groups Links <*> To visit your group on the web, go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Electronics_101/ <*> Your email settings: Individual Email | Traditional <*> To change settings online go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Electronics_101/join (Yahoo! ID required) <*> To change settings via email: mailto:Electronics_101-digest at yahoogroups.com mailto:Electronics_101-fullfeatured at yahoogroups.com <*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: Electronics_101-unsubscribe at yahoogroups.com <*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to: http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/ ------------------------------------------------------- -- Member of the toughest, meanest, deadliest, most unrelenting -- and ablest -- form of life in this section of space, ?a critter that can be killed but can't be tamed. ?--Robert A. Heinlein, "The Puppet Masters" - Information is more dangerous than cannon to a society ruled by lies. --James M Dakin

18 years, 4 months

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DEC HSZ20

by steve＠radiorobots.com

Still looking for any doc related to above. Thanks, Steve

18 years, 4 months

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Seeking Xceed Color30 card

by trag＠io.com

>Date: Sat, 12 Apr 2008 15:04:29 -0700 (PDT) >From: David Griffith <dgriffi at cs.csubak.edu> >On Sat, 12 Apr 2008, Jeff Walther wrote: >> Now, it really shouldn't be that hard to whip something up with an >> FPGA and either some fastish SRAM or an open core DDR2 controller and >> one DDR2 memory chip. >How far did you get with this project? I'd love to see something that >just does greyscale. That and smaller modern parts would allow a lot more >to be crammed into that PDS slot. I would say I'm still in the conceptual stage. I've examined the Is and the Os in the documentation and I pretty much know what I want to build, with a few choices still remaining (e.g. SRAM vs. DDR2). But I'm stymied by the details and by the fact that when I started this I was unemployed and had time, although my motivation was low due to the associated emotional challenges. Now I am wonderfully employed, and very happy, but have very little spare time. I've read through "Designing Cards and Drivers for the Macintosh" (IIRC) but I need to go through in more detail and draw a diagram of the ROM structure. But it seems to me that some of what I need to know is in Inside Macintosh and extracting those tidbits is difficult (for me). Also, some of the information I want to examine is contained in Pascal coding examples, and I don't know Pascal. It will be easy enough to pick up, but it's another step back from the actual project. Of course, all of the Apple documentation assumes that the audience is already an expert at building the component they want to build and only needs the Apple specifics, and I've never designed a video card. I haven't found any kind of book about it anywhere. I picked up whatshisnames book about the video typewriter and the follow up book, but it doesn't seem quite applicable to this application. So I'm in one of those situations where I need bits of information in order to truly understand other bits of information. But I don't know in what order I really need the bits in order to make them comprehensible. Worse, I don't actually know which piece will be in which resource. So I need to find all the pieces of information, fail to understand them as I find them, but identify them, then after they've all been found, reorder them and go back, this time in logical sequence and put it all together. Maybe if I was smarter, one pass would be enough... I'm somewhere late in the finding all the pieces without understanding them yet stage, paused just before doing a quick learn of Pascal so I can examine/understand the examples in Inside Macintosh. But I still lack a resource on the finer points of video card design. I understand the basic fucntion, but there are always details which clever people have worked out, which a latecomer like me can greatly benefit from. For example, the various schemes to avoid drawing the top half of the screen and then using changed data for the bottom half of the screen. I'm familiar with the simple expedient of having two screen buffers. But I understand that there are more elegant solutions in use, otherwise video cards would need twice as much VRAM. Is it really all about tracking updates as they come in and only allowing ones which are earlier in the buffer than the current draw point, and delaying the others until the drawing point passes? If so, one would either hold up the host system, or need an additional buffer for the delayed changes. Yes? No? As far as cramming a lot more into the PDS slot with smaller components... Yes, the thing holding folks back is the time and skill to code, not the available technology. Taken to its logical conclusion, we would take a moderate sized FPGA, emulate the 68030 and FPU on board, put a fast memory interface on the FPGA, add a USB2 chipset and fast ethernet I/O, plus an ATA interface and video outputs, then just use the SE/30 board as an I/O peripheral and home to the Apple ROM, with the built-in 9" screen as one display and a connector for a large color display if desired. Alternatively, use a Coldfire MCU, patch the unimplemented 68030 instructions with the exception handler (there's a library at Freescale for this) and then copy the basic design of the Daystar CPU upgrades which already worked out how to put a faster 68030 into the PDS slot. With a little more work patching the firmware, one could use a Coldfire with built in USB and ethernet, but that's a lot more software work. One also loses the FPU functionality, and if your code calls many of the unimplemented instructions it could be pretty slow. But all those projects are dauntingly large. For now, I'd like a video card. Later, an ATA interface. Maybe USB after that, but frankly, without a more skilled programmer's help, I don't think I will be able/willing to write USB drivers. Eventually, it could all go on one card. Jeff Walther

18 years, 4 months

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WTB ( and some questions ) WD1002-05 / HDO

by jos.mar＠bluewin.ch

I am in the market for a WD1002-05 or WD1002-HDO controller. Are these software compatible to the WD1002-27x ( of which I have 2 ) ? Does anyone have a software and/or schematics manual for the -27x ? I do realize the -27x is RLL, the others are MFM, but then I have a choice of disks to use. Or could the -27x be jumpered for MFM compatibility ? Target : - Obtain a harddisk with 100 sectors (@ 256 bytes/sect) per cylinder. 4 heads with 25 256-byte-sectors-per-tracks should do the trick. I do no care about lost space on the disk. Jos

18 years, 4 months

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WTB: Emulex MT-02 controller

by aek＠bitsavers.org

> That was the MT-02 and QIC-36, not QIC-02 interface. They used the Sysgen (4000?) cards before switching to MT-02's.

18 years, 4 months

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WTB: Emulex MT-02 controller

by cclist＠sydex.com

> Date: Wed, 23 Apr 2008 09:24:07 -0700 > From: Al Kossow > Archives seem to be better than Wangtek. Lots of Sun 150 meg ones > in peripheral boxes. Most of my DCxxx recovery lately has been done > with Archive 20150's. Usual problem with the rubber rollers. > Early Sun 2's used a QIC bridge board with an Archive drive. This > was early enough to have been SASI. May have been from Sysgen. The > early Sun FE ref manual shows the board, but I don't have my copy > anywhere handy. That was the MT-02 and QIC-36, not QIC-02 interface. > SMS 7300 and 7400 SCSI adapters supported QIC02 tape. That's a thought. My experience with the OMTI/SMS adapters have mixed results. Mostly, the command set they support does not include the IDENTIFY command, which leads to all sorts of problems if your software or SCSI controller locates peripherals in this manner. A Tandberg 4220 looks like a pretty good bet for a "read anything/write some" drive. Cheers, Chuck

18 years, 4 months

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ISO Intel MDS hard disk controller docs

by aek＠bitsavers.org

Does anyone have the reference manual and schematics for the CDC Hawk controller board set for an Intel MDS2 ? I've turned up most of the other docs except for that.

18 years, 4 months

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WTB: Emulex MT-02 controller

by aek＠bitsavers.org

> Ah, well. Time to look for a nice SCSI QIC drive. Personally, I > like Tandberg over Wangtek. Anyone have any other preferences? I assume this is for data recovery. Archives seem to be better than Wangtek. Lots of Sun 150 meg ones in peripheral boxes. Most of my DCxxx recovery lately has been done with Archive 20150's. Usual problem with the rubber rollers. Early Sun 2's used a QIC bridge board with an Archive drive. This was early enough to have been SASI. May have been from Sysgen. The early Sun FE ref manual shows the board, but I don't have my copy anywhere handy. SMS 7300 and 7400 SCSI adapters supported QIC02 tape.

18 years, 4 months

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IBM DisplayWriter DOS

by cclist＠sydex.com

> Date: Tue, 22 Apr 2008 16:54:56 -0800 > From: Grant Stockly > I read that there was something sold to make the IBM DisplayWriter > DOS compatible? What would that take? There were versions of some DOS programs that would run on the DW, such as VEDIT come to mind. Unless my memory is faultly, one of the hurdles that you're likely to run into is that the system (including that daisy wheel) is EBCDIC- based, not ASCII. But I don't think it's impossible to get MS-DOS going on one; it wouldn't surprise me if someone actually did at some point. "PC compatible" MS-DOS is a whole 'nother matter, however. IIRC, IBM had a setup that would allow one to attach a PC to a DW and use the DW keyboard and display to run DOS applications on the PC. Cheers, Chuck

18 years, 4 months

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WTB: Emulex MT-02 controller

by cclist＠sydex.com

Scratch the request for an Emulex MT-02. Looking at the Bitsavers tech ref for this board shows it to be a QIC-36 interface, not a QIC- 02. I should have checked before I posted, sorry. A great big "Doh!" Does anyone know of a QIC-02 to SCSI converter? I'm not finding anything. Thanks, Chuck

18 years, 4 months

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cctalk Digest, Vol 56, Issue 26 Looking for a LM4250H 8 Pin DIP

by trebor72＠execpc.com

Message: 16 Date: Wed, 16 Apr 2008 18:08:06 -0400 From: "Andrew Lynch" <lynchaj at yahoo.com> Subject: RE: Looking for a LM4250H 8 Pin DIP or A real good substitute I am Looking for a LM4250H 8 Pin DIP or A real good substitute. I found a Data Sheet but having trouble locating any Parts. I am hoping someone has one in their Parts Box Bob, I bought some a while back from UnicornElectronics.com. They are really cheap parts and it fixed my home brew S-100 bus terminator with no problems. Apparently those op-amps get worn out over time and just die occasionally, I guess. At least replacing the one on mine worked. Thanks and good luck! Andrew Thanks I must have missed them; I just rechecked and they are listed on page 12 of my Catalog. I am adding a Terminator circuit to a Board I had made up for my BYTE-8 S-100 box Thanks Bob

18 years, 4 months

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IBM DisplayWriter DOS

by warren＠databasics.us

Grant Stockley wrote: "I read that there was something sold to make the IBM DisplayWriter DOS compatible? What would that take?" IBM produced an IBM PC program called DisplayWrite (DW IV was the last version, IIRC.) This allowed document interchangability with other IBM platforms, including the DisplayWriter and 5520. It was NOT a method to make the DisplayWriter DOS compatible, however. It let the PC act like a DisplayWriter, and produced format compatible documents. Sadly, I think this must be what you read about. I suppose a retro-fit kit to make the DisplayWriter PC compatible, but I've not heard of it. If you find anything like this, let us know... Peace, Warren E. Wolfe, warren at databasics.us

18 years, 4 months

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VAXstation 3100 and DecWindows

by RodSmallwood＠mail.ediconsulting.co.uk

Down to a product not being loaded (It also shows a missing product in the boot sequence) But it does not tell you which one!!! Rod -----Original Message----- From: cctech-bounces at classiccmp.org [mailto:cctech-bounces at classiccmp.org] On Behalf Of Dave McGuire Sent: 22 April 2008 15:59 To: General Discussion: On-Topic Posts Only Subject: Re: VAXstation 3100 and DecWindows On Apr 22, 2008, at 6:20 AM, Rod Smallwood wrote: > I'm past that hurdle. It seems you have to have a console connected > and define the display from there. > Its just a license problem now. I've been advised to load a couple > more appliaction and license them. That is great news! Let us know how things go after you've loaded the licenses. -Dave -- Dave McGuire Port Charlotte, FL

18 years, 4 months

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Radio Shack Science Fair manuals

by wordorama＠optusnet.com.au

Hi Brian - found an email you wrote on classiccmp.org website re Radio Shack Science Fair kits. My dad has just found an old 200-in-one kit that he wants to donate to my son but there is no manual. Any chance we could obtain a copy of the manual from you at all? Thanks and kind regards J Stewart Brisbane, Australia

18 years, 4 months

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IBM DisplayWriter DOS

by grant＠stockly.com

I read that there was something sold to make the IBM DisplayWriter DOS compatible? What would that take? I have two of these things with a letter quality daisy wheel and the giant sheet feeder. SuperCalc and TextPack are boring. Is there anything else that can be done with them? CP/M? Grant

18 years, 4 months

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VAXstation 3100 and DecWindows

by RodSmallwood＠mail.ediconsulting.co.uk

I'm past that hurdle. It seems you have to have a console connected and define the display from there. Its just a license problem now. I've been advised to load a couple more appliaction and license them. Rod -----Original Message----- From: cctech-bounces at classiccmp.org [mailto:cctech-bounces at classiccmp.org] On Behalf Of Dave McGuire Sent: 21 April 2008 21:39 To: General Discussion: On-Topic Posts Only Subject: Re: VAXstation 3100 and DecWindows On Apr 20, 2008, at 2:32 PM, Rod Smallwood wrote: > 2. If you run the IVP and enter the node name or WSA0 (the device > name) > it simply says "cannot open display" > > 3. I am exactly where I was on Friday. > > 4. Until I find out what "Cannot open display" means I'm stuck That sounds suspiciously like what X libraries say when they...well, can't open the display. ;) In a UNIX-ish OS, here's what happens when one starts an X app when the DISPLAY environment variable isn't set, and a display isn't specified on the command line: g5$ unset DISPLAY g5$ xterm xterm Xt error: Can't open display: g5$ -Dave -- Dave McGuire Port Charlotte, FL

18 years, 4 months

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are there any 68000 multi-cpu systems out there?

by ray＠arachelian.com

Just out of curiosity, were there any machines out there that were built >from multiple MC68000's CPU's?

18 years, 4 months

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reel to reel

by jonas＠otter.se

"John Floren" <slawmaster at gmail.com> wrote: > So I'm looking at a Teac reel to reel deck going for $25. It comes > with 6 tapes, which judging from the prices on ebay is a pretty good > deal. What I'm wondering is if anyone can tell me about the kind of > life I'd be getting out of these tapes. I don't plan to record too > much (I'm not in a band or anything) but my friends and I would > probably be making recordings from time to time and I expect that I > would eventually want to reuse some of the tapes; how many times can > you usually write to these before you start seeing a noticeable > degrading in sound quality? > > John > Many times, probably hundreds, as long as the magnetic layer doesn't begin to come off. Old tapes may be at risk of deteriorating. To get the best recordings possible, use a bulk eraser to erase the tapes before reusing them, and make sure that all parts of the deck that come into contact with the tape, such as heads, tape guides, capstan etc are regularly demagnetised. Jonas

18 years, 4 months

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Removing the sides of a DEC mini rack

by silvercreekvalley＠yahoo.com

Thanks for all the tips. I removed the two brackets on the rear of the cab, and then turned the cab on its side and gave the underside of the sides a sharp tap with a hammer (cushioned). Eventually the sides came off. They were quite tight - but came off in the end without damage. Many thanks for the help! Ian. ____________________________________________________________________________________ Be a better friend, newshound, and know-it-all with Yahoo! Mobile. Try it now. http://mobile.yahoo.com/;_ylt=Ahu06i62sR8HDtDypao8Wcj9tAcJ

18 years, 4 months

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