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

by ajp166＠bellatlantic.net

> >Subject: Re: DEC LA180 printer (&LA100) > From: M H Stein <dm561 at torfree.net> > Date: Fri, 01 Feb 2008 14:54:19 -0500 > To: "'cctech at classiccmp.org'" <cctech at classiccmp.org> > >Date: Fri, 1 Feb 2008 09:37:40 -0500 >From: Dave McGuire <mcguire at neurotica.com> >Subject: Re: DEC LA180 printer > >On Feb 1, 2008, at 6:35 AM, Rick Murphy wrote: >>>> My books are still in storage,( basement wall are up! ), but I >>>> seem to >>> recall the LA36 had adjustments on the servo. Could the LA180? >> >>> Yes, it's basically the same mechanism. >>> I've sent the maintenance manual to der Mouse for scanning. > >> LA36 and LA180 are the same mechanism? Are you sure? I don't >>recall much similarity there, especially in terms of speed. LA36, 120 and 180 were mechanically similar but that about it. the logic and a few other detils were different. >> -Dave >------------- >I'll be scrapping some more LA100s (RO) shortly; any useful parts in there >for anyone? I believe that at least some parts are compatible with the LA210 >and others, including the LA34 & 38; can someone confirm that? The LA210 is a varient of the LA100RO for most mechanical parts. The la210 and LA100 shared the same print head, ribbon, carriage motor platten motor, font carts, and a few other bits. Again they were related so many parts could be shared but the logic board for each were differnt. Things you want to save are power supplies, print heads, drive motors, ribbons, and the litle one way clutch used for the ribbon advance. Allison >Also an LJ500 (B2), although it's probably clogged and I don't expect much >interest... > >TIA, > >mike > > > > >

18 years, 7 months

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Chip ID and datasheet?..

by bpope＠wordstock.com

All, I am trying to ID a chip from a SFD-1001 motor control board. This is printed on the chip: JAPAN SERVO SA1001 3A It looks like a normal DIP, except for the middle pins which look to be twice as wide. Is this for heat sinking? I have tried searching for this chip but so far have found nothing. The board has this marking; PC-368C JAPAN SERVO TDK-T15V Which also has not turned up anything useful.. The 5 1/4" drive mech this board is connected to was made by Matsushita and its model # is JU-570-2. From reading the SFD-1001 technical manual, the 5 1/4" mech is just listed as a part so it does not have any detailed information for this board. :( Cheers, Bryan

18 years, 7 months

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"CP/M compatible" vs. "MS-DOS Compatible" machines?

by ajp166＠bellatlantic.net

> >Subject: Re: "CP/M compatible" vs. "MS-DOS Compatible" machines? > From: "Chuck Guzis" <cclist at sydex.com> > Date: Wed, 30 Jan 2008 10:57:15 -0800 > To: cctalk at classiccmp.org > >> From: "Joshua Alexander Dersch": > >> Were there similar problems in the CP/M world? That is, was it >> commonplace for there to be CP/M programs that bypassed CP/M BDOS calls >> and wrote directly to a specific machine's hardware? Seems like CP/M >> developers were more disciplined in this fashion, but maybe it's just >> because in the CP/M arena there were so many different pieces of hardware >> it was the only way to do it? (Whereas with IBM, the PC was seen as more >> of a reference standard, even if it wasn't really that way in the >> beginning?) > >The great thing about CP/M (and I'm talking about the 8-bit version >here) was that it imposed a file system and made disk I/O uniform-- >128 byte sectors, regardless of how the information was actually >formatted onto a drive. CP/M was really primitive when it came to >console I/O, giving only about 3 functions for output and input each. >No cursor positioning or screen control; basic TTY style I/O. And, >while there was an IOBYTE facility to redirect I/O, implementation >was very nonuniform between vendors. Things like Termcap and the lise were not needed. However the console IO was not so good. Try printing a string containing $ using the print string call. The other was passing 8bit data when needed. IObyte was mostly uniform, the problem was often it wasnt even implemented. This was a problem of allowing the BIOS spec to be minimal and it usually was. >As a result, for other than simple command-line utility programs and >compilers/assemblers and the like with minimal I/O requirements, most >productivity and comms programs had to go to the hardware directly >for display and communications. > >And that, I think was the innovation of programs such as WordStar and >SuperCalc, and, to a lesser extent MODEM7 and Kermit--that you were >running on an operating system that was basically designed for TTY >I/O with no connectivity and the majority of systems were using CRTs >and had modems. The problem became then how to make a single program >work for everyone--and that was done with custom patch overlays. > >DRI, for its part, seemed to remain blissfully ignorant of both of >these aspects. Ignorant, I think no, they gave the hooks and basic requirements. It was up to the BIOS developer to do a good job or just enough. I've repeatedly posted that if anything CP/M prevents little and you can do a great deal at the bios level to really deliver a better system. The best way to illustrate this is try a system with basic IO and one with a full interrupt drive IO. The first thing you notice is the ability to type ahead and the system feels more responsive. >Likewise, it wasn't MS-DOS that was the great advance for the IBM PC >platform, but rather the well-documented BIOS and I/O interfaces. >Heck, PC-DOS 1.0 wasn't that different from CP/M-86--you still had to >do your disk I/O through FCBs, just like CP/M. I believe, to this >day, you can still issue your DOS calls by loading (CL) with the >request number and calling TPA:0005. Well it was patterned (so say copied) after CP/M so.. No surpize there. ;) Allison > >Cheers, >Chuck

18 years, 7 months

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"CP/M compatible" vs. "MS-DOS Compatible" machines?

by ajp166＠bellatlantic.net

> >Subject: Re: "CP/M compatible" vs. "MS-DOS Compatible" machines? > From: Roger Ivie <rivie at ridgenet.net> > Date: Fri, 01 Feb 2008 08:05:02 -0800 (PST) > To: "General Discussion: On-Topic Posts Only" <cctech at classiccmp.org> > >On Fri, 1 Feb 2008, Allison wrote: >> >> Done right it was portable. However I encounterd at least one system >> where the BIOS calls were unusuable for 8bit serial because every >> transaction in or out was masked with 07Fh.. > >Which is consistent with the manual: > >"All simple character I/O operations are assumed to be performed in >ASCII, upper- and lower-case, with high-order (parity bit) set to zero." > >(from the section 6 of the CP/M 2.2 manual) It is sorta.. Parity may not be a visible bit if the terminal is set for 8P1, the manual would imply the required serial format is 7S1 or 7S2 which may be for TTY but not always. The manual is at best obscure on that. ;) My implmentations had two serial drivers TTY (masked to 7bit) and CRT not masked. Add to that printer (DEC LA100) serial 8bit and modem 8bit I used the high and low bits of IObyte usefully. Allison >-- >roger ivie >rivie at ridgenet.net

18 years, 7 months

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"CP/M compatible" vs. "MS-DOS Compatible" machines?

by cclist＠sydex.com

> Date: Thu, 31 Jan 2008 09:21:58 -0500 > From: Allison > If one takes a moment some of that was INTEL MDS artifact that were > programmed around. Also there are plenty of unused RST vectors. > For the later systems the 8259 was available and it inserted a > CALL XXXX where XXXX was anywere in addressable memory. The Z80 > in mode2 interrupt also could vector anywhere in ram. DMA > is not impacted by how the low page is used. IIRC, in ISIS-II, programs were loaded somewhere above 3000H, depending on the buffer requirements of the program, but always above the ISIS resident, which always occupied the same space, regardless of memory size. On some early 8080 implementations, an 8259 wasn't used (expensive!) and a simpler circuit using a priority encoder and a latch to stuff 111iii11 onto the bus in response to an interrupt acknowledge. CP/M could get in the way of this scheme, if it was desired to use the RST0 vector for an interrupt. Otherwise, there was no problem, except for the RST vector (usually 7) used for DDT--but that's local to DDT and easily patchable (it's done for the Amstrad PCW, for example). After having used ISIS before CP/M, I was happy to see the "lean and mean" CP/M. ISIS was verbose, clumsy and slow (e.g., :F0: instead of A: for the first floppy drive; "DELETE" instead of "ERA"). Of course, had CP/M simply shifted the TPA up 256 bytes and used the area between 0100h and 01FFh for command-line storage, system request vectors and FCBs, that would have solved the problem, but for the DDT RST vector. Cheers, Chuck

18 years, 7 months

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Any word on OS/2 for PDP-11?

by aek＠bitsavers.org

> I think it's time for me to unsubscribe from this list and > get back to reality. Talk is cheap. Let's see the proof.

18 years, 7 months

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Has anyone ever written a standalone Commodore disk drive emulator?

by dm561＠torfree.net

Have a look at: http://www.baltissen.org/newhtm/cbmhd.htm Ruud's the main guy behind the 1541 IDE project I mentioned to you, (and is on the CBM hacker's list I also mentioned) but he does have an IEEE <> PC project on his site as well. I've been meaning to look at the IEEE version myself; if you try it out, share your experience (as will I if I get to it first). mike --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Message: 12 Date: Wed, 30 Jan 2008 02:19:23 +0000 From: Ethan Dicks <ethan.dicks at usap.gov> Subject: Has anyone ever written a standalone Commodore disk drive To: cctalk at classiccmp.org Message-ID: <20080130021923.GA7074 at usap.gov> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Hi, Commodore folks, I have just tracked down an ISA IEEE-488 card and was thinking that it might be interesting to use it to build an older PC into a Commodore diskette drive emulator - I recall there are various projects to interface modern hardware to PETs (like the C2N232 I have with me), but the idea in this case is to allow existing apps to work as if there were a real C= drive hanging off the PET's IEEE port. Essentially, the PC would act as closely to, say a 4040, as possible. My thought was that if I had a real IEEE-488 interface, it could handle the physical-layer protocol, and the emulator would only have to handle sending and receiving command strings and data. The virtual diskettes would be, of course, image files. I'm not really as worried about RELative files - more along the lines of "direct access" files where the code running on the PET wants to read and write individual sectors, ignoring the C= DOS filesystem. That is, in fact, the major reason for trying to emulate drives in the first place - if it was just a case of loading and saving streams of data as files, the C2N232 does a fine job of that (and costs on the order of $10 to breadboard). There seem to be a number of ways to emulate C= IEC-bus devices (such as the 1541-III), but not for the IEEE-488. If anyone can point me at any existing projects, even if they are incomplete, it would be a big help. Thanks, -ethan -- Ethan Dicks, A-333-S Current South Pole Weather at 30-Jan-2008 at 02:00 Z South Pole Station PSC 468 Box 400 Temp -34.8 F (-37.1 C) Windchill -57.9 F (-50.0 C) APO AP 96598 Wind 7.9 kts Grid 45 Barometer 674.7 mb (10829 ft) Ethan.Dicks at usap.gov http://penguincentral.com/penguincentral.html

18 years, 7 months

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How compatible were "MS-DOS Compatible" machines?

by cclist＠sydex.com

> Date: Wed, 30 Jan 2008 13:07:48 -0600 > From: Jim Leonard > Was there ever a *vanilla* MS-DOS? Short answer--yes. It was called an "OEM Kit". Basically, you got the binaries and instructions on how and what I/O drivers to write and you linked the whole mess together to form two files, IO.SYS and MSDOS.SYS, though you weren't confined to those names. Many utilities, such as MODE and FORMAT were provided in skeleton form with the vendor filling out the details. This lead to a some interesting variations on MODE. For example, the Grid MS-DOS version of MODE allows one to control the power status of the peripherals and a whole bunch of other things. I may even still have the OEM documentation wandering around somewhere, printed up on fading tractor-feed paper. A key difference between the two OEM arrangements was that you agreed to serialize the copies of DRI products that were sold, while Microsoft didn't require that. I think that MS simply charged you on the basis of the number of systems shipped--I'd have to go back to my files to make sure. When you get that "Synchronization error" message from MOVCPM, it means that MOVCPM has compared the serial number of the copy of CP/M that it contains with the one of the system on which it's running and the two don't match. Easy to patch out, however--but beware if you "fill out" your CP/M disk with another's files. Cheers, Chuck

18 years, 7 months

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2.11BSD Patch 445; FPSIM fixed; 211bsd runs on systems without FPP

by glen.slick＠gmail.com

On Jan 30, 2008 11:53 PM, Zane H. Healy <healyzh at aracnet.com> wrote: > > Has anyone ever made an up-to-date install tape that doesn't require > you to apply all the patches? I've got a chicken/egg situation going > on, my PDP-11 uses a Viking QDT SCSI board, which requires one of the > very last patches in order to be supported. > > Zane > I have an MTI QTS-30 (aka CMD CQD-200/Ts) and TTi QTS-1 / QTS-3 SCSI tape controllers which I can use to boot a 2.11BSD install tape, but the install process hangs up while trying to restore the files from the tape to the hard drive. Anyone know for certain if the latest patches might help that with these TMSCP controllers? With the same SCSI tape drive and a CQD-220/TM I can complete the 2.11BSD tape install process to a hard drive attached to the CQD-220/TM, but then it won't cold boot from the hard drive attached to the CQD-220/TM. One of the MSCP boot loader patches is supposed to fix that, but I haven't built and verified myself yet. It's on the to do list.

18 years, 7 months

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Radio Shack Science Fair manuals

by sdenkin＠bayridgeprep.org

Hi, I see that you have the manual for science fair 200 in 1 from radio shack. It would be great if I could get a copy of this manual. I would like to use this system with my students. We have the machine, however, the manual is missing. Thank you, sdenkin at bayridgeprep.org

18 years, 7 months

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Commodore parts?

by mcguire＠neurotica.com

Hey folks...I've got an otherwise-pristine Commodore 1702 monitor that is missing the little front door that covers the controls. Does anyone have one of those doors that they can spare, perhaps from a junker 1702? I'd really like to make this one perfect. Thanks, -Dave -- Dave McGuire Port Charlotte, FL

18 years, 7 months

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DEC LA180 printer

by harten＠injectstar.de

I slipped off the belt from the motor pulley. Now the motor can turn without moving the carriage. I tried to turn the motor by hand (power off) and it can be turned easily. On power up the motor starts to turn for about one second and then stopps with the bell continously beeping (till power off). I observed the signals -carry-, -borrow- and -inc- with an oscilloscope. They are there when the motor turns but are the timings o.k.? Regards Axel Harten.

18 years, 7 months

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"CP/M compatible" vs. "MS-DOS Compatible" machines?

by cclist＠sydex.com

> Date: Thu, 31 Jan 2008 23:04:55 +0000 (GMT) > From: Tony > IIRC, while the MDA card had a light pen connector, it was never really > documented or supported by IBM, due to the fact that light pens didn't > work properly with the very long persisnence phosphor of the 5151 > monitor. The CGA card's light pen connector was docuemtned, though > (although I have never seen a light pen designed to work with it I've got a light pen that was salvaged from some 60's era graphics equipment. This is the kind with the fiber optic tip and a microswitch that determines when the tip is depressed. Has some discrete circuitry in it (probably an amplifier, pulse shaper, etc.) and works just fine with the MDA/CGA/EGA cards. About the diameter of a felt tip marker (ca. 3/4"). I once used it with a monitor with a short-persistance white phosphor. It wasn't bad; just couldn't think of a good application for it. I've got a VGA card here (Paradise I think) that also has the connector, but it's hooked to an LCD monitor, so that's not going to work very well--but does give another reason to hang onto CRT displays. Cheers, Chuck

18 years, 7 months

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DeskWriter Disks

by technobug＠comcast.net

A while back someone was looking for DeskWriter software disks. If that need remains, please contact me off-list. CRC

18 years, 7 months

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Help needed on a DEC LA180 printer

by harten＠injectstar.de

Hi! I'm a Computer collector from Germany and the last 3 years i spend a lot of time in reconstructing and repairing my PDP11/05 along with its peripheral devices (2x RK05,RX02,BA11ES). Noe that these things are working im trying to repair my LA180-PD printer, that was in no good condition. With a copy of the logic-prints i was able to find some faulty IC's on th logic board- but there must be at least one more. On Power-Up the carriage starts to move back to left edge but stopps before reaching the left end then the bell is turned on permanently. There is no reaction on any button pressed or switched over. Unfortunately i have no Maintenance Manual or Logic description, maybe there is a person out on this list who can help me with a copy of the documents. Regards Axel Harten.

18 years, 7 months

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"CP/M compatible" vs. "MS-DOS Compatible" machines?

by cclist＠sydex.com

> Date: Wed, 30 Jan 2008 18:27:23 -0500 > From: Allison > Things like Termcap and the lise were not needed. However the console IO > was not so good. Try printing a string containing $ using the print > string call. The other was passing 8bit data when needed. Many avoided the issues with the BDOS and simply went through the CBIOS vector. That's why it was important that your "cold boot" jump at 0000 point to the proper entry in the BIOS jump vector list and not to the cold boot routine directly. A lot programs used the cold boot jump at 0000 to find the BIOS jump list--just take the address in the jump instruction and set the low byte to 00. Timer as well as console interrupt I/O was pretty much necessary for MP/M functioning (interrupt-driven disk I/O was *strongly* suggested) and recommended for CP/M 3.0, as was bank-switching. I did a CP/M 2.2 implementation using interrupt-driven I/O for everything but the memory-mapped display. It worked pretty well, but the effort was wasted for the disk I/O--there was nothing to do while you were waiting for the operation to complete. On the other hand, it did make writing an MP/M XIOS much simpler. > IObyte was mostly uniform, the problem was often it wasnt even > implemented. This was a problem of allowing the BIOS spec to be > minimal and it usually was. The problem with IOBYTE is that it was defined in terms of console, reader, punch and list. Well, most systems didn't have a "reader" or "punch". This made what to do with those items a matter of implementation. BDOS Function 3 is defined as "Reader Input" and 4 as "Punch Output". > Ignorant, I think no, they gave the hooks and basic requirements. It was > up to the BIOS developer to do a good job or just enough. By the time that 2.2 was offered, most CP/M systems were CRT oriented with a printer and perhaps a serial port used to connect to a modem. Instead of acknowledging that as the model configuration, DRI stubbornly stayed with TTY and paper tape as their model of character I/O. Cheers, Chuck

18 years, 7 months

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"CP/M compatible" vs. "MS-DOS Compatible" machines?

by cclist＠sydex.com

> Date: Wed, 30 Jan 2008 15:44:40 +0100 > From: Holger Veit <holger.veit at iais.fraunhofer.de> > MSDOS was much better in abstracting hardware, because it had a loadable > driver concept. Loadable drivers didn't come along until MS/PC DOS 2.0. Before that, adding another device, say an extra disk drive, was a brutal patchwork affair. CP/M 86 was far more advanced (for that matter, CP/M Plus was too) than MS DOS 1.x. As a matter of fact, the DOS 1.1 reference material included information not only on commands, but system table layout, .EXE file structure and system requests. ONE disk buffer for blocking/deblocking. Read and write transferred one record to and from the DTA. Flat file structure; file I/O done with FCBs. As a matter of fact, if you didn't know any better, you'd have sworn that someone took CP/M 2.2 and ported it to the 8086. MS-DOS 2.0 was a huge advance over 1.1; by Microsoft's own admission, the goal was to get closer to Xenix in operability. > Point is there in both cases: the hardware designers did not foresee how > their hardware could or should be used by software, so they basically > implanted the bare chips, not even respecting IRQ and DMA requirements; > the OS developers did not foresee usable and extensible interfaces to > access and abstract various hardware and just hacked something that it > would somehow work; and finally the application designers found the whole > base OS functions where plain unusable and reinvented, each one > differently, the wheel, leaving burnt ground for others that somehow > required similar functions - "thou shall not use the printer port for your > dongle, I have it already." 20-20 hindsight is great, but let's take it from the viewpoint of the times. There were very many CP/M systems around at the time with *no* interrupt or DMA support. Remember that the 5150 made extensive use of peripheral chips that were from the 8-bit world (8237, 8253, 8259, 8255, not to mention the NS8250), so the fact that DMA and an interrupt controller (with 8 interrupt levels yet) and a timer was somewhat remarkable considering the competition. Although the BIOS functions came a long way as the PC evolved, MS-DOS still ran on a 5150, so the added BIOS functionality couldn't be exploited. The parallel port was designed as a printer port; the fact that it was used for other things can hardly be blamed on MS-DOS. The printer port does what it was designed to do extremely well. The fact that a dongle designer was so short-sighted as to not provide printer pass-through functionality can hardly be laid on the designers of the PC. Personally, I'm surprised the light pen interface wasn't used for more things. Cheers, Chuck

18 years, 7 months

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A sign of the times

by cclist＠sydex.com

I've been using a couple of Panasonic laser printers for years; a KX- P4455 (PS/PCL) and a KX-P4451 (PCL). They're real beasts of machines; I'd guess that they weight somewhere around 60 lbs. each-- heavy enough to cause me to grunt when lifting them. These are the kind of units that requires one to add toner to a compartment periodically. Drum and developer are separate cartridges. The time came to replace the OPC drum in one of these--after pricing the remanufactured ones and checking the deals on eBay, it turned out not to be practical. I found that I can get a factory refurb Brother 5240 from Staples.com for $40 shipped. When it runs out of toner, I can just buy another one at that price (1200 DPI, 23 PPM and most important--a parallel interface). So what to do with the old monsters? They use 68000 CPUs, with differing SIP and DIP memories. Scrappers, I guess. It's sad because both of these have pretty much been the only printer I've used since a Diablo Hitype II. It wouldn't surprise me if each has more than 250,000 copies on it. It's just a shame that such a nicely engineered piece of gear is now worth only its weight in scrap metal. But nobody collects printers, not even vintage ones. Cheers, Chuck

18 years, 7 months

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Simple peer to peer network?

by cclist＠sydex.com

> Date: Wed, 30 Jan 2008 14:16:32 -0500 > From: scheefj at netscape.net > What is the desired end result? What is the application? A simple > application may not need a "real" networking protocol. If "cluster" > means distributed processing, then you have a lot more than just > protocols to figure out. You know, a $2 PIC (e.g. 18F2580) MCU implements CAN. It's not really fast(CAN, not the PIC) but it keeps your car going. A minimum of external components required. You even get a bunch of other neat stuff thrown in (USART, timers, ADC, etc.). All in a 28 pin skinny DIP or QFN. (Dodging brickbats, for not keeping things contemporaneous) Cheers, Chuck

18 years, 7 months

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"CP/M compatible" vs. "MS-DOS Compatible" machines?

by ajp166＠bellatlantic.net

> >Subject: Re: "CP/M compatible" vs. "MS-DOS Compatible" machines? > From: "Chuck Guzis" <cclist at sydex.com> > Date: Thu, 31 Jan 2008 02:06:29 -0800 > To: cctalk at classiccmp.org > >> Date: Wed, 30 Jan 2008 15:44:40 +0100 >> From: Holger Veit <holger.veit at iais.fraunhofer.de> > >> MSDOS was much better in abstracting hardware, because it had a loadable >> driver concept. > >Loadable drivers didn't come along until MS/PC DOS 2.0. Before that, >adding another device, say an extra disk drive, was a brutal >patchwork affair. CP/M 86 was far more advanced (for that matter, >CP/M Plus was too) than MS DOS 1.x. As a matter of fact, the DOS 1.1 >reference material included information not only on commands, but >system table layout, .EXE file structure and system requests. ONE >disk buffer for blocking/deblocking. Read and write transferred one >record to and from the DTA. Flat file structure; file I/O done with >FCBs. As a matter of fact, if you didn't know any better, you'd have >sworn that someone took CP/M 2.2 and ported it to the 8086. > >MS-DOS 2.0 was a huge advance over 1.1; by Microsoft's own admission, >the goal was to get closer to Xenix in operability. Roger that. >> Point is there in both cases: the hardware designers did not foresee how >> their hardware could or should be used by software, so they basically >> implanted the bare chips, not even respecting IRQ and DMA requirements; >> the OS developers did not foresee usable and extensible interfaces to >> access and abstract various hardware and just hacked something that it >> would somehow work; and finally the application designers found the whole >> base OS functions where plain unusable and reinvented, each one >> differently, the wheel, leaving burnt ground for others that somehow >> required similar functions - "thou shall not use the printer port for your >> dongle, I have it already." > >20-20 hindsight is great, but let's take it from the viewpoint of the >times. There were very many CP/M systems around at the time with >*no* interrupt or DMA support. Remember that the 5150 made extensive >use of peripheral chips that were from the 8-bit world (8237, 8253, >8259, 8255, not to mention the NS8250), so the fact that DMA and an >interrupt controller (with 8 interrupt levels yet) and a timer was >somewhat remarkable considering the competition. DING! Thats is the point. the 5150 was running at 4.77mhz which by 8088 standard of the day was SLOW. but it wasnt sitting the cpu in tight loops waiting for keypressed or FDC data ready. Every Z80 system that did exactly that was nothing short of phenominal to use and could easily blow the doors off a 5150. I worked with a one off Multibus system at that time that had Z80/6mhz 64k shadow rom DMA floppy controller and later ST506 hard disk. For text based work, cross assemblers it was light years faster. >Although the BIOS functions came a long way as the PC evolved, MS-DOS >still ran on a 5150, so the added BIOS functionality couldn't be >exploited. Also the early bios was only 16k than even two years later it was twice the size. Reason ram and rom became cheaper and larger. More space more functions. >The parallel port was designed as a printer port; the fact that it >was used for other things can hardly be blamed on MS-DOS. The >printer port does what it was designed to do extremely well. The >fact that a dongle designer was so short-sighted as to not provide >printer pass-through functionality can hardly be laid on the >designers of the PC. >Personally, I'm surprised the light pen interface wasn't used for >more things. That never caught on. I think when it could have the CPU was still too slow to do the work. Allison

18 years, 7 months

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Q-BUS primer?

by ajp166＠bellatlantic.net

> >Subject: Q-BUS primer? > From: "Dave Dunfield" <dave06a at dunfield.com> > Date: Wed, 30 Jan 2008 22:12:16 -0500 > To: cctalk at classiccmp.org > >Hi Guys, > >Recently acquired a goodly amount of DEC gear - I had put the Q-BUS >stuff aside while I got the "all in one" VAXstation/VAXservers up and >running, but I'm starting to collect information - I've no experience >whatsoever with Q-bus, but from what I've read, I understand that it >will take a bit of research to determine how to properly configure >and position the boards. Here comes a huge first shot. Any questions ask. I've likely answered them before. I have here most every Qbus configuration for PDP-11 and a few DEC would never support and a few Qbus uVAX too. All operational. If you liked programming the 6809 the PDP-11 will be familair and even nicer. (CUBIX-11). Any (and all) of the late 70s through mid 80s "MicroComputer Handbooks" [microcomputers and memories, Microcomputer interfacing handbook] DEC put out. They are chock full of info, explanation and are just gotta have items. The PDP11 and MicroVAX have heavy overlap in the Q-bus realm so any and all info for one will be helpfull for the other. Those books will help with.. PDP11 programming (or microVAX) PDP11 modules and their jumpers Standard addresses for various functions Some info on standard configurations including what board goes where. Boot code for many devices Mxxxx to function conversion DEC history! >I'm hoping that I have enough material to built up at least one >(possibly 2) nice little PDP-11's, and/or a MicroVax II) To make a system you need roughtly (pdp11). A box with power, backplane and at least minimal front pannel (three switch) A CPU be it LSI-11 or M8186 the latter is mroe versitile. An SL serial port configured as console (dl11 or better DLV11J OR MXV11) My prefernce is the 11j and seperate ram as the MXV is a sea of jumpers. However teh MXV-11 Two or up to 4 total make for a compact systems with boot and IO galore. the MXV11s mostly seenare limited to Q18 configurations due to limited address decoding but fully populated boards times four Gives you 64KW (128KB) with is a moderately large memory system and also 8 serial lines 4 PPI! Popular card for embedded systems. Memory at least 4K more for an OS (16k minimum) To run an OS some form of mass storage (could be a Tu58 emulator running on a PC on A serial port) A good OS to start with is RT-11, compact, small ram fooprint and can run from any device 256k or larger, looks like dos. ;) NOTE: The LSI-11 is the oldest and has some bus configuration items to pay attnetion to. It's limited to 32KW addressing (Q16) and when you remove the IO page (PDP-11 and VAX use memory mapped IO) typical space is 26KW (big for basic 11). The M8186 is the F11 cipset and has MMU also (Q18/Q22) can address larger memory. Most all 8186s I've seen despite handbooks claims of only Q18 addressing do Q22 (22bit). It's also much faster than the LSI-11. >At this point, all I'm really looking for is a good "starting point". >Can anyone recomment a good document/resources for a Q-bus newbie? > >Btw, this is what I've got - If there's anything I'm obviously missing, >or will have to find extra parts for, please advise me so that I can >start looking... > >Three chassis: > BA-23: complete with outer shell and end caps. It bears a > "MicroVAX II" label on the console switch panel, and has a > floppy drive (dual disk) installed in it. The dual floppy is RX50. The front pannel is processor specific as are the real pannel (if present!) inserts. That box works for both Q-bus 11 cpus and Qbus uVAX cpus. > I don't know the model numbers for the next two: > - One looks like a BA32 but smaller, and has the "3-switch" PDP > console/display panel on it. The cards are inserted from the > front beside the panel. BA11N BAllVA??? Should have a label somewhere identifying it. > - The last one is the smallest, looks much like the one above, > complete with 3-switch console/display panel, however instead > of metal side/top/bottom plates, it has a "wire cage". It also > has a second expansion chassis of similar construction with no > power supply or console panel. Generally the DEC backplanes are wirecage to cupport the guides and the backplane at the end with power and control connectors. >I've got the following DEC Q-BUS cards: >(Descriptions taken from the "Field Guide to Q-BUS and Unbus modules" > >M3106 4-line async >M7264 11/03 processor with 4-Kword RAM That is the base "LSI-11" cpu card. Use in many machines and even the H11. >M7504 Ethernet adapter (older DEQNA) Older and often flaky, if it works keep it, if unsure keep it. >M7546 TMSCP controller for TK50 >M7555 Winchester and floppy disk controller AKA the RQDX3 controller for MFM and floppy(RX50 and RX33 aka TEAC FD55GFR). >M7606 MicroVAX II KA630 >M7608 x2 2/4 MB RAM (boards are fully populated) uVAXII cpu has matching ram with an over the top IDE cable. M7608 is ONLY for uVAXII. >M7940 x2 SLU Module DL-11 card, generic serial line interface. That an older one but very useable. Pair that up with LSI-11 cpu. >M7944 x3 4-Kword RAM Goes with the LSI-11 CPU. >M7946 x2 RX01 floppy disk controller It's not teh FDC it's really only the bus interface to the FDC. The drive RX01 has a simple randome logic processor to do all the heavy lifiting. RX01 is SSSD 8" standard. >M8043 x2 4-SLU peripheral interface DLV11J, the standard 4 serial line interface for QBUS. >M8044DB x2 32Kword RAM >M8044DF x2 32Kword RAM For qbus 11 systems. >M8047 RAM, Async, ROMs MXV11 compact card with a million jumpers that gives you yp to 32kB of ram, ROm, 2 serial(DL compatable) and parallel(8255). >M8186 11/23 CPU First generation F11 cpu, fine board has uODT in microcode. ODT is a very simple Octal based (all 11s are octal) monitor debugger. >M9047 Grant continuity Always handy for filling holes. The bus is wires such that interrupt and DMA grant are passed through eash card so that the highest priority requestor is nearest the CPU. >M9400YA 120-ohm terminators with refresh & floppy boot used with Qbus 11 cpus that are romless. can boot RX01 and I think two otehr devicves >M9400YE Headers and 250 Ohm resistors bus terminator reqired in some cases optional in others not wanted in some. >I've also got the following third party cards - I don't know >anything about these, other than the identifying marks found >on the boards listed below - if anyone can provide more >information on these, that would be helpful: (Several of them >appear to be media controllers of one sort or another). > >Andromedia Systems UDC-11 rev H (50 pin connector at front edge) Memory says same as RQDXn. desireable board if you have info. >Micro Technology Inc. MSV05B (x2) (50 pin connector at front edge) >TD Systems TDL-11H/A (50 pin connwctor at front edge) >Xylogics "Wizard 1" (50 pin connector at front edge) >SDC-RXVZ1 "8202 FD Controller" (50 pin connector at front edge) >Versatec LSI-11 P/P Interface (40 pin connector at front edge) >Sigma Information Systems Assy 40100 > - This board has one 40 + one 50 pin connector, and a place to > populate another 40 pin - none are at the front edge. >W951 "Flip Chip" > - This board has places for various sized chips (most of them populated) > with pins to wire-wrap connections between them - looks like some sort > of prototyping board. > >+ A couple of the little grant continuity boards. > >I don't expect this to be a short journy, but it should be interesting... >Thanks in advance for any advice/tips. > >Regards, >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, 7 months

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Dosbox and TOPAS working!

by rdawson16＠hotmail.com

After some serious hacking, with this 3d animation program, I have it running under DOSBox!!! Next questions: 1. Its a really cool program, expensive in its day, but abandoned by its owner AT&T who got out of the graphics business about 1993 or so. What have others done, to get the OK to post these type programs somewhere. (Im thinking about the Mame arcade emulator guys, who never were able to post the ROMs) 2. How can you free up the dosbox mouse to get back to a windows control so I can grab a screenshot? Dosbox is cool! Randy _________________________________________________________________ Shed those extra pounds with MSN and The Biggest Loser! http://biggestloser.msn.com/

18 years, 7 months

2
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Whitechapel WC1 on Ebay

by stimpy.u.idiot＠gmail.com

Astounding - something genuinely rare on ebay. Item number: 260206754118 I'd have it myselft but alas my loft is full. -- Pete Edwards "Prediction is very difficult, especially if it's about the future" - Niels Bohr

18 years, 7 months

4
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Help needed on a DEC LA180 printer

by tiggerlasv＠aim.com

I'm assuming you've already verified that the carriage isn't binding, by trying to move the print head with the printer turned off, so we'll skip that step. If the carriage is moving, and suddenly stops, with a continuous error bell, it's possible that there is something wrong with the head positioning electronics. The motor that moves the print head has an encoder wheel on the back of it, which of course is monitored by the logic board. I would GUESS that if the printer doesn't see any feedback from the encoder, that it would stop the print head, and turn on the warning bell. I have one of these at home, with the classic "head slam" problem, which is also related to the encoder and/or electronics. It will print, but when returning to the left-hand side, it will start with a gentle tap while it's printing, then a bit louder, then a bit louder, as the carriage slams harder and harder up against the left stop plate. Finally, it stops, and the bell sounds. In this instance, it's losing track of where the print head is. I haven't had time to isolate the problem myself, but it sounds like you're having problems along the same lines. I would check the connections to the encoder wheel. . . the encoder wheel itself, (sometimes they get dust / dirt inside the enclosure, which interferes with operation), then the infrared sensors, and related circuitry on the board. Tim ________________________________________________________________________ More new features than ever. Check out the new AIM(R) Mail ! - http://webmail.aim.com

18 years, 7 months

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HP-UX install tape available

by jack.rubin＠ameritech.net

I have an HP DDS cartridge labelled "HP-UX Install S800 / HP-UX 10.10 Release / For the HP9000 S800". Marked as 1 of 1, SD FMT, P/N B3920-13427. Available for cost of postage. Email me off-list Jack No virus found in this outgoing message. Checked by AVG Free Edition. Version: 7.5.516 / Virus Database: 269.19.16/1250 - Release Date: 1/29/2008 10:20 PM

18 years, 7 months

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2716 with 100 nS access time - Lessons learnt by a Trainee Technical Officer in the dim, distant past...

by doug＠stillhq.com

Jos, You have sparked a funny (now) memory from my long distant past. In my youth, I had a Rockwell 65F11 SBC board, with a FDC, that was a small scale Forth development system. I spent many many hours writing code on it. One day, I decided that it needed a memory upgrade, and I designed a card to sit on top of the entire PCB that had buckets of ram (48K from memory??). As a trainee, I thought that I would be clever, an instead of laying out all of that tedious memory decode logic, I would use a 2732, and simply write a big decode matrix. (It worked beautifully for a traffic light controller state machine I did a little earlier...) So, I created an awesome memory upgrade PCB (with tape on film - 2 sided) - Photo reduce - expose - etch - drill - populate, etc, etc......All to discover that it didn't work.. After hours of trying to find the problem, I sheepishly approached one of the Senior Technical Officers, who suggested with a smile, that I connect a logic analyser to see what was happening... Low and behold - the CS* signal never got around to appearing before the memory was read. That day, I truly found out what 450nS access time actually meant. All to try to avoid mucking around with those pesky single use proms... Interestingly enough, a year or so later, I fitted one of those massive 62256 to get all of the memory I needed. Wo hoo. I hope you find a solution. BTW, does anybody remember the wierd diode logic decode that the TRS-80 model 1 used.... I tried that once as well, and discovered that you couldn't use silicon, and that only germanium worked. -- Doug Jackson, I-RAP, MAIPM, MIEEE Principal Information Security Consultant EWA-AUSTRALIA PO Box 6308 O'Connor ACT 2602 Level 1, 214 Northbourne Ave, Braddon ACT 2612 Tel: +61 (0)2 6230 6833 Fax: +61 (0)2 6230 5833 Mob: +61 (0)414 986 878 http://www.ewa-australia.com ============================================ IMPORTANT: This email remains the property of Electronic Warfare Associates - Australia. If you have received this email in error, you are requested to contact doug.jackson at ewa-australia.com or Ph +61 2 62306833 and delete the email. This message is not to be copied or distributed to other parties without the express permission of the author. Any personal information in this email must be handled in accordance with the Privacy Act 1988 (Cth). ============================================

18 years, 7 months

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"CP/M compatible" vs. "MS-DOS Compatible" machines?

by ajp166＠bellatlantic.net

> >Subject: Re: "CP/M compatible" vs. "MS-DOS Compatible" machines? > From: Dave McGuire <mcguire at neurotica.com> > Date: Wed, 30 Jan 2008 13:27:25 -0500 > To: "General Discussion: On-Topic Posts Only" <cctech at classiccmp.org> > >On Jan 29, 2008, at 4:33 PM, Joshua Alexander Dersch wrote: >>> In the early-mid 80's a program was "well behaved" if it did it's >>> I/O thru DOS calls. Those programs would run on just about anything. >> >> Were there similar problems in the CP/M world? That is, was it >> commonplace for there to be CP/M programs that bypassed CP/M BDOS >> calls and wrote directly to a specific machine's hardware? Seems >> like CP/M developers were more disciplined in this fashion, but >> maybe it's just because in the CP/M arena there were so many >> different pieces of hardware it was the only way to do it? >> (Whereas with IBM, the PC was seen as more of a reference standard, >> even if it wasn't really that way in the beginning?) >> I'd be interested to hear opinions from people who were there at >> the time, since it was a little before my time. > > I was there; I was a CP/M weenie for many years. I still use it >from time to time; it's lots of fun. > > The CP/M BIOS definition doesn't provide for all the things a user >might want his/her hardware to do. Accessing serial ports >efficiently is one thing...Some popular CP/M communications programs, >such as the MODEM7 family, used the concept of "overlays" (not the >kind that we use in the PDP-11 world!), which are assembly language >modules which are written for your specific hardware that present a >unified (BIOS-like!) interface to the rest of the MODEM7 code. It >was intended that end users would write these routines for their >specific hardware. (in a day when end users were typically highly >technical people) > > Formatting floppy disks is another example. The CP/M BIOS has no >provision for floppy disk formatting, so a formatter program had to >be written for each floppy controller, and it accessed the >controller's registers directly to perform the formatting (and >sometimes verification) function. > > Other than specialized hardware (lab I/O, speech synthesizers, >real-time clocks) there weren't many instances of programs directly >accessing I/O in my experience. Another way to say that is if the application used BDOS calls there was a near 100% assurance of proper operation. If it did BIOS calls corectly that was near 100% as well. If it played with hardware direct all bets were off. Generally the hardware was simple enough that was a minor issue. The most common case was extra serial IO (modems and the like). Even then there is a YABUT.. If the system was IO interrupt driven and also fully implemented IObyte then doing modem IO was a easy task. The problem with that is CP/M didn't REQUIRE it but would certainly be nicer to use if you had it. Therein lies the statement: Most BIOS were minimal implmentations. It was the Ampro's, Kaypros, DEC vt180 and many others that were more than minimal BIOS and those you could actually count on more things as the bios did the lifting. Allison > -Dave > >-- >Dave McGuire >Port Charlotte, FL >

18 years, 7 months

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got 80251 microcontroller PLCC 44 pin?

by jpero＠sympatico.ca

I was working on a monitor, this is romless version but I can take other type as long as I can jumper it to disable the internal programming. I'm fixing a monitor with a flaky 80251. Seems to have many pins output low clocked pulses/noies laid on the signals. The main filters are good, the linear regulators are clean and quiet. Got this microcontroller to spare? Cheers, Wizard

18 years, 7 months

1
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ps2 to ascii keyboard converter

by elazzerini＠interfree.it

Hi at all, i'm working to make alive my bigboard 1. It has input for a parallel keyboard so I'd like to build or to know where to find an interface to convert a ps2 keyboard in parallel way. Well here <http://www.rasmicro.com/FTP/an434.pdf> http://www.rasmicro.com/FTP/an434.pdf there is a schematic to convert ps2 to IIC way. What I asking for is: 1) Is there anyone who know the way to modify the assembly to make the 8xc751 working on its p1.0 to p1.7 output to generate a parallel ascii code corresponding to the key pressed on the ps2 keyboard? 2) What could be the programmer to save the program onto the 8xc751? Thanks Enrico

18 years, 7 months

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YouTube videos of vintage PDP-11/40, ASR-33, VT05, etc

by wacarder＠earthlink.net

Somebody recently was asking about wanting to see videos of some vintage equipment in action. I have uploaded some videos to YouTube. These were taken some time back in 2007 one day when I was playing around with my system. The videos are not anything high quality, but do show the PDP-11/40 front panel with the lights blinking, the RL01, RL02, and RK05 drives as they are running, and an ASR-33 teletype, a VT05 terminal, a VT52 DecScope, an LA36 DecWriter II, and an LA120 DecWriterIII as the terminals run the system status program $SYSTAT. Take a look at some live vintage equipment in actions! The URL at YouTube is under the user "WoffordWitch" at: http://www.youtube.com/profile_videos?user=WoffordWitch&p=r If there's anything in particular anyone would like me to video and upload, just reply here or email me at wacarder at usit.net, and I'll fire up the old system and try to accomodate you. Thanks, Ashley Carder http://www.woffordwitch.com

18 years, 7 months

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some free DEC boxes in boston area - pickup only

by josecvalle＠gmail.com

Zane.. Hello, from Computer Museum Brazil. I am curator of Museu do Computador , my name Jose Carlos Valle, I will apreciatte to pick up. Please could you send photo of that material? I would like to get it to my Museum here in Brazil. But, I have a friend mine in Dallas, TX, Richard, he will get it and will send to me. Thanks Jose Carlos Valle http://computermuseumbrazil.blogspot.com www.museudocomputador.com.br 2008/1/30, Zane H. Healy <healyzh at aracnet.com>: > > At 1:09 PM -0500 1/30/08, Brad Parker wrote: > >- working BA123 cabinet (with wheels!); no disks, no floppy, no boards, > > no front panel. I think I have the sides, no guarantee. But the p/s > > works fine. Great if you need an open qbus chassis. Plus makes a > nice > > coffee table. > > If you've got all the sides and intact wheels, this is well worth > saving. Even if it is for a VAX, nothing says someone can't > "upgrade" it to a PDP-11. I'd classify it more of an end-table > personally, and I actually used one that way for a few years. > > With a little effort you can also keep a VT420 and LA75 on top of it > and use both. > > Zane > > > -- > | Zane H. Healy | UNIX Systems Administrator | > | healyzh at aracnet.com (primary) | OpenVMS Enthusiast | > | MONK::HEALYZH (DECnet) | Classic Computer Collector | > +----------------------------------+----------------------------+ > | Empire of the Petal Throne and Traveller Role Playing, | > | PDP-10 Emulation and Zane's Computer Museum. | > | http://www.aracnet.com/~healyzh/ | > -- Jose Carlos Valle Museu do Computador & Futuro da Tecnologia tel:+5511-8609-7410 Brazil

18 years, 7 months

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How compatible were "MS-DOS Compatible" machines?

by cclist＠sydex.com

> Date: Wed, 30 Jan 2008 11:07:38 -0600 > From: Jim Leonard > > In the early days, it was possible to call BASIC subroutines. But, I > > don't think that they kept the same addresses for long. > > Wow -- while that's cool, what was a useful application for that? > Borrowing the use of the floating-point routines, perhaps? ROM has a > faster access time than RAM, but would it have been all that much faster > than doing it yourself, or would it have just been merely convenient? Any IBM system with BASIC-in-ROM kept the same addresses for subroutines throughout the life of that feature. That's why you can run PC-DOS BASICA only on those machines having the ROM BASIC. For generic MS-DOS, MS supplied GWBASIC as an option (which I still use on my XP-equipped machine when I need to do some quick figuring). Several very early games required BASIC-in-ROM--the basic 5150 shipped with 48K of DRAM, so memory was at a premium. I don't think any productivity tools made use of the ROM BASIC, however. Do any of the IBM diagnostics use it? Cheers, Chuck

18 years, 7 months

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some free DEC boxes in boston area - pickup only

by brad＠heeltoe.com

Hi, I don't need the following DEC equipment anymore. Since I got them for free I figured I'd pass them on if anyone wants them: - working BA123 cabinet (with wheels!); no disks, no floppy, no boards, no front panel. I think I have the sides, no guarantee. But the p/s works fine. Great if you need an open qbus chassis. Plus makes a nice coffee table. - MV4000; has cpu & some disks (2 or 3?) it booted vms once and may still. I may have some s cards also laying around (nothing exciting). Worked fine last time I powered it up. Marginal as a coffee table; perhaps an end table. - MV3100 + associated scsi disk box. Last ran netbsd and worked fine. No idea what is on the disks. I think I have one scsi cable also. Not tall enough to be a coffee table. too heavy to server as paper weight. I can't ship these. If you want them you need to pick them up. I'm in Arlington Mass (USA) 02476. You can pick them up most any time. (I can't get at my 14" disks right now and those need to be spun up :-) -brad

18 years, 7 months

2
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Z80 Divide by 10

by cclist＠sydex.com

On 25 Jan 2008 at 12:00, cctalk-request at classiccmp.org wrote: > I figure that one might do part of the multiplication and then > right shift the result some since were are going to truncate the > LSBs anyway. The first result is expected to error some. With > the correct value for the multiply, the error will always be on > the low side, keeping the error calculation simple. The largest > error seems to grow linearly so even with some truncation, > one should be able to hit 10K or so with only 1 or2 conditionals, > using a large fractional munber to multiply. > I don't think I'd ever use this but it was fun to think about. I suspected that this is what you might be doing (that ADD HL,H really had me wondering), but I wonder if your method will hold together for accuracy or be faster than a simple unrolled 10 bit divide. Remember that without the need for an iteration test you can use BC to hold the scaled +10 and use a DAD instead of an SBC, shaving a byte from the loop. Cheers, Chuck

18 years, 7 months

11
28
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DEC Highnote P8x

by steve51158＠hotmail.com

Hi sorry to bother you,I came across a CCtalk archive from Nov 2003 regarding power supply pin out connections for a DEC Highnote notebook.I have recently aquired one of these but have the same problem,no power supply,I have an old non working DELL adapter which looks to have the same connector so if you still have the info on the connections that would be a big help,thank you. _________________________________________________________________ Share what Santa brought you https://www.mycooluncool.com

18 years, 7 months

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.. 1973... Intertechnique Multi 8 / Microdata 800-1600

by pichotjm＠free.fr

Hi, Thanks for information. I have added your comment on my http://pichotjm.free.fr/Multi8/Multi8.html page. Do you accept that? I have found 2 more photos showing me working with another Multi 8 configuration, but i have to restore them (many scratches, white dots...)! May be from 1972. I was debugging one of these applications: http://pichotjm.free.fr/Techno73/Applis/Applis.html Electronic contains the first microprocessor 4004. Unfortunatly, i have no document about this. JMP

18 years, 7 months

1
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Help needed on a DEC LA180 printer

by RodSmallwood＠mail.ediconsulting.co.uk

On switch on the printer will seek the margin. If there's a problem with the position encoder or photocell the motor will not stop. With the printer off make sure the head carriage is free to move and the bar it slides on is not bent. You can put a little oil on the head slider bar. As with above if the head jams before it gets to the rest position. The stall current from the motor will trip the alarm. Rod Smallwood DEC Terminals Product Line 1975 - 1978 -----Original Message----- From: cctech-bounces at classiccmp.org [mailto:cctech-bounces at classiccmp.org] On Behalf Of Harten Sent: 29 January 2008 20:25 To: cctech at classiccmp.org Subject: Help needed on a DEC LA180 printer Hi! I'm a Computer collector from Germany and the last 3 years i spend a lot of time in reconstructing and repairing my PDP11/05 along with its peripheral devices (2x RK05,RX02,BA11ES). Noe that these things are working im trying to repair my LA180-PD printer, that was in no good condition. With a copy of the logic-prints i was able to find some faulty IC's on th logic board- but there must be at least one more. On Power-Up the carriage starts to move back to left edge but stopps before reaching the left end then the bell is turned on permanently. There is no reaction on any button pressed or switched over. Unfortunately i have no Maintenance Manual or Logic description, maybe there is a person out on this list who can help me with a copy of the documents. Regards Axel Harten.

18 years, 7 months

1
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old ncr laptop

by jwest＠classiccmp.org

I was contacted by someone with an NCR 3120 laptop (1990). They want to sell it for best offer plus shipping. It's located in arizona and from the pics looks to be minty. If anyone is interested, please contact me off-list. Jay

18 years, 7 months

1
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Has anyone ever written a standalone Commodore disk drive emulator?

by ethan.dicks＠usap.gov

Hi, Commodore folks, I have just tracked down an ISA IEEE-488 card and was thinking that it might be interesting to use it to build an older PC into a Commodore diskette drive emulator - I recall there are various projects to interface modern hardware to PETs (like the C2N232 I have with me), but the idea in this case is to allow existing apps to work as if there were a real C= drive hanging off the PET's IEEE port. Essentially, the PC would act as closely to, say a 4040, as possible. My thought was that if I had a real IEEE-488 interface, it could handle the physical-layer protocol, and the emulator would only have to handle sending and receiving command strings and data. The virtual diskettes would be, of course, image files. I'm not really as worried about RELative files - more along the lines of "direct access" files where the code running on the PET wants to read and write individual sectors, ignoring the C= DOS filesystem. That is, in fact, the major reason for trying to emulate drives in the first place - if it was just a case of loading and saving streams of data as files, the C2N232 does a fine job of that (and costs on the order of $10 to breadboard). There seem to be a number of ways to emulate C= IEC-bus devices (such as the 1541-III), but not for the IEEE-488. If anyone can point me at any existing projects, even if they are incomplete, it would be a big help. Thanks, -ethan -- Ethan Dicks, A-333-S Current South Pole Weather at 30-Jan-2008 at 02:00 Z South Pole Station PSC 468 Box 400 Temp -34.8 F (-37.1 C) Windchill -57.9 F (-50.0 C) APO AP 96598 Wind 7.9 kts Grid 45 Barometer 674.7 mb (10829 ft) Ethan.Dicks at usap.gov http://penguincentral.com/penguincentral.html

18 years, 7 months

1
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DG10 AOS tapes

by mnusa2＠hotmail.com

I have some DG10 AOS tapes which I can not use and do not need. I have not tested these tapes or contents. 8 pcs of 45 MB QIC-2 tapes. If any interest please email. _________________________________________________________________ Windows Vista + Windows Live. Astu digitaaliseen maailmaan. http://get.live.com

18 years, 7 months

1
0
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Z80 Divide by 10

by cclist＠sydex.com

> Date: Tue, 29 Jan 2008 06:45:46 -0500 > From: M H Stein > >Some people get rather upset at the lack of symmetry, and lack of certain > >instructions that might be handy, such as a load immediate into segment > >registers. > And some people just get rather upset by _anything_ that doesn't match > their view of how the world "should" be... Sigh. As long as it's possible to "get there from here", I don't much mind how an instruction set's laid out. I'll learn it and learn to work around the problem areas, such as the lack of an inclusive-OR instruction on the CP1600, or the weird setup of the RCA COSMAC, or the asymnetry of <fill in the blank>'s instruction set, or the lack of a hardware stack on a PDP/8. If you want strange and asymnetric, try working with a few samples of the current crop of microcontrollers. You can get used to anything. In a way, this line of discussion reminds me of an Inuit criticizing the Tongan language for the lack in the vocabulary for different types of snow. You work with what you've got. Cheers, Chuck

18 years, 7 months

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Fast 8Kx2 ROM replacement

by cclist＠sydex.com

> Date: Mon, 28 Jan 2008 14:49:18 -0500 (EST) > From: Jeff Jonas > Why not try for a free sample of the Freescale Magnetoresistive Random > Access Memory (MRAM): it's fast and needs no power at all. The largest > seems to be P/N PR2A16AVYS35 4MBIT I was also going to suggest the Ramtron FRAM, but was looking for something close to the OP's original target of 2Kx8. The smallest parallel-access FRAM that Ramtron offers is 8Kx8, which is why I didn't suggest it. Cheers, Chuck

18 years, 7 months

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8-bit micro MMU's

by cclist＠sydex.com

> Date: Tue, 29 Jan 2008 01:19:35 -0500 > From: Dave McGuire > A slight diversion here...What is wretched about the 8202? I ask > because I got ahold of a few not long ago (and some 8203s) and was > considering putting something together with them to play with. As I recall, the timing, on chip-to-chip samples was all over the place making it a headache to design a manufacturable product. The second-generation 8203 is much better in that respect. I'd recommend that you skip the 8202. If it's a one-off and you have more than one sample, it may not matter. I thought it interesting that IBM avoided the problem of a DRAM controller altogether on the PC and dedicated a channel of the 8237 DMA controller to serve as refresh generator. You'dve thought that Intel would have made them a great deal on one. Cheers, Chuck

18 years, 7 months

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a tad OT: creating a bootable cflash card

by chrism3667＠yahoo.com

I'm stumped. All I have to work with is a WinXP laptop that doesn't boot off anything special in particular. The CD drive yes, but that's about it. I once was able to make bootable CD's w/early versions of Norton, but I doubt that would work for a compact flash card. I had thought I could "format/s" inside a dos box...no dice. even the "format" option arrived at by right clicking doesn't allow you to create a bootable partition. apparently "fdisk" doesn't exist in XP. I don't even have my USB floppy drive handy. Not that I would imagine DOS 6.22 would recognize a PCMCIA slot. Is there a way of running an *alien* DOS within XP. In a DOS box in other words? No, I don't imagine so. Whenever you click on a foreign command.com, you get a "wrong version" message or something. No I don't have the WinXP embedded resource kit (there's a program called bootprep that allegedly might help). I'm not trying to work with XP, just utilize it to create a DOS-bootable device. help ____________________________________________________________________________________ Looking for last minute shopping deals? Find them fast with Yahoo! Search. http://tools.search.yahoo.com/newsearch/category.php?category=shopping

18 years, 7 months

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Anybody ever find Kai Kaltenbach?

by tshoppa＠wmata.com

I was trading some stuff with Kai Kaltenbach back around 1996/1997 or so, and promised him a binder of docs when I found it. Well, I found the binder, and now I cannot track him down. Anybody have a current E-mail address for him?

18 years, 7 months

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Z80 Divide by 10

by ajp166＠bellatlantic.net

> >Subject: Re: Z80 Divide by 10 > From: Sean Conner <spc at conman.org> > Date: Mon, 28 Jan 2008 19:35:52 -0500 > To: "General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts" <cctalk at classiccmp.org> > >It was thus said that the Great Jim Leonard once stated: >> >> I find it amazing that there's an instruction set even more annoying >> >> than >> >>the 8086 (segments and all). I was amazed at the lopsidedness of the >> >>instruction set. I'm beginning to think I was lucky in skipping this >> >>particular chip (my first 8-bit was the 6809, so I think I got spoiled). >> >> Other than the goofy segment layout, what did you find "annoying" about >> the 8086 instruction set? > > Me? I didn't find it all that odd (at least, once I realized it was >better to look at the opcode map in octal instead of hex), but I do recall >reading various rants against the x86 on USENET in the early to mid 90s. I >did *a lot* of 8086 programming in the late 80s/early 90s, and still like >revisiting it from time to time (well, assembly in general, not specifically >the 8086). > > -spc (Man, I think I'd prefer the 6502 over the Z80 any day, and I hate > the 6502 ... ) ;) Having programmed a lot of the 8bitters and a fair number of 16 bitters my favorites are: PDP11, z80, 8085 and 804x(and 805x) I happen to hate Zilog neumonics for z80 though as it hides the fact that thre are hole in the instruction set. It also took me a long time to to switch from octal to hex as octal made the instruction set clear rather than hiding the holes. But I'm used to them especially the 8085, z80 and 804x. Others I find interesting are 6502, 1802, 6809 and TI9900 but I have to pay atttention as they require a different programming approach than would z80 or for that fact PDP11. Not better or worse just different. My all time favorite is PDP-8. Likely the most minimal instruction set that does enough. It has all the lacks XYZ of most every cpu and you can still code effectively with it. Also after PDP-8 everything looks good. ;) The 1802 also falls in that catagory, odd little machine with not much there but functional programs that are fast for the CPU speed manage to happen. There are few micros that do decent math, ti9900 and 6809 are ok at it but none were designed to be a primary number cruncher. Most code math routines effectively enough and thats what counts. If theres a comment here each cpu has something going for it or PDP8, PDP-11, z80 and 6502 would not have been amoung the longest lived cpus going. Yet despite that I still loathe the 8088/6 and later as the worst 8080 enhancement with a bag on the side. Just my .02$ Allison

18 years, 7 months

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8-bit micro MMU's

by ajp166＠bellatlantic.net

> >Subject: Re: 8-bit micro MMU's > From: Dave McGuire <mcguire at neurotica.com> > Date: Tue, 29 Jan 2008 01:19:35 -0500 > To: "General Discussion: On-Topic Posts Only" <cctech at classiccmp.org> > >On Jan 28, 2008, at 3:02 PM, Chuck Guzis wrote: >> With the slow memory chips back then, making things work with the >> wretched 8202 DRAM controller was a real chore. I seem to recall >> that if you ran worst-case numbers, you could wind up with the >> requirement of a negative access time for the DRAM for a 5MHz 8085. >> Adding bank-mapping hardware in the address path didn't improve >> things any. > > A slight diversion here...What is wretched about the 8202? I ask >because I got ahold of a few not long ago (and some 8203s) and was >considering putting something together with them to play with. Nothing save for the 8202 was optimized for 16k drams and the 8080 cpu (at 2mhz!). It was the older part. if your going to do Dram larger than 64k that the 8203 is the part of choise and pretty decent though not fantastically fast. the latter was because early Dram didn't do cas/ before ras/ refresh and other tricks to interleve the refresh cycle and the early parts were slow. > I worked with the 8207 DRAM controller extensively on the Navier- >Stokes Supercomputer Project at Princeton in the mid-late 1980s...We >had lots of problems with the memory arrays at first, but they were >eventually all traced to power...both nasty spikes on Vdd and ground >bounce. Big arrays are tough in the power gridding and bypass. The 8207 was a more involved part to use. Allison > > -Dave > >-- >Dave McGuire >Port Charlotte, FL >

18 years, 7 months

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Z80 Divide by 10

by dm561＠torfree.net

Date: Mon, 28 Jan 2008 15:11:42 -0800 (PST) From: Fred Cisin <cisin at xenosoft.com> Subject: Re: Z80 Divide by 10 >>> Can we just shoot the designers of the 8086 and just leave it that. !? On Mon, 28 Jan 2008, Jim Leonard wrote: >> But seriously -- why? I didn't find it all that horrible -- in fact, I >> missed the string handling (REP MOVSW/STOSW/SCASW/etc.) on all the other >> platforms I mentioned. If they truly deserve to be shot, I want to know >> why :-) >Some people get rather upset at the lack of symmetry, and lack of certain >instructions that might be handy, such as a load immediate into segment >registers. ---- And some people just get rather upset by _anything_ that doesn't match their view of how the world "should" be... m

18 years, 7 months

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non-existence of printer collectors...proven wrong

by Arno_1983＠gmx.de

Sat, 26 Jan 2008, "Chuck Guzis" <cclist at sydex.com> wrote: > Okay, so who wants a working Diablo Hitype II? Spare wheels and >(probably dried-out) ribbons. Free for pickup, or for the cost of > shipping. Probably in America and thus out of my reach, unless somebody coming to the upcoming VCFe in Munich offered to bring it along. "Ed" <listmailgoeshere at gmail.com> wrote: > Back in 1995 I used an IBM 3262 belt printer which was attached to an > AS/400. I don't know what its native interface was, but the company I > was working for had got hold of a third-party interface box that was > mounted on the side of said printer and connected it to the AS/400 via > twinax. Funny thing was, there was also a Centronics socket on the > base of said interface unit... > That unit would do 600LPM, so I was told. It was about a 1m x 1m x 1m > cube, and it was *loud*. Ah, I totally forgot about telling that I at one time also was involved with the rescue of such a setup (3262 and interface box) from a big mailorder store in Germany, which was passed to Hans Franke for possible future use with his/our 4331. The print server or how it's to be called boots from a floppy disk on power-up. The printer had been transported to my school in the Janitor's van and stored there for some weeks. When we came to pick it up in with our station wagon, it showed that the unfortunate piece of equipment was a tiny bit too large to fit through the hatch although there would have been ample space inside. We solved the problem by rolling the printer to our garage on it's own casters (one block from the school) and taking off the outer panels there so we could deliver it to Munich the following weekend. In my list, I forgot to mention my only GPIB-enabled printer, a CBM 8023 (9 needles, IIRC). At the risk of leaving the classic definition of "printers", I also have to brag about last week's great find, an Agfa PCR II film recorder, unfortunately missing the camera body that belongs to it - a modified Nikon N6000, according to internet sources. So long, Arno -- Arno Kletzander Student Assistant // Studentische Hilfskraft Informatik Sammlung Erlangen www.iser.uni-erlangen.de GMX FreeMail: 1 GB Postfach, 5 E-Mail-Adressen, 10 Free SMS. Alle Infos und kostenlose Anmeldung: http://www.gmx.net/de/go/freemail

18 years, 7 months

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8-bit micro MMU's

by cclist＠sydex.com

> From: Alexis > Subject: 8-bit micro MMU's > Maybe someone can use this? I haven't looked deeply into the MP/M II > XIOS requirements so I may have left something out that it needs so is > anyone familiar with the XIOS? (Raises hand) For MP/M and CP/M Plus, this is probably far too elaborate. It's my experience that MP/M appears to be designed around the idea of a 16K bank size. So, for 256K, you need only to be able to select 16 banks of 16K. A fairly common 74LS670 should do the trick. A 74LS610 or 612 should be more than adequate for most large-scale MP/M applications, but I understand that they're getting hard to come by. They can sometimes be found on early 286 motherboards as the DMA bank select register. (PC XTs and ATs have to perform bank-selection for DMA, as they use an 8237 DMA controller model, which is limited to 64K addressability). I made the mistake of (just before the '610 came out) designing a bank-select circuit for an 8085 product. It used a Fairchild 64x9 bipolar RAM (power-hungry and expensive) to give granularity of 1K pages. With MP/M, this was overkill. 16K would have done just fine and saved time and money. With the slow memory chips back then, making things work with the wretched 8202 DRAM controller was a real chore. I seem to recall that if you ran worst-case numbers, you could wind up with the requirement of a negative access time for the DRAM for a 5MHz 8085. Adding bank-mapping hardware in the address path didn't improve things any. The comment about separating data and address space is worth considering, but be aware that, because of deficiencies in the instruction set and for performance and space needs, 8080 self- modifying code is not uncommon. For example, consider the problem of I/O to a variable port number. SHLD-ing into the operand field of an LXI instruction to save a few cycles and bytes is also common in my experience. For what it's worth. Cheers, Chuck

18 years, 7 months

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The Centronics connector

by cclist＠sydex.com

> Date: Sun, 27 Jan 2008 19:32:35 -0800 > From: Brent Hilpert <hilpert at cs.ubc.ca> > > I thought it was "Amphenol 57 Series". > > I suspect "Blue-Ribbon" may be the name of the original larger style, and > "Micro-Ribbon" is the name of the smaller style more popular now-a-days. > > If that's correct, the plug-in input modules for 60's-era tube Tekky > scopes (for example) used a Blue-Ribbon connector, while the Centronics > connector is a Micro-Ribbon connector. Going fom the Amphenol web-site, 57 > series appears to be either a synonym for the Micro-Ribbon series or a > subset of the Micro-Ribbon series. I've heard the telco variety also called "Champ" connectors. You used to see a lot of them used to connect desk sets (e.g. 2565) to a PBX or 1A2 KSUs. Also known as an RJ21 connector. The 36-pin Centronics as well as the 24-pin GPIB variety are both members of the Amphenol "Micro ribbon" family. The same 50-position connector type was used quite a bit for connecting SCSI-I devices. Cheers, Chuck

18 years, 7 months

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6800 C compilier

by grant＠stockly.com

Is there a 6800 C compilier for CPM or DOS? I've been looking but can't seem to find one. If anyone knows where I could get one that would help me out a ton... Grant

18 years, 7 months

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Dead IBM PC 5150 motherboard - help troubleshooting

by richard.beaudry＠gmail.com

Hello all and thanks for the suggestions... Here's the story so far: 1) Power appears good -- measured correct voltages at power supply header on motherboard, and at various chips on the motherboard. All seem to be within specs 2) "Power good" line stays at +5VDC -- I believe this is correct, and signals that power is indeed good 3) Processor reset line -- at power up, briefly goes to +5VDC, then back to 0VDC and stays at 0VDC -- I don't think it is active low, so this should be correct, right?? 4) Triple-checked configuration switches, and they are correct for the configuration 5) Clock input to 8088 is dead-on 4.77xxxxxx MHz (my scope shows all the digits, but I don't remember them :-) -- I think the 4.77MHz is close enough). 6) One thing that seems odd is that the ADxx (Address/Data) lines seem "stuck". The scope does not show a waveform, and measuring with a meter shows some lines right at +5VDC, some at about +4VDC and some at 0VDC. Perhaps the processor is indeed HALTed??? That's where I am right now ... I'll remeasure the ADxx lines, and post the full list of values .... Thanks again for all the suggestions!!! Rich B.

18 years, 7 months

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The Centronics connector

by dm561＠torfree.net

----------Original Message: From: Fred Cisin <cisin at xenosoft.com> Subject: RE: The Centronics connector On Mon, 28 Jan 2008, dwight elvey wrote: > Hi > Things seem to have drifted a little. It is the wire combination > that I'm interested in. I'm aware that the connector was there > before the printer. > It looks like to the best of knowledge, the 101 may have been > the first. What type of printer was that? ISTR that there was also a 100 ? The 101 was BIG. It was HEAVY. Substantially bigger and heavier than Laserjet -. It was fast. It was LOUD! But, it would fit into the back of a Civic hatchback. I had one sitting around for years. I took it to some of the John Craig Computer Swaps in San Jose, and siome of the "Northwest" ones in San Mateo. I could not sell it. Not for $100; not for $50; not for $20 I gave it to City College Of San Francisco in 1983? when I was doing some part-time teaching there. They stated a value of $1200! so I got a LOT more off of my taxes than I could have gotten from a sale. IF they have stopped using it by now, then it was NOT because it was worn out. -- Grumpy Ol' Fred cisin at xenosoft.com ***********Reply: I used a 101 for years; great machine, similar in size & weight to the line printers I was using at Burroughs, even used a form control tape. Also as noisy; it was in a back room of the basement, connected to the CBM 8032 in my upstairs office with a 50 foot ribbon cable. Length restrictions on parallel cables? Feh! Still have the cable and many of the printouts... mike

18 years, 7 months

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8" floppy connector READY signal

by ccmpcpg＠yahoo.de

Hi, I've built the 8" <--> PC adapter described on Dave Dunfield's site. It works well with an 8" drive from an Olivetti M40 system. But it doesn't work with a Shugart SA851 drive. Now, after checking the pin description in the SA851 OEM manual it seems that the SA851 uses pin #22 instead of pin #12 for READY. I haven't tried yet whether the adapter works if I change it for pin #22... I'm just asking if it's a well known fact that there appear to be different layouts of the 50pin 8" floppy connector. I was under the impression that it is quite standard. I'll probably add a switch to the adapzer to select between pin #12 and pin #22. regards, chris __________________________________ Ihr erstes Baby? Holen Sie sich Tipps von anderen Eltern. www.yahoo.de/clever

18 years, 7 months

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On collecting printers...

by tsw-cc＠johana.com

On a previous message, dwight elvey <dkelvey at hotmail.com> said: > Hi > Does anyone know which Centronix ( sp?) printer the 36 pin connector > for parallel printers became standard? > Dwight It seems that they started using it in the mid 70's. The connector was an Amphenol 36 pin "micro-ribbon" type, one of the various sizes available. As a point of reference IEEE-488 (HPIB) standardized on a 24 pin version of the connector, and the phone company (It was called the Bell System in those days) used a 50 pin version for their cabling of telephones (25 pair cables as well). The connectors were pretty common, and worked VERY well, as the wiping contacts were ultra reliable. In the lab where I was working at the time had standardized on the 50 pin version for connecting things together (this was in the mid 60's). So, the connector has been around for quite a while. Of course, I could comment on their choice of pinouts, being as how they switched the ground return from one side of the connector to the other about 1/2 way down (what were they thinking!). The problem is that this is now standard, and nobody wants to change it. (*SIGH*). In that era of computing (electronics) many connector styles were used. Some stayed on, and others died. The "D-sub" is another style (DA-15, DB-25, DC-37, DD-50 (three row!), and DE-9). People fail to understand that the "D" is the connector style, and the letter following (A-E) is the size of the connector. When IBM went to the DE-15 connector for VGA, they might have shown some people, but it still amazes me that the 9-pin connector (properly called a DE-9) is referred to by an incorrect name (not mentioned here!). -- Sorry, No signature at the moment. ____________________________________________________________________________________ Never miss a thing. Make Yahoo your home page. http://www.yahoo.com/r/hs

18 years, 7 months

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The Centronics connector

by aek＠bitsavers.org

>> Does anyone know which Centronix ( sp?) printer the 36 pin connector >> for parallel printers became standard? > I think it was the Centronics 770. It had severe problems though, > Centronics had to pull it from the market and thats when Epson jumped >into the market -- Try at least 10 years earlier. Models 101 and 306 used them (early 70's)

18 years, 7 months

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Toshiba T3100 Techref

by cclist＠sydex.com

I just noticed that I have a Toshiba T3100 technical reference manual on my shelf. There's no possibility that I'm going to need it. Anyone collect these beasts who's looking for such a book? No schematics, but lots of programming information. Cheers, Chuck

18 years, 7 months

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replies to cctech Digest, Vol 53, Issue 52

by jeffj＠panix.com

------------------------------ From: "UnR00ster" <unr00ster at gmail.com> Subject: Re: 27256 in place of a 2764 >> Under what conditions can a 27256 be used in place of a 2764? I have a >> schematic that calls for the latter, of which I have none, >> but I have lots of the former. > See Ray Carlsen's site > http://staff.washington.edu/rrcc/ > http://personalpages.tds.net/~rcarlsen/cbm/eprompla.txt > adapters http://staff.washington.edu/rrcc/uwweb/EPROM/2x256.gif > and http://staff.washington.edu/rrcc/uwweb/EPROM/2x128.gif > This is all for Commodore stuff, but the idea of using a > modified socket and 512K chip should work for you as well. Very clever! I used to get EE trade rags and a regular advertisor was a socket maker of "correct-a-dip": a daughter-board that you slip under a chip to correct the pinout or add other parts, kinda like the Slocket adapters for CPUs. That's a nice way to do-it-yourself with easy to use, readily available parts and no custom fabrication! ------------------------------ From: "Chuck Guzis" <cclist at sydex.com> Subject: Re: Fast 8Kx2 ROM replacement Message-ID: <479CF645.31339.23B64E5 at cclist.sydex.com> > I don't have the message archives, but I don't think that anyone > mentioned the Cypress CY22016L NVSRAM using QuantumTrap technology. > > Pretty cool stuff; very fast SRAM backed by NV RAM; > at power-up, the SRAM is loaded from the nonvolatile store; > at power-down, it's written (optionally and probably not needed for this application). > > The SRAM has access times of 25, 35 or 45 nsec. and unlimited writes. > The NV RAM is guaranteed for 1,000,000 writes. Why not try for a free sample of the Freescale Magnetoresistive Random Access Memory (MRAM): it's fast and needs no power at all. The largest seems to be P/N PR2A16AVYS35 4MBIT http://www.freescale.com/ ------------------------------ From: dwight elvey <dkelvey at hotmail.com> Subject: RE: 8-bit micro MMU's Message-ID: <BAY138-W18819E7D5B0F64A4281812A3340 at phx.gbl> > One thing that is worth doing that I've seen done on > a Z8000 system is to map instruction memory into > a different area of physical memory than the data memory. > I don't recall but I think there is status information from > the Z80 about what type of fetch or store is being done. I was pondering that long long ago: using the M1 line to differentiate instruction fetch from data read/write. Just one thing: unless it's an embedded system running only from ROM, the loader needs to re-map data areas into program/executable space. Before pipelines, pre-fetching and caches, CPUs accessed RAM with a steady pace and pattern. I can't be the only one to ponder using a Z80 where the M1 cycles (opcode fetch, refrech) went to ROM and non M1 cycles went to RAM, thus allowing other devices to "cycle steal" access to the RAM without interfering with the CPU execution at all (unlike DMA which halts the CPU, or at least all the CPU's bus access). -- Jeff Jonas

18 years, 7 months

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A sign of the times

by cclist＠sydex.com

Date: Mon, 28 Jan 2008 11:44:22 -0600 From: Jules Richardson > Does the old printer do what you need better than a new one (build > quality, interfaces, print quality, reliability)? (although you hint at > some answers to that above) Build quality? No--I've mentioned that the Panasonic's an industrial- grade beast. Interfaces? Both have parallel; I've never used the serial or Appletalk interface on the Panasonic, which doesn't have USB. The new Brother is head-and-shoulders above the Panasonic regarding print quality; 1200 dpi vs. 300. Reliability? Hard to say at this point, although I've owned the predecessor model to the Brother for a couple of years and never had a problem. Speed? The Brother is much faster, particularly when rendering graphics; the halftones are superb. At this point, a big factor--cost of operation skews things a lot. Replacement drum and developer cartridges for the Panasonic are getting pretty dear. > How does the expected lifetime if given a new drum stack up against the > cost of new printer(s) (which IME don't seem to be very serviceable or > built to last) While I might find a NOS drum for the Panasonic on eBay for a good price, I'm also aware that the shelf life of OPC drums is finite. If I elect to purchase a remanufactured drum unit, it'll cost me more than $100 plus shipping. The Brother cost me $40 shipped. I suspect that for the shipped price of a single Panasonic drum unit, I could buy three Brothers and stash two of them away for the future. > How guilty do you feel about sending something which could be repaired off > to landfill? It wouldn't go to the landfill. I'd disassemble it and send the metal parts off to recycling and hang onto any interesting mechanicals and electronics for my hellbox. I might try freecycling it, but I saw an HP color laser recently go without a single nibble on the local Freecycle. Some old things, however well made, seem to be eclipsed by more modern technology. Cheers, Chuck

18 years, 7 months

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Some new pics available online from the 60's about SEL

by ragooman＠comcast.net

I added some new pics from the 60's about SEL in the gallery There's some with machines used in the glory days of NASA during the Apollo moon project Thanks to Al Kossow and Bob Rosenbloom for helping me find some of these Feel free to take a look http://www2.applegate.org/~ragooman/computers_mini_gallery.html =Dan

18 years, 7 months

2
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8-bit micro MMU's

by thrashbarg＠kaput.homeunix.org

Hi, I'm working on an Z80 MP/M II server for my 8080 CP/M computer and I have been designing a MMU for it. I thought I'd post it here because it could be useful to other builders or better still to talk about any flaws or improvements. The circuit diagram is here: http://kaput.homeunix.org/~thrashbarg/MMU.png Configured like that it is capable of accessing 256kB of RAM with write protection, or 512kB without write protection by using the 'Mem WE' output as an address line. The logical address range is divided up into 2kB pages, where those pages can be of any 2kB page in the physical address range. It's more of a Memory Mapping Unit than a Memory Management Unit. MP/M II needs to remain resident in the highest 13kB of RAM so having the write protection will prevent any runaway processes from crashing the system. 50kB of RAM can be made available to the running program. Pages can be duplicated in the logical address range, so if a process only uses say 4kB of RAM only three pages need to be allocated to it, two for the program itself and one to fill the rest of memory. There may be a need to have a table on disk to tell the OS how many pages to allocate, because a program may use less space on disk than what it requires in memory. The Process ID is determined by the 74174 to the left of the SRAM. When the process changes the 2kB bank making the switch must not change or the program will be moved and probably crash. In MP/M II this wont be an issue because the system bank isn't supposed to move. In this configuration there is a total of 64 processes, 63 if you don't include the system as a process. When an interrupt occurs it clears the PID register to zero so the system can be called to service the interrupt request. The 74175 to the far left controls the MMU and ROM. The ROM is enabled after a reset and the MMU is disabled. This is done by deactivating the left CS of the RAM and connecting the upper address bits of the CPU directly to memory. The remaining two or three address lines should be tied high with resistors, or even connected to the 74LS244 with those inputs tied to +5 or Ground. The tricky element is the 2kB dual port SRAM. I found two of them on an old arcade game board. This lets the CPU program the mapping of memory without having to implement a messy multiplexing system. To program a bank an 11-bit address is loaded into ports F9h and FAh, then the desired bank is programmed to port F8h. The lowest 5 bits of the address selects the desired 2kB page the CPU will access and the remaining 6 digits determine the PID. Maybe they should be split up so one port selects the page and the other selects the PID. Maybe someone can use this? I haven't looked deeply into the MP/M II XIOS requirements so I may have left something out that it needs so is anyone familiar with the XIOS? Cheers, Alexis.

18 years, 7 months

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Backing up VAX/VMS?

by mjd.bishop＠emeritus-solutions.com

Building on previous posts: Standalone backup can be installed on the system drive, it gets installed as [.SYSE] and is then started by: >>> B /R5=E0000000 DKA300 Any disks it needs to use must be ready before it goes looking for them during initialisation. The one off creation of the standalone backup kit (i.e. [.SYSE]) goes something like: $set def sys$update $@stabackit [Ref VMS System Manager's Manual] Standalone backup has some limitations, e.g. at ~V5.5 it only supports a cluster size of 1; i.e. it only supports disks up to 1 Gby. This means that you can't use it with RZ27/28/29 StorageWorks (1/2/4/8/.. Gby) disks. On a machine with a SCSI bus and with spare scsi disks to hand my preference would be to write the backup to another blank scsi disk as a save set, and then to archive the backup on modern hardware. The save set condenses the disk to it's minimal file size, and on restore you get a "fresh" copy with contiguous files. The basic incantation is: $init DKA200 volnam /nohigh $backup/image/verify DKA300: DKA200:filename.sav/save It's best practice to fix up any lint on the disk prior to backing up / archiving it, i.e. to resolve any block allocation / file index inconcistencies: $analyse/disk DKA300: -- generates a list of issues $analyse/disk/repair DKA300: -- lists and fixes any issues $analyse/disk/read DKA300: -- reads all the blocks and tells you which ones have irrecoverable parity errors With three spindles on a system you can produce a compact copy of a disk image, with the file index at the beginning rather than the centre of the disk. One spindle runs the system and backup, another disk (which could also be the system disk) has a saveset copy of the imaged disk on it, the final disk will be initialised and have the saveset written to it. $initialise dkb000 /index=beginning/nohighwater $mou/foreign dkb000: $backup/image/verify/noinitialise dka200:filename.sav/save dkb000: The reason for doing this used to be to produce the smallest possible "necessary" disk image for burning on a CD or whatever. Nowadays, I would probably copy the entire disk - GigaBytes are cheap, ensuring you have copied to the HWM can be expensive. Obviously, a live disk volume should have the file index in its default location at the centre of the disk. IIRC there are/were some (free) SalesWare utilities which permit Files-11 disks to be mounted on XP and read. This would provide a much neater (and safer) way of eliciting the .sav (save set) file for archival on a PC than croping an image at it's high water mark. However, dd of the entire disk containing the savesets may be even better. Regards Martin

18 years, 7 months

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27256 in place of a 2764

by dgriffi＠cs.csubak.edu

Under what conditions can a 27256 -- David Griffith dgriffi at cs.csubak.edu A: Because it fouls the order in which people normally read text. Q: Why is top-posting such a bad thing? A: Top-posting. Q: What is the most annoying thing in e-mail?

18 years, 7 months

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Ladder-shaped belt

by mike＠brickfieldspark.org

Is the ladder belt a belt or a chain ? I have seen metal chains in the "ladder" format, each "rung" looped to the next, could be extended or shortened very easily, used to be used on model cars a lot for the four wheel drive. HPC Gears have plastic ladder chain http://www.hpcgears.com/newpdf/ladder_chain.pdf and plastic chain http://www.hpcgears.com/newpdf/ladder_chain.pdf is that the sort of thing ? Mike > ------------------------------ > > Message: 20 > Date: Sun, 27 Jan 2008 11:08:45 +0000 > From: Gordon JC Pearce <gordonjcp at gjcp.net> > Subject: Ladder-shaped belt > To: "General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts" > <cctalk at classiccmp.org> > Message-ID: <1201432125.7318.13.camel at elric> > Content-Type: text/plain > > > On Sat, 2008-01-26 at 22:13 +0000, Tony Duell wrote: > >> The drive belt fro an HP9871 (daiswheel printer, the belt is about 2m >> long and looks like a ladder. I am told none have survived. This is one >> printer I would love to find, just to see if I can work out some >> alternative) > > I'm guessing that the rungs of the ladder go between teeth on the > pulleys, and the rails of the ladder keep the belt in place? In which > case, I'd get the closest matching toothed belt I could find and fit > little metal end cheeks on the pulleys to stop it sliding sideways. If > you were tight for space, you could probably get away with only one > pulley. > > Gordon > >

18 years, 7 months

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the non-existence of printer collectors

by cclist＠sydex.com

> Date: Sun, 27 Jan 2008 19:59:30 -0700 > From: Richard <legalize at xmission.com> > I knew a guy that wrote an "alarm" program. He would be there late > at night working on the LA-36. When he felt sleepy, he would run his > alarm program. It would move the carraige on the LA-36 to column 132 and > wait. At the requested time it would beep several times. If you didn't > press return, it would print a carraige return, bringing the print head to > the left hand margin again. He would sleep with his hand in the printing > area and if the beep didn't wake him up, the print head slamming into his > hand would do it :-). On that Diablo dot-matrix, it wouldn't just wake him up, it'd probably send him to the ER with some fractures. I think the carriage servo was run from either 48 or 24VDC. I've still got a spare from a Durango printer (same design people). It's basically a 48v Litton Clifton PM DC motor with an attached encoder. I was told that it cost more than the rest of the mechanicals on the printer combined. The other odd thing with the Diablo was that it used several early Rockwell MPUs (at least more than one). PPS-8 or PPS-4, perhaps? I remember seeing and using a really oddball printer in the early 70's from Singer-Friden. It used a disc type element oriented vertically and perpendicular to the paper surface, a leadscrew for advancing the carriage and a big honking spring for carriage return. The type element was inked by means of a felt pad (no ribbon) and tended to leave nice vertical ink stains on the paper when not printing. Very similar to that used on the Singer-Friden 115x calculators, but scaled up for 14" tractor-feed paper: http://www.oldcalculatormuseum.com/friden1152.html When the project shut down, the call came down for the lot to be scrapped, but a co-worker arranged for one to "disappear" off the loading dock. I don't know if he ever pressed it into use. Cheers, Chuck

18 years, 7 months

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Fast 8Kx2 ROM replacement

by cclist＠sydex.com

I don't have the message archives, but I don't think that anyone mentioned the Cypress CY22016L NVSRAM using QuantumTrap technology. Pretty cool stuff; very fast SRAM backed by NV RAM; at power-up, the SRAM is loaded from the nonvolatile store; at power-down, it's written (optionally and probably not needed for this application). The "juice" for the optional write-back on power-down is guaranteed by at least a 68 uF capacitor. The SRAM has access times of 25, 35 or 45 nsec. and unlimited writes. The NV RAM is guaranteed for 1,000,000 writes. It's a 5V part and comes in a 28-pin SOIC, so it'd fit nicely on a small PCB that'd fit the outline of a 24 pin PDIP. Here's the datasheet: http://download.cypress.com.edgesuite.net/design_resources/datasheets/ contents/cy22e016l_8.pdf This family comes in sizes ranging from the 2Kx8 just mentioned to a 512Kx8/256Kx16 item. Cheers, Chuck

18 years, 7 months

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the non-existence of printer collectors

by cclist＠sydex.com

Date: Sat, 26 Jan 2008 20:24:36 -0500 (EST) From: djg at pdp8.net > Those old line printers had such a nice impressive sound. At least looking > back and when you will be doing short printouts on a classic computer. > When you had to listen to it all day not so good. There is no way that I would want to own and operate a CDC 501 (drum) or 512 (train) printer. Changing the ribbon, even with the provided gloves was a messy job (who knows if ribbons could even be found anymore), and when one of those ribbons got tangled up in the 512 type train, it was an hours-long incredibly messy job digging the bits and pieces out. Inevitably, you'd find that you'd assembled the type train with a character swapped here and there. The old drum printers tended to suffer from the wobbly line syndrome, where characters would be displaced from a straight line in a vertical direction. On the other hand, the train printers, while creating nice straight lines, would often displace characters in a horizontal direction. The former was far more noticeable than the latter. In the mid 70's, my lusted after personal printer was one of aftermarket Teletype model 40(?) band printers. About 300 lpm, I think and basically a tabletop unit, usually sold in an acoustic enclosure. Print quality was pretty good (upper- and lowercase), unless you printed a lot of dumps, whereupon the '0' would get kind of fuzzy after awhile. I still have a copy of the OEM manual for one of these if anyone's interested. I briefly had a Diablo dot-matrix printer--the carriage servo could crush your hand if you were stupid enough to put it in the wrong spot. An incredibly noisy screaming demon of a boat anchor. I got rid of it while I still had my hearing. Cheers, Chuck

18 years, 7 months

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On collecting printers...

by tsw-cc＠johana.com

It isn't difficult. But as anyone who knows, you must collect IMPACT printers! None of this silly laser stuff, or even worse an ink-spitter (they actually has ones that did!). Me my collection has a few: An older wide Decwriter (LA120?) A narrow DecWriter (LA30) that I modified to do upper and lower case. A nice Centronics 300 LPM band printer. A couple of Daisy-Wheel printers. Some actually work. The Qumes; I have a Sprint3/4 (depending upon the boards) with a keyboard, a Sprint 5 (RO). I also have a couple of Diablo ones that use the metal wheels. Then there are the OTHER ones: A couple of Noisy-90's (Silent 700s) of various types (some portable, some not). No to be true printer collector, one must have an impact printer somewhere. Even a teletype would do in a pinch (somewhere I've got an ASR33 stashed). On topic stuff: I've got some prints of the Qume printers somewhere if anyone is interested. They are pretty simple to interface. I used a MC6821 PIA and a few chips. Pretty easy. Good luck to all -- Sorry, No signature at the moment. ____________________________________________________________________________________ Be a better friend, newshound, and know-it-all with Yahoo! Mobile. Try it now. http://mobile.yahoo.com/;_ylt=Ahu06i62sR8HDtDypao8Wcj9tAcJ

18 years, 7 months

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non-existence of printer collectors...proven wrong

by cclist＠sydex.com

> Date: Sat, 26 Jan 2008 11:29:59 -0600 Okay, so who wants a working Diablo Hitype II? Spare wheels and (probably dried-out) ribbons. Free for pickup, or for the cost of shipping. RS-232C interface. This is the RO model, not the KSR. Cheers, Chuck

18 years, 7 months

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Wave Mate Bullet boot disks

by lynchaj＠yahoo.com

Hi, Does anyone have some Wave Mate Bullet boot disks? I have one of these computers and I think it works but have no boot disks. The disks are 5.25" soft sector so all I need is an ImageDisk or TeleDisk image of your boot disk and not a physical copy. If your Wave Mate Bullet is using 8" disks those might work too. However, it would be better if you could attach a 5.25" drive and format and SYSGEN the disk, copy some CP/M files to it and make an image of it. The Wave Mate Bullet says "Microcomputer Rev C" on the motherboard. Much appreciation in advance if anyone could help me out. Thank you! Andrew Lynch

18 years, 7 months

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non-existence of printer collectors...proven wrong

by n8uhn＠yahoo.com

While we're on the subject, i'd like to collect one certain type of printer. one or two examples of one would be nice but, the problem is finding them and shipping them. i'm in Michigan usa and all the "good" stuff seems to be on the other side of the nation or in the UK ;) oh, the type of printer? belt or chain thier called. centronics or serial interface. ever since i saw the belt printer used in the ibm sys 32, i wanted to find a pc compatable one. do they even show up on ebay? anyone know of makes/models i should look for? Bill ____________________________________________________________________________________ Be a better friend, newshound, and know-it-all with Yahoo! Mobile. Try it now. http://mobile.yahoo.com/;_ylt=Ahu06i62sR8HDtDypao8Wcj9tAcJ

18 years, 7 months

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Zenith Data Systems Terminals at U of Washington auction 2/2/08

by innfoclassics＠gmail.com

Spotted in the University of Washington's Auction Catalog are 8 Heath Zenith Terminals. I don't think they are Z100 all in ones as I don't see any drives. Lot 40. http://www.washington.edu/admin/surplus/feb2008catalog.html A Sun pallet including at least 3 SGI O2s and 3 large sun servers. And a bunch of older stuff. Lot 44 I am not going to make the sale. It is in Seattle Washington, Feb 2. You can bid online. Pax -- Paxton Hoag Astoria, OR USA

18 years, 7 months

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UK assistance requested

by cclist＠sydex.com

Hi Folks, I just got off the phone with a very nice gentlemen from Amersham who's trying to get an old PC program (on 3.5" media) going on his modern PC system. He's run into one of the copy-protection schemes that worked fine under MS-DOS but not under 2K or XP. I suspect that one of the copy-protection-defeating programs may be just what he needs. Any help I can offer will be at a distance of 5000 miles. I was wondering if anyone on that side of the Atlantic might be willing to help out. Drop me a line if you're interested and I'll put you in touch. Thanks much, Chuck

18 years, 7 months

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Tandy 2000 available

by rcini＠optonline.net

All: I need to clear space in my shop and refocus my projects a bit. So, I?d like to divest my Tandy 2000. I bought it last year and refurbed it with a new 20mb hard drive and a second floppy drive. It has the color graphics board, 640k of RAM, a CM-1 monitor, VM-1 monitor, a few spare parts, software and books (in various conditions). The case is gleaming white ? the person I got it from must have kept it in the dark because there?s no fading/yellowing at all. I was going to use this for an emulation project but realistically, I?m not going to get to it. Contact me off-list if interested. Shipping would be from 11791 (Long Island, NY) in three or four boxes I?m guessing. Rich -- Rich Cini Collector of Classic Computers Build Master and lead engineer, Altair32 Emulator http://www.altair32.com http://www.classiccmp.org/cini

18 years, 7 months

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Z80 Divide by 10

by cclist＠sydex.com

Date: Sat, 26 Jan 2008 17:21:56 -0500 From: Sean Conner <spc at conman.org> > I came across this bit of code from http://www.hackersdelight.org/ to > divide by 10: I think that goes back to my original suggestion of effectively multiplying by a scaled reciprocal approximation of 0.1. The 6 in the last computation statement appears to be some sort of rounding factor. The problem as stated however, was to calculate x/10 and mod(x,10) (i.e. the remainder). Dwight seems to have figured this one out at least for the range of 0..799. If you/re a PIC programmer, there's a very cool web site that features a code generator for various problems: http://www.piclist.com/techref/piclist/codegen/index.htm But double-check the code that's generated; I've occasionally found some errors. Cheers, Chuck

18 years, 7 months

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SGI Octane 2 on Craigslist

by cclist＠sydex.com

Eugene, OR area: http://eugene.craigslist.org/sys/551185465.html Cheers, Chuck

18 years, 7 months

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non-existence of printer collectors...proven wrong

by Arno_1983＠gmx.de

Cameron Kaiser <spectre at floodgap.com> wrote: > > But nobody collects printers, not even vintage ones. > > Because they're big and heavy and power-hungry, and they're always > running out of supplies when you try to do anything useful. So let's say they're just not for the faint of heart ;) I for one have to plead guilty of printer packratting, having piled up an assortment of impact matrix and laser printers mainly (I'm less fond of inkjets because they always clog up if you don't use them regularly). So let's see what's around here: Pin impact: Commodore MPS-802 (first printer in household) NEC Pinwriter P2200 (printer of our first PC) NEC Pinwriter P6+ NEC Pinwriter CP7 (four-zone ribbon color printer) Epson LQ100 (neat little dot matrix unit, even used sometimes) Epson LQ-570+ Epson LX-400 Epson TM-267IIB (serial receipt printer) Oki Microline 591 Star J120 Inkjet: Canon BJ-10sx Canon BJ-20 Canon BJC-85 Canon BJC4100 HP DeskJet 660C (first color printer of my dad) HP DeskJet 1200C HP DeskJet 1600C(M), 3x (professional inkjets with drier lamp) Epson Stylus COLOR (nonstandard appearance for an inkjet) Lexmark Color Jetprinter 1000 (modern exterior) Lexmark X1160 (USB Scanner/printer combi) Laser: Citizen Overture 106 Apple LaserWriter II NTX Apple LaserWriter Pro 630 Epson EPL-5000 Epson EPL-7100 HP LaserJet Series II Siemens PT10 (rebadged HP LaserJet II) HP LaserJet IIISi HP LaserJet 4L (unusually flat laser) HP LaserJet 4 brother HL-1260e (the only one regularly in use; same engine as LJ4) HP LaserJet 4Si (honkin' big cube) HP LaserJet 5L HP LaserJet 6L HP LaserJet 2100M Kyocera F-1200 Thermal transfer Okidata unit with c/y/m/k transfer strips chained in a ribbon cassette two Mitsubishi still image printers (CP100E, CP250E?) with TTL, VGA, RGB and composite video inputs in addition to parallel ...and probably some more buried somewhere that I don't yet have in my inventory. People keep telling me I have to cut down on such stuff (as well as commodity PCs) but whenever I start to think about which to throw out, I get to think about each one's unique features and what I would say if somebody asked me tomorrow if I had a printer for that-and-that specific location and application. One of my yet unfulfilled dreams is a daisywheel printing terminal (Diablo 1620 or similar). Enough of a confession? So long, Arno -- Arno Kletzander Student Assistant // Studentische Hilfskraft Informatik Sammlung Erlangen www.iser.uni-erlangen.de Der GMX SmartSurfer hilft bis zu 70% Ihrer Onlinekosten zu sparen! Ideal f?r Modem und ISDN: http://www.gmx.net/de/go/smartsurfer

18 years, 7 months

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the non-existence of printer collectors

by djg＠pdp8.net

> 1) "interesting" printers are large and power hungry and frankly hard > to find in isolation. When they are around, they are usually part of > a large mainframe/minicomputer package and you can't get *just* the > printer. > Those old line printers had such a nice impressive sound. At least looking back and when you will be doing short printouts on a classic computer. When you had to listen to it all day not so good. Way back in college they had a 9-1/2 DEC line printer drum/band on an old PDP-11. That would be about the right size to make a nice addition to my collection. Never have seen one like that since then and don't know what the model was. Whenever I find a DECwriter II (or unlikely I) within a reasonable drive I will add one of them to my collection. Do have a DEC dasywheel, a couple of dot matrix PC printers, and an ASR-33

18 years, 7 months

1
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2716 with 100 nS access time ?

by cclist＠sydex.com

> Date: Fri, 25 Jan 2008 21:11:26 +0100 > From: Jos Dreesen / Marian Capel <jos.mar at bluewin.ch> > I need a programmable device, with the standard 24 pin layout, with 100nS > acces time. 2716's are 350ns to 450ns, 2816's are 150nS match. What other > options do I have ? How about a NV SRAM, such as the DS1220? 100 nsec, 24-pin JEDEC pinout. Or an ST M48Z12, same-oh pinout and capacity? Are you trying to replace something like an 82S191? Cheers, Chuck

18 years, 7 months

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Zenith Data Systems Terminals at U of Washington auction 2/2/08

by bnansel＠bigpond.net.au

> Spotted in the University of Washington's Auction Catalog are 8 Heath > Zenith Terminals. I don't think they are Z100 all in ones as I don't > see any drives. Lot 40. Wow, that takes me back. Hacking away on Pascal programs on H-19 terminals in the H-19 editor at two-thirty in the morning in the ACC...the vending machine that dispensed rhino piss they claimed was tea. Oh, those were the days. H-19 was the first screen editor I ever used, though I never did get used to the "colour" command system they introduced in later years. Bah, the old system worked fine, why did they hafta go and change it? -Bobby

18 years, 7 months

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I propose to make the journey in 1973...

by pichotjm＠free.fr

I had the opportunity to conduct a series of photographs when I participated in the fair 'Le Bourget' in 1973. You will see about 200 original pictures of displays, keyboards, computer terminals, cameras, radar displays, screen shots of weather, tactical, electric power plant, road traffic, and 8 american or soviet satellites. The visit is here: http://pichotjm.free.fr/Techno73/Techno73US.html The root address http://pichotjm.free.fr will lead you in early computers... (1954 to 1975) Enjoy! JMP

18 years, 7 months

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the non-existence of printer collectors

by billdeg＠degnanco.com

> >Subject: Re: the non-existence of printer collectors was Re: A sign of > the times > >I actually have an interest in printers, but there are the following >problems: > ><snip> >2) Printers were commoditized quite some time ago. Remember the Epson >FX-80? (And later the RX-80.) A printer was one of the few >peripherals that *everyone* who had an Apple ][/IBM PC (or clone) >needed. (Paperless office, my ass!) As a result printers were one of >the few things that could be commoditized across all brands of >computers from micros to mainframes -- although it would probably look >silly to have an Epson FX-80 hooked up to a mainframe! I brought this topic up as a thread on vintage-computer.com/vcforums. I keep one printer per system type in operational condition, and use them for comprehensive testing of systems. Same goes for modems. I think that the Diablo printer is worthy of collecting (I have an Commdore-branded OEM model CBM 8300P, which is quite rare I believe). A nice IBM Proprinter is worth holding onto. Boxed printers are easy to store, I prefer printers in their original boxes, otherwise I am less likely to keep them. Bill D

18 years, 7 months

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A sign of the times. (Laserjet 4000s here)

by technobug＠comcast.net

On Sat, 26 Jan 2008 10:19:19 +0000, Stroller <classiccmp.org at stellar.eclipse.co.uk> wrote: > *sigh* > > I have a similar conundrum here. > [...] > The HP engineers intended for this part to be easily > replaceable, and you can easily pick up a roller set on eBay. > Unfortunately the price comes to about ?12 per tray - or perhaps ?25 > shipped for rubbers for both lower trays plus the manual feed pickup, > too - and these printers have a resale value of only ?35. > > [...] > Stroller. > > You might want to check out <http://www.partsmart-corp.com>. The pickup roller is $1.00. They have replacement parts for all sorts of laserwriters and have presence on many sides of the pond. Good folks - just a very satisfied customer... CRC

18 years, 7 months

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A sign of the times. (Laserjet 4000s here)

by compoobah＠valleyimplants.com

On Jan 26, 2008, at 5:22 AM, Stroller wrote: > I think it's tragic to be throwing out such decent & solidly- > constructed printers in favour of cheap plastic rubbish - in the > event a repair is necessary the kind of printers we can get for less > money will complain about disassembly with the "pling" of flying > broken-plastic sproggets - but it makes little economic sense to do > otherwise. I've been meaning the last week to try & find a source of > Laserjet rollers where I can purchase 10 or 20 at more sensible > rates, but I'm not overflowing with optimism. I tend to like the better printers even if you do have to put some $ into upkeep. I made that decision after cursing out a cheap printer that would have "issues" often.

18 years, 7 months

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the non-existence of printer collectors was Re: A sign of the times

by ajp166＠bellatlantic.net

> >Subject: Re: the non-existence of printer collectors was Re: A sign of the times > From: Jim Leonard <trixter at oldskool.org> > Date: Fri, 25 Jan 2008 22:41:35 -0600 > To: General at mail.mobygames.com, "Discussion at mail.mobygames.com":On-Topic and > Off-Topic Posts <cctalk at classiccmp.org> > >Cameron Kaiser wrote: >> I do keep an Apple LaserWriter around, but mostly because anything can >> talk to it, and HP LaserJet supplies are easy to find. > >I second the part about LaserWriter. The only printers I accept in the >house are Postscript because anything can talk to them. Me I have a HP 4L, Epson LQ5000 for the parallel interface printers that speak basic ASCII as well as other protocals. I may have a MX80 as well. For the serial interface printing camp a pair of LA100RO. Not all of my systems speak postscript, they all speak ASCII. Allison

18 years, 7 months

1
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Proper spacebar repair on XT 83-key?

by trixter＠oldskool.org

The spacebar died on the last working 83-key XT keyboard I had (I have three, and ALL have non-functioning spacebars), so I decided to finally choose one to take apart and try to clean with compressed air, etc. All of the keys came off okay; I put the plastic parts *only* in the dishwasher (mild soap, warm water, nothing harsh) and cleaned the rest by hand by shooting compressed air into every buckling spring hole. But when it came time to put the spacebar back on, I noticed that both ends of the spacebar have two little "hooks" that are supposed to hook onto two little prongs of metal underneath the top of the assembly. These provide necessary support, as the spacebar will bend if pressed at the edges instead of going straight down. Only problem is, I can't seem to get these re-hooked! The only way I can see getting the spacebar back on, barring some trick I don't know about, is to take the metal back off the assembly and try to re-hook it from underneath. But I'm terrified that, if I try to take the back off, 83 buckling spring assemblies are going to fly every which way from the unit and I'll be left with a worthless hunk of junk. It also doesn't look like it was meant to be taken off anyway, as one of the metal tabs on mine seems intentionally bend downward to prevent this. For those who need pictures, I've taken some snapshots of the problem and put them here: ftp://ftp.oldskool.org/pub/misc/keyb/ Any advice is appreciated -- either that, or a source for more 83-key XT keyboards... -- Jim Leonard (trixter at oldskool.org) http://www.oldskool.org/ Help our electronic games project: http://www.mobygames.com/ Or check out some trippy MindCandy at http://www.mindcandydvd.com/ A child borne of the home computer wars: http://trixter.wordpress.com/

18 years, 7 months

6
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DOSBox...

by cclist＠sydex.com

> Date: Fri, 25 Jan 2008 16:40:09 -0600 > From: Jim Leonard <trixter at oldskool.org> > Yes. In fact, myself and a few others have done significant work trying > to get CGA properly emulated (composite CGA emulation is pretty damn close > to the original; some tweaked modes work as well). It can even boot > bootable diskette images (as long as copy protection is absent). ...and that's just the problem here. The program diskette is copy- protected. What what, I'm not sure. Cheers, Chuck

18 years, 7 months

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Subject: RE: Subject: Re: div by 10 on Z80

by cclist＠sydex.com

> Date: Tue, 22 Jan 2008 19:33:15 -0800 > From: dwight elvey <dkelvey at hotmail.com> > Here goes with using your idea to double use the a register. Except > If I start it with 2, I can use the carry instead of the sign bit. What > fun! > > Div10: > ld a,#2 > ld de,#-640d > divloop: > add hl,de > jr c, div1 > sbc hl,de > div1: > rl a > jr nc,divloop > add hl,hl > ret Ah, but you forgot the add hl,hl to shift the dividend after each iteration. Put it at the top of the loop so it doesn't interfere with the operation of the "rl a/jr nc" pair and scale your divisor by an additional power of 2 and you should have it. By now, we've probably bored the hardware guys to tears and DEC people are tearing out their hair, so we should probably drop the subject. My apologies, but I've always found bit-twiddling fun. It seems that every platform has some peculiar characteristic that can be exploited to good advantage. Cheers, Chuck

18 years, 7 months

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Ribbons for your teletype model 43 on ebay

by legalize＠xmission.com

I purchased two from the guy. They are NOS and the ribbon hasn't dried out. He apparently has a bunch of them. He's selling them for $15 each, but he will combine shipping if you buy more than one. I tried to arrange a discount for buying 5, but he was firm in his pricing. So I bought 2. I figure that if I use them both up, I can try my hand at re-inking the ribbon. At $75 for 5 ribbons, that was more than I paid for the terminal itself :-). -- "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, 7 months

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2716 with 100 nS access time ?

by jos.mar＠bluewin.ch

I need a programmable device, with the standard 24 pin layout, with 100nS acces time. 2716's are 350ns to 450ns, 2816's are 150nS match. What other options do I have ? ( Target : replace some bipolar microcode proms So I can experiment a bit) Jos

18 years, 7 months

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Dead IBM PC 5150 motherboard - help troubleshooting

by richard.beaudry＠gmail.com

Hello all, I have an IBM PC, 5150, 16-64KB motherboard, that appears to be dead. Power on produces no display or disk activity (even after a while), and no beeps >from the speaker (I tried a couple of speakers, so I don't think it is a speaker issue. >From what docs I found on the internet, the switches are set up properly for the machine's configuration... I am pretty sure the motherboard is getting power. I checked at a RAM socket, and all voltages were there, and well within specifications. The problem is, I'm not sure where to go from here. I have NO schematics, and haven't ever troubleshot a 5150 before. I DO have a good meter, and a scope (and I know how to use it!) What would be the first things to check? Thanks for any help!!! Rich B.

18 years, 7 months

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2716 with 100 nS access time ?

by ajp166＠bellatlantic.net

> >Subject: 2716 with 100 nS access time ? > From: Jos Dreesen / Marian Capel <jos.mar at bluewin.ch> > Date: Fri, 25 Jan 2008 21:11:26 +0100 > To: General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts <cctalk at classiccmp.org> > >I need a programmable device, with the standard 24 pin layout, with 100nS acces time. >2716's are 350ns to 450ns, 2816's are 150nS match. >What other options do I have ? > >( Target : replace some bipolar microcode proms So I can experiment a bit) > > Jos The only way you can get to under 100ns is using larger EEproms or Eproms as their smaller feature size made them faster. You can get 27256s under 100ns (might be cmos but no matter) and larger parts go down to under 50ns. Ofcourse that means a chip adaptor but thats no big deal. Allison

18 years, 7 months

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UK assistance requested

by jfoust＠threedee.com

At 01:16 PM 1/25/2008, from at fu3.org wrote: >2008/1/25, Chuck Guzis <cclist at sydex.com>: >> trying to get an old PC program (on 3.5" media) going on his >> modern PC system. He's run into one of the copy-protection schemes >> that worked fine under MS-DOS but not under 2K or XP. > >DOSBox sends its regards. Yes, it's great for reviving old programs under contemporary Windows. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DOSBox , at http://www.dosbox.com/. - John

18 years, 7 months

1
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Z80 Divide by 10

by cclist＠sydex.com

From: dwight elvey: Well, you've got me confused. HL = dividend (Dnd) > ld d,h > ld e,l ; DE=Dnd > add hl,hl ; HL=Dnd*2 > add hl,hl ; HL=Dnd*4 > add hl,de ; HL=Dnd*5 > add hl,hl ; HL=Dnd*10 > ld b,h > ld c,l ; BC=Dnd*10 > add hl,hl ; HL=Dnd*20 > add hl,hl ; HL=Dnd*40 > add hl,bc ; HL=Dnd*50 > add hl,de ; HL=Dnd*51 ; At this point, HL=0-41000 > ld a,h ; A=HIGH(Dnd*51) > rra ; A=HIGH(Dnd*51)2 > ld l,a ; L=HIGH(Dnd*51)/2 ; At this point, you've lost me. But a non TLU fall-through 10-bit divide with only one conditional branch at the end would be worth a paper in CALGO, surely. Cheers, Chuck

18 years, 7 months

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Ohio Scientific

by djg＠pdp8.net

I'm working on getting my Ohio Scientific Challenger II running. The system is a 505 CPU (first rev that doesn't match schematics online), 535 memory 48k (no schematics online I have found), 540B video card with color and dual 8" floppy. This machine was modified with a switch so I can use either the video board or a serial terminal. Its pretty close to the system I first used in high school. I think I have the computer working but would like to run a memory test. Does anyone know of one available that I could load in through the monitor? Or do I need to see how much 6502 I can remember from 25 years ago? The video card generates the first line right after end of vertical blank so all my monitors cut off most of the first line. Is this normal? Next is moving on to the the 8" floppies. After I get them working I want to dump all the disks I have. I found at osiweb a program to dump floppies but it was for 5 1/4". Does anybody know of one that will dump the 8"? Perferably in a format that an emulator can use so I can verify the dumped disks are good.

18 years, 7 months

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Link: IBM's anti-MacBook Air goes up for sale on eBay

by lproven＠gmail.com

http://www.reghardware.co.uk/2008/01/25/ibm_5155_up_for_sale/ Quote: [ Forgotten Tech Want to own a piece of portable computing history? Actually, we use the word 'portable' advisedly - we're talking an IBM 5155 here, a 30lb (13.6kg) monster that, as the eBayer offering it up to the highest bidder admits, "is not a MacBook Air". ] Amusing, even affectionate, story and indeed auction description, too. -- Liam Proven ? Profile: http://www.linkedin.com/in/liamproven Email: lproven at cix.co.uk ? GMail/GoogleTalk/Orkut: lproven at gmail.com Tel: +44 20-8685-0498 ? Cell: +44 7939-087884 ? Fax: + 44 870-9151419 AOL/AIM/iChat: liamproven at aol.com ? MSN/Messenger: lproven at hotmail.com Yahoo: liamproven at yahoo.co.uk ? Skype: liamproven ? ICQ: 73187508

18 years, 7 months

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Subject: Re: div by 10 on Z80 was RE: Reading Polymorphic

by cclist＠sydex.com

> Date: Sun, 20 Jan 2008 20:57:27 -0800 > From: Brent Hilpert <hilpert at cs.ubc.ca> > Subject: Re: div by 10 on Z80 was RE: Reading Polymorphic --- > (I expect you may have noticed already..) the subroutine (div10s) is > only called once now, you could inline it to save another 4 bytes. You can do a bit better with that and by using the carryout to form the quotient bits: div10: xor a ld de,0fd80h ; largest power of 2 times 10 less then 800d ld b,07 ; only seven loops needed to finish divide 80 divloop: add hl,de ; trial subtract jr c,div10s1 ; carry means trial passed sbc hl,de ; undo previous add, carry is clear div10s1: rl a add hl,hl ; shift number to reuse same constant, 640 decimal djnz divloop add hl,hl ; push full remainder in HL ret Again, I haven't tried it out, but it should work. Cheers, Chuck

18 years, 7 months

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div by 10 on Z80

by cclist＠sydex.com

> Date: Wed, 23 Jan 2008 18:48:27 -0700 > From: woodelf <bfranchuk at jetnet.ab.ca> > Well it does make for Software Updates to come out a **Tad** Slower > than most systems. Look at the ADVENTURE update, almost 20 years later. > :) I assume that was an intentional pun. Very clever. Cheers, Chuck

18 years, 7 months

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cctalk Digest, Vol 53, Issue 44

by compoobah＠valleyimplants.com

On Jan 22, 2008, at 11:52 PM, cctalk-request at classiccmp.org wrote: >> 12) Bend over the locking tap, refit the case. > > It's not the same without the Terry Davey cutaway drawings and > "Refitting is > the reverse of removal" ;-) The one I like is the stock "this was changed in the XXXX model year" Oh, very helpful. About as helpful as a MS-DOS 6 bundled "user's guide"

18 years, 7 months

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