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

IBM PC "64-256K Memory Card" switch settings

by bear＠typewritten.org

Can somebody send me the decoded switch settings for the 8-bit IBM "64-256KB MEMORY CD"? There are 8 switches, marked A16-A19, 64KB, 128KB, 190KB, and 256KB. I need to know how to set the switches for my 16-64KB 5150, so I can bring it up to 256KB and run PC-DOS 3.30. Thanks. ok bear

19 years, 3 months

6
6
0 0

Commodore sx64 parts

by dgriffi＠cs.csubak.edu

Does anyone know of a place that has parts for a Commodore SX 64? (in particular, keyboard and cable) -- 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?

19 years, 3 months

2
2
0 0

Computer History WIki up

by toresbe＠ifi.uio.no

I'd like to announce the Computer History Wiki at http://toresbe.dreamhosters.com/wiki ! I realize that there has been some discussion previously about setting up a computer history wiki, and that Jay has decided against hosting one himself, favouring a knowledge base arrangement. I am involved in the Norwegian Computer History Society, and we have a MediaWiki website which we are very happy with. However, being a Norwegian organization, the page is... well, it's in Norwegian. I found myself really enjoying adding technical information, guides, etc, but I was very frustrated by the fact that the text would only reach a very limited audience, and only had a very limited potential for revision by others - at most, our audience consisted of Scandinavia. Recently I bought a very cheap hosting deal from Dreamhost, which so far has worked splendidly. I therefore decided to use this to set up an English computer history wiki and gauge the response. So far, this has been very encouraging - we are up to 80 articles now, and it's growing very fast. The chief difference between this wiki and Wikipedia is that this is not aiming to be an encyclopedia of formal defintion articles, but an information base for articles of all kinds - handy hints and tips, practical guides, tutorials, quick introductions, cheat sheets, advice, stories, you name it. My hope is that this page could become a resource for people on all ends of the classiccmp knowledge scale. The wiki is currently hosted on a temporary domain, since I did not want to spend my free domain (included in the hosting deal) if interest turned out to be minimal. Well, it hasn't, and I'm seriously considering registering a domain very soon. Currently, the wiki has a strong DEC minicomputer bias, because all three of the current active editors are DEC fans. With time, I hope this bias becomes less apparent, and that people will add information about micros, other minis, mainframes, peripherals, terminals, etc, etc. Again, the URL of the wiki is: http://toresbe.dreamhosters.com/wiki Regards, Tore Sinding Bekkedal

19 years, 3 months

3
2
0 0

he Last of The Line

by bqt＠softjar.se

"Rod Smallwood" <RodSmallwood at mail.ediconsulting.co.uk> skrev: > Now that makes a lot more sense. > > So PMI memory choice is: (2 Max) > > MSV11-JD M8637-D 1 MB ECC PDP-11/84 or PDP-11/83 > MSV11-JE M8637-E 2 MB ECC PDP-11/84 or PDP-11/83 Correct. > The CPU choice is: > > Module Type Speed RAM ROM LTC SLU > ------ ---- ----- --- --- --- --- > M8190 KDJ11-B > M8190-AD KDJ11-BA 18 > M8190-AB KDJ11-BB 15 0 Y Yes > 2 > M8190-AC KDJ11-BD > M8190-AZ KDJ11-BF 18 0 Y Yes > 2 You need to check out if all of these really works in an 11/84. I don't think they all do. Some had hardware bugs that meant they only work in the 11/83 configuration. > So..... > > 1. Plug in one or two memory cards. Yes. > 2. Plug in a CPU card Yes. > 3. Insert Bus Grant cards (Which end of the slot?) The bus grant goes into the middle slots. There are two models. One really small one, which is only one connector high. They should go into the fourth slot from the top if my memory serves me right. In this case, you also need to make sure the NPG lines are are connected. This is done by a DIP-switch block on the backplane. One switch per slot. It should be visible if you look down into the cage. The other bus grand card is two connectors high, and also carry the NPG line, in which case you don't need to worry about the DIP-switches. > 4. Insert in Slot nine a M9302 UNIBUS TERMINATOR and a M9713 MIN. LOAD > MODULE Yes. > 5. Now we would have: > > Slot 1 M8190-Ax KDJ11-Bx 11/83 - 11/84 CPU Card > Slot 2 M8637-X MSV11-Jx PMI Memory > Slot 3 M8637-X MSV11-Jx PMI Memory > Slot 4 M8191 KTJ11-B Unibus controller > Slot 5 M7547 TUK50-BB Tape controller (Bus grant as > well?) > Slot 7 G7273 NPG and BUS Grant > / Double Grant > Slot 8 G7273 NPG and BUS Grant > / Double Grant > Slot 9 M9302 UNIBUS TERMINATOR > Slot 9 M9713 MIN. LOAD MODULE You only need one memory card, so it's not really neccesary to get two. Also, no grant in the slot where you have the TUK50. But I'm missing a grant in slot 6. :-) > 6. Connect up a terminal (I have several 420's) to the SLU connector. Yes. > 7. Connect a TK50 drive (Which I have) to its controller. Yes. > 8. Check for correct boot proms on the CPU card. No need, normally. The 11/8x and 11/9x cards have nice large boot proms with all kind of boot routines on them, including booting from TMSCP. > 9. Switch on. Wait for smoke to clear. Look for output on the terminal. Yes. > 10. Insert a bootable tape. (Which I don't have yet) That would help if you don't feel like starting to write your own code. But for test purposes, not needed at all. > All those in favor of this config say Aye! > All those against email me quick, before I do anything dangerous!! If you're just interested in checking that the machine is working, skip the TUK50. Just make sure the unibus is "whole", and fire her up. The boot monitor of the 11/8x and 11/9x are real talkative, with lots of things that can be done without anything else, including running tests, and checking out the hardware. Johnny -- Johnny Billquist || "I'm on a bus || on a psychedelic trip email: bqt at softjar.se || Reading murder books pdp is alive! || tryin' to stay hip" - B. Idol

19 years, 3 months

2
1
0 0

he Last of The Line

by RodSmallwood＠mail.ediconsulting.co.uk

Roger that!! >The other bus grand card is two connectors high, and also carry the NPG line, in which case you don't need to worry about the DIP-switches. These I have so where do they go? Thanks for the kind assistance Jonny. There now follows a general request for: One M8190-Ax KDJ11-Bx 11/84 version One/Two M8637-D or -E MSV11-Jx 11/84 version. Anybody having or knowing the whereabouts of the above modules please email me at: rodsmallwood at btconnect.com -----Original Message----- From: cctech-bounces at classiccmp.org [mailto:cctech-bounces at classiccmp.org] On Behalf Of Johnny Billquist Sent: 17 May 2007 21:51 To: cctalk at classiccmp.org; Rod Smallwood Subject: Re: he Last of The Line "Rod Smallwood" <RodSmallwood at mail.ediconsulting.co.uk> skrev: > Now that makes a lot more sense. > > So PMI memory choice is: (2 Max) > > MSV11-JD M8637-D 1 MB ECC PDP-11/84 or PDP-11/83 > MSV11-JE M8637-E 2 MB ECC PDP-11/84 or PDP-11/83 Correct. > The CPU choice is: > > Module Type Speed RAM ROM LTC SLU > ------ ---- ----- --- --- --- --- > M8190 KDJ11-B > M8190-AD KDJ11-BA 18 > M8190-AB KDJ11-BB 15 0 Y Yes > 2 > M8190-AC KDJ11-BD > M8190-AZ KDJ11-BF 18 0 Y Yes > 2 You need to check out if all of these really works in an 11/84. I don't think they all do. Some had hardware bugs that meant they only work in the 11/83 configuration. > So..... > > 1. Plug in one or two memory cards. Yes. > 2. Plug in a CPU card Yes. > 3. Insert Bus Grant cards (Which end of the slot?) The bus grant goes into the middle slots. There are two models. One really small one, which is only one connector high. They should go into the fourth slot from the top if my memory serves me right. In this case, you also need to make sure the NPG lines are are connected. This is done by a DIP-switch block on the backplane. One switch per slot. It should be visible if you look down into the cage. The other bus grand card is two connectors high, and also carry the NPG line, in which case you don't need to worry about the DIP-switches. > 4. Insert in Slot nine a M9302 UNIBUS TERMINATOR and a M9713 MIN. LOAD > MODULE Yes. > 5. Now we would have: > > Slot 1 M8190-Ax KDJ11-Bx 11/83 - 11/84 CPU Card > Slot 2 M8637-X MSV11-Jx PMI Memory > Slot 3 M8637-X MSV11-Jx PMI Memory > Slot 4 M8191 KTJ11-B Unibus controller > Slot 5 M7547 TUK50-BB Tape controller (Bus grant as > well?) > Slot 7 G7273 NPG and BUS Grant > / Double Grant > Slot 8 G7273 NPG and BUS Grant > / Double Grant > Slot 9 M9302 UNIBUS TERMINATOR > Slot 9 M9713 MIN. LOAD MODULE You only need one memory card, so it's not really neccesary to get two. Also, no grant in the slot where you have the TUK50. But I'm missing a grant in slot 6. :-) > 6. Connect up a terminal (I have several 420's) to the SLU connector. Yes. > 7. Connect a TK50 drive (Which I have) to its controller. Yes. > 8. Check for correct boot proms on the CPU card. No need, normally. The 11/8x and 11/9x cards have nice large boot proms with all kind of boot routines on them, including booting from TMSCP. > 9. Switch on. Wait for smoke to clear. Look for output on the terminal. Yes. > 10. Insert a bootable tape. (Which I don't have yet) That would help if you don't feel like starting to write your own code. But for test purposes, not needed at all. > All those in favor of this config say Aye! > All those against email me quick, before I do anything dangerous!! If you're just interested in checking that the machine is working, skip the TUK50. Just make sure the unibus is "whole", and fire her up. The boot monitor of the 11/8x and 11/9x are real talkative, with lots of things that can be done without anything else, including running tests, and checking out the hardware. Johnny -- Johnny Billquist || "I'm on a bus || on a psychedelic trip email: bqt at softjar.se || Reading murder books pdp is alive! || tryin' to stay hip" - B. Idol

19 years, 3 months

1
0
0 0

a few more items

by chrism3667＠yahoo.com

Microvax 2000 Hardware Information, slipcover ThinkC for Macintosh, Symantec User's Guide CP/M Assembly Language Programming, Barbier, Prentice Hall The Programmer's CP/M Handbook last 2 are hardcovers all the preceding a bit musty same terms as last bunch of crap also have an Apple IIe that had been sitting out in the rain. Looks ok, powered up a few months ago, distorted image, but it powered up. prolly more items to follow... ____________________________________________________________________________________Choose the right car based on your needs. Check out Yahoo! Autos new Car Finder tool. http://autos.yahoo.com/carfinder/

19 years, 3 months

1
0
0 0

Dayton Hamvention

by marvin＠west.net

I got my selling spot numbers today when I arrived in Dayton and they are 2913 and 2914. I don't have any classic computer stuff for sale, but if you get a chance, stop by and say Hi! Marvin, KE6HTS

19 years, 3 months

1
0
0 0

Configuring an EV-833 QIC controller

by ballsandy＠msn.com

Right now I am attempting to configure my Everex EV-833 tape controller card with my old 386 system and I am stuck at setting the dip switches and the jumper blocks. I usually find configuration settings here... http://artofhacking.com/th99/index.htm ...but they don't have any info on this card. does anybody here know the configuration settings or does anyone know where I can find the configuration settings? Here's a photograph: http://www.yjfy.com/images/oldhard/scsi/pwa-0081h.jpg _________________________________________________________________ Win a webcam! Nominate your friend?s Windows Live Space in the Windows Live Spaces Sweetest Space Contest and you both could win! http://www.microsoft.com/canada/home/contests/sweetestspace/default.aspx

19 years, 3 months

6
5
0 0

Com-tran Ten

by rkaumeier＠earthlink.net

Robert Borsuk wrote: >Does anyone know what a Com-tran Ten is? I have a set of prints >(over 30 pages) I pulled from my filing cabinet (while looking for >Mac info for Teo and Jeff) which say they are a reprint by permission >of Digiac Corporation. >I tried doing some goggling but to no avail. > >Any ideas (or links)? > >Rob I used a Com-tran Ten computer trainer while attending the US Navy's Advanced First Term Avionics (AFTA) school in Millington, Tennessee in 1980. Our classroom time on it was pretty limited - a week or two, at most. I vaguely recall that it was used to teach a smattering of machine language and digital circuit fault analysis & troubleshooting. That's about all I remember, and unfortunately I lost most of the tech pubs I had kept from those days in a move several years ago. If anyone else on the list attended tech school in Millington during that era, perhaps you can answer a question I've wondered about for a while. The Navy was experimenting with computer graded programmed instruction in the early 80s, and the machine that processed the Scantron forms would print out a line or two of remedial info or "attaboys" on each test report. Unfortunately, we never did get to see "Jim-Jim", the machine which processed our grades. Does anyone know what kind of hardware Jim-Jim was? -Rick Kaumeier

19 years, 3 months

1
0
0 0

Problem reading CP/M floppy on a PC

by john_a_s2004＠hotmail.com

Dear All, Thanks for your helpful reples. On 15 May 2007 at 11:45, Chuck Guzis wrote: >It's entirely possible to fit 10x512 sectors per track using a 765- >type controller, though it's much easier if the IAM is left off and the >space gained used to expand the inter-sector gaps (you can do this with a >uPD 2765-type controller or any of the WD 17xx/27xx controllers. >>I think the Tuscan FDC uses a WD1771 controller... >Nope, the 1771 is restricted to FM only. Maybe a 179x or 1770/1772/1773 though. You're right, it has a FD1791 controller. >It's entirely possible that the drive used to create the diskettes was >somewhat out of alignment. You may have to "unalign" a drive to >successfully read these. This is more common than you might think. Yes, it could be. I tried a different PC last night, same problem as before. Using IMD (Image Disk) utility, and the analyse option, it would show a scrolling display with entries like: 0 7 20 0 for track 0, the 20 meaning that 20 sectors were found up to: 39 5 20 0 for track 39. Using D to read data, I could read track 0 OK, but with higher tracks (especially 10 or higher) then IMD gave errors like: Read error <1> No Addr Mark 2 Read error <2> No Addr Mark 3 etc up to sector 10. I came across this article: http://www.atari-forum.com/viewtopic.php?t=9644&postdays=0&postorder=asc&st… (Google for ["read sector" "splice points"]) which makes the valid point that floppies are often formated on one machine, and written to on another. As I can read track 0, and all the sector marks are found for the other tracks, but I can't read the data part of the sectors for tracks 1 to 39, I am guessing that the drive used to write the data was different to that used to format the floppy and write the system track. The above page talks about 'splice points' where the new data is written over existing data. (Another interesting glossary was found here: http://www.softpres.org/knowledge_base) >You didn't mention if you were using a 48tpi ("360K") drive to read these >or trying to get by on a 96tpi ("720K" or "1.2MB) drive. The former will >usually produce better results. I am using a 48tpi drive, an IBM badged Qumetrak 142 with belt drive ("That is the third worst drive I've dealt with" - Fred Cisin, Oct 2005), also tried a Techmate NPH-502. I have some Tandon TM-100s on various machines, I'll try one of these plus a 96tpi drive for luck. >If the first sector on the track is consistently missing (not always the >lowest-numbered; some systems skew the tracks for better performance), you >might be able to recover it by slowing the drive a bit to allow the first >sector IDAM to move outside of the 765 "blind spot" at the beginning of a >track (although the 765 formats a track with an IAM at the start, it never >reads it). Seems to be every sector past a certan track. BTW the disk is formated with sector skewing, starting from track 0 they are read as: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 9 10 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 7 8 9 10 1 2 3 4 5 6 5 6 7 8 9 10 1 2 3 4 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 1 2 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 Luckily I have recently heard from two more Tuscan owners with CP/M boot disks, so hopefully they will have more joy. Regards, John _________________________________________________________________ The next generation of Hotmail is here! http://www.newhotmail.co.uk

19 years, 3 months

2
1
0 0

Harwell (was RE: A local computer history group for my area. ..)

by RodSmallwood＠mail.ediconsulting.co.uk

Hi Having had a look at the slides I now have it straight. It was the Alas I saw when at college and the ICL system when I worked just round the corner at RRD. If you had anything to do with Harwell RRD would have been familiar to you. I built experimental rigs and interfaced them to PDP-8's. The science guys would run them whilst the particular reactor (Dido or Pluto) was operating and I would do the maintenance whilst they where on shutdown. Happy Days... I had a office/workshop at one end of a hut with windows on three sides. Taxi to and from work each day and one week in three to a sandwich course. Rod -----Original Message----- From: cctech-bounces at classiccmp.org [mailto:cctech-bounces at classiccmp.org] On Behalf Of Roger Holmes Sent: 16 May 2007 23:28 To: cctalk at classiccmp.org Subject: Re: Harwell (was RE: A local computer history group for my area. ..) > > Date: Wed, 16 May 2007 04:13:44 +0100 > From: "Rod Smallwood" <RodSmallwood at mail.ediconsulting.co.uk> > Subject: RE: Harwell (was RE: A local computer history group for my > area . ..) > > Yes slight aberration of the brain. The building was called "The Atlas > Computer Laboratory" but the system was ICL. Maybe it had gone by then, but there are photos on the web of the building when it housed a Ferranti Atlas. Specifically: http://www.chilton-computing.org.uk/gallery/harwell/ slide8.htm or the view the whole collection of photos at http://www.chilton- computing.org.uk/gallery/home.htm > One of my first jobs as a junior engineer (circa 1972) was to > refurbish > 4K core memory stores for an Elliot system. What was involved in refurbishment? > They were about three feet long with a Mullard Core stack in a box in > the middle and plug in cards on either side. > They used early transistors of the OC71 era (Yup -ve supply). I soon > learned all about read, write and sense amplifiers and how the cores > actually worked. My 1301 has five core stores, each of 400(decimal) words x 50 bits (48 data + 2 parity). Three of the stores work perfectly after they have warmed up, but two of the stores are totally dead. We've tried everything, starting with the obvious - looking for a fault in the selection logic, but after replacing the same boards about five times with no effect (especially when the 'scope also says they're working properly), we had to started looking for a fault in each of the stores. But everything there looks OK too, at least measuring voltages they look OK, I don't possess a current probe and I'm not sure if I had one I'd be able to use it. > > As a final test I would put the store back in the system (Elliot > 4100?) > load a very complex FORTRAN program from paper tape ( it worked out > handicaps for large racing yachts based on their dimensions) then a > data > tape. The answer came out on one of two IBM golfball printers (no > keyboards). > > That's what I call classic computing as opposed to a classic computer! > > Rod Smallwood

19 years, 3 months

1
0
0 0

General SCSI+DLT speed questions

by james＠attfield.co.uk

> From: Jim Leonard <trixter at oldskool.org> > > > Don't confuse interface speed vs. actual media speed. > > True, but I didn't have a basis for comparison. I'm hearing that 4MB/s > is indeed slightly above par, so I guess I should be happy . I have several 35/70GB DLT drives on various systems and they all do between 240MB/minute to 400MB/minute depending on the speed of the disk systems (and to some extent CPU's) they are backing up so yours certainly seems in the ball park. You can't go by interface (10MB/s) or bus (132MB/S) speed, it's purely down to the highest rate the drive can stream at and making sure you can feed it data fast enough to keep it in 'streaming' mode. Jim

19 years, 3 months

7
8
0 0

Harwell (was RE: A local computer history group for my area. ..)

by RodSmallwood＠mail.ediconsulting.co.uk

>What was involved in refurbishment? Well its 35 years ago but I'll have a go. The store was made up of planes. Each was (I think) 64x64 cores. Wires ran Horizontally and Vertically through each core plus a sense wire that snaked through all the cores diagonally from one corner of the plane to the other. The cores could be magnetized in one direction or the other. It was driven by current pulses of differing magnitude depending on reading or writing. Reads came out on the sense wire as serial pulses of differing polarity to indicate 0 or 1 and you had to write the answer back each time. We had a test bench with power supplies and test boxes to write then read the store. The setting up consisted of setting the shape of the pulse amplifers output to a drawing we had. If it ran the read/write pattern ok for an hour it was a good one. If you had good electronics (ie a working board set and pulses present at the core box input)and no output you checked the date of manufacture of the core box. If it was still in warranty you went to he stores with it and said "Another one to go back to Mullard" and got a new one. If it was out of warranty you threw it out of the last window on the left (That's where the skip was) as you left the building to go and get a new one from the stores. -----Original Message----- From: cctech-bounces at classiccmp.org [mailto:cctech-bounces at classiccmp.org] On Behalf Of Roger Holmes Sent: 16 May 2007 23:28 To: cctalk at classiccmp.org Subject: Re: Harwell (was RE: A local computer history group for my area. ..) > > Date: Wed, 16 May 2007 04:13:44 +0100 > From: "Rod Smallwood" <RodSmallwood at mail.ediconsulting.co.uk> > Subject: RE: Harwell (was RE: A local computer history group for my > area . ..) > > Yes slight aberration of the brain. The building was called "The Atlas > Computer Laboratory" but the system was ICL. Maybe it had gone by then, but there are photos on the web of the building when it housed a Ferranti Atlas. Specifically: http://www.chilton-computing.org.uk/gallery/harwell/ slide8.htm or the view the whole collection of photos at http://www.chilton-computing.org.uk/gallery/home.htm > One of my first jobs as a junior engineer (circa 1972) was to > refurbish > 4K core memory stores for an Elliot system. What was involved in refurbishment? > They were about three feet long with a Mullard Core stack in a box in > the middle and plug in cards on either side. > They used early transistors of the OC71 era (Yup -ve supply). I soon > learned all about read, write and sense amplifiers and how the cores > actually worked. My 1301 has five core stores, each of 400(decimal) words x 50 bits (48 data + 2 parity). Three of the stores work perfectly after they have warmed up, but two of the stores are totally dead. We've tried everything, starting with the obvious - looking for a fault in the selection logic, but after replacing the same boards about five times with no effect (especially when the 'scope also says they're working properly), we had to started looking for a fault in each of the stores. But everything there looks OK too, at least measuring voltages they look OK, I don't possess a current probe and I'm not sure if I had one I'd be able to use it. > > As a final test I would put the store back in the system (Elliot > 4100?) > load a very complex FORTRAN program from paper tape ( it worked out > handicaps for large racing yachts based on their dimensions) then a > data > tape. The answer came out on one of two IBM golfball printers (no > keyboards). > > That's what I call classic computing as opposed to a classic computer! > > Rod Smallwood

19 years, 3 months

1
0
0 0

The Last of The Line

by bqt＠softjar.se

"Rod Smallwood" <RodSmallwood at mail.ediconsulting.co.uk> skrev: > Well I think I understand the list. > But for clarity's sake here's the problem again. > > 1. I have a number of PDP-11/94's > 2. The first three slots are Quad Qbus > 3. The missing KDJ11-EB would have been in slot one > 4. Slot two has a M9714 ALT PWR FOR KDJ11-E in it. > 5 Slot three is empty. > 6. Slot four is a Unibus slot and has a M8191 KTJ11-B Unibus controller > in it > 7 Slot five has a M7547 TUK50-BB Tape controller in it. > 8. Slot's Six,seven and eight are empty > 9. Slot nine has a M9302 (UNIBUS TERMINATOR) at one end and a M9713 > (MIN. LOAD MODULE) at the other. > > "Your mission Mr Phelps (Should you accept it) is to replace the missing > KDJ11-EB with the lowest cost plug in alternative that will run" > > The winner gets (for the cost of the shipping) a 11/94 system unit box > as described above. Sorry, but your options are very few. The first three slots of that backplane are not Q-bus, but a special adaptation of it for the PMI memory and nothing else. You cannot use Q-bus memory on it, and no other Q-bus options either (atleast according to the manuals, I haven't tried in real life. I could check out if any signals differ, if it were real important). Second, the Unibus adapter required some special signals from the CPU-board as well. Your options are basically the 11/8x and 11/9x CPU boards. No others will originate the signals for the Unibus adapter required. Memory wise only PMI memory boards will do. For an 11/94, all memory are on the CPU board, so for those, the two PMI slots should always be empty. To make the power supply happy, you normally have some bus loads on them. If you go for the 11/84 instead, you also need to find PMI memory boards. That's the CPU/memory part of your system. You then need to configure the Unibus correctly, which means you need unibus grant cards in theright place of all empty slots. You probably also want some disk controller in that system. Johnny -- Johnny Billquist || "I'm on a bus || on a psychedelic trip email: bqt at softjar.se || Reading murder books pdp is alive! || tryin' to stay hip" - B. Idol

19 years, 3 months

1
0
0 0

Vintage Computer Festival - OT

by velocite＠gmail.com

I am writing an educational book about the invention of the videotape machine and subsequent evolution of nonlinear edit systems on desktop computers. In order to background the reader properly, I am including material on the development of not only the GUI by companies like Xerox but also microprocessors and PC's by companies and people like MOS, Motorola, DG, Intel, Faggin, De Castro, Chuck Peddle and Bill Mensche. I have tried without luck to contact Mr Peddle and wish to do so. I believe Mr Peddle will be attending, Vintage Computer Festival East 4.0 this June Maybe you are too? http://www.vintage.org/2007/east/ If you are going I am looking to convey my interest in making contact with him, to make sure the facts in my book are fair and accurate. I would love to attend but I am in Sydney, Australia. I am more than happy to give fair credit in the published work to ClassicCMP. Thanks John velocite (at) gmail dot com

19 years, 3 months

1
0
0 0

A local computer history group for my area . . .

by dgreelish＠mac.com

Hi everyone, I have just started up a user group in my area to get together once a month and enjoy old computers and the history, etc. I plan to give a short presentation each meeting, bring a few systems, have some retro gaming available and basic refreshments. I'm calling it what I once called a "club" I started years ago - The Historical Computer Society. It will take many meetings and some time, but I hope it can grow and become a true non-profit group on it's own standing with elected officers, etc. - a user group. I have arranged for the space in the public library near my house, every third Saturday, from 2pm - 3:30pm, starting with next Saturday, May 19th. Here's the library, in Fruit Cove, FL, just south of Jacksonville: http://www.sjcpls.org/Branches/BartramTrail.aspx If you're not too far and interested, please let me know. Best, David David Greelish classiccomputing.com The Classic Computing Podcast Home of Computer History Nostalgia Stan Veit's History of the Personal Computer Audio Book Podcast

19 years, 3 months

5
7
0 0

Com-tran Ten

by rborsuk＠colourfull.com

Does anyone know what a Com-tran Ten is? I have a set of prints (over 30 pages) I pulled from my filing cabinet (while looking for Mac info for Teo and Jeff) which say they are a reprint by permission of Digiac Corporation. I tried doing some goggling but to no avail. Any ideas (or links)? Rob Rob Borsuk email: rborsuk at colourfull.com Colourfull Creations Web: http://www.colourfull.com

19 years, 3 months

1
0
0 0

Harwell (was RE: A local computer history group for my area . ..)

by roger.holmes＠microspot.co.uk

> > Date: Wed, 16 May 2007 04:13:44 +0100 > From: "Rod Smallwood" <RodSmallwood at mail.ediconsulting.co.uk> > Subject: RE: Harwell (was RE: A local computer history group for my > area . ..) > > Yes slight aberration of the brain. The building was called "The Atlas > Computer Laboratory" but the system was ICL. Maybe it had gone by then, but there are photos on the web of the building when it housed a Ferranti Atlas. Specifically: http://www.chilton-computing.org.uk/gallery/harwell/ slide8.htm or the view the whole collection of photos at http://www.chilton- computing.org.uk/gallery/home.htm > One of my first jobs as a junior engineer (circa 1972) was to > refurbish > 4K core memory stores for an Elliot system. What was involved in refurbishment? > They were about three feet long with a Mullard Core stack in a box in > the middle and plug in cards on either side. > They used early transistors of the OC71 era (Yup -ve supply). I soon > learned all about read, write and sense amplifiers and how the cores > actually worked. My 1301 has five core stores, each of 400(decimal) words x 50 bits (48 data + 2 parity). Three of the stores work perfectly after they have warmed up, but two of the stores are totally dead. We've tried everything, starting with the obvious - looking for a fault in the selection logic, but after replacing the same boards about five times with no effect (especially when the 'scope also says they're working properly), we had to started looking for a fault in each of the stores. But everything there looks OK too, at least measuring voltages they look OK, I don't possess a current probe and I'm not sure if I had one I'd be able to use it. > > As a final test I would put the store back in the system (Elliot > 4100?) > load a very complex FORTRAN program from paper tape ( it worked out > handicaps for large racing yachts based on their dimensions) then a > data > tape. The answer came out on one of two IBM golfball printers (no > keyboards). > > That's what I call classic computing as opposed to a classic computer! > > Rod Smallwood

19 years, 3 months

1
0
0 0

Computer stuff 1970's ish at Lucas Birmingham Gt King St

by roger.holmes＠microspot.co.uk

> Date: Wed, 16 May 2007 09:43:27 +0100 > From: "Rod Smallwood" <RodSmallwood at mail.ediconsulting.co.uk> > Subject: RE: Computer stuff 1970's ish at Lucas Birmingham Gt King St > > Very Interesting!!! > > 1. The console terminal is a Creed Model 75 Teleprinter ie > Baudot Telex code not ASCII > This may be a Bletchley Park legacy. > The later electronic BP systems were designed to break > teleprinter codes and hence the > high speed tape readers and terminals were for telex code. > You can just see the M75 reader/punch above the operators > hand. > > 2. To the left of the operator are two high speed paper tape > readers. Are these the 1000 character per second model or the 300 character per second model? I presume they are the slower 300 cps units as the 1000 cps Elliott version on my ICT 1301 needs a powered tape un- roller to feed it. It can still stop between characters even at that speed, but I understand from my old boss when I worked at Elliott's Rochester works that the older Elliott readers did not have the stop on character facility, so that our software always put four null characters after every carriage return line feed pair, and the reading software would always read a line of input at full speed before doing any heavy processing which might take longer than a character time. > > 3. You can see the holes in the top of the desk where the tape > went after the reader > > 4. The tape rewinder is on the corner of the other desk. > > 5. The two boxes on the right are the storage cases for the high > speed readers or could be tape punches. They are the acoustic cases for Teletype BRPE paper tape punches. 100 characters per second. You had to raise the cover to load new rolls of tape into the unit, then press the feed button on top of the unit as you pulled on the tape until it started feeding itself. Then you closed the cover and when it was ready the computer started punching and the tape fed out of the chrome lined hole on the left hand side. It looks like it fed into the two holes in the desk to the left of these units. My ICT 1301 has had one of these grafted onto it in the 1970s using a Vero board full of TTL logic which is housed within the paper tape reader cabinet. Interest interface between the plus 5 volt logic levels of TTL and the minus 6.3 volt logic levels of the discrete germanium transistor logic of the 1301. A slight cheat - the TTL ground is actually at -5 volts and the TTL's VCC is connected to the 1301's 0 volt earth level. This also means a TTL '1' is a 1301 '0' and vice-versa. The 1301 to TTL signals work fine with no special circuitry, but the TTL to 1301 need a transistor (GET872) to work correctly. > > 6. The row of horizontal drawers on the right of the desk are > for rewound paper tapes. > > 7. The row of cabinets under the window is the electronics. > > 8. You needed a whole cabinet to hold 16K of core + PSU > > 9. The desk to the left appears to have some punched cards on > it. But they look a bit big. > > 10. The drawers in the desk to the left look like card storage. > > 11. The desk to the left could be a punched card station but I > have > never seen one so am unsure.

19 years, 3 months

1
0
0 0

My VAX 4000-200 died....

by cheri-post＠web.de

Hi all, my first VAX ever - died, unfortunately. During the last months, I experienced that the CPU just got stuck at some time, but I could not reproduce this error. Sometimes, it froze during or directly after the initialisation procedure, or later on after half an hour or an hour of work with VMS. A friend of mine thought of instable voltages caused by the power supply, so I swapped it with another one in order to check, if the supply was to blame. But it wasn't the case. I took out all the boards and left the CPU and some memory only, but it didn't get any better. After getting stuck, the CPU could only be reset switching the supply off and on again. And now, since last week, the CPU doesn't come up at all anymore. After switching on the power supply, the seven segment display shows an "F", nothing is printed on the terminal, and the halt-button has no function anymore (which was always the case when it got stuck). So I guess that my VAX died... Needless to say that these boards can't be repaired. As far as I know, no schematics were ever published and these big chips on the board are horrible to unsolder and solder, even if spare ones could be obtained (supposed that one knows, where the "problem is"). Did anybody on this list make similar experiences regarding VAXen dying that way (at least, I'm pretty sure that she's dead) ? Is there anything else I could check in order to save my VAX ? Thanks for any help. Regards, Pierre __________________________________________________________________________ Erweitern Sie FreeMail zu einem noch leistungsst?rkeren E-Mail-Postfach! Mehr Infos unter http://produkte.web.de/club/?mc=021131

19 years, 3 months

4
3
0 0

Fairchild MB8116E == 4116 ?

by tandj812＠verizon.net

I have a bunch (more than 80) of Both MB8116E and ITT 4116 My email address is tandj812 at verizon.net

19 years, 3 months

7
6
0 0

My VAX 4000-200 died....

by cheri-post＠web.de

Hello Tim, > What you write is "not inconsistent" with failing to get DCOK from the > power supplies. DCOK is a signal indicating that the power supplies > are all up and operating. The CPU refuses to even begin its self test > until DCOK is asserted. Thanks alot for pointing out several things I forgot to mention. My VAX is housed in a BA430 enclosure. So there is only one power supply which provides the power to the system. Normally, when the green "DC OK" LED turns on, the DC voltages should be available and lie within the necessary voltage range for the CPU to work correctly. Now I don't know how reliable the control circuit is, regarding the detection of voltages lying outside of the specified range. Could it be possible that the DCOK LED lits while a voltage is not within the required tolerance ? > > BA213's (a popular cabinet for your CPU) have two supplies and the light > has to be on on both of them. Otherwise you see exactly the symptom > you have (CPU stuck at "F"). > > It's not impossible for a CPU board to fail and get stuck at "F", but > in my experience, 99 times out of 100 it's because there's no DCOK on the > backplane. And 9 times out of 10 it's because the power supply is > failing. They often go flaky and are hard to start, or go flaky and > fail after getting warm, etc. > Ok, in my case, having a BA430 chassis, both tested power supplies would have the same failure then. I tested both, and only one fits in the chassis at a time. On both supplies, the DCOK-LED turns on after powering up the VAX. But just to be sure, I should measure the voltages of the supply at the backplane. > It's also true that the power supplies need a certain minimum load... > you may have had some boards in your backplane that had nothing except > for resistors on them to provide the minimum load. Putting those > back in won't hurt. Of course, spare KDA50 sets are just fine for > sucking up DC power too! > A total of seven boards were plugged in, so I guess that the minimum load should be given. Thanks alot for your precious hints, Tim ! Regards, Pierre _______________________________________________________________ SMS schreiben mit WEB.DE FreeMail - einfach, schnell und kostenguenstig. Jetzt gleich testen! http://f.web.de/?mc=021192

19 years, 3 months

2
1
0 0

3.5" Altair CP/M

by ajp166＠bellatlantic.net

> >Subject: Re: 3.5" Altair CP/M > From: David Griffith <dgriffi at cs.csubak.edu> > Date: Tue, 15 May 2007 15:33:55 -0700 (PDT) > To: "General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts" <cctalk at classiccmp.org> > >On Tue, 15 May 2007, Grant Stockly wrote: > >> I have a tarbell floppy controller card that has been rewired to access >> 3.5" disks using a standard PC 3.5" disk drive. >[snip] >> What could be missing? If the bitrate is fixed, then is CP/M not writing >> standard sectors? Rawread says "Address not found" and diskinfo says the >> drive is not ready. > >I take it you don't have access to a Unix machine? The dd command might >be able to fish out something more from that disk. Specifically, the >utility cpmtools is useful for writing to a variety of disk formats and is >easy to customize for new formats. > >From all I've read the controller is a a SD unit and may be running at either the 8" SD rate or possibly the 5.25" SD rate makig the disk at most 360k. That 360k format is NOT PC compatable. The OS used on the PC is not a factor as whatever you do required direct controll of the FDC even then some PCs will NOT do the slower SD data rate. Allison

19 years, 3 months

1
0
0 0

3.5" Altair CP/M

by ajp166＠bellatlantic.net

> >Subject: Re: 3.5" Altair CP/M > From: Grant Stockly <grant at stockly.com> > Date: Tue, 15 May 2007 17:09:37 -0800 > To: "General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts" <cctalk at classiccmp.org> > >At 04:45 PM 5/15/2007, you wrote: >>On 5/15/07, Grant Stockly <grant at stockly.com> wrote: >>>I have a tarbell floppy controller card that has been rewired to access >>>3.5" disks using a standard PC 3.5" disk drive. I have 3 disks that the >>>Altair can boot off of and read, but my windows computer can't do anything >>>with them. I've tried rawread.exe and diskinfo.exe and they both choke on >>>the disk. I assumed that if a disk could be written with the standard 3.5" >>>disk drive on the tarbell card then it should also be read on the same >>>drive connected to a modern IBM compatible. >> >>Are you using a 1771 based SD Tarbell card, or a 1791/1793 based DD >>Tarbell card? That might make a difference. > >Its an MDL-1011D with an FD1771-B01. > >What's the deal with this chip? Is it formatting the the disk as 360k? the 1771 is single density only and yes. Also if the format program used didn't fully format the disk with all the marks (often done with 1771s) then it will be harder to read with a PC. Allison

19 years, 3 months

1
0
0 0

The Last of The Line

by RodSmallwood＠mail.ediconsulting.co.uk

Thanks Pete Heres my list of KJD11 variations: Module Type Speed RAM ROM LTC SLU ------ ---- ----- --- --- --- --- M8192 KDJ11-AA 15 0 0 No 0 KDJ11-AB 18 0 0 No 0 M8190 KDJ11-BB 15 0 Y Yes 2 KDJ11-BF 18 0 Y Yes 2 M7554 KDJ11-D 15 1.5 Y Yes 2 M8981 KDJ11-EA 15 2 Y Yes 1 KDJ11-EB 18 4 Y Yes 8 KDJ11-SD Anybody want to amend and add the module for the memory? Rod -----Original Message----- From: cctech-bounces at classiccmp.org [mailto:cctech-bounces at classiccmp.org] On Behalf Of Pete Turnbull Sent: 14 May 2007 21:21 To: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts Subject: Re: The Last of The Line On 14/05/2007 09:01, Rod Smallwood wrote: > All of your points are well made. One is very important the KDJ11-EB > has its memory on the CPU board. Are you saying some models of the > KDJ11 do not have their memory on the CPU board? Is it a case of > unpopulated sockets and add memory or is it no sockets and no memory? KDJ11-E (M8981) is a quad-height board used in 11/93 and 11/94, running at 18MHz, with up to 4MB of RAM on board. It also has a floating point processor, boot ROMs, line time clock, and 8(?) serial ports. KDJ11-D (M7554) is a quad-height board used in 11/53, usually running at 15MHz, with either 512KB or 1.5MB of RAM, boot ROMs, LTC, and 2 SLUs. It's one of the slowest KDJ11s; the 11/53 was meant as a low-cost system. The same board, but with different ROMs and different handles (KDJ11-S), was used in some tabletop systems. KDJ11-B (M8190) is a quad-height board with no RAM (and no sockets for it), but with boot ROMs, LTC, and 2 SLUs. It was available as 15MHz for the 11/73, and 18MHz for the 11/83 and 11/84. 18MHz versions normally included the FPJ11 floating point processor chip; 15MHz usually merely had the socket; some early 15MHz versions won't accept an FPJ11 chip. These boards will work with PMI memory as well as with ordinary QBus memory. KDJ11-A (M8192) is a dual-height board clocked at 15MHz, with no RAM, boot ROMs, LTC, SLUs, or other embellishments. In other words, it's just a CPU. Used in a few 11/73S systems, as an OEM board, and for 11/23 upgrades. Early revisions won't accept an FPJ11 chip. See Micronotes 25, 30, and 39. -- Pete Peter Turnbull Network Manager University of York

19 years, 3 months

3
5
0 0

Computer stuff 1970's ish at Lucas Birmingham Gt King St ?

by RodSmallwood＠mail.ediconsulting.co.uk

Very Interesting!!! 1. The console terminal is a Creed Model 75 Teleprinter ie Baudot Telex code not ASCII This may be a Bletchley Park legacy. The later electronic BP systems were designed to break teleprinter codes and hence the high speed tape readers and terminals were for telex code. You can just see the M75 reader/punch above the operators hand. 2. To the left of the operator are two high speed paper tape readers. 3. You can see the holes in the top of the desk where the tape went after the reader 4. The tape rewinder is on the corner of the other desk. 5. The two boxes on the right are the storage cases for the high speed readers or could be tape punches. 6. The row of horizontal drawers on the right of the desk are for rewound paper tapes. 7. The row of cabinets under the window is the electronics. 8. You needed a whole cabinet to hold 16K of core + PSU 9. The desk to the left appears to have some punched cards on it. But they look a bit big. 10. The drawers in the desk to the left look like card storage. 11. The desk to the left could be a punched card station but I have never seen one so am unsure. Rod Smallwood -----Original Message----- From: cctech-bounces at classiccmp.org [mailto:cctech-bounces at classiccmp.org] On Behalf Of Dave Caroline Sent: 15 May 2007 21:02 To: cctalk at classiccmp.org Subject: Computer stuff 1970's ish at Lucas Birmingham Gt King St ? Here's a few obscure pics from the 1970's I believe take the picture link Pertec tape drive and a box with System 90 on it? and what else http://www.archivist.info/collection/searchv8.php?srcdata=title&srcprog= searchv8.php&searchv4page=1&errlev=0&searchstr=lucas+computer+lab Any information gratefully received as a treat here is an Elliott 803 at Lucas http://www.archivist.info/collection/searchv8.php?srcdata=title&srcprog= searchv8.php&searchv4page=1&errlev=0&searchstr=lucas+elliott Dave Caroline

19 years, 3 months

2
1
0 0

The Last of The Line

by RodSmallwood＠mail.ediconsulting.co.uk

Well I think I understand the list. But for clarity's sake here's the problem again. 1. I have a number of PDP-11/94's 2. The first three slots are Quad Qbus 3. The missing KDJ11-EB would have been in slot one 4. Slot two has a M9714 ALT PWR FOR KDJ11-E in it. 5 Slot three is empty. 6. Slot four is a Unibus slot and has a M8191 KTJ11-B Unibus controller in it 7 Slot five has a M7547 TUK50-BB Tape controller in it. 8. Slot's Six,seven and eight are empty 9. Slot nine has a M9302 (UNIBUS TERMINATOR) at one end and a M9713 (MIN. LOAD MODULE) at the other. "Your mission Mr Phelps (Should you accept it) is to replace the missing KDJ11-EB with the lowest cost plug in alternative that will run" The winner gets (for the cost of the shipping) a 11/94 system unit box as described above. Rod Smallwood PS Speed is not an issue here. -----Original Message----- From: cctech-bounces at classiccmp.org [mailto:cctech-bounces at classiccmp.org] On Behalf Of Glen Slick Sent: 15 May 2007 19:24 To: General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts Subject: Re: The Last of The Line On 5/15/07, Pete Turnbull <pete at dunnington.plus.com> wrote: > > > Anybody want to amend and add the module for the memory? > > http://www.dunnington.u-net.com/public/PDP-11/QBus_memory > > It also doesn't have columns to specify whether the boards work in > Qbus/Qbus backplanes or Q/CD backplanes without releasing magic smoke, > whether they have provision to use battery power, whether they have > options to disable the parity CSR, or support block-mode transfers. > I'd expect users to get the nitty-gritty from the relevant user guides > or handbooks. > > As always, additions and corrections are welcome. > http://www.bitsavers.org/pdf/dec/qbus/EK-MSV1J-UG_001_May85.pdf MSV11-JB M8637-B 1 MB ECC PDP-11/84 ONLY MSV11-JC M8637-C 2 MB ECC PDP-11/84 ONLY MSV11-JD M8637-D 1 MB ECC PDP-11/84 or PDP-11/83 MSV11-JE M8637-E 2 MB ECC PDP-11/84 or PDP-11/83 NOTE: Modules designated MSV11-JB and MSV11-JC may be used in the PDP-11/84 (UNIBUS) system only. Modules designated MSV11-JD and MSV11-JE may be used in both the PDP-11/84 and PDP-11/83 (Q-bus) systems. NOTE: MSV11-JB and MSV11-JC cannot perform Q-bus protocol. NOTE: Insertion of the MSV11-J in a Q-Q backplane my damage other components or the memory itself. The PMI bussing of the MSV11-J's CD connectors is not compatible with the +12V bussing on the Q-Q backplane.

19 years, 3 months

1
0
0 0

Anyone recognize this terminal?

by legalize＠xmission.com

This little photo is all I have to go on; someone else is looking to ID this puppy and I said I would ask around. <http://www.xmission.com/~legalize/tmp/hlac.jpg> -- "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/>

19 years, 3 months

12
12
0 0

Vintage Test Set, a Hardware Hackers Delight on eBay

by whdawson＠nidhog.net

(LURK OFF) Item 290114723691, Safetran Dual Tone Multi-Frequency Test Set A41080. I thought about buying another of these just for its potential, but am passing on bidding on this one and letting the list be aware of what I found this in this little 14x10x6 inch fiberglass case. I bought one of these, 290112949036, from the same seller. It arrived UPS 3-day today, was very well packed, and looks to have never been used. I'm quite pleased with its quality and potential. Oh, and it works great. The manual that came with mine is everything a manual should be, Operation, Circuit Description (4 1/2 pages alone), Block Diagram (detailed), Troubleshooting, Wiring Diagram, Schematics, Component Layout Diagrams and Parts Lists. If someone on this list wins the auction, ending May-16-07 13:29:44 PDT, I'll photocopy the manual for them if it's not available anywhere else (I haven't looked). The manual is dated April 82, although my test set was made in August 85. Portable uProcessor controlled tone DTMF decoder/encoder 2 & 4 wire. Audible monitor Intercom mode, includes adjustable amp, speaker & electret mike. 12 digit LED readout (2 x HP HDSP3733) Reset Button All I.C.s in sockets Contents: Separate Keyboard/Display and Processor/Power Supply boards connected by a ribbon cable, and an Intercom board with Volume control and transmit level controls. Processor board: MC6809 @ 1Mhz, 2x 2716, 2Kx8 CMOS RAM (MSM5128), MC6821 PIA, MT8865 DTMF Band Splitter, 2-of-8 Tone Encoder MC14410P, Keyboard Encoder MM74C923, Hex Bounce Controller MC14490VL, Watchdog, all the necessary glue, and power supply rectification & regulation Display/Keypad board: LED displays, Hex Keypad, 4 other momentary buttons, 3 other LEDs, 2x Hex Display Driver Controller MM74C917, Keyboard Encoder MM74C92312, and 12 digit LED readout (2 x HP HDSP3733). Great hacking potential, now to figure out what to hack it into. Guess a nice 6809 Monitor in EPROM would be a good start... I have no relation to the seller in this auction other than as a very satisfied buyer. Regards, Bill Dawson (/LURK OFF) -- This message has been scanned for viruses and dangerous content by MailScanner, and is believed to be clean.

19 years, 3 months

1
0
0 0

Harwell (was RE: A local computer history group for my area . ..)

by RodSmallwood＠mail.ediconsulting.co.uk

Yes slight aberration of the brain. The building was called "The Atlas Computer Laboratory" but the system was ICL. One of my first jobs as a junior engineer (circa 1972) was to refurbish 4K core memory stores for an Elliot system. They were about three feet long with a Mullard Core stack in a box in the middle and plug in cards on either side. They used early transistors of the OC71 era (Yup -ve supply). I soon learned all about read, write and sense amplifiers and how the cores actually worked. As a final test I would put the store back in the system (Elliot 4100?) load a very complex FORTRAN program from paper tape ( it worked out handicaps for large racing yachts based on their dimensions) then a data tape. The answer came out on one of two IBM golfball printers (no keyboards). That's what I call classic computing as opposed to a classic computer! Rod Smallwood -----Original Message----- From: cctech-bounces at classiccmp.org [mailto:cctech-bounces at classiccmp.org] On Behalf Of Roger Holmes Sent: 15 May 2007 19:44 To: cctalk at classiccmp.org Subject: Re: Harwell (was RE: A local computer history group for my area . ..) > From: "Rod Smallwood" <RodSmallwood at mail.ediconsulting.co.uk> > > Well now let me see now I left School for College in 1964. My major > subjects were Industrial Electronics and Computing. > > We were taken to Harwell Research centre to see 'The' Computer. It was > an ICL 1900 series system. It took up three floors of a substantial > building. Input on the top floor (80col Cards and papertape). > Processing > and storage on the middle floor and output on the ground floor. Had to > be that way or the vibration from the line printers would have shaken > the building to pieces. > > I remember it was called Atlas and even had an operating system called > George III. So that's just over 40 years ago. In computer terms > certainly vintage if not veteran. Hi Rod, I think you have mixed up two different systems. The Ferranti Atlas (later ICT/ICL Atlas) was in a custom built building, I understand the CPU occupied two floors, and yes there was one at Harwell I've been told. I would expect that Harwell also had at least one ICT/ICL 1900, and that would indeed run the George 3 multi access system. I did my computer science degree at Queen Mary College (University of London) and we had a ICL 1905E, upgraded to a 1904S which ran George 2 batch processing and the Maximop multi access system. Later I used a 1906 (S?) at the Royal Aircraft Establishment and it used either George 3 or George 4, and I was relieved to find that all the Maximop commands worked on it. When I was in the sixth form we visited the computer centre at the NatWest tower - huge floors - IIRC, one floor had nothing but IBM CPUs (probably 370s - this was 1969) and other static electronics, one floor had all the storage - magnetic tapes, discs, and juke box like machines which picked up strips of magnetic tape. Another floor had the hard peripherals - card readers, line printers and a massive document reader with a curved 'retina' on top about 20 feet across where all the optical sensors were. Another floor had all the cheque reading machines, the operators were moaning about people stapling their cheques and the staples getting caught in the works. At that time a random 2% of the cheques were also processed manually for quality assurance purposes, and presumably to prevent fraud. That day was the first I heard of the fraction of a penny (or cent) scam, where all interest payments were rounded down and all the fractions of a penny credited to the programmer's account. The same day I visited the University of London's central computer centre (as opposed to the individual college's private ones). They had a CDC 7600 and one operator was using a terminal to send messages to chat up a girl operating one of the remote stations which fed the 7600 with punched card data and printed the results. A very early form of Internet chat room you might say. Roger Owner of a ICT 1301 built 1962

19 years, 3 months

1
0
0 0

Subject: Re: Manuals being scanned

by ed＠ed-thelen.org

Message: 8 Date: Sat, 12 May 2007 11:49:02 +0100 From: Paul Williams <paul at frixxon.co.uk> Subject: Re: Manuals being scanned To: General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts <cctalk at classiccmp.org> Message-ID: <46459B9E.4040706 at frixxon.co.uk> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed > Al Kossow wrote: >> >> They are some of the ugliest, bloated pdf's I've ever seen. >> What are you doing to them to make them look so BAD. > This is Adobe Capture at work. I had a look at the CP/M manual to see if > the OCRed text was overlaid on an original full page image beneath, but > unfortunately, the 256-page document consists of 13441 image fragments > that couldn't be OCRed. There are no images where text has been OCRed. > -- > Paul Paul - in all kindness (I've been there, done that) Stop scanning a bit and consider: 1) your current technique is not good! a) your current files are indeed much too large by maybe a factor of 6 or 7 b) your current files contain OCR errors - with no warning to users, who tend to think .pdf means a valid image. Two easily found errors are on "your" http://www.cse.uta.edu/TheMuseum at CSE/Manuals%20Scanned/CDC/Control%20Data-Cyber%2070%20Computer%20Systems%20Models%2072,73,74,6000%20Computer%20Systems.PDF on page 3-7 or page 19 in the file in HTML, several variable which should be l<sub>i</SUB> have been mis OCRed and are shown as I, Adobe blunders such as the above caused me to abandon Adobe for several years, until I met an Adobe employee who straightened me out. I now use Adobe Acrobat Professional as scanning input control, (not optimum, but it works OK) - trim off the images of paper holes with "Crop Pages" - check the "Recognize Text using OCR" which places Adobe's interpretation "behind" the image (for direct searching) - and have figured how to make "Reduce File Size" work Another thing to consider is that GOOGLE OCRs .pdf files that it spiders, highlighting search hits :-)) To some extent, your Adobe OCR is bypassed by GOOGLE. So - I'm back "PDF"ing, http://www.ed-thelen.org/comp-hist/on-line-docs.html http://www.ed-thelen.org/#h-documents etc. For serious work, I suggest you look at Al Kossow's suggestions at http://www.bitsavers.org/ "Keep Smiling" ;-)) Ed Thelen

19 years, 3 months

10
16
0 0

Old electrolytic capacitors (IME-86s calculator)

by julesrichardsonuk＠yahoo.co.uk

I'm guessing that old (circa early-70s) electrolytics which have a green cap at one end and a red cap at the other are polarised and that the green end is -ve. Can anyone confirm to save me tracing out schematics? They're in the power supply of an IME-86s calculator and are decidedly past their best :-) (At least four of the ten in the PSU are showing signs of major leakage) The rest of the machine *looks* healthy enough; once I've replaced the electrolytics is there any good reason not to slowly run the system up on a variac (rather than giving it full AC from the start)?

19 years, 3 months

9
15
0 0

Problem reading CP/M floppy on a PC

by john_a_s2004＠hotmail.com

Hi, I have a Transam Tuscan system and recently received a set of boot disks for it. I am trying to back these up to a PC, but when reading the disks with Anadisk or Imagedisk I get 'no data' errors on tracks 3 and higher. The errors get worse from tracks 3 to 15 then nothing can be read. I have taken the 5.25" drive out of the Tuscan and put it in the PC, and the contoller passes the TESTFDC tests for single density and double density. The odd thing about these floppies is that Anadisk reports them as 512 byte / sector and 10 sectors per track. The norm for '360K' floppies is 9 sectors / track. The outer sector (track 0) can be read fine with Anadisk, and I can read the CP/M welcome message. I was hoping someone could advise on what tricks or techniques I could use? Would it help for example to slow the drive down below 300rpm? I assume that with 9 sectors / track there is more time for the FDC to recgnise the start of each track. I think the Tuscan FDC uses a WD1771 controller, is that better than the NEC765 type-controller and able to pack more data in? I read on http://www.s100-manuals.com/Disk-drives.htm that Kaypro also uses 10 sectors of 512 bytes. Another thought is to try different PCs, perhaps formating, writing and reading 10 x 512 byte sectors is another test that could be added to Dave's TESTFDC program to help find a suitable machine :-) Lastly (before anyone asks) yes the floppies are soft sectored. Regards, John _________________________________________________________________ The next generation of Hotmail is here! http://www.newhotmail.co.uk/

19 years, 3 months

7
8
0 0

DEC Pro380 RX50 boot frustration

by chd_1＠nktelco.net

I have been trying to boot my Pro380 from an RX50 and can't seem to get it to work. I have to be missing something. I have been using RX50 floppies that work fine in an -11/73. When I put those disks in the Pro I get an error code that translates to "Bad format or blank disk." and a picture of a floppy with a question mark. I created RT11 boot disks for the FB monitor and used the COPY/BOOT:DZ thing to get the right bootstrap. All on a real -11/73. I was able to initialize a volume on the diskette using P/OS from the Pro's hard disk. The resulting disk boots in the -11/73 with the message ***THIS VOLUME DOES NOT CONTAIN A HARDWARE BOOTABLE SYSTEM ***. In the Pro it gives me that same error code 340. The fact that this message was created by the Pro makes me think there is nothing wrong with the hardware or the floppy format. I have swapped floppy controllers and RX50 drives with no change. I have downloaded a couple disk images that I thought should be bootable (P/OS maintenance utilities) with the same results. I have a little less confidence in this because I had to convert .td0 images to binary images to copy to the floppy. I did find a note about installing 2.9bsd on the Pro that indicates that the floppy must have a special header for the bootstrap different from the NOP and BR that the normal PDP-11's usually require. Shouldn't this be taken care of by the RT11 bootstrap installation process? Is there something that needs to be in the first track that is missing from my disks? This Pro380 was a VAX console. Is there possibly something different about the firmware?

19 years, 3 months

1
0
0 0

Color Macintosh boot floppy?

by dbetz＠xlisper.com

Can anyone help me with creating a boot floppy for a Color Macintosh? I have a machine whose hard disk died and I'm trying to replace it but I don't have a boot floppy containing DiskTools to format the new (Apple) hard drive. I *do* have an install CD for System 7.5 but it doesn't seem to want to boot on the Color Classic even if I hold "C" down when I start up the Mac. I'd be happy to pay for shipping and something extra for the effort involved in making the DiskTools boot disk. By the way, I've already tried downloading the DiskTools 7.5 and 8.5 images that are available on the net. Unfortunately, they won't boot on the Color Classic. I get a message saying that a system resource is missing. I'm assuming that they don't have the right enabler for the Color Classic. Thanks! David

19 years, 3 months

2
2
0 0

phree stuph

by chrism3667＠yahoo.com

reply offlist hosers Logitech Scanman Handheld scanner user manual a bunch of caddies, prolly 20+ generic Mac ADB trackball Wordstar Reference Manual for 2000 plus release 3, I may have others in this series, no disks/images I don't think though MCS-8080/8085 Family User's Manual Adobe Streamline, boxed, 5 1/4" disks, I won't vouch for their integrity DBase III Plus Command Performance Series (M$ Press?) The New Wordstar Customizing Guide Analyzing Broadband Networks, 3rd Ed. Soundblaster Midi Kit, boxed, disk and cable AS/400 User's Manual, wire bound The Modem Reference, 2nd Ed. Brady pubs. 3 non-functional Commodore Plus 4's (I think, the brown squarish ones). chips missing. Basically doorstops or parts. I might want to keep one, don't know... *these are moldy, but readable* PC Tools Deluxe Hard Drive Back Up PC Tools Data Recovery and Dos Utilities PC Tools Data Recovery and Utilities If any interest, postage must be payed in advance by snail mail. I don't have paypal and don't want to bother with it right now. If there's no interest after ~1 week, I throw it all in the trash. Muahahahahahahaha ____________________________________________________________________________________Got a little couch potato? Check out fun summer activities for kids. http://search.yahoo.com/search?fr=oni_on_mail&p=summer+activities+for+kids&…

19 years, 3 months

1
0
0 0

interesting classic video game anniversary story

by innfoclassics＠gmail.com

This is an interesting read and some pics of the very first video games. http://www.1up.com/do/feature?cId=3159462 Found the link on slashdot. Paxton -- Paxton Hoag Astoria, OR USA

19 years, 3 months

4
4
0 0

opinion needed

by chrism3667＠yahoo.com

a very nice man is offering to send me (2) 5170s replete w/5175 monitors and the associated PGA graphics boards. These were used in the "common area" at MIT. As such, do these represent any particular value? I have an AT already, but these are seemingly more interesting having dwelt w/i the hallowed halls of an illustrious technical university. Any thoughts... ____________________________________________________________________________________ Never miss an email again! Yahoo! Toolbar alerts you the instant new Mail arrives. http://tools.search.yahoo.com/toolbar/features/mail/

19 years, 3 months

3
4
0 0

Rainbow on eBay and looking...

by jba＠sdf.lonestar.org

The Rainbow does operate at standard TV rates, i beleive. The monochrome signal is actually a straight composite signal, meaning, if you build an adapter, you can connect any old composite monitor to it. I used a Commodore 1084 (I think that's the model...) for a while. One of the oddest features was that you could switch to European rates at any time through the bios. Just press F3 while the system was on to get to the Set-Up screen. One of the flags was 'Frequency' and it presented two options: 50Hz and 60Hz. Just flip the flag depending on your continent, and you're all done. The high-res graphics mode was 800x240, which does seem a bit wide. Maybe the engineers predicted the coming of widescreen monitors... ;) Low-res graphics mode was a more normal ratio at 384x240. The Rainbow in the auction looks nice, but there is no color monitor in the pictures. Is the seller sure that he has a color monitor? jba at sdf.lonestar.org SDF Public Access UNIX System - http://sdf.lonestar.org

19 years, 3 months

3
2
0 0

Televideo TS-802 also in Canada

by chrism3667＠yahoo.com

http://cgi.ebay.com/Vintage-1982-Televideo-TS-802- CP-M-Z80-PC-Computer_W0QQitemZ250077921603QQihZ015 QQcategoryZ4193QQrdZ1QQssPageNameZWD1VQQcmdZViewItem ____________________________________________________________________________________Ready for the edge of your seat? Check out tonight's top picks on Yahoo! TV. http://tv.yahoo.com/

19 years, 3 months

3
3
0 0

General SCSI+ DLT speed questions

by james＠attfield.co.uk

> Date: Tue, 15 May 2007 13:07:03 -0500 > From: Jim Leonard <trixter at oldskool.org> > Subject: Re: General SCSI+DLT speed questions > To: General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts > <cctalk at classiccmp.org> > Message-ID: <4649F6C7.4010402 at oldskool.org> > Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed > On the system I had it hooked up to (a 933MHz Linux box with hardware > RAID) keeping the drives fed was no problem. > > Anyway, I'm happy to see that, although seeming to need a cleaning tape > every 4 loads or so, they function as expected :-) > -- > Jim Leonard (trixter at oldskool.org) http://www.oldskool.org/ The cleaning light can also indicate media problems, not just head cleaning time. I have a few tapes which frequently trigger the head-cleaning light even though recently cleaned. Jim

19 years, 3 months

1
0
0 0

3.5" Altair CP/M

by grant＠stockly.com

I have a tarbell floppy controller card that has been rewired to access 3.5" disks using a standard PC 3.5" disk drive. I have 3 disks that the Altair can boot off of and read, but my windows computer can't do anything with them. I've tried rawread.exe and diskinfo.exe and they both choke on the disk. I assumed that if a disk could be written with the standard 3.5" disk drive on the tarbell card then it should also be read on the same drive connected to a modern IBM compatible. The disks are 720K style, they don't have the high density hole. I was hoping that these disks would be an easy way to move data to and from the Altair. The version of CP/M is 1.4. What could be missing? If the bitrate is fixed, then is CP/M not writing standard sectors? Rawread says "Address not found" and diskinfo says the drive is not ready. Grant

19 years, 3 months

6
5
0 0

Disk Nicolet 1280 spectrometer

by mikeee＠tiscali.it

Good morning, excuse me for the trouble, have I seen a discussion on a forum and have I seen that her posside it "Nicolet 1280", do I have the necessity to restore mine "Nicolet 1280", don't I have the floppy disk that allows the operation anymore, is it possible to send me by mail the packet of the softwares? I Thank you in advance. Dr. Michele Marongiu

19 years, 3 months

1
0
0 0

General SCSI+DLT speed questions

by trixter＠oldskool.org

(Hopefully this is on-topic since the technologies and hardware are over a decade old) Background: I rescued two DLT 7000 drives this weekend (one Quantum, one SUN) and hooked them up to an Adaptec 29160 HBA. The Adaptec has an external 50-pin (Ultra 2?) connector, so I used a 50-to-68 pin (Ultra wide SCSI?) cable to connect the HBA to the first DLT drive, and a 68-pin to connect both DLT drives together. It took a bit of configuring in the Adaptec BIOS (had all targets set to U160 16-bit) but after some sane reductions they both were recognized and speed was set to 10MB/s. My concern is that it takes nearly two hours to fill a DLT IV (35GB) tape, regardless of which drive I use or HBA settings I configure. The Quantum drive averages 4168 kB/s; the SUN drive is slower and averages 3355 kB/s. Are these times normal? With such large capacities per tape, I would have assumed they could be filled faster... They are reporting a 10MB/s speed, why am I getting only 4MB/s? Another question: Is it normal for DLT drives to go faster if compression is disabled? I thought the point of hardware compression was that it came without cost. I'm running a test now, but was curious to know if other drives were known for being "slower" with compression on. -- 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/

19 years, 3 months

8
10
0 0

Anyone know the MTI "THORN" board?

by oldcpu＠rogerwilco.org

The recent discussion on tape backup devices has been timely, to say the least. I just picked up an Exabyte 8505XL 8mm tape drive, hoping to scan a ziplock bag-full of 8mm tapes that were included in a pickup of several Qbus PDP-11s and uVAXen last year. Included with the drive is a bare board that rumor has it came from a Micro Technology 'Liberator' tape backup subsystem. The interesting part about this board is that it is also rumored to be a DSSI-to-SCSI adapter. If true then I just maybe, sorta, kinda, might have a way to connect SCSI hard disks and/or a CD-ROM drive to my DECsystem 5400, which would be very, very nice. Unfortunately, I have no docs or technical information on this board, or the Liberator. Nothing turns up on bitsavers.org, Manx, the MTI website, or a general search of Google. I have tried to query MTI's support group via email, but no reply for a week, and I'm guessing that whoever received that email just took me for a crank collector of old comptuers! ;) While this board isn't really a 'classic' item by any means, nor even the DECsystem 5400, I'd still appreciate any information that anyone might have on this. It is marked "Model: THORN / T/A: 640036-007 REV M / S/A: 640036-001 REV K" and is built around a 68C000 @ 16Mhz, a couple NCR 53C700 SCSI drivers, 3 (I think) AMD 29c983 bus exchangers (whatever they are) and a bunch of logic, and two 68-pin SCA-like connectors on the SCSI side. You can see an image of the board on my mystery boards page at: http://www.rogerwilco.org/mystery_boards/#MTI_THORN If I can sort out the power connection, I might start experimenting a bit through what appears to be an on-board RS-232 port. The big question is: can I really use this to connect at least one SCSI hard disk or CDROM to my system? Thanks! Jared

19 years, 3 months

2
1
0 0

CBM Plus/4 sluggish keyboard

by julesrichardsonuk＠yahoo.co.uk

I'm leaning toward the idea of offloading my Plus/4 as it's sat in the attic for years and I've never got around to *doing* anything with it. :-( It works, but some of the keys are a bit sluggish - are there any gotchas involved in dismantling the keyboard in order to give contacts a clean? (I just want to check I'm not going to be faced with tiny springs going every which way if I unscrew the backplate :-) Also, am I right in thinking that the tape unit was an optional extra? I don't have one [1], but looking at the boxed plus/4 on ebay at the moment, it doesn't seem to include one either in the standard package. [1] I *did* have a broken one once, but it's either seriously buried or I tossed it out long ago.

19 years, 3 months

4
7
0 0

Looking for a dead machine

by ploopster＠gmail.com

Hi. I'm looking for a dead IBM 5155 Portable Personal Computer. The only conditions are that the power supply, monitor and floppy drive need to work. None of the motherboard-based devices (including the CPU) need to work. A canvas carrying case would be a nice plus. Anyone have a line on one? Peace... Sridhar

19 years, 3 months

1
0
0 0

Harwell (was RE: A local computer history group for my area . . .)

by roger.holmes＠microspot.co.uk

> From: "Rod Smallwood" <RodSmallwood at mail.ediconsulting.co.uk> > > Well now let me see now I left School for College in 1964. My major > subjects were Industrial Electronics and Computing. > > We were taken to Harwell Research centre to see 'The' Computer. It was > an ICL 1900 series system. It took up three floors of a substantial > building. Input on the top floor (80col Cards and papertape). > Processing > and storage on the middle floor and output on the ground floor. Had to > be that way or the vibration from the line printers would have shaken > the building to pieces. > > I remember it was called Atlas and even had an operating system called > George III. So that's just over 40 years ago. In computer terms > certainly vintage if not veteran. Hi Rod, I think you have mixed up two different systems. The Ferranti Atlas (later ICT/ICL Atlas) was in a custom built building, I understand the CPU occupied two floors, and yes there was one at Harwell I've been told. I would expect that Harwell also had at least one ICT/ICL 1900, and that would indeed run the George 3 multi access system. I did my computer science degree at Queen Mary College (University of London) and we had a ICL 1905E, upgraded to a 1904S which ran George 2 batch processing and the Maximop multi access system. Later I used a 1906 (S?) at the Royal Aircraft Establishment and it used either George 3 or George 4, and I was relieved to find that all the Maximop commands worked on it. When I was in the sixth form we visited the computer centre at the NatWest tower - huge floors - IIRC, one floor had nothing but IBM CPUs (probably 370s - this was 1969) and other static electronics, one floor had all the storage - magnetic tapes, discs, and juke box like machines which picked up strips of magnetic tape. Another floor had the hard peripherals - card readers, line printers and a massive document reader with a curved 'retina' on top about 20 feet across where all the optical sensors were. Another floor had all the cheque reading machines, the operators were moaning about people stapling their cheques and the staples getting caught in the works. At that time a random 2% of the cheques were also processed manually for quality assurance purposes, and presumably to prevent fraud. That day was the first I heard of the fraction of a penny (or cent) scam, where all interest payments were rounded down and all the fractions of a penny credited to the programmer's account. The same day I visited the University of London's central computer centre (as opposed to the individual college's private ones). They had a CDC 7600 and one operator was using a terminal to send messages to chat up a girl operating one of the remote stations which fed the 7600 with punched card data and printed the results. A very early form of Internet chat room you might say. Roger Owner of a ICT 1301 built 1962

19 years, 3 months

1
0
0 0

Sun 2/120 chassis

by bear＠typewritten.org

Howdy, guys. I'm working on restoring a Sun 2/120. My particular machine appears to have been a diskless workstation (no storage controllers). I think I have enough spares to give it a local disk and QIC-11 drive, but there is no obvious way to mount a drive of any type in the upper part of the chassis. There's a cutout on the front panel, so I know you were at least supposed to be able to put a tape drive up there. Can somebody draw me a picture of how things are supposed to look with drives in the cabinet? I guess if worse came to worst I could attach one of the 511 shoeboxes, but I'd need a panel kit for my multibus SCSI controller. Also: I guess this is a long shot, but I would also like to find a Sun-2 keyboard and mouse for this machine. I'll pay some money for it, if somebody has one they would be willing to part with. Thanks! ok bear

19 years, 3 months

4
5
0 0

Rainbow on eBay and looking...

by jfoust＠threedee.com

At 08:38 AM 5/15/2007, Ethan Dicks wrote: >Babylon 5 used hopped-up Amiga 2000s w/68040s and Toasters and >Lightwave for their first season, but I think they switched the >rendering platform to Lightwave on Pentium-class machines for the >remainder of the show. Don't know if they continued to use Toasters >for laying down the rendered images to tape or not. As I recall, they all used non-video / all-digital methods of laying down the rendered frames. I remember writing an Abekas utility at one point for Newtek for someone at the Post Group, I think it read and wrote Abekas-format data to an Exabyte 8500. Back then there were video recorders that could cleanly lay down single frames of video to tape. They may also have simply 'tar'd rendered frames to Exabytes and delivered them to a post-production service, who rendered them to high-quality video output. - John

19 years, 3 months

1
0
0 0

Giant LED Displays - Re: Motion video on an IBM PC/XT - Methodology

by ajp166＠bellatlantic.net

> >Subject: Giant LED Displays - Re: Motion video on an IBM PC/XT - Methodology > From: Grant Stockly <grant at stockly.com> > Date: Mon, 14 May 2007 21:53:37 -0800 > To: "General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts" <cctalk at classiccmp.org> > >At 07:40 PM 5/13/2007, you wrote: >>About 3 years ago I announced to the list a little something I'd done with >>an IBM PC/XT with CGA that was unconventional for the platform >>(full-motion video using stock hardware). I recently gave a talk at a >>hacker convention on the complete methodology of how I did it, and the >>video of that talk is now available here: >> >>http://www.archive.org/details/8088CorruptionExplained > >This whole discussion has reminded me of an unfinished project of mine, a >192x99, 19,008 pixel LED display. I have not manufactured the driver >circuits, but they have been designed. > >The display is organized/refreshed as 11x1728. 8x11 characters look very >good to me, so I designed it to handle 24 wide by 9 high characters. > >Here are pictures of it: >Front: http://www.stockly.com/images2/060129-LED_Display_Front_2718.jpg >Back: http://www.stockly.com/images2/060129-LED_Display_Back_2716.jpg >Weight of all the >legs: http://www.stockly.com/images2/060129-Weight_of_39584_Legs_2696.jpg > >As you can see from the pictures it is as big as a couch. : ) > >I built it in the spirit of blinkin lights for my Altair. 19008 LEDs is >2376 bytes, 71280 bytes a second at 30 frames. The altair should be able >to handle this...??? Any ideas? Thats faster than SD 8" FDC data rate! Thats pushing an 8080 hard. >I would really love if it could handle a shade or two of grey. : ) I'm >considering now building a driver out of an FPGA. It would be able to >handle a fast refresh rate and frame rate in order to get grey scales. I >was thinking 4 shades would be enough. The FPGA might even be able to act >as the dual port SRAM for the bitmap display? Any ideas how I should >proceed? : ) You want the CPU doing as little as possible. If at all possible the display is refreshed by DMA from local or other memory and the CPU is there to update/alter the display. >You can find my thread on this on USENET called "Wall of RAM". I have >copied it here: >http://www.stockly.com/forums/showthread.php?t=21 > >Grant ;) if I were to do something on that grand a scale I'd consider a LED billboard of VDM-1 (160x512) (roughly 30"x100"). Of course it would have to use green leds. Allison

19 years, 3 months

2
1
0 0

Fairchild MB8116E == 4116 ?

by adamg＠pobox.com

MB8116 is a Fujitsu part, not Fairchild. Per the 1982 databook it crosses to AM9016, F4116, HM4716A, 2117, M5K4116, MK4116, MCM4116, MM5290, TMS4116, TMM416. -- Adam

19 years, 3 months

1
0
0 0

A twist on emulation...

by gtoal＠gtoal.com

> From: Allison <ajp166 at bellatlantic.net> > The links do not works from here. I get an operation timed out > error. > Allison It's my home site on a RoadRunner cable connection, and the cable modem locks up if there is excess traffic. Doesn't happen often, but judging by my web logs I was being overloaded by coincidental spidering from 4 different search engines at once. It's back online now. Had to wait until I got home to reset the cable device. Some time this summer, history.dcs.ed.ac.uk should be relocated to a properly hosted machine in Edinburgh. Oh yes - that reminds me - if there are any Edinburgh people here, we're organising a reunion in late June. Mail me for info. Graham

19 years, 3 months

1
0
0 0

Color Macintosh boot floppy?

by roger.holmes＠microspot.co.uk

> > Can anyone help me with creating a boot floppy for a Color Macintosh? > I have a machine whose hard disk died and I'm trying to replace it > but I don't have a boot floppy containing DiskTools to format the new > (Apple) hard drive. I *do* have an install CD for System 7.5 but it > doesn't seem to want to boot on the Color Classic even if I hold "C" > down when I start up the Mac. I'd be happy to pay for shipping and > something extra for the effort involved in making the DiskTools boot > disk. I think at one time you had to hold down both the C and D keys to boot from CD on the old Macs. I don't have a floppy drive any more so cannot help there, even though I have just about all the Apple developer CDs ever issued, including floppy images of the various systems.

19 years, 3 months

5
6
0 0

Motion video on an IBM PC/XT - Methodology

by trixter＠oldskool.org

About 3 years ago I announced to the list a little something I'd done with an IBM PC/XT with CGA that was unconventional for the platform (full-motion video using stock hardware). I recently gave a talk at a hacker convention on the complete methodology of how I did it, and the video of that talk is now available here: http://www.archive.org/details/8088CorruptionExplained Just thought some people here would be curious to see how it was accomplished. While there are several versions of the video to choose from, if you have the bandwidth you should grab the MPEG-2 version (big) because it's DVD quality and best preserves some of the detail necessary to properly appreciate the piece. (In fact, it looks best burnt to a DVD and watched on a television proper.) -- 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/

19 years, 3 months

3
4
0 0

The Last of The Line

by RodSmallwood＠mail.ediconsulting.co.uk

Hi When preserving something you go for the best example you can find. Even so in this case there was no choice involved. I want to keep as original as I can a a PDP-11 from the era when I was working with them. Speed is not an issue and a slower (but working)DEC KDJ11 board would satisfy my criteria for originality. All of your points are well made. One is very important the KDJ11-EB has its memory on the CPU board. Are you saying some models of the KDJ11 do not have their memory on the CPU board? Is it a case of unpopulated sockets and add memory or is it no sockets and no memory? Reading from the factory label the 11/94 was confgured thus Slot 1 M8981 (Now sadly empty) Slot 2 M7914 Slot 3 Empty Slot 4 M8191 KTJ11-B Slot 5 M7547 TUK50-BB Slot 6 Empty Slot 7 Empty Slot 8 Empty Slot 9 M9302 & M9713 So excluding the expensive options can anybody say exactly which board I need. Full module and DEC code to me please. For example only say M8980-AA KDJ11-BB I must get a list of the KDJ11 boards. Iv'e seen one somewhere. Rod -----Original Message----- From: cctech-bounces at classiccmp.org [mailto:cctech-bounces at classiccmp.org] On Behalf Of Jerome H. Fine Sent: 14 May 2007 03:16 To: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts Subject: Re: The Last of The Line >Patrick Finnegan wrote: >>On Sunday 13 May 2007 06:28, Rod Smallwood wrote: > > >>Hi All >>Now for my dilemma. Before checking the cost of a KDJ11-EB you are >>advised to make sure pacemaker batteries are fully charged and any >>blood pressue medication has been taken. Take it from me the prices >>are so high they need to join the astronaut corps! >> >..which is probably why your systems were missing the CPU boards when >yo got them... > >>I would like to get at least one of these historic systems running >>again. Suggestions please!! >> >It'd be a lot less expensive to turn it into an 11/84, the CPU for that >(some models of KDJ11-B) should be much less expensive, then just add >memory. :) > Jerome Fine replies: Your suggestion might not be possible. I once had the box and boards for an 11/94. I really can't remember, but there might not have been any slots for the memory. In any case, I am extremely curious. What goal(s) will you achieve? Do you want to run software faster? Is your only goal to have the fastest PDP-11 that DEC ever produced? Note that a number of other companies produced much faster PDP-11 CPU boards. Note that I very much appreciate that from a hardware point of view your goal is extremely gratifying - probably even more than my software goals. I am just curious what your goals are. One of my goals when I run using PDP-11 software is to run as fast as possible. At present I run at about 15 times a PDP-11/93. Very shortly, I hope to be upgrading my hardware and be able to run at 100 times a PDP-11/93 along with the availability of having an extra GigaByte of spare memory for data that may also allow a co-processor to perform CPU intensive calculations. About 20 years ago, I was using a PDP-11/23+ on a system with 4 MB of memory which included a co-processor that used the same memory as the PDP-11/23+. Any finally, although my experience is with an 11/93 on the Qbus, I found that there is very little difference between an 11/93 and an 11/83 as far as CPU speed is concerned. That would also be likely to apply to the difference between an 11/94 and an 11/84. Basically, I suggest that the only difference in speed is due to the clock rate of 20 MHz on the 11/93 board and the 18 MHz clock rate (or crystal if you prefer) on the 11/83 board. Otherwise, the PMI memory on the 11/83 is probably about as fast as the on board memory on the 11/93. As for the actual CPU, almost all M8190 quad CPU boards or KDJ11-Bx (maybe all) allow the use of PMI memory which is the primary reason the 11/83 is faster than the 11/73. The other reason is the 18 MHz clock rate on the 11/83 as opposed to the 15 MHz clock rate on the 11/73. So if anyone has a M8190 CPU with non-PMI memory and can find some PMI memory, then as long as there are ABCD slots available for all of the memory and CPU boards, the system will run much faster with PMI memory. Sincerely yours, Jerome Fine -- If you attempted to send a reply and the original e-mail address has been discontinued due a high volume of junk e-mail, then the semi-permanent e-mail address can be obtained by replacing the four characters preceding the 'at' with the four digits of the current year.

19 years, 3 months

4
5
0 0

Manuals being scanned

by adamg＠pobox.com

Since no one seems to have said this yet: Thanks for making an effort to preserve these documents. -- Adam

19 years, 3 months

1
0
0 0

looking for System III/PC-UX for NEC APC III

by chrism3667＠yahoo.com

If you don't have a clue what I'm talking about, I guess you wouldn't have it then, huh? ____________________________________________________________________________________Take the Internet to Go: Yahoo!Go puts the Internet in your pocket: mail, news, photos & more. http://mobile.yahoo.com/go?refer=1GNXIC

19 years, 3 months

2
2
0 0

Subject: Old electrolytic capacitors (IME-86s calculator)

by ed＠ed-thelen.org

Message: 12 Date: Mon, 14 May 2007 09:32:35 -0500 From: Jules Richardson <julesrichardsonuk at yahoo.co.uk> Subject: Old electrolytic capacitors (IME-86s calculator) To: General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts <cctalk at classiccmp.org> Message-ID: <46487303.8040805 at yahoo.co.uk> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-15; format=flowed ... > They're in the power supply of an IME-86s calculator and > are decidedly past their best :-) (At least four of the ten > in the PSU are showing signs of major leakage) I'm the power supply guy in a large restoration effort. http://www.ed-thelen.org/1401Project/1401RestorationPage.html http://www.ed-thelen.org/1401Project/TricksForCapacitors.html Fortunately, there were only linear supplies, (suitable switching devices not yet available for switching power supplies - another interesting game :-)) The machines (and currents) were large and most electrolytics were the screw connector types. After considerable experience, and using an ESR (Effective Series Resistance) unit to verify performance of the re-formed electrolytics, I went to replacing only those capacitors with "major" leakage, and testing ripple for "excessive" and that everything was "cool enough" when power supply running rated voltage and current. > The rest of the machine *looks* healthy enough; once > I've replaced the electrolytics is there any good reason > not to slowly run the system up on a variac > (rather than giving it full AC from the start)? A vital thing to watch out for in this business is motors. Most types of motors depend on sufficient source voltage to get started and generating "back EMF (voltage)" to limit current. I was using the variac technique on an old key punch when we began to hear a loud hummmm - the capacitor start motor was not moving and getting warm :-((( Interestingly, we have not had to "re-form" any capacitors on capacitor start motors!! ?? I have no clue why. One would reasonably expect some effort there. Enjoy :-))

19 years, 3 months

4
3
0 0

RM Nimbs

by chrism3667＠yahoo.com

I didn't know the 'bus took cartridges. How many different kinds were there? Besides the Peanut, the only other PC I'm aware of that used them was the Mindset. Currently I'm missing a huge mega box of docs and stuph for the 'set, and I'm about ready to burst out in tears. ____________________________________________________________________________________ We won't tell. Get more on shows you hate to love (and love to hate): Yahoo! TV's Guilty Pleasures list. http://tv.yahoo.com/collections/265

19 years, 3 months

1
0
0 0

A twist on emulation...

by ajp166＠bellatlantic.net

The links do not works from here. I get an operation timed out error. Allison > >Subject: A twist on emulation... > From: "Graham Toal" <gtoal at gtoal.com> > Date: Mon, 14 May 2007 14:18:26 -0500 > To: cctech at classiccmp.org > >I took a pdp15 compiler and a pdp15 emulator this weekend and >hacked them together in a way such that the compiler outputs >what looks like a windows executable that you can simply run >like a normal DOS (x86 DOS, not the other one) command-line >program. The emulator is embedded in the .EXE along with the >pdp15 code. > >It lets you have the experience of writing in an early 1970's >language for the PDP15 much as if you'd been on the machine >itself, but without the hassle of managing an emulator. > >The language is an early version of Imp, which predates the >more common Imp77 or Imp80 versions; in fact it is actually >much closer to the original Atlas Autocode than it is to the >final versions of Imp. A significant feature of the language is >that it allows embedded PDP15 assembly language. > >Unfortunately I don't have a document describing the early language, >though I do have a few example programs you could look at to >pick it up from. > >The windows-ported binary of the compiler is here: > > http://history.dcs.ed.ac.uk/archive/languages/imp-pdp15/windows_port/ > >see the readme.txt for manual installation instructions. > >I'll put up the source of the system and some working example imp15 >source files in a day or two. > >meanwhile related files are: > >http://history.dcs.ed.ac.uk/archive/languages/imp-pdp15/EMULATOR.txt >http://history.dcs.ed.ac.uk/archive/languages/imp-pdp15/CompilerOutput.htm > >http://history.dcs.ed.ac.uk/archive/languages/imp-pdp15/hdcomp-emul.i15.html >http://history.dcs.ed.ac.uk/archive/languages/imp-pdp15/takeon.i15.html >http://history.dcs.ed.ac.uk/archive/languages/imp-pdp15/gram.txt > >http://history.dcs.ed.ac.uk/archive/languages/imp-pdp15/IMP15SYS.TXT > >a trivial hello world program looks like this: > >%begin > %print %text 'Welcome to the 1970''s!' >%end %of %programme > >save it as hello.i15 and then execute these commands: > >imp15 hello >link15 hello >hello > >Here are some more example programs; they're not likely to compile >or run, they're just for looking at to learn the language: > >http://history.dcs.ed.ac.uk/archive/languages/hal/7502/hal7502.i15 >http://history.dcs.ed.ac.uk/archive/languages/hal/interdata/hal70.i15 >http://history.dcs.ed.ac.uk/archive/os/pdp915/edit15.txt >http://history.dcs.ed.ac.uk/archive/os/pdp915/decode.txt > >The original pdp15 operating system (not needed for this compiler) >is here: >http://history.dcs.ed.ac.uk/archive/os/pdp915/ > >The operating system was basically a run-time environment for >the Imp compiler. > >Graham

19 years, 3 months

1
0
0 0

The Last of The Line

by RodSmallwood＠mail.ediconsulting.co.uk

Ah Ha ... Thanks and the memory card would be a ???? Rod -----Original Message----- From: cctech-bounces at classiccmp.org [mailto:cctech-bounces at classiccmp.org] On Behalf Of Roger Ivie Sent: 14 May 2007 21:02 To: General Discussion: On-Topic Posts Only Subject: RE: The Last of The Line On Mon, 14 May 2007, Rod Smallwood wrote: > When preserving something you go for the best example you can find. > Even so in this case there was no choice involved. I want to keep as > original as I can a a PDP-11 from the era when I was working with them. > Speed is not an issue and a slower (but working)DEC KDJ11 board would > satisfy my criteria for originality. I've never met an 11/94, so I'm no expert. My understanding of the situation was the 11/94 was built when it became possible to put all of the memory on the CPU board. The 11/84 used a CPU board without memory. The memory was in the slots between the CPU board and the UNIBUS adapter, communicating with the CPU board using a private memory interconnect protocol. I don't recall whether there was an additional ribbon cable across the top, like the MicroVAX II. I'm pretty certain (but, have been wrong before) that the KDJ11-BB would be the 11/83 or 11/84 CPU; they used the same CPU board, differing in the backplane and whether the UNIBUS adapter was present. -- roger ivie rivie at ridgenet.net

19 years, 3 months

1
0
0 0

Lonely Mac..

by robert＠irrelevant.com

I'm mainly a BBC Micro person, but thanks to the local freecycle list, i'm now up to two Apple Macintosh II base units - latest is a IIsi. Unfortunately those are all I've got .. no monitors, no keyboards, no mice. nothing.. These are ADB mouse/kb, so not something I have already.. I've never used a Mac before .. so... has anybody, preferably in the UK, got any spare peripherals going cheep/free so I can at least test them, see what all the fuss was about :-) Cheers, Rob

19 years, 3 months

4
3
0 0

A local computer history group for my area . . .

by dgreelish＠mac.com

>From: "Ethan Dicks" <ethan.dicks at gmail.com> >Yeah... the definition of "old" tends to be quite subjective, as in >"prior to what was current when _I_ got started with foo." > >I tend to think of "old" as 100% TTL designs, i.e. - >pre-microprocessor, but that's because I got my start with the 6502 >and 1802, then later came upon M-series DEC logic-based machines (like >the PDP-8/L). Well, what I'm trying to do is essentially create a mini VCF that meets each month, so at least for now, the rules are pretty loose. I'll see how many show up this Saturday, then in a month and so on. There is a much smaller potential pool of members on a local level, but I have hopes! Go north-east Florida, we can do it. I'll just mostly stick to the ten year rule for now. I just hope to have a lot of fun and see and "play" with some cool machines I haven't seen that much, or at all. Perhaps a swap meet twice a year would be great too. Best, David David Greelish classiccomputing.com The Classic Computing Podcast Home of Computer History Nostalgia Stan Veit's History of the Personal Computer Audio Book Podcast

19 years, 3 months

1
0
0 0

A twist on emulation...

by gtoal＠gtoal.com

I took a pdp15 compiler and a pdp15 emulator this weekend and hacked them together in a way such that the compiler outputs what looks like a windows executable that you can simply run like a normal DOS (x86 DOS, not the other one) command-line program. The emulator is embedded in the .EXE along with the pdp15 code. It lets you have the experience of writing in an early 1970's language for the PDP15 much as if you'd been on the machine itself, but without the hassle of managing an emulator. The language is an early version of Imp, which predates the more common Imp77 or Imp80 versions; in fact it is actually much closer to the original Atlas Autocode than it is to the final versions of Imp. A significant feature of the language is that it allows embedded PDP15 assembly language. Unfortunately I don't have a document describing the early language, though I do have a few example programs you could look at to pick it up from. The windows-ported binary of the compiler is here: http://history.dcs.ed.ac.uk/archive/languages/imp-pdp15/windows_port/ see the readme.txt for manual installation instructions. I'll put up the source of the system and some working example imp15 source files in a day or two. meanwhile related files are: http://history.dcs.ed.ac.uk/archive/languages/imp-pdp15/EMULATOR.txt http://history.dcs.ed.ac.uk/archive/languages/imp-pdp15/CompilerOutput.htm http://history.dcs.ed.ac.uk/archive/languages/imp-pdp15/hdcomp-emul.i15.html http://history.dcs.ed.ac.uk/archive/languages/imp-pdp15/takeon.i15.html http://history.dcs.ed.ac.uk/archive/languages/imp-pdp15/gram.txt http://history.dcs.ed.ac.uk/archive/languages/imp-pdp15/IMP15SYS.TXT a trivial hello world program looks like this: %begin %print %text 'Welcome to the 1970''s!' %end %of %programme save it as hello.i15 and then execute these commands: imp15 hello link15 hello hello Here are some more example programs; they're not likely to compile or run, they're just for looking at to learn the language: http://history.dcs.ed.ac.uk/archive/languages/hal/7502/hal7502.i15 http://history.dcs.ed.ac.uk/archive/languages/hal/interdata/hal70.i15 http://history.dcs.ed.ac.uk/archive/os/pdp915/edit15.txt http://history.dcs.ed.ac.uk/archive/os/pdp915/decode.txt The original pdp15 operating system (not needed for this compiler) is here: http://history.dcs.ed.ac.uk/archive/os/pdp915/ The operating system was basically a run-time environment for the Imp compiler. Graham

19 years, 3 months

1
0
0 0

A local computer history group for my area . . .

by RodSmallwood＠mail.ediconsulting.co.uk

Well now let me see now I left School for College in 1964. My major subjects were Industrial Electronics and Computing. We were taken to Harwell Research centre to see 'The' Computer. It was an ICL 1900 series system. It took up three floors of a substantial building. Input on the top floor (80col Cards and papertape). Processing and storage on the middle floor and output on the ground floor. Had to be that way or the vibration from the line printers would have shaken the building to pieces. I remember it was called Atlas and even had an operating system called George III. So that's just over 40 years ago. In computer terms certainly vintage if not veteran. Rod Smallwood -----Original Message----- From: cctech-bounces at classiccmp.org [mailto:cctech-bounces at classiccmp.org] On Behalf Of Ethan Dicks Sent: 14 May 2007 16:39 To: General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts Subject: Re: A local computer history group for my area . . . On 5/14/07, Gordon JC Pearce <gordon at gjcp.net> wrote: > Funny, I don't think my PDP-11 is *that* old. It seems to date from > around 1986. I can't call a computer that was built while I was doing > my 'O' grades "old", I just can't... Yeah... the definition of "old" tends to be quite subjective, as in "prior to what was current when _I_ got started with foo." I tend to think of "old" as 100% TTL designs, i.e. - pre-microprocessor, but that's because I got my start with the 6502 and 1802, then later came upon M-series DEC logic-based machines (like the PDP-8/L). -ethan

19 years, 3 months

1
0
0 0

Subject: Re: Manuals being scanned

by gtoal＠gtoal.com

>> >Google is particularly bad about fetching documents over and over >> >again. >> >> mmm... any evidence they are using OCR to index pdf's? >> >> of all the places I'd *like* them to OCR, it's bitsavers. >> >> in fact, mmmmm, I'd like to connect the two dots. bitsavers >> + google (and, and/all mit, standford, cmu, ... software archives) >> >> something to start mentioning at various fund raising >> cocktail parties :-) > > To be clear - the problem is that Google consumes bandwidth by > repeatedly downloading static documents, verses downloading dynamic > content whose index status might be new or dirty? Guys, if you want bitkeeper OCR'd, have you tried just *asking* Google if they'd do it? They are scanning and OCR'ing huge amounts of paper all the time, working with various libraries. As far as I know, they're doing this for free, because they want all the world's data... It wouldn't hurt to ask... anyone have any contacts at Google? Also, the Internet Archive will accept a DVD by mail of your archives if spidering is too expensive. I gave them a DVD of the Edinburgh Computer History Project last year. (Not sure if the contents are visible online anywhere, but at least they're in the archives and reasonably safe against me trashing my hard drive again...) G

19 years, 3 months

1
0
0 0

hp 9153c

by mikep＠triadcomputer.com

Hi Phillip, My company TRIAD sells HP legacy and other IT hardware. I came across your name going through some old User Group threads. Do you still require legacy HP or other IT hardware quotes? TRIAD offers expert techs in HP, Cisco, IBM and Liebert and we'd like to be a vendor for you if appropriate. Cheers, Mike Mike Pisciotta Hardware Sales TRIAD Computer Connection Office: 425-402-1700 Cell: 831-566-9270 Fax: 425-402-1777 mikep at triadcomputer.com

19 years, 3 months

1
0
0 0

Wanted: National Semi VS100 (phoneme generator?) info

by wh.sudbrink＠verizon.net

I went ahead and reverse engineered the TTL on the NETRONICS ELECTRIC MOUTH, so I have a good idea of the addresses, etc. that it uses. The main component on the board is the above mentioned VS100, a 40-pin chip that seems to be (along with 4 ROMs) the heart of the board. Anybody have any info on this guy? Thanks, Bill No virus found in this outgoing message. Checked by AVG Free Edition. Version: 7.5.467 / Virus Database: 269.7.0/803 - Release Date: 5/13/2007 12:17 PM

19 years, 3 months

2
1
0 0

The Plato system

by silent700＠gmail.com

When contemplating spending some fairly serious coin on that IBM system earlier this week, a friend asked "which systems/machines out there would you pay 'real' money for?" Since I'm not a Big Iron collector, and I'm used to spending no more than $10-20 on any given piece, that's a fair question for me. Maybe a Symbolics Lisp machine. Maybe an original Sun machine, or even a 2-series. A Xerox Alto. Historical stuff like that. Then I remembered when my high school class took a trip down to the U of I at Champaign-Urbana for "Engineering Open House" and I was sat in front of this monstrous wooden terminal with beguiling orange vector graphics. Only many years later did I learn what it was, and where it fit in the timeline of computing (thanks in part to Ted Nelson's "Computer Lib/Dream Machines" books.) So...who has one? What's become of the remaining infrastructure? I recently used a Windows Plato client to connect to some descendant of the system, but I asssume even the back end was running on modern hardware then, and not old Data General equipment. -j -- Retrocomputing and collecting in the Chicago area: http://chiclassiccomp.org

19 years, 3 months

15
38
0 0

looking for TU56

by jack.rubin＠ameritech.net

I'll never know unless I ask - does anyone have a TU56 for sale or trade? Ideally in the $10/lb range, or trade for an Altair 8800. I'm in the Chicago area, will be driving to VCF East and Midwest in the next few months, happy to drive a couple hundred extra miles to retrieve said tape drive. Shipping is a bit frightening, but will certainly be considered. The drive will be interfaced to my 8/E, most likely with a TD8E interface, but a good or restorable unit in any configuration will do! TIA, Jack No virus found in this outgoing message. Checked by AVG Free Edition. Version: 7.5.467 / Virus Database: 269.7.0/801 - Release Date: 5/12/2007 6:40 PM

19 years, 3 months

1
0
0 0

The Last of The Line

by RodSmallwood＠mail.ediconsulting.co.uk

Hi All For reasons that I will not go into here I have most of four PDP-11/94's. The 94 was the last of the PDP11 line. Thats about as classic as it gets. Notice I said 'most'. What's missing is the cpu cards in this case a KDJ11-EB. The DEC orientated amongst us will know that the CPU is a QBus J11 chip based board on quad module (M8981). Ah but the 11/94 is a unibus system you say. Thats right. The board talks to the unibus through a KT11-B that does the conversion. Now for my dilemma. Before checking the cost of a KDJ11-EB you are advised to make sure pacemaker batteries are fully charged and any blood pressue medication has been taken. Take it from me the prices are so high they need to join the astronaut corps! I would like to get at least one of these historic systems running again. Suggestions please!! Rod Smallwood

19 years, 3 months

3
2
0 0

IBM floppy termination

by rcini＠optonline.net

All: I have a few IBM-labeled YE-Data YE-580 (320k/360k) half-height floppy drives. I can?t seem to locate a manual for these on-line so I wondered if they use the standard 150 ohm terminator or something else (the Teac uses 330 ohm for example). Any info appreciated. Thanks. Rich -- Rich Cini Collector of Classic Computers Build Master and lead engineer, Altair32 Emulator http://www.altair32.com http://highgate.comm.sfu.ca/~rcini/classiccmp

19 years, 3 months

5
13
0 0

Subject: Re: Manuals being scanned

by aek＠bitsavers.org

> they never find stuff on > bitsavers when you search for text. Very early on, I disabled all search engines from .pdf files on bitsavers' in the robots.txt file. Google is particularly bad about fetching documents over and over again.

19 years, 3 months

3
2
0 0

Tek 4051 on craigs list here in Seattle

by g-wright＠att.net

Listed with a Wang and others under computer and search vintage http://seattle.craigslist.org/see/sys/325631116.html - Jerry Jerry Wright JLC inc g-wright at attnet

19 years, 3 months

2
1
0 0

IBM 83-key questions (repair and color)

by trixter＠oldskool.org

My best-condition 83-key keyboard suddenly developed a bum spacebar, right in the middle of writing some documentation. Before I unscrew the two screws on back to open it up and take a look, can anyone tell me if this is a common condition and if it's relatively easy to fix? I've *never* had a buckling-spring keyboard develop a bad key (maybe I haven't had enough frustrating debugging sessions yet ;-) so I'm at a slight loss as to how to start repairing it. Was there a tech ref for the keyboard at one point, perhaps? Slightly OT, here's an 83-key that is *gray* (several pictures): http://www.clickykeyboards.com/index.cfm/fa/items.main/parentcat/11066/subc… I've never seen a gray variant -- was it official? If so, what system was it intended for use with? I've seen "skinny" IBM keyboards that were intended for use with the PS/2 model 25, but I've never seen a gray 83-key before... -- 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/

19 years, 3 months

9
14
0 0

FPGA CPU's (was: Re: wonderful assembly language book)

by mtapley＠swri.edu

At 12:02 -0500 5/6/07, Pat wrote: > > Au contraire. "Architecture" these days is whatever you want it to be > > cooked into an FPGA. .... FPGA designs are > > *very* popular for custom architectures these days. > >Sure, but no one (in their right mind) builds a general purpose CPU out >of them. Well, unless it's a research or "toy" project, a prototype >design, or something very unusual and high end[1], but even in that case >it's still not making a general purpose CPU out of it. Although I tend to agree with Pat about the "right mind" part of it, we routinely do this for spacecraft avionics. Both simple processors, like 8085, and more complex ones like SPARC architecture are implemented in FPGAs. The speed is generally far below what a "real" CPU would do, but because we can implement more functions than just the CPU into a single chip, and because we can often get an FPGA that has been tested to better radiation exposure levels than the corresponding (faster, smaller semiconductor feature) "real" CPU, it still turns out to be the best option in many cases. I really mourn the lack of availability of rad-hard CPU's anymore. Harris RTX2010 (a forth-oriented 8/16 bit) and the RAD6000 (a PowerPC-like unit) were both workhorses in the past. The FPGA's we use routinely come up with chip-level problems of one form or another (bad programming algorithms, power-up sequencing issues, etc.) that cause angst, board reworks, or other serious cost and schedule problems. That never used to happen with "real" CPUs. >I challenge you to come up with the name of a single product that someone >can purchase right now, which uses an FPGA-implemented CPU, which is >general-purpose, and reasonably widely available. :-) admittedly, I can't really claim our avionics boxes are "widely available", though we're always looking for new customers.... -- - Mark, 210-379-4635 ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Large Asteroids headed toward planets inhabited by beings that don't have technology adequate to stop them: Think of it as Evolution in Fast-Forward.

19 years, 3 months

5
5
0 0

Replacement belts for Amstrad CF floppy drives

by cclist＠sydex.com

Thanks to another cctalk-er, I've discovered an inexpensive replacement for the dreaded neoprene belt in Amstrad 3" CF drives. There's a product called "Plastibands" available at many office supply stores (or on Amazon.com) that are intended as a replacement for traditional rubber bands. They're made of polyurethane and have a considerable amount of "stretch"--and, the best part, don't disintegrate quickly. I slipped one of the 2" x 1/8" bands on my CF drive and it works like charm--plenty "grippy". A box of 100 on Amazon runs less than $5.00. That should keep you and your best friends in drive belts nearly forever. There's also a larger 4" x 1/4" size. The $64,000 question is "Can these be used as a replacement for the band in DC-600-ish QIC carts? My initial experimentation with the 2" model in a DC-2000 cart is "not quite"--the QIC application requires a bit of slip, which these don't appear to have--they're a bit too "grippy". However, I'm going to tumble a few in some molybdenium disulfide powder for a few days to see if a "slip" can be imparted to them. Stay tuned... However, I suspect that the larger belts might work with old 5.25" floppy drives that require a drive belt. Remember, as they stretch, they get narrower. Cheers, Chuck

19 years, 3 months

1
0
0 0

IBM 83-key questions (repair and color)

by Watzman＠neo.rr.com

Re: "The spacebar - beyond the switch - has a small "C" supporter that keeps the bar horizontal and makes any pressure in any point of the bar activate the switch" This is called an "equalizer" mechanism, and all keyboards have it on all large keys (it's usually present on the enter and shift keys as well as the space bar, and often on a few other keys). These can be a real bitch to get reconfigured properly, but it's a purely mechanical task, and with some patience, if this is the problem, it should be fixable. It's possible, however, that this isn't the problem. Do NOT take the back of the keyboard apart as a first step, rather, remove the space bar (being very careful not to break the equalizer mechanism and noting in detail how it is attached). There is a metal plate inside the "switch" that serves as the actual contact point, this can become dislodged. Or there might be dirt in the mechanism. It's very rare that these can't be fixed, and fixed without any new parts, unless something is really broken. More common it's just dirt or some mechanical part that has become misaligned.

19 years, 3 months

1
0
0 0

A local computer history group for my area . . .

by dgreelish＠mac.com

>> From: "Chuck Guzis" <cclist at sydex.com> >> Hi everyone, I have just started up a user group in my area to get >> together once a month and enjoy old computers and the history, etc. > David, some folks local to your area who are also on this list might > be more interested if you could nail down what you mean by "old". To > some, a Commodore 128 is "old"; others wear socks older than that. Hi Chuck, as a general guideline, I'm a big fan of the ten year rule, though I'd generally be weary still of anything PC based that is Pentium III and newer, and/or Win95 or newer. Thanks, David David Greelish classiccomputing.com The Classic Computing Podcast Home of Computer History Nostalgia Stan Veit's History of the Personal Computer Audio Book Podcast

19 years, 3 months

1
0
0 0

A local computer history group for my area . . .

by dgreelish＠mac.com

>> From: "Chuck Guzis" <cclist at sydex.com> >> Hi everyone, I have just started up a user group in my area to get >> together once a month and enjoy old computers and the history, etc. > David, some folks local to your area who are also on this list might > be more interested if you could nail down what you mean by "old". To > some, a Commodore 128 is "old"; others wear socks older than that. Hi Chuck, as a general guideline, I'm a big fan of the ten year rule, though I'd generally be weary still of anything PC based that is Pentium III and newer, and/or Win95 or newer. Thanks, David David Greelish classiccomputing.com The Classic Computing Podcast Home of Computer History Nostalgia Stan Veit's History of the Personal Computer Audio Book Podcast

19 years, 3 months

1
0
0 0

sun4m floppy drive in a macintosh

by dgriffi＠cs.csubak.edu

In my hands is a floppy drive pulled from a Sun IPC: a Sony MP-F17W-F1. Looking at Ebay, I see a floppy from a Macintosh: Sony MP-F75W-02G. Would this IPC's drive be acceptable for a Mac? -- 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?

19 years, 3 months

2
1
0 0

ET-3400A Schematic needed

by whipaway＠yahoo.com

Hello to All on the list, I need the schematic for the ET-3400A, which is different from the original ET-3400, which I already have. I have an ET-3400 that does not have the MCM6830A ROM. I have a ET-3400A that uses the 8316 ROM and one that uses a 2716 EPROM, which are interchangable. I want to create an interface circuit that will allow me to use a 2716 EPROM in the ET-3400. A schematic for the ET3400A will really be appreciated. Thanks in advance, whipaway at yahoo.com --------------------------------- Park yourself in front of a world of choices in alternative vehicles. Visit the Yahoo! Auto Green Center.

19 years, 3 months

1
0
0 0

Early MSC HD controller

by cclist＠sydex.com

I've posted a photo of my Microcomputer Systems Corporation SA4000-to- GPIB disk controller PCB here: http://www.sydex.com/durango/msc1088.jpg This is a large board (12"x19")that contains mostly 74LSxx logic. The two 24-pin cerdip packages at the top left side are AM2506DC 4- bit ALUs; the 28-pin package below them is a N8209 (Signetics) 64x9 bipolar RAM. The 40 pin package to the left of them is an Intel 8291 GPIB talker/listener. The Just thought I'd snap a photo before it went back into its box. The documentation for the board (just command definitions) is dated 1979. FWIW, Chuck

19 years, 3 months

2
4
0 0

NETRONICS ELECTRIC MOUTH documentation/software wanted

by wh.sudbrink＠verizon.net

Hi, I have one of these cards that I'd like to demo at VCF East this year. Does anyone have docs and/or software for it? Thanks, Bill No virus found in this outgoing message. Checked by AVG Free Edition. Version: 7.5.467 / Virus Database: 269.6.8/800 - Release Date: 5/11/2007 7:34 PM

19 years, 3 months

1
0
0 0

ftp archives disappearing?

by aek＠bitsavers.org

> Has anyone else noticed that ftp search services like archie seem to > have disappeared The web as subsumed all of this, in an inferior fashion, IMHO. You will notice that bitsavers looks exactly the same as it did as an anonymous ftp site on its previous host. > Should we be working to archive large FTP software repositories? Absolutely! And try to find old backups that you have. Make sure to use something that can preserve file dates of the files. The old recursive ftp programs didn't do this.

19 years, 3 months

33
138
0 0

Manuals being scanned

by aek＠bitsavers.org

> If you have any comments I would like to hear them. OK, I've downloaded some of them now. They are some of the ugliest, bloated pdf's I've ever seen. What are you doing to them to make them look so BAD. "Control Data-Cyber 70 Computer Systems Models 72,73,74,6000 Computer Systems.PDF" for example, appears to have a mix of six different fonts on a single line, where there should be one. The titles are poor. "IBM System-360 Operating System.pdf" is a program logic manual for the Fortran IV graphics programming services. At a minimum, you should have the document part number, date, and the REAL title. Y27-7152-0_F4_Graphic_Programming_Services_Program_Logic_Sep67.pdf provides some useful metadata Look at http://bitsavers.org/pdf for 10,000+ examples of how this SHOULD be done.

19 years, 3 months

3
2
0 0

USB drivers

by aek＠bitsavers.org

> A few weeks > ago I bought a few USB serial port adapters, and they work fine on a > variety of PCs running various versions of Windows. Not, though, on a > Mac, which doesn't even see them. Did they 'just work' or was a driver downloaded off the net to make them work? The curse of Windows is every vendor doing things their own way, and the need for thousands of incompatible drivers. You can extend this to USB drivers as well. A USB async adapter can be implemented a bunch of different ways, going as far back as Anchorchips devices that squirted code onto the adapter, up through the current reduced cost devices that barely offer any tech docs on how they work. Vendors really only care about Windows support, and grudgingly give out info to driver writers (or they have to reverse engineer the hardware to do it). They also want to lock you into their device, so they have no interest in common drivers. Getting back to the original topic, as long as the protocol for the floppy adapter is documented so that people can write USB drivers for it for other platforms, it should not be an issue.

19 years, 3 months

10
19
0 0

What's the classiccmp IRC address?

by evan＠snarc.net

I lost it.

19 years, 3 months

2
1
0 0

FC drive interconnects?

by ethan.dicks＠gmail.com

I was staring at a Seagate "fiber channel" drive today and trying to figure out what the most economical method of attaching a few to a box would be. Seagate made a line of STxxxxFC drives with a small D-connector (like a narrow SCA connector) that presumably has power, unit ID lines, and, of course, the drive's part of the FC loop for data in/out. I know there are a number of Sun boxes (3500? 5500?) that have compatible connectors right there in the CPU box - you just drop the drives into bays in the front of the machine and off you go. Presuming you have something older, with PCI or Sbus, say, what options are there for using these drives? I know there are PCI (PCI-X?) FC-AL-over-copper SCSI controllers. What has me puzzled is what the options are for the interconnects - drive bays, external connections (copper vs fiber) for said bays, copper-to-fiber converters, etc. If one wants to hang a wad of drives off of a server, it seems that an 8-drive bay or whatever, with a fiber attachment to an Sbus or PCI fiber card makes sense. If one has, say, a PCI SCSI controller with an FC-over-copper external connector, or just wants to hook up one or two drives, are there any inexpensive interconnect options, like, say, the SCA-to-68-pin adapter boards that are an inexpensive way to use an SCA drives in an non-SCA environment? Of course the answer might just be, "no... the drives are the cheap part of an FC-based storage scheme", but given how cheap FC drives seem to be these days (plus the added bonus of fiber-attached drives being allowed to be a couple of kilometers from your server via single-mode fiber ;-) it seems like an option worth exploring. My direct FC-AL experience is a bit old - I used to run SPARCserver 1000 with three pre-FC-AL disk boxes with 3 drawers each of up to seven 2GB SCA-connector drives. I think one or two members on the list might have one of these. It was nice in its day (10+ years ago), but a lot of juice and a lot of heat for your 42GB (you _might_ have been able to install 4GB drives, but no larger due to firmware limitations in the box). I did get to fiddle with what I think might have been an early proper FC-AL box with a stack of 9GB drives, but I didn't get to play with it long enough to have many details stick in my mind about it. For now, though, my best Sun box just has a couple of 18GB SCA-connector drives. Effective, but boring. Thanks for any info on FC-over-copper interconnects and adapters. -ethan

19 years, 3 months

5
7
0 0

[pic] retro computing tattoo (a little different...)

by blakespot＠gmail.com

A bit of a different post here, but I thought folks on this list might get a kick out of the tattoo I had inked this week, branding me for all eternity as one with retro computing in my blood (and on my skin). A sort of crude petroglyph from the walls of the cave of computing history. http://www.bytecellar.com/archives/000105.php bp -- Heisenberg may have slept here.

19 years, 3 months

4
3
0 0

Wirelist for HP9000/200 RS232 cable

by aek＠bitsavers.org

The schematic for the 98626 is at http://bitsavers.org/pdf/hp/9000_dio/98626-90000_RS232_May82.pdf

19 years, 3 months

2
1
0 0

Manuals being scanned

by aek＠bitsavers.org

> If you have any comments I would like to hear them. Do you have any other Memorex system documents? I have a fair bit on the MRX 70 under http://bitsavers.org/pdf/memorex/7x00 but I didn't have the RPG design document.

19 years, 3 months

1
0
0 0

Apple II Mockingboard schematic

by rcini＠optonline.net

All: I?ve done a bit of searching for this but can?t locate it. Does anyone have a scannable copy of the schematic for the Mockingboard sound board for the Apple II? Thanks. Rich -- Rich Cini Collector of Classic Computers Build Master and lead engineer, Altair32 Emulator http://www.altair32.com http://highgate.comm.sfu.ca/~rcini/classiccmp

19 years, 3 months

6
8
0 0

Floppy disc reader/writer status report

by classiccmp＠philpem.me.uk

Hi guys, I think I might be on something of a roll here - I spent the train ride to/from work (and a good chunk of my lunch break) playing about with state machine designs for the write side of the floppy disc writer. What I've come up with is a nifty little finite state machine that interprets instructions >from the acquisition RAM, then executes them and writes them to disc. The way I've done it, there are five instructions: 0nnn nnnn: Write Timer. Writes the 7-bit timer value 'n' to the timer, then outputs a pulse on the WRDATA line when the counter reaches zero 1111 1111: STOP. Sets the STOP flag and halts the state machine until it is reset. 1011 xxx0: Close Write Gate. Deactivates WRGATE, preventing the head from writing to the disc. 1011 xxx1: Open Write Gate. Activates WRGATE, allowing the drive head to write to the disc. 110n nnnn: Wait for 'n' INDEX pulses before continuing execution of SM instructions. 1100 0000: Wait for a hard-sector track index (sector zero marker) signal before continuing execution of SM instructions. As far as I can tell, this is the minimum instruction set required to allow both soft and hard sectored discs to be duplicated reliably. There is one 'spare' instruction -- 1110 xxxx -- if anyone can come up with a good use for it, I'm open to suggestions. The write hardware currently clocks in at 19 macrocells, read hardware is another 26, the track-index pulse detector (which allows hard-sectored discs to be read and written) is 18, and the MFM synchronisation detector (including the neat little state-machine data separator) is another 29. So that's a total of 92, which leaves 52 for the acquisition control circuitry and registers. Assuming I don't run out of any other chip resources first, that is. The disc interface is going to be a standard 34-pin "PC" floppy connector. It seemed like the best plan - wiring to 3.5 and 5.25" drives can be done with a standard cable, and 8" drives can probably be connected with a fairly simple adapter cable. I do need one thing confirming though - I've read that on hard-sectored discs, each sector is marked with an index pulse: ---+ +------------+ +---- | | | | +--+ +--+ And the start of the track (sector 1) looks like this - note the index pulse half-way between two other index pulses: ---+ +----+ +----+ +---- | | | | | | +--+ +--+ +--+ 1 2 3 My question is, does sector 1 start at 1, 2 or 3? I'm guessing 3, and that's what the sync detector's set up for at the moment. Basically, it has a timing window - if a second index pulse arrives within 0.75T (where T = time between two normal index pulses) of the last one, it is assumed to be a track index sequence. The threshold value is adjustable in software, so drive speed isn't an issue. Thanks. -- Phil. | (\_/) This is Bunny. Copy and paste Bunny classiccmp at philpem.me.uk | (='.'=) into your signature to help him gain http://www.philpem.me.uk/ | (")_(") world domination.

19 years, 3 months

29
104
0 0

8mm data cartridges

by julesrichardsonuk＠yahoo.co.uk

How common were drives which could read these? I suspect the answer is "not very"! If anyone has one, how reliable was/is the media? I've got a couple of such Sony cartridges here dating from 1991; one does call itself a data cartridge (QG-112M) - the other one is a PAL/SECAM 90-minute Video8 tape (P5-90MP). Going from the labels, both have backups from some UNIX system on them - but (helpfully!) no clue as to what that system was or what backup program wrote them. From the huge box of floppies that I found them in though, I suspect that they might be from an Olivetti 3B2 - in which case they're possibly just tar dumps. I'm not sure what my chances are of finding a drive to read them are though (and worse still, such a drive might not be SCSI and so require a proprietary interface card and drivers). The packrat in me wants to try reading them rather than just tossing them out though :-) cheers Jules

19 years, 3 months

19
52
0 0

Big pile of VAX documentation to be disposed

by jzg22＠drexel.edu

>There is a large pile of VAX and other documentation waiting for >disposal on the 7th floor of Disque Hall at Drexel University in >Philadelphia. >Disque hall is located on the former 32nd street between market and >chestnut streets, its the tall(~10 floors)) brick building. >Pretty much everything paper, and a working Phaser 370? printer (missing >its paper tray and missing the centronics->microcentronics adapter but >otherwise working) is free for the taking. >This documentation originally went along with the VAX machine which >someone from the list rescued from there about 2 years ago when it was >being disposed. This is all still there. I found the VAX installation manual and license PAK buried in a seperate pile behind some fuzzy wall panels (I have it cached at home now), so there's also some networking manuals and other stuff behind there in grey binders in additional to the 22 orange binders of VAX stuff. This stuff IS going to be disposed of eventually, so I suggest anyone who wants it to get it QUICK. Theres also a bunch of printouts, schematics, software manuals, and source code listings for some old CERN-associated neutrino experiment which was run years ago, if anyone is interested in that. Jonathan Gevaryahu

19 years, 3 months

2
1
0 0

Manuals being scanned

by gilcarrick＠tx.rr.com

We are probably going to be drastically curtailing our museum efforts and perhaps shifting to a new affiliation if I can pull it off. As a start to lightening the load we are scanning as many of the manuals as we can. (We have a pretty nice scanner and some office assistants who occasionally have extra time that they need to look busy in.) I will be placing the scanned manuals on our web site, but for the time being there will be no link to the directory. You may feel free to download any of them you like. If you want to download everything that will be OK, but try to do it in the early morning hours U.S. Central Standard time. The university has a pretty good connection, but we don't want to swamp it during the day. If you seen anything that you would like to have in hard copy I will be happy to mail it to you. Payment of the postage and some token payment for the manual would be appreciated. You can contact me via email to arrange such a payment. If you see anything here that you think should not be available because of copyright limitations please let me know. I assume that since these manuals are all nearly 30 years old that nobody will care. Of course something may slip through the cracks and some large vendors still exist and might care for legal reasons, but I don't have time to sort that all out right now. Here is the link: http://www.cse.uta.edu/TheMuseum at CSE/Manuals%20Scanned/ If you have any comments I would like to hear them. Gil -- A. G. (Gil) Carrick, Director The Museum at CSE University of Texas at Arlington Department of Computer Science & Engineering Box 19015, 471 S Cooper Street Arlington, TX 76019 817-272-3620 http://www.cse.uta.edu/TheMuseum at CSE/

19 years, 3 months

1
0
0 0

DDS vs Audio DAT

by aek＠bitsavers.org

> I've never seen an audio cart used in a data drive, > and we had a lot of customers using them.. Audio DATs don't have the media recognition burst, and will be rejected by DDS drives. DDS tapes used as audio DAT tapes overwrite the DDS data, and are unusable as data tapes after doing that. Early audio DAT recorders (TEAC DA-30) will accept 90M data tapes, later TEAC drives will reject them. At one point we had about 6 DA-30's at KFJC, which have all developed transport problems after using a lot of 90M data tapes in them. We're slowly migrating 100's of DATs to optical or IDE disc media because of the problems preserving data recorded to DAT.

19 years, 3 months

2
1
0 0

How much of the FOG collection is archived?

by aek＠bitsavers.org

A few weeks ago, CHM received a donation of the entire floppy collection of the First Osborne Group (FOG). It is literally thousands of 5" floppies, and I am trying to get a feeling for what of the collection has already been archived. I believe NODE51 has the CPM portion on line, but FOG morphed into a general users group including support for the DOS world through the 80's. It will be a LOT of work to read the collection, so I'm trying to get a feeling for how to prioritize what's there.

19 years, 3 months

2
1
0 0

2026

2025

2024

2023

2022

2021

2020

2019

2018

2017

2016

2015

2014

2013

2012

2011

2010

2009

2008

2007

2006

2005

2004

2003

2002

2001

2000

1999

1998

1997

test-drb