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

by djg＠pdp8.net

>I'm sure that there's service documentation or schematics online somewhere. > ftp://ftp.pdp8.net/misc/4010/ Tiff and PDF are identical so you only need to download one. In a quick look I didn't see an adjustment in section 4 stated for the problem. 6-48 says how it's supposed to work. I did find out with mine that if you have some faint ghost image from previous drawing that leaving it at the bright screen you get on power on for a minute seems to get rid of it.

19 years, 6 months

2
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Wanted: bulk decconnect 6 conductor flat cord

by tothwolf＠concentric.net

I've finally decided to go ahead and start making MMJ cables again after all. The seller who has been giving me trouble has given me several reasons to go ahead and compete. First off, his last email to me was this: > Ha Ha I didn't copy YOUR idea. You're so vain. > > Anyway, it doesn't matter what you say or think about me. I used to > like Texans before this experience. Well, I like Bush. > > Well, good luck I wish you the best. ...he then bid on one of my adapter kits to try scare away other bidders. I did cancel his bid and added his username to my BBL. Another bidder bought the kit, so I didn't even lose a sale over that. I also suspect he wanted to see how I had them wired, though I flat out old him to look up the DEC pinout. He bought a 1000ft spool of genuine decconnect cable off of eBay a month or so back, and after he started emailing me and then bid on my adapter kit, I've decided I'd like to compete with this guy head on. If someone has a spool of such cable laying around and wants to part with it, please let me know. I tried going after a lot of 10 50ft cables a few weeks ago so I could use their cable to make shorter/more useful cables, but a DEC reseller nabbed them ;P Most recently the guy who started copying my adapter kits has changed his listings for the MMJ cables he is making after my initial post/rant here on classiccmp: http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=130075722308 > Digital Equipment Corporation DEC BC16E 10 feet long DECconnect Office > Cable. Made from a spool of genuine, authentic, high quality DECconnect > Office Cable and MMJ offset style plugs. The MMJ plugs are high quality > and commercially available. > > The crimps are carefully made and thoroughly tested. I would never sell > a cable that did not work. > > Note that once I purchased a crimping tool from an eBayer. That tool > did not work properly and that eBayer later admitted that he sold me a > cheap tool. That particular tool has not been used in making any of my > cables sold on eBay. I now use a high quality crimping tool purchased > from a reputable supplier! > > This cable has never been used before other than to test it to make sure > it works. Tested on a DEC Alpha and VAX. Will work the same for any DEC > machine. > > This is a high quality cable that is tested and working. It is made > from DEC branded cable, not from a third party cable such as Graybar, etc. Not like I believe him, especially as this only appeared after my posts... -Toth

19 years, 6 months

3
4
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Humpty Dumpty

by ajp166＠bellatlantic.net

> >Subject: Re: Humpty Dumpty > From: "Ethan Dicks" <ethan.dicks at gmail.com> > Date: Thu, 08 Feb 2007 14:50:16 -0500 > To: "General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts" <cctalk at classiccmp.org> > >On 2/8/07, Richard <legalize at xmission.com> wrote: >> As near as I can tell, there are like 3 people who care about >> terminals: myself, Paul Shuford (who is the only source of online >> information about many kinds of terminals) and Paul Williams (who runs >> and maintains vt100.net). > >4. I have a collection of terminals, 90% of which are various DEC >models (VT-50 through about VT-320), but a couple of Tektronix, couple >of Planar, Heathkit, CiTOH, etc. I have VT100 series and VT320 and VT340 along with a VT1200. >> Most terminals do not have graphics capability, just character >> capability. Color graphics terminals are even scarcer. > >I'd have to check the stack, but the Tektronix terminals are color >graphics + text (local printer port, etc.), and of course, the VT241 >is color graphics + text, as is the DEC GIGI. I agree - they are >rare. Rarer are the applications to drive them. I don't know of many >color Tek apps, but there were quite a few for the GIGI under TOPS-20. Error! VT100 had sixel graphics as did VT220, 320 and 340 added color, VT1200 as full graphics (xterm). >> Terminals that have 3D graphics builtin are even scarcer than that. > >Indeed. I don't know if I've ever seen one. > >> The Visual >> 500 therefore is of interest to me because it is older and has >> graphics. (Not all Visual terminals have graphics, but the 500 does.) > >Interesting. Shame the seller was too cheap/ignorant to package >things properly. I have to wonder how he got them to accept it - I've >been to the UPS depot and seen them turn away customers with boxes >that had heavy, shifting loads (improperly packaged computer bits). The V500 and others postdate the VT220 and it was the VT100 and VT220 that were a strong influence on the high end ANSI compatable terminal market. Even the Heath H19 has VT52/ANSI(VT100 subset) compatable modes. Allison

19 years, 6 months

6
11
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A newbie and an IBM 5360

by ballsandy＠msn.com

First off, I'm new to cctalk so please be easy on me. :) Anyways, I ahve always been facinated by those older pieces of history that IBM made and distrubuted. About six months ago I got the idea to start searching and find one to add to my collection of computers. After some hard searching I found this one: http://www.vintagecomputermarketplace.com/view.cfm?ad=2372 An IBM 5360 with quite a few extras and best of all, it was free! The corestore also has one but it's less than complete. http://www.corestore.org/36.htm I thought it was perfect for a person who was starting in this new realm of computing until I spotted something: Location: Heartford, CT Shipping: Pickup only Great! the thing is all the way across the country. By the looks of it I am going to have to give it up (I doubt anyone would hold it for me, you would have to be crazy to even mention it to the wife). I'm just giving a heads up that it's in existance and if anyone wants it (or help me) they can feel free to get it. _________________________________________________________________ Find out the restaurants participating in Winterlicious http://local.live.com/default.aspx?v=2&cp=43.658648~-79.383962&style=r&lvl=… >From January 26 to February 8, 2007

19 years, 6 months

1
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HP gear sought

by jwest＠classiccmp.org

I'm kinda sorta half-way looking for some additional HP gear that is out of the area I normally look for.... HP 1340A X-Y display HP 1350A Graphics Translator I may have to get another HP rack...... ;) If anyone has a spare 1340A and/or 1350A they'd like to trade off, I'd be happy to offer up some gear for 'em. Jay

19 years, 6 months

3
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(OT?) Can anyone web-host a few articles?

by ard＠p850ug1.demon.co.uk

As many of you know, I am a member of HPCC (Handheld and Portable Computer Club), a UK user group for HP calculators, etc. This group publishes a magazine called 'Datafile'. Anyway, I have been persuaded to write a few articles for said magazine. The current issue contains one explaining how to cure that well-known hardeneed grease problem in the Sony full-height 3.5" disk drive. I've illustrated the article with a number of photos showning the stages in dismantling said drirve. As yoy also know, I don't haev a digital camera, but the company who processed the film put scans of the photos onto a CD-ROM for me, I believe as JPEG files, about 2.5Mpixels. Although the results printed in the magazine were excellent, they were necessarily small, and both the editor and I feel it would be a good idea to make the article(s) available on the web with full-sized images. The reason I put OT? im the subject line is that said articles may not be classic _computing_. I think I'll only be writing about stuff more than 10 years old, mostly HP (but maybe the odd machine from Sharp, TI, etc). And mostly calcualtors and handheld computers (the last bit is why you might not consider it to be classic computing). Can anyone help by suggesting a site that might host said articles? If so, I'll put you in touch with the magazine editor. Thanks in advance -tony

19 years, 6 months

4
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CTX Panoview 630 power supply pinout?

by ethan.dicks＠gmail.com

Does anyone on the list have a CTX Panoview 630 (or similar, it was sold under several names) LCD monitor that can verify the power brick pinout? The connector looks like a 6-pin mini-DIN with one pin removed for keying (so that you can't plug in a keyboard, I'd expect). I picked up two of them from the Mansfield Hamfest, sans power brick, with the expectation of being able to trace out the connectors easily. I know the unit takes +5VDC and +12VDC, but since the power just seems to go into the main board, through a couple of mini-fuses, then into some DC-DC components, it's not obvious to me which would be +12 and which would be +5, even once I trace them out from the power input connector. I've grubbed around on the 'net today a bit and only have managed to verify that these were once sold as an Elo part # ELT121C TFT (w/touchscreen), but with no specifics on the power brick. Elo lists it as obsolete and replaced by a model with an integral mains power supply, which is obviously of no help to me. Thanks for any pointers, -ethan

19 years, 6 months

1
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Shameless Plug: Unisite offered

by kyrrin＠bluefeathertech.com

Fellow techies, A brief shameless plug: I've just posted one of my Data I/O Unisite programming systems for sale on That Auction Site. A seller search for the ID 'bftbell' will turn it up if you're interested. Thanks much. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- Bruce Lane, Owner & Head Hardware Heavy, Blue Feather Technologies -- http://www.bluefeathertech.com kyrrin (at) bluefeathertech do/t c=o=m "If Salvador Dali had owned a computer, would it have been equipped with surreal ports?"

19 years, 6 months

5
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Hp SCSI front load Tape drive spotted FS in Oregon

by innfoclassics＠gmail.com

The State of Oregon surplus store has a tall HP rack with a HP 7980S tape drive ( 1" front load SCSI) and a A3312A disk array mounted in it for the tag price of $50. Since it is a govt. agency assume no disk drives installed in the array cabinet. It is in Salem Oregon, The store is open 1 pm to 4 pm Tue thru Friday.

19 years, 6 months

1
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has anyone constructed 3D models of vintage gear?

by legalize＠xmission.com

The subject pretty much says it all. I've been reading "From Whirlwind to MITRE: The R&D Story of the SAGE Air Defense Computer", which is very similar in feel to "The Rocket Team" (the story of the V2). I was thinking that it would be really cool to have a complete 3D model of the SAGE that you could move through DOOM style. You'd start with coarse texture-mapped approximations until you could model things in more detail. Maybe there are some models already out there? -- "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, 6 months

5
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Humpty Dumpty

by jfoust＠threedee.com

At 02:42 PM 2/8/2007, Ethan Dicks wrote: >On 2/8/07, Richard <legalize at xmission.com> wrote: >>I've not heard of Planar before, so I'd like to hear about that one. > >They are still around. They now make VGA and DVI LCD panels, but at >one point, they made terminals and PCs. I have a Planar wall-mount >486 (LCD, 2.5" disk, external CD-ROM...) and couple Planar ELT-320s. Their Lake Mills, WI facility closed in 2002. It was perhaps the last USA-based LCD manufacturing plant. - John

19 years, 6 months

1
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Service Manual/Schematics for an IBM 7861-015 modem?

by ethan.dicks＠gmail.com

Had a good day at the Mansfield Hamfest today. I now have some LCD monitors that I need to scope out power for (+5 @ 2A, +12 @ 1A), a nixie-tube panel DVM, and a couple of IBM modem frontpanels. >From googling the IBM model number (7861-015), they appear to be from a 9600bps 4-wire leased-line modem. I picked them up because they have a 20-key keypad with double-shot hex letters (0-9, A-F) that look really handy for attaching to an 1802 or similar, and a 1x16 char "british flag" VFD. What I'd really like is to get my hands on a schematic to skip the step of reverse-engineering the VFD drivers. Does anyone on the list have any docs on IBM modems at that level of detail? Thanks for any pointers, -ethan

19 years, 6 months

3
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Preservation of correspondence

by roger.holmes＠microspot.co.uk

I've been listening in on this thread (though I skipped a few) and am wondering how you can tell whether a CD or DVD has corruption which is being corrected or whether it is pristine. If I can tell, then maybe when there is corruption I could re-record the data before it becomes unreadable. Of course I can also keep multiple copies on different sites.

19 years, 6 months

3
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Preservation of correspondence

by aek＠bitsavers.org

>> Is everything you're 'backing up' checksummed? > > Yes. I regularly ( == when I remember!) backup my email > by throwing it all into a zip archive and then that gets > written (along with other stuff) to CD, along with an > MD5SUM file. Good for you! Few people do backups. Those that do trust that the data that was copied was done so CORRECTLY. I have to implement a digital archiving mechanism for the CHM software collection, so this is all VERY fresh in my mind right now. The trick is coming up with something that has verification down to the individual archive commit that can be tracked essentially forever.

19 years, 6 months

10
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Tower of Nerd

by ken＠seefried.com

From: "Zane H. Healy" <healyzh at aracnet.com> >ELKS will run on a 286, right? IIRC, I've got a 286 S-100 Bus CPU >card (I know I have a 80186 card). There was a V6 port to the 286 for which at least some source is laying around the net (I've never looked to see if it was remotely complete/buildable). V7 should be doable, if anyone remembers enough about it to try. There was Xenix & Venix as well, not that anyone wants to run Xenix unless they have too...:-). Wonder if 2BSD could be the basis of a port. Sorta similar constraints. Ken

19 years, 6 months

1
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Schematics needed for H7868

by bob＠jfcl.com

Does anybody have the maintenance prints for the H7868 (BA213) power supply? Bitsavers and max appear to have nothing on this guy. Thanks, Bob Armstrong

19 years, 6 months

1
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Preservation of Correspondence - And Media - MMI PALS's

by grant＠stockly.com

>Looks like the 16R8 has 8 inputs, 8 D/Q outputs with feedback, 1 clock >input, and 1 output enable input. Looks like there are 32 columns (8x >input True/False plus 8x D/Q feedback True/False) and 64 rows (8x >product terms into each D/Q output) for a total of 2048 fuses. So I >think that would be 256x8, not 512x8. 1024 fuses is right. Talking about "looks", I just happen to have pictures of the silicon on a MMI 16R8 HAL. A HAL is just a manufactured PAL. http://www.stockly.com/forums/showthread.php?t=18 I have a 15-20 mega pixel picture of the entire fuse map. I'd like to be able to say I finished reading it, but I barely got started. There is a place in china that will do it for less than what it cost me to get the chip decapped. :) Grant

19 years, 6 months

2
1
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Tower of Nerd

by grant＠stockly.com

I thought you guys would get a kick out of this. No, I am not attempting to build a beowulf cluster... The ultimate Altair needs to run Linux. I spent the first few hours today thinking up an S-100 card with a 386 processor. : ) Idle minds can be dangerous... It will have to wait on that because I am still deep in the hole with this crazy project... http://www.altairkit.com/images/070210-AltairTower_2172.jpg Grant

19 years, 6 months

13
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Why isn't Apple releasing patches for the Month of Apple Bug exploits???

by aek＠bitsavers.org

> am I the only one who sees the urgency in fixing those memory corruption and > root privilege escalation exploits? What possible good is posting this HERE going to do? Why don't you raise this issue where someone who has any influence over what Apple does participates?

19 years, 6 months

2
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Preservation of Correspondence - And Media

by aliensrcooluk＠yahoo.co.uk

--- Billy Pettit <Billy.Pettit at wdc.com> wrote: > **>> snip <<** > > Everybody else seems to have lots of horror storie s > about media. I don't. > I want to again state that I have seen CD's burned > in the 1976-77 time > period that can still be read. And I've seen DVDs > from the early 90's that > can also still be read. Reliably. > **>> snip <<** > > Billy > Woah... I thought CD's were invented in 1982? I remember it easily as thats the year my younger brother was born. Or was that the year they first came to the UK/Europe?? Regards, Andrew D. Burton aliensrcooluk at yahoo.co.uk

19 years, 6 months

30
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Tektronix terminals

by rickb＠bensene.com

Christian wrote: >Another unrelated question: The 4010 I got needs an awfully long time >until it will fully erase the screen (at least 20 minutes). When it's cold >it will only erase the center in the shape of a (distorted) circle, the >corners won't be erased. Is this a typical sign of a used CRT? I know the >main heater and cathode (for the writing beam) are fine, I suspect the >collimation electrodes or the flood gun. Does anyone have experiences with >that problem, is there any cure (e.g. a longer flooding time) ? I used a lot of 4010s and 4014s in my days at Tektronix, and saw this type of problem on numerous occasions. The primary terminals for the Control Data Cyber 73 (and later, an added Cyber 175), and Vax 11/780 (VMS during the day, BSD 4.x Unix at night (for the hacks to play with), intermittently) were 4010s and 4014s. There were user areas with a bunch of these terminals grouped together. These user area terminals were very heavily used. Most people didn't have terminals at their desk in those days. The flood system that erases the screen has a limited lifetime. I know there was some adjustment inside both of the terminals (but you'd need a service manual...perhaps bitsavers?) that would adjust the flood current. However, if adjusting this didn't work, they'd check a couple of test points on one of the circuit boards, and if all the numbers came back right, the factory service guys would not fuss with it anymore, and start right away on replacing the tube. A good factory service person could replace the tube in a 4010 (took longer for a 4014) in about 20 minutes. My guess would be that, given the many, many years this terminal has been around, that the tube is just plain worn out. It is a possibility that some of the components in the flood drive circuitry have changed characteristics over the many years...resistors and capacitors can do this, as well as active components due to heat and power cycling. I'm sure that there's service documentation or schematics online somewhere. If bitsavers doesn't have it, I know that there is a website dedicated to Tektronix equipment, and has scans of lots of manuals and such, but can't recall the URL (don't have it bookmarked). Such material would at least let you know if the tube is tired, or if perhaps something else in the flood drive circuitry has gone astray that might be repairable. Rick Bensene The Old Calculator Web Museum http://oldcalculatormuseum.com

19 years, 6 months

1
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oi ancient IBM computer "Bible"

by chrism3667＠yahoo.com

http://cgi.ebay.com/1945-IBM-Computer-Engineer-s-Bible- Antique-Manual_W0QQitemZ190079723533QQihZ009QQcategory Z1247QQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem One can only wonder if an up to date translation would be necessary :D ____________________________________________________________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Everyone is raving about the all-new Yahoo! Mail beta. http://new.mail.yahoo.com

19 years, 6 months

6
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Tektronix terminals [was: Re: Re: Humpty Dumpty]

by djg＠pdp8.net

> > There also was a 'write through' mode, > > again, not sure if it was a hack, or part of the production terminals, > > that would (within the limitations of the RS-232 port) could do simple > > dynamic (non-stored) vector graphics. >It is also on the 4010. The 4010 and the 4014 have a card cage into >which you can insert your own cards. > I have a 4010 and didn't see any mention of this in the manual. Do you know if it took special cards? >At the very least it would be interesting to >add a USB port to the Tektronix this way to give it a higher serial >transfer rate. The number and complexity of the dynamic vectors that >you can draw is currently limited by the baud rate on the port. > On the 4010 you can exceed the draw rate for stored vectors when running at 9600 baud and you don't sent the unchanged bytes in the coordinates. I was trying reduce the draw time to make a better demo and found that long vectors wouldn't line up properly at 9600 when several of the bytes didn't need to be sent.

19 years, 6 months

2
1
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Portable Sun on ebay # 250082537181

by legalize＠xmission.com

Never heard of one of these, but I was surprised to read it was a Sun? Is this an x86 Sun or a ruggedized/portable SPARC or somesuch? -- "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, 6 months

6
5
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Tower of Nerd

by grant＠stockly.com

>Did anyone make S-100 SCSI? One could roll ones own, but that's a >different level of expense. The 5380, 3 resistor packs, a '138, couple latches, and about 10 square inches of an S-100 breadboard card. Grant

19 years, 6 months

3
2
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Heath ET-3400 Trainer Simulator SW

by ntp71＠ptd.net

do you have a copy of the trainer.zip file please need much neal

19 years, 6 months

1
0
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IBM Thermal Printer 5181001

by dbethke＠sbcglobal.net

I wonder if you still have the printer and what is the price? Dennis Howell Mountain Retreat Fonda and Dennis Bethke PO Box 731 277 Luring Pines Drive Angwin, CA 94508 Phone 707 965-3057 FAX?? 707 965-2835 dennisbethke at msn.com www.vrbo.com/21031 www.winecountrymall.biz ?

19 years, 6 months

1
0
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Tower of Nerd

by aek＠bitsavers.org

> The ultimate Altair needs to run Linux. Like a fish needs a bicycle? http://techdigest.tv/pcmaclinux.jpg

19 years, 6 months

3
2
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FS: PDP-11/24

by charlesmorris＠hughes.net

I have too many projects (including my 8/A and 11/23+) and not enough time, and don't want to keep my 11/24 sitting until the mice build nests in it. It seems to be alive (comes up to ODT on the console port) but I haven't tested it otherwise. 1 M7133 KDF11-UA 11/24 CPU with line clock and 2 SLU 1 M7134 KT-24 Unibus map, extension to 22 bits 1 M8743 (ECC RAM, either 512 Kb or 1 Mbyte) 2 M8722 (ECC Memory either 128 Kb or 256 Kb each) 1 M8188 FPF11 floating point processor 1 M7762 RL11 disk controller RL01/02 1 M7258 LP11 printer controller 1 DSD A2130-6 disk controller 4 M7819 DZ11-A eight RS232 ports each 1 M920 Unibus connector 1 M7297 RH11 MASSBUS Parity Control 1 M7296 RH11 MASSBUS Control & Status Registers 1 M7295 RH11A MASSBUS Bus Controller 1 M7294 RH11 MASSBUS Data Buffer and Control 3 M5904 RH11 MASSBUS Control Transceivers 1 M9300 Unibus terminator 1 M9312 Bootstrap Terminator Looking for a good home, please make a reasonable offer. Shipping may be expensive (that chassis/power supply is *heavy*). Can email pics. I'm in south central Missouri, zip 65775. thanks Charles

19 years, 6 months

1
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Tektronix terminals [was: Re: Re: Humpty Dumpty]

by rickb＠bensene.com

>>> There also was a 'write through' mode, >>> again, not sure if it was a hack, or part of the production terminals, >>> that would (within the limitations of the RS-232 port) could do simple >>> dynamic (non-stored) vector graphics. >>It is also on the 4010. The 4010 and the 4014 have a card cage into >>which you can insert your own cards. >I have a 4010 and didn't see any mention of this in the manual. Do you >know if it took special cards? I know that the 4010 did not provide write-through in "stock" form. There were only two aspects of the 4010 that did write-through. One was the "crosshairs" that would be drawn on the screen when the "GIN" (Graphic In) escape sequence was received. When put into GIN mode, write-through X&Y crosshairs would appear, and two thumbwheels could be used to position the intersection of the crosshairs anywhere on the screen, then any key could be pressed to send the coordinates, and the key pressed, back to the host system. The other was a write-through vertical line that scanned left-to-right when the optional dry-silver paper hardcopy unit was connected to the 4010. The write-thru line would "scan" the screen, and areas of the screen that had stored points/vectors would cause voltage variations in a sense circuit, which would cause a special CRT in the hardcopy unit to duplicate the screen contents as dry-silver paper would pass by the CRT. Then, the paper was passed through a heater (HOT!) that would develop the latent image in the silver, and fix it. There very well could have been options or hacks that provided the ability to draw write-through vectors. I do know that there was a PDP/11 DMA parallel option that was available for the 4010 that allowed much higher speed operation than offered by the serial port, but there were handshaking considerations that had to be taken into account, because the PDP/11 could easily outpace the ability of the 4010 to keep up. I do know that there were write current adjustments which you could fiddle with which would turn down the energy of the beam enough that it wouldn't cause storage. But then, the 4010 was write-through ONLY. It became really difficult to read text on the screen, as it would have to be continuously refreshed. Through the serial port, there just wasn't enough speed to be able to refresh a whole screen's worth of text fast enough to be readable. I believe that the statement that was made that the 4014 (a large-screen [19" diagonal, IIRC) version of the 4010, with faster vector draw rates, and more features) is correct. I think that the 4014 did have a programmable write-through mode but I recall that it was an option, and didn't come standard. I remember talking to someone in the CRT fab building (Tek built all of their own DVST and oscilloscope tubes for many years -- the building no longer exists on the campus though..it was demolished quite a number of years ago) who was involved with the design of the DVST tube for the 4014. It was a major challenge. It was a large screen for the time, and major challenges involved in structural stability, along with the difficulties of fabricating the complex structures that made the storage tube possible. Tek's DVST terminals were mainstays of graphics display technology for quite some time. It was much less expensive than the vector systems made by folks like Sanders and others. I remember a CAD system in the basement of building 50 that was PDP-8-based, made by a company that I can't remember, unfortunately. The company OEM'd Tek's storage tubes for the displays on the machine. The system was used for circuit board layout. It didn't do routing or anything like that...it only allowed a layout to be "drawn", and then turned into a photoplotter tape that would generate the negative artwork for the board. The storage tubes on this system definitely operated in write-through mode most of the time, and were capable of having quite a few vectors on the screen at once without too much flicker. I spent quite a bit of spare time down there watching the artists (in those days, circuit board layout folks were truly artists) designing the various layers of Tek's famous multi-layer circuit boards used in their oscilloscopes and other instrumentation. The PDP-8 was a transistorized PDP 8 (not a straight-8 but one of the later ones before they started using ICs), and had a couple of RK05 drives, along with a full rack that was filled with the display subsystem electronics. Tek later made a machine called the 4081. It used a similar DVST tube as the used on the 4014 terminal. It was a computer workstaiton based on an Interdata 8/16 CPU that Tektronix OEM'd from Interdata. The machine had a Tek-designed custom display-list processor, and could do some pretty fancy write-through graphics, along with storage graphics. It was fast enough that even a reasonable amount of vector text could be painted on the screen in write-through mode. Storage and write-through could be mixed. The machine used what I believe were OEM'd from Diablo, similar to RK05-F's, with one fixed platter, and one removable platter. The machine also had a cartridge tape drive that could be used to "IPL" the system. I spent a lot of time writing Pascal and machine-level code on this machine. There were some really fun games that were written for this machine. There was a disk operating system (I can't remember the name) that was kind of OS/8-like, with similar commands, and user-perceived filesystem structure. I wonder if any of these machines are still around an in operation. After the 4081, the move to raster graphics had gathered speed. Tek did a lot of research internally on raster graphics. There was an absolutely groundbreaking machine called the Magnolia (never marketed) that had some kind of bit-slice processor, a highly capable bit-slice raster BLIT graphics engine. The machine had a Micropolis 40MB 8" hard disk in the base of the "terminal", and ran a Tek-developed window-based multiprocessing (Unix-like) operating system, with the development environment being Smalltalk. It had a monochrome display, but could do gray-scale, which made shading, etc. possible. The biggest problem with the design was that with the hard disk in the base, users tended to kick and bump their feet on the bottom of the pedestal, which would cause shocks to the hard disk, and cause head crashes. Those old drives were pretty sensitive. The sad part of the whole thing was that Tektronix never pursued these machines as a product - the machine never made it past prototype stage. I believe that Xerox Parc had their early machines (Star, etc.) out already, which the Tek machines were clearly patterned after, but Tektronix' graphics expertise would have made these machines into tremendous standalone graphics workstations long before they became mainstream. An example of one of many of Tektronix' missed market opportunities. I ended up getting a number of those Micropolis 40MB drives (brand new in the box, for something like $20) used in Magnolia from the Tek Country Store (another whole article could be written on this wonderful place) much later, and built a custom interface for a homebrew 6800-based computer that I'd built, and wrote drivers for the FLEX operating system to talk to the drive. The drives ran quite hot, were extremely noisy, and had essentially a simple parallel interface. It was pretty cool having a computer system at home that had a whopping 40MB of hard disk space when everyone was running Apple II's and the likes with floppies. As always, a long diatribe that somewhat wanders off-topic, but it is all definitely within the context of the list. Rick Bensene The Old Calculator Web Museum http://oldcalculatormuseum.com

19 years, 6 months

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Speaking of terminals - a Morrow Designs/Lear Siegler ADM20 dropped on me today

by aek＠bitsavers.org

> > it. Didn't see anything on bitsavers, but I did find this... tech docs on the mdt20 are up now under http://bitsavers.org/pdf/morrow/mdt20

19 years, 6 months

2
1
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Recent Ohio Scientific lot on ebay...

by wh.sudbrink＠verizon.net

Well, old age is starting to catch up with me... While sitting and waiting for the lot (item #170077516683) to get a little closer to its end time last night, I fell asleep in front of the computer and didn't bid. I'm not familiar with the ebay ID of the winner, if you are on this list, I'll pay what you bid for copies of the documentation that was "hinted at" in the lot listing. To everyone else, sorry for the interruption. Bill Sudbrink -- No virus found in this outgoing message. Checked by AVG Free Edition. Version: 7.1.411 / Virus Database: 268.17.33/678 - Release Date: 2/9/2007

19 years, 6 months

1
0
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Sixel graphics (was: Humpty Dumpty)

by ajp166＠bellatlantic.net

> >Subject: Sixel graphics (was: Humpty Dumpty) > From: Richard <legalize at xmission.com> > Date: Fri, 09 Feb 2007 01:40:18 -0700 > To: "General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts" <cctalk at classiccmp.org> > > >In article <0JD500346VGN4EW3 at vms040.mailsrvcs.net>, > Allison <ajp166 at bellatlantic.net> writes: > >> Error! VT100 had sixel graphics as did VT220, 320 and 340 added color, >> VT1200 as full graphics (xterm). > >Sorry, but I just don't think this is correct. I meant Regis graphics, Sixel is a printer graphics protocal (As in LA75, LA100 and others). >VT100 docs (user guide and technical guide, both on bitsavers) do not >mention sixel graphics at all. Paul Shuford's site has some >discussion of what "sixel graphics" means and apparently different >people use the term loosely to describe different things. > >The VT125 had ReGIS graphics capability, but this is not a VT100. Totally incorrect as the Vt125 is a VT100 + the VT125 graphics plane. So a VT125 is a vt100 but a VT100 is not a VT125 holds. >The VT220 Programmer Reference Manual also does not mention sixel >graphics, but you can download a font glyph definition and presumably >with the right custom font you could display some sort of image, but >its not "sixel graphics". > >The VT320, like the VT200 series, also had user-definable character >sets. You can "fake" some graphics this way like you can with the >VT220. See <http://vt100.net/dec/vt320/soft_characters>. > >I know all these DEC terminal models can become confusing, but trust >me, I have been paying attention to which models support graphics. ><http://vt100.net/vt_history> gives these models as supporting >graphics: IT was VT105 I'd meant not the base VT100. > VT55: primitive graphics capability > VT105: VT100 + VT55 graphics capability > <http://home.arcor.de/magnos/ccg/vt105/VT105.html> > VT125: Graphics produced as a separate display from the text. > (I am not sure what this means; a separate monitor > required?) It means the display was a two plane one for characters and one for grpahics and they are displayed on the same tube. External monitor is required for color though. My Vt125 and VT185 have this. > VT240: B&W ReGIS graphics > VT241: Color ReGIS graphics > VT330: B&W ReGIS graphics > VT340: Color ReGIS graphics Read further the manual. Works fine on mine. I prefer the DEC tubes as Real Terminals(tm) rather than PCs running a poor emulation. I have used all of them in place AKA in the terminal and printers engineering (in a former engineering life) group makes it harder to remember all of them. It's also a problem as I have a few one off firmware versions that were not produced. Allison

19 years, 6 months

4
3
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Origins of "ansi" color codes

by palazzol＠comcast.net

Hello, Some old PC terminal emulators emulate "ansi" color. They use a total of 16 colors, which are really 8 colors with light/dark (bold/normal) versions. The color modes are triggered by escape sequences. The actual colors used in various emulators vary quite a bit. I am interested in knowing which terminal actually originated these colors (vt241? vt3xx series?). Ideally, I'd love to see a color spec, or schematics of how the terminal actually generated the colors, to try to get the most accurate representation possible of the colors. Thanks for any help, Frank

19 years, 6 months

3
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Speaking of terminals - a Morrow Designs/Lear Siegler ADM20 dropped on me today

by ethan.dicks＠gmail.com

Well... not literally "dropped"... Someone handed me one at lunch today (he thought it was an ADM2 when he mentioned it), so I brought it home and started googling around for it. Didn't see anything on bitsavers, but I did find this... http://www.classiccmp.org/dunfield/morrow/mdadm20.pdf ... on Dave Dunfield's pages, I presume. From what I can read, it's a pre/non-ANSI terminal from 1983. I was going to use it as a console for this Netra t 1125 (reboxed Sun Ultra 60 w/no holes for keyboard or video), but the distinct lack of VT-100-compatibility makes me think that I should dig something else out for a console to at least install the OS. Once it's up, there _is_ an adm20 entry in the termcap. To me, at least, the only thing remarkable about it is the company that made it. At least there's a bit of lore attached to ADM3 terminals (and the historic places they used to be found in). A non-ANSI terminal from 1983 just isn't that exciting, so if anyone on the list is really gung-ho for Morrow Designs stuff, make inquiries off-list, please. Gotta go dig up that Planar ELT-320 - at least it's small and low-power (as well as being ANSI-compatible in the terminal (not PC character graphics) sense). -ethan

19 years, 6 months

4
9
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Copying Mac Disks with a Single Drive

by compoobah＠valleyimplants.com

> Message: 23 > Date: Thu, 8 Feb 2007 12:27:00 -0800 (PST) > From: Fred Cisin <cisin at xenosoft.com> > Subject: Re: Copying a Mac Disk with a Single Drive > To: "General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts" > <cctalk at classiccmp.org> > Message-ID: <20070208122504.I35814 at shell.lmi.net> > Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII > > On Wed, 7 Feb 2007, Scott Quinn wrote: >> with an external 400 or 800k floppy. The SuperDrive (original >> SuperDrive, not the "new" CD/DVD one) [present on all Macs since the >> IIx, many IIs and some SEs (SE FDHD)] has the smaller head size and >> your older machine won't read it properly. WRT the swapping- can't > > There is a completely different recording method (MFM v Mac GCR). > > What are the dimensions of the different size heads? > Not sure about dimensions- the 800/400k drives I think share common dimensions with the PC-esque 720k drives, and the 1.4 SuperDrive is known to be the same dimension as the 1.44 MB PC mechanism. It was big issue around the time System 7 came out- if you put a 800k diskette in a System 7 machine with a SuperDrive the desktop file would be rewritten unless the disk was locked. If you then put the disk in a 800k System 6 drive it would indicate it as corrupt (you could run it through Disk First Aid to get it back) because of the head sizes (similar to the problem with 5.25" DD floppies in the PC AT)

19 years, 6 months

6
7
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Need an Elston analog video board for VT100

by ISC277＠CLCILLINOIS.EDU

All the terminal chatter has reminded me, anyone got a good spare VT100 analog video board of the Elston variant? It's the last piece I need to get my VT100 working again. Julian

19 years, 6 months

8
11
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Some HP paper tapes found

by jwest＠classiccmp.org

I just found 13 cases of HP paper tapes that I had forgotten about. Either I have a large cluttered basement, or I found them a week ago and just have really bad memory so I keep finding them again ;) Perhaps both. In any case, they are mostly DOS III, DOS-M, and RJE related. I noted the DOS stuff had system generation tapes too at the least. There's some BCS and diag tapes too. If anyone is desperately looking for tapes in that area of interest, let me know and I'll make a list of what's there. Jay West

19 years, 6 months

2
2
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Preservation of correspondence

by aliensrcooluk＠yahoo.co.uk

--- Jules Richardson <julesrichardsonuk at yahoo.co.uk > wrote: > Chuck Guzis wrote: > > On 5 Feb 2007 at 20:23, Jim Leonard wrote: **>> snip <<** > > I don't see the correlation. What good is bette r > error correction if > > it's built on a less reliable technology? > > Well said :) If the optical media were enclosed in a > case (CD caddies, > anyone?) then at least it would go some way toward > preventing damage from > scratches, fingerprints etc. **>> snip <<** > > cheers > > Jules > I remember CD caddies :) I recall back at secondary school in my first year there (year 7 for UK'ers), in 1990/1, that the new computer in the library used CD's which were in see through plastic. Essentially the "CD" of the time was like floppy discs - the writable media (medium?) was encased in protective plastic shell. I haven't seen any like that ever since. I don't suppose anyone on this list has any like that?? If so, I'd love to see a picture of it, please. Regards, Andrew D. Burton aliensrcooluk at yahoo.co.uk

19 years, 6 months

5
5
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SunOs tapes

by micheladam＠theedge.ca

I have both 4.1.1 for Sun3/3x, and the 4.1.1_U1 update, on CD, and could use CloneCD on those, if you would like. Would not mind getting one of those fuse for my 3/60. Michel ----- Original Message ----- From: silvercreekvalley <silvercreekvalley at yahoo.com> Date: Friday, February 9, 2007 4:06 am Subject: SunOs tapes > Looking for any original SunOS tapes (any machine) > or a 4.x era Sun 3 CD. Must be original tape/CD. > Format etc doesnt matter as I can cope with just > about anything. > > Also - if anyone is looking for the fairly difficult > to find fuses that you get in Sun 3's I have a few > spares available (no charge, just postage). > > I've blown a few of these fuses over the years, > usually > caused by the keyboard plug moving in the socket while > the Sun is on - and I've found them awkward to find. > > Cheers > > Ian. > > > > > ____________________________________________________________________________________ > 8:00? 8:25? 8:40? Find a flick in no time > with the Yahoo! Search movie showtime shortcut. > http://tools.search.yahoo.com/shortcuts/#news >

19 years, 6 months

1
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Tektronix terminals [was: Re: Re: Humpty Dumpty]

by blstuart＠bellsouth.net

Richard wrote: > At the very least it would be interesting to > add a USB port to the Tektronix this way to give it a higher serial > transfer rate. The number and complexity of the dynamic vectors that > you can draw is currently limited by the baud rate on the port, but I > assume that if you get a faster communications channel, then there's > probably a limit based on how fast they can slew the electron beam. That was the impression I got at the time. Of course it's been *mumble* years. (You know, it's really sad when you find yourself counting how many decades something's been.) One of my college roommates did his senior project setting up an LSI-11 as a front end for the 4014. He didn't integrate into the card cage, but I seem to remember that he didn't just hook it up to the RS-232 port either, but he may have. That bit's rather fuzzy. I seem to remember that he found it really didn't help much on the speed of drawing. But I think it was more a matter of comm speed rather than what the terminal could do. BLS

19 years, 6 months

1
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Preservation of Correspondence - And Media

by Billy.Pettit＠wdc.com

Jules Richardson wrote: Tony Duell wrote: >> Can't say the same for *some* players I've owned (thinks of Magnavox crap >> in wastebasket about three months later just after the warranty expired). > > IIRC Magnavox are essentially Philips. Interesting - I didn't know that. The Magnavox stuff I've seen in the US seems to have less build quality than similar Philips items from Europe, but that's possibly a reflection on US consumer electronic/electrical equipment in general rather than any kind of corporate failing. > In the UK, Philips CD players were > knwon for developing dry joiuts. A complete re-solder would get them > going again and then they'd essentially go for ever... The soldering is awful in their Laserdisc players of old; sounds like things didn't improve when they started making CD players... cheers Jules --------------------------- Philips bought the Magnavox label seveeral years ago. Before that, they had a terrible time getting name brand recognition in the US. Most of the sets for both brands were made by Funai, so there was very little real change. This is common technique for companies outside the US trying to crack the US market. Philips also bought Sonic Care tooth brushes for the same reason. Thomson bought the RCA brand name. And so on. Billy

19 years, 6 months

1
0
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Bugs in computer hardware (real ones)

by charlesmorris＠hughes.net

On Fri, 9 Feb 2007 12:03:37 -0600 (CST), you wrote: >On Feb 8, 2007, at 2:42 PM, Bob Rosenbloom wrote: >> I have a dual floppy system from Computer Automation that >> some kind of insect had made a nest in a long time ago. I'm not >> sure how to remove the stuff. I tried water but it has no effect. >> It's hard as concrete! I looked at the pictures and those sure look a lot like mud dauber wasp nests - they get into everything stored outdoors in Missouri that has an opening big enough to admit a wasp. That mix of wasp snot and dirt could be a replacement for structural concrete if one could find a way to direct the placement :) Unfortunately I don't know any magic way to get it off that won't also destroy the electronics! I've actually had to use a hammer to get rid of some of them, and steel-brush the remainder. Obviously not practical in your floppy drive. http://www.ent.iastate.edu/imagegal/hymenoptera/sphecidae/sphecinae/muddaub… -Charles

19 years, 6 months

1
0
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Bugs in computer hardware (real ones)

by Billy.Pettit＠wdc.com

John C. Ellingboe wrote: Bob Rosenbloom wrote: > > I have a dual floppy system from Computer Automation that > some kind of insect had made a nest in a long time ago. I'm not sure how to remove the stuff. I tried water but it has no effect. It's hard as concrete! I can chip it but it takes quite a bit of force and I don't want to rip off any components under it. Any ideas? Here's some photos: > > <http://www.dvq.com/oldcomp/1kx768/cc_flpy2.JPG> > <http://www.dvq.com/oldcomp/1kx768/cc_flpy3.JPG> > <http://www.dvq.com/oldcomp/1kx768/cc_flpy4.JPG> > > Thanks, > > Bob Dirt/mud dauber nest... They can be removed with water and a brush but it will take a bit of work.. Chip away what you can safely, use something a little stiff like an acid brush and add a little detergent to the water. What ever they add to the dirt is somewhat water resistant but it will wash away after a bit. ------------------------------------------------ What they add is saliva, which dries extremely hard, like a varnish. What I've done with these nests which I find in the eaves occasionally, is just simply water. If I'm worried about the finish (or in your case, the components) I use a thin sponge taped over the nest. Keep it soaked by watering every day. Usually a week is enough for the nest to fall off. It leaves a ring that I take off with a white (no scratch) Scotch Brite pad and warm water. Billy

19 years, 6 months

4
4
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Tektronix terminals [was: Re: Re: Humpty Dumpty]

by blstuart＠bellsouth.net

Rick Bensene wrote: > The coolest Tektronix terminal, if you ask me, was the original Tek > 4002. > ... > There also was a 'write through' mode, > again, not sure if it was a hack, or part of the production terminals, > that would (within the limitations of the RS-232 port) could do simple > dynamic (non-stored) vector graphics. Don't know about the 4002, but I'm pretty sure it was standard on the 4014. We had one in college and I wrote a little thing that drew a wireframe pyramid in writethrough mode. You gave it a file of x, y, z rotations and it drew the animated pyramid. We were running it on a VAX 11/780 running VMS. Of course, when someone else got the CPU, the screen blanked. (If you didn't rewrite the lines fast enough, they went away.) So this friend of mine who was employed by the computing center (as was I) as an operator got this "brilliant" idea. We had privileges to create queues. So he created one with real-time priority so that it wouldn't blank out. It worked in that the animation was quite smooth. But >from the perspective of everyone else on the system, it had locked solid. We did finally get logged in and killed the queue, but as I recall it took about 30 to 45 minutes. BLS

19 years, 6 months

2
1
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Copying a Mac Disk with a Single Drive

by mtapley＠swri.edu

At 11:56 -0600 2/8/07, Scott wrote: >but the default >gives you lots of wrist exercise even on a 4MB Mac SE/800k. My favorite sniglet for this is, "MacElbow". --

19 years, 6 months

1
0
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Anyone have real tech info on HP54201D (Digital Storage Scope)

by dave06a＠dunfield.com

Sorry - I know this is a bit OT, but I don't know many places to ask... Does anyone here have technical information or experience with the HP54201D Digitizing Storage Oscilloscope. I'm specifically looking for information/help with the analog triggering circuits. I've obtained the HP "service manual" for this scope, and it is absolutely useless, no schematics, not technical descriptions... Basically, it says "Plug the scope into your HP scope tester, press GO and replace any boards which are listed as FAILED". I've had this machine for a few months. It's always had problems with the analog triggering. When I first got it, channel-1 would not trigger at all, but channel-2 and external triggering worked most of the time. Channel-1 would fail the trigger Hysteresis & Level calibration, Channel-2 would usually pass. I've been using it with Channel-2 triggering, however within the past week, I've noticed that it triggers continuously after power on (Doesn't matter what trigger level etc. you program), but after a few minutes it would settle down and work as before. Thinking it might be a calibration issue, I re-ran self-calibration, and surprisingly Channel-1 passed, after which I could use both channels with full triggering, however both of them exhibited continuous triggering after power-on, and the time taken to settle down has been increasing. This morning, it's been on for over three hours and it's still triggering continously, even with no signal inputs (leads disconnected). Triggering calibrations fail consistantly for both channels. So I think it has finally gone bye-bye. When it works, this scope is awesome - I would really like to get it working again - any information/help would be greatly apprecaited. Regards,. Dave -- dave06a (at) Dave Dunfield dunfield (dot) Firmware development services & tools: www.dunfield.com com Collector of vintage computing equipment: http://www.classiccmp.org/dunfield/index.html

19 years, 6 months

2
2
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Preservation of Correspondence - And Media

by Billy.Pettit＠wdc.com

Chuck Guzis wrote: While I'd like to believe that DVD-R media has the same permanence, my problems with DVD players successfully reading movies and such makes me suspicious. It could be that DVD is just "pushing" the technology a bit. Storage for CD-Rs in stlil in styrene jewel cases. We'll occasionally use PVC cases as mailers (they survive the rigors of the USPS better), but we advise customers to use traditional styrene cases for storage. From what I've read on the archivists' list, some PVC material has been found to outgas chlorine. Cheers, Chuck -------------------------------------------------- I never quite know how to take all the disk bashing that seems to come up periodically on this list. One point that seems to be missed is that the DVD play back is influenced by the reliability of the laser diode. And that diode is subjected to thermal stresses far beyond those of the CD-ROM laser diodes. At the junction temperatures used in DVD burners, the life of the diode is a small fraction of the CD-ROM diodes. It also deteriorates in performance from the junction breaking down. Consequently the playback life of the player is significantly reduced. Yet it is always the media that takes the hit. Everybody else seems to have lots of horror stories about media. I don't. I want to again state that I have seen CD's burned in the 1976-77 time period that can still be read. And I've seen DVDs from the early 90's that can also still be read. Reliably. But the moves to cut the cost of the players to sub-$50 means that many companies are using substandard laser parts, or parts with shorter rated life (which are a lot cheaper.) Every study I have seen shows that CDs and DVDs have a much longer life span than magnetic media, especially floppies. Another point made that I do agree with - because of all the music CDs made, the players will not go away. All the major players in CDs and DVDs have tried for many years to force to another form factor. Those mostly empty 5.25" chasses are really offensive to design engineers trying to push the state of the art. And how can you resell the same music again, if you don't change form factor or format? But the customer base won't budge. They don't want to render obsolete their sizeable investment in CDs. (Last year I have data for shows annual production of CDs in the billions world wide!) Legacy demands will keep the 5.25" form factor around for the rest of my life. Can't speak for you youngsters. But say another 25 years minimum. Shame really - I saw some lovely little Blu Ray 20mm disks that held as much video as the current DVD. Gives you a DVD player that could be built into a cell phone or toy. But every customer survey showed massive resistance to change from 5.25". PVC does outgas Chlorine - and other volatiles. Does nasty stuff to the reflective films in DVDs. Most jewel cases are better. But oddly enough, the self cleaning paper sleeves caused the least affects - except for shock events. Billy

19 years, 6 months

10
11
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SunOs tapes

by silvercreekvalley＠yahoo.com

Looking for any original SunOS tapes (any machine) or a 4.x era Sun 3 CD. Must be original tape/CD. Format etc doesnt matter as I can cope with just about anything. Also - if anyone is looking for the fairly difficult to find fuses that you get in Sun 3's I have a few spares available (no charge, just postage). I've blown a few of these fuses over the years, usually caused by the keyboard plug moving in the socket while the Sun is on - and I've found them awkward to find. Cheers Ian. ____________________________________________________________________________________ 8:00? 8:25? 8:40? Find a flick in no time with the Yahoo! Search movie showtime shortcut. http://tools.search.yahoo.com/shortcuts/#news

19 years, 6 months

1
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Tektronix terminals [was: Re: Re: Humpty Dumpty]

by rickb＠bensene.com

>> I don't think Tektronix ever made a terminal that wasn't graphics >> capable :-) and when they went to raster displays from storage scopes, >> I believe they were all color capable. >I remember at least on counter-example, the 4025. It was a >mono raster unit. We had a 4025 at the research lab of the >first company I worked for out of college. It was connected to >one of those electrostatic printers. We drove it from a VAX 11/750 >running BSD4.2 and later 4.3. There was also a 4023 "non-graphic" terminal, significantly prior to the 4025. It used SSI and MSI TTL logic, early IC-RAM (don't know if it was dynamic or static), and a MOS character generator. The CRT used a rather slow-responding white phosphor that made it a little difficult to read when it scrolled. When I was a Systems Operator (as they were called in those days) of Tektronix' Scientific Computer Center Control Data Cyber 73, a Tek 4023 terminal was situated next to the big dual vector CRT console. This terminal was logged into KRONOS (the timesharing operating system that ran on Tek's Cyber 73) as an administrative user that would pop up messages with user requests to do things like mount tapes, and other messages from users, and the operator could respond through this terminal. The 4025 came significantly later, and I believe, was microprocessor controlled. The coolest Tektronix terminal, if you ask me, was the original Tek 4002. It did use Tek's famous DVST (Direct View Storage Tube) display that was really made famous by the 4010. The 4002 (and slightly updated) 4002A were big terminals, with a "drawer" packed full of electronics. The coolest part was the "^G" (bell), which was a really nice tone generator. I can't remember if it was a hack, or production, but there was an escape sequence that you could send to change the frequency of the tone emitted with control-G was received. With this, people had written some programs on some a DEC PDP-8 (it may have been a PDP 8/I IIRC) that could play music on the terminal, while drawing some graphics on the screen at the same time. There also was a 'write through' mode, again, not sure if it was a hack, or part of the production terminals, that would (within the limitations of the RS-232 port) could do simple dynamic (non-stored) vector graphics. There was a little game, again hosted on the PDP-8 machine, that would play a game where two tanks opposed each other with interposing landcape (hills or elevation changes) and players would take turns aiming their gun, and shooting a shell at the opposing tank. I also recall that for high-speed use, there was a direct DMA parallel interface that would hook to a PDP-11 (Unibus) that allowed some actually fairly high-performance vector graphics on the 4002. Would love to find a 4002 or 4002A around somewhere. Would also love to find one of those 4023's -- it really was a great old terminal. For a time, I had one of them at home, hooked up to an acoustic coupler and I could dial into the Cyber at 1200 baud, and do work from home. Those were good old days! Rick Bensene The Old Calculator Web Museum http://oldcalculatormuseum.com

19 years, 6 months

1
0
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Humpty Dumpty

by ken＠seefried.com

From: Richard <legalize at xmission.com> > >> As an aside, INMHO E-bay feedback is seriously broken, in that you can >> bet seller will give you negative feedback if you give him negative >> feedback, no matter how poor the product, how misleading the discription, >> how promptly you paid, etc. > >In fact this seller tried to blackmail me saying "if you remove your >negative feedback, then I will remove mine, > I've not had this, but I've had a *lot* of sellers (almost always big ones) who have sent me mails to the effect "I'll leave you positive feedback after you leave me positive feedback". I don't leave any feedback for them. As a slightly amusing aside, the only negative eBay feedback I have was from this Canadian douchebag dentist-in-training who was pissed I left him neutral (not negative) feedback that it took something like 3 weeks to ship two small packages. Not only did he leave me negative feedback, as some sort of juvenile "payback" attempt, he tried to subscribe me to a couple of dozen random mailing lists. Of course, every one sent me a "reply to this if you want to subscribe" email, which I ignored. Now, as it happens, I was a principle information security architect for a Very Large Telco at the time. There's a certain amount of pull associated with the job. Not being real bright, our eBay dork didn't notice some of the mailing lists involved were hosted at .gov sites. They we're more than willing to supply me with date/time/IP of the attempt to sign me up. Very easy to track back to some jerk in Canada rather than me in sunny Atlanta, GA. This resulted in a few personal calls to his school and ISP to the effect "I'm a senior security guy at Very Large Telco, but I have a little personal issue I was hoping you could help me out with...here's the issue, here's the evidence". They apparently had a really good time dressing this little putz down. Moral of the story...don't try to screw random strangers. You never know what kind of pull they have.

19 years, 6 months

9
9
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Humpty Dumpty

by Billy.Pettit＠wdc.com

Chuck Guzis wrote: True, high-voltage (low current) DC is usually far less dangerous than AC, but there can arise nasty side effects from the involuntary muscle twitch. When I was much younger, I was working on a 3KV transmitter power supply. I *thought* that the bleeder had sufficiently discharged things, but it wasn't so. I brushed the top of an oil capacitor and got nailed. Unfortunately, about 6 inches in back of me was a concrete block wall. The muscle contraction proceeded to slam my elbow with great force into said wall. It hurt like hell for days. I'm fortunate I didn't fracture something. It's truly amazing how many lessons you can learn in the space of a millisecond or so: 1) Never trust a bleeder--they can and do open. 2) Leave plenty of working space around you. 3) Try to work with one hand in a back pocket. Cheers, Chuck ------------------------------------------- In the Army in 1960, I took radar school at Fort Monmouth, New Jersy. After Basic Electronics, we moved to the TPS-1D radar lab for orientation. 4 hour safety class - what to wear, to do, not do, etc. For example, we all wore a small florescent tube on our shirts. At the end was a tour and the instructor pointed out the various systems and risks. We got to the kylstron modulator and he pointed out with a wooden pencil where the high voltage lead was. Of course the inevitable happened, the arc came up the graphite, and his muscles convulsing threw him into wall. A few of us had sense enough not to laugh. The MSgt in charge of the lab came running over and helped him back on his feet. He asked the instructor what the hell happened? This guy was still in a daze and answered, "I don't know. All I did was touch this point with a pencil like this..." The next day he left for Fort Dix for infantry training. Billy

19 years, 6 months

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eBay - Interesting Item

by aek＠bitsavers.org

> $50 is overpriced for an ICE? It's useless without the CPU pod.

19 years, 6 months

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eBay - Interesting Item

by Billy.Pettit＠wdc.com

6809 Emulator stuck over in ICs. Overpriced but nice looking. 150089377880

19 years, 6 months

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Very old Cdrom mastering

by jwstephens＠msm.umr.edu

There is a Young Minds unit on Ebay right now, which was similar to the first unit I saw at sunsoft in about 1995 or so. This unit would have been from 13,000 to 50,000, depending on when you got hold of it. There was a kodak writer unit attached to this to do the writing. This particular unit seems to have a wide scsi under the connector marked "writer" so would most likely not be the same one as the one I encountered. Sunsoft could master the data and drive this unit via the SCSI port, and this in turn would write the cd. Overall the process took probably over 3 hours, but produced a cd which at the time was something that was pretty new, at least to me. I think there is was a Kodak unit recently, but I cannot find it now. they were packaged in a unit almost as big as this converted desktop. Jim 190046817654

19 years, 6 months

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Removing labels - lighter fluid

by Watzman＠neo.rr.com

For removing labels and their adhesive gum, I use lighter fluid (the kind made for old cigarette lighters) to remove labels. Zippo and Ronson are two major brands. You can buy it at almost any grocery or drug store (it may be behind the counter, ask). It's very effective and doesn't seem to leave a residue or cause long-term plastic damage. I also use it for cleaning old laptops, put some on a paper towel and it works great, it's just a good solvent. [Do not use it on the screen ... I will use Windex on an LCD screen, however. It's harsh and frequent use is definitely not recommended, but very occasionally, it's ok and works very well.]

19 years, 6 months

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CD remastering (was Preservation of Correspondence - And Media)

by aek＠bitsavers.org

> The analog to digital transition is not significant at all, really. > Once the audio is in those two RCA connectors or phono plugs, it does > not really matter if it is coming or going to digital or analog > source. Absolutely false. The reason early CDs sounded so bad was they often started with the Master mixdown tapes from the LP, which had a lot of bad juju done to them due to the limitations of the vinyl medium. That's why so much work has been put into remastering from original multitracks, when possible. The problem is people EXPECT the music to sound like what they heard on vinyl. Getting the remix to sound 'right' is tough to do. > Pretty much all of > this is mainstream, anyway, so the record companies do the > conversions. This won't happen, as people have said, for stuff out of the mainstream. When it's done, it is often from vinyl, since the original tapes have been lost. .. getting this back to preservation, at least we work (mostly) with digital saturation recording.

19 years, 7 months

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Tektronix terminals [was: Re: Re: Humpty Dumpty]

by blstuart＠bellsouth.net

> I don't think Tektronix ever made a terminal that wasn't graphics > capable :-) and when they went to raster displays from storage scopes, > I believe they were all color capable. I remember at least on counter-example, the 4025. It was a mono raster unit. We had a 4025 at the research lab of the first company I worked for out of college. It was connected to one of those electrostatic printers. We drove it from a VAX 11/750 running BSD4.2 and later 4.3. BLS

19 years, 7 months

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Copying a Mac Disk with a Single Drive

by compoobah＠valleyimplants.com

> If I am remembering correctly, older systems can't format during a > copy, but later ones can. What I seem to think was the single-disk > copying procedure is to eject the System disk (Flower-E or Flower-1?), > you want <COMMAND>-E for copying. the "1" thing (<COMMAND> <SHIFT> 1 if I remember right) was the "force eject" for the first floppy drive at startup if normal methods (drag-to-trash or eject command) failed. > It's all quite tedious, but possible. If there's anyway you can > borrow a second 400K floppy, you will find this somewhat trivial. You > can also copy 400K disks in more modern Macs, so don't think you are > limited to using a 128K Mac to copy single-sided MFS disks. I can't > say for certain how new the gear can be, but at the very least, I'd be > surprised if a Mac SE or SE/30 running System 6 couldn't still do it. You want to use either a Mac II or earlier, or a SE/30 or IIcx/IIci with an external 400 or 800k floppy. The SuperDrive (original SuperDrive, not the "new" CD/DVD one) [present on all Macs since the IIx, many IIs and some SEs (SE FDHD)] has the smaller head size and your older machine won't read it properly. WRT the swapping- can't recall at this point if changing the disk cache/RAM cache (depending on your system version) setting makes any difference, but the default gives you lots of wrist exercise even on a 4MB Mac SE/800k.

19 years, 7 months

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ISO: A good explanation of EBCDIC control seuqnces

by ptykodi＠tykodi.com

Hi Chuck, If you know the name of the WP package that created the files, I can check and see whether I have the manual that would explain the command formats utilized. Best Regards, /Paul -- Paul Tykodi Principal Consultant TCS - Tykodi Consulting Services LLC E-mail: ptykodi at tykodi.com > Date: Wed, 07 Feb 2007 16:25:20 -0800 > From: "Chuck Guzis" <cclist at sydex.com> > Subject: ISO: A good explanation of EBCDIC control sequences > > Lately, I've been plowing through a bunch of EBCDIC-encoded WP > documents. I don't have a problem finding EBCDIC charts with > mnemonics, but I'd like some more detail on control character > operation. For example, what's the difference between IT PT and HT? > What sequence does CSP introduce and what are its variations? > > I've done some web searching but can't come up with anything > definitive. Any pointers would be welcome. > > Cheers, > Chuck

19 years, 7 months

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ISO: A good explanation of EBCDIC control seuqnces

by cclist＠sydex.com

Lately, I've been plowing through a bunch of EBCDIC-encoded WP documents. I don't have a problem finding EBCDIC charts with mnemonics, but I'd like some more detail on control character operation. For example, what's the difference between IT PT and HT? What sequence does CSP introduce and what are its variations? I've done some web searching but can't come up with anything definitive. Any pointers would be welcome. Cheers, Chuck

19 years, 7 months

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HP 2117f cables needed

by g-wright＠att.net

Hi, All of this HP 1000 talk got me going on mine. I have most of the drives, paper tape punch and tape drives and a real nice 2117F. But thats where it stops. No Cables Does anyone have a stash of these. I have no cables and cant seem to find anyone that does. It seems that most of these are offered with out the cables. I would guess they all go to bulhead connectors and are just easier to slip off the connector on the cards. Need these at minimum - Console 12966a - HPIB disk 12821a - HPIB Mag tape 13183 Also Trying to figure out 2 cards HP 12250 60001 and a FDS n612 4256-001 Thanks, Jerry Jerry Wright JLC inc g-wright at att.net

19 years, 7 months

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[ot] broadcast radio

by aek＠bitsavers.org

How is it that a station that covers about 20 years, only plays about 4-8 hours of music! I'm sick of the radio and how few songs they actually play. -- Terrestrial broadcast radio (and television) is in a death spiral. Corporations want to move to the subscription model, and are putting the least resources they can into traditional media. Most stations are automated with feeds from satellites. They are programmed by consultants looking for least common denominator programming for the desired audience demographic by the advertisers. Mean while, most people under 30 have abandoned radio for iPods or webcasts. There are a few eclectic non-comms left. I'm involved with KFJC in the SF Bay area, and William is working on a program for WFMU.

19 years, 7 months

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wire wrap machine

by Billy.Pettit＠wdc.com

Chuck Guzis wrote: On 7 Feb 2007 at 11:08, jim wrote: > any other observations on WW as far as clocking? I know that > the more expensive stuff ran mini coax around the backplane > to get much better signals, but we just used regular old 32 or > whatever guage WW wires, sometimes 26 guage for high > current. How about ECL? Moto used to advertise that the 10,000 series was "wire-wrappable", but the WW samples I've seen have lots of twisted pairs on them. Looks like a real pain to do. Cheers, Chuck ---------------------------------------------- The Cyber 170 series from CDC used twisted pair wire-wrap. I still have a bunch of it. The wires were color coded for length. The early back planes were hand wired using a machine like Al described. Later machines were more automated and wired from a reel. Proper nightmare to troubleshoot. You had to feel a wire through the mat since all wires were the same color. The logic was standard MECL 10K. The normal and complement outputs made it a natural to use as a differential transmitter. So some of the signals were single-ended, twisted with a ground wire. The longer signals and I/O lines used the twisted pair as a differential line - no ground wire. If I remember correctly, the standard single ended wire was 100 ohm impedance terminated to 220 ohm resistors to -2.2v or 550 ohm resistors to -5.5v. The differential lines used two resistors at each end. Real pain doesn't do justice to working with these back planes. The wires were 30 gauge single strand and brittle. When removing one, you had to carefully trim off the bare wire end before pulling the wire out of the mat. If you didn't, the ends would break off and fall down the vertical back plane until they disappeared. Then you got to spend an hour trying to find them. We used to call them "tingles". If you didn't get them all out and applied power, they became "twinkles" as they shorted out and vaporized. Which did wonders for the logic and gave you a couple more hours of overtime trying to get the machine going again. Of course this always happened late on a Saturday night, especially if you had a date or tickets. Putting ECOs in became a total complete nightmare. We calculated the size of work by number of wires to change. If you were good, you could do 8-10 wires an hour. 4 years of twisted pair wire wrap experience is probably the best explanation I can give for volunteering to move off main frames and on to disk drives. Billy

19 years, 7 months

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some prime CV software on ebay?

by brad＠heeltoe.com

If anyone is interested in prime/cv software, check out ebay 190080793732 I know the seller, but don't know anything about the software. It's not far from me however, so I could go check it out if anyone is seriously interested and has questions. -brad

19 years, 7 months

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Preservation of Correspondence - And Media

by aek＠bitsavers.org

Their latest release (for charity (Red Nose day)) is a cover of Run DMC's "Walk This Way". Of course, you need to be old enough to remember the originals though :) -- ahem.. "Walk This Way" isn't a Run DMC song..

19 years, 7 months

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wire wrap machine

by dgriffi＠cs.csubak.edu

There's a wire-wrap machine of some sort on Ebay (#290079310287) just in case someone in Colorado wants to redo their PDP-10 backplane. -- 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, 7 months

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What does the unimplemented trap bomb error message mean?

by hexstar＠gmail.com

What does a unimplemented trap bomb error message mean? As in, what happened to cause it? Thanks! :) P.S. Tried googling and came up with nothing :eek: :( ...reason I'm asking is because I've got a app I want to run on a 'ol SE of mine but when it starts to open a unimplemented trap bomb error message is thrown (Mac OS 7.1) and thus I'd like to know what exactly happens to cause that bomb...thanks! :) P.S.S The app that causes the bomb is speedometer (I believe it's version 1.0..not totally sure though)

19 years, 7 months

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Preservation of Correspondence - And Media

by Billy.Pettit＠wdc.com

* David Griffith wrote: On Wed, 7 Feb 2007, Al Kossow wrote: > > So, . . . > > is there hope of eventually seeing the old classics on CD? > > (such as "Nash Rambler", "Purple People Eater", "Witch Doctor") > > The Playmates "Beep, Beep" > Sheb Wooley "Purple People Eater" > David Seville "Witch Doctor" > > These are all charted singles, and are easy to find, though > probably not on a single collection. I've found all of those on Dr Demento CD sets. -- David Griffith -------------------------------------------- Ahh. You took the words out of my mouth. Dr Demento even goes further back to "Please Mr Custer", "Surfin Bird" or "Transfusion". Nervous Norvous - what a great name for a classic computer noid afraid to power up his thousand dollar because of aging capacitors. (Have to stay OT.) Billy

19 years, 7 months

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Preservation of Correspondence - And Media

by aliensrcooluk＠yahoo.co.uk

--- woodelf <bfranchuk at jetnet.ab.ca> wrote: > aliensrcooluk at yahoo.co.uk wrote: > > > I thought CD's were invented in 1982? > > I remember it easily as thats the year my > > younger brother was born. > > I am still waiting for my CD's from UK/Europe. > All the ones I want are out of print. > > > Or was that the year they first came to the > > UK/Europe?? > > I am still recovering from the Beatles invasion fr om > this side of the pond. Do you still have a wide > selection > of music CD's or have they like the USA only the N EW > fad music in stock? > Depends where you go. I buy all my CD's from HMV (His Masters Voice for those who don't know what it stands for) or from online (usually Amazon). HMV is often pricey, whereas smaller backstreet shops have them cheaper. HMV has a huge range of choice here in Cambridge, UK, but I can't say what the choice is like in erm... less popular cities! HMV sells, as the name suggests, mainly music so they have to have a wide variety. I must admit I am fed up of all the covers/ remixs of old songs that keep being done by new (younger) artists. Girls Aloud (although beautiful) are a prime example - they won a UK talent search thing like American Idol and pretty much 95% of there stuff (certainly all there singles that are released) are covers of older music. Their latest release (for charity (Red Nose day)) is a cover of Run DMC's "Walk This Way". Of course, you need to be old enough to remember the originals though :) Anyway, going well OT.... Regards, Andrew D. Burton aliensrcooluk at yahoo.co.uk PS. I am looking to buy a laptop off eBay , for reasons I won't explain as it will take too long. Does anyone have any recommendations of makes/models I should look for, or avoid? Replies direct to me please (or Jay will shoot me!) :)

19 years, 7 months

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Preservation of Correspondence - And Media

by aek＠bitsavers.org

> So, . . . > is there hope of eventually seeing the old classics on CD? > (such as "Nash Rambler", "Purple People Eater", "Witch Doctor") The Playmates "Beep, Beep" Sheb Wooley "Purple People Eater" David Seville "Witch Doctor" These are all charted singles, and are easy to find, though probably not on a single collection.

19 years, 7 months

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Preservation of correspondence

by aliensrcooluk＠yahoo.co.uk

--- Adrian Graham <witchy at binarydinosaurs.co.uk> wr ote: > On 7/2/07 00:34, "arcarlini at iee.org" > <arcarlini at iee.org> wrote: > **>> snip <<** > > > In a school in 1990 I would guess that this is > just the > > standard "flip-top" lid caddy that many early > CD-ROM units > > I thought that at first but Andrew said some of th e > caddy came back out > again? No, I never said that. The person who replied to my email said that. Regards, Andrew D. Burton aliensrcooluk at yahoo.co.uk

19 years, 7 months

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IBM 3420 and 3803 on ebay

by rborsuk＠colourfull.com

There are a couple listed from the same seller. Look in good condition. # 170078807906 # 170078863271 Robert Borsuk rborsuk at colourfull.com -- (\__/) (='.'=) This is Bunny. Copy and paste bunny into your (")_(") signature to help him gain world domination.

19 years, 7 months

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Handy copyright guide

by cclist＠sydex.com

Questions of copyright have come up here from time to time with much discussion. I discovered a chart that might help to clear a few things up about US copyright: http://www.bromsun.com/practices/copyright-portfolio- development/flowchart.htm Cheers, Chuck

19 years, 7 months

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Preservation of correspondence

by aek＠bitsavers.org

> The problem with putting floppy images on a DVD is that if you lose > or destroy that DVD you lose a ton of data Well, rule #1 is never have a single copy of backup data. Rule #2 is have an off-site copy. That single DVD is going to be a heck of a lot easier to migrate to the next generation of media than trying to re-read those floppies again (if they are still even readable). A single copy of something on aging media is a problem I face at CHM. It's what I call a 'latent archive'. If you don't actually RECOVER the data on an old tape or disk, you can't be assured that you actually have anything other than the physical object.

19 years, 7 months

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Preservation of Correspondence - And Media

by shumaker＠att.net

The unit that seems most commonly available is branded "Ion" and comes with a USB link built in.. specs for it sound like a fairly good "consumer" grade turntable. There is also a device available that takes a turntable preamp signal and converts it to digital audio on a USB link. Thus allowing those of us with audiophile grade units to continue using them.... steve shumaker At 09:44 AM 2/7/2007, you wrote: >Please, if you know a source of good stuff like this let us know. > >My wife's got a ton of LP's that haven't come out on CD... and they never >will. >Kind of be nice to play them instead of just collecting them. > >Bill > >On 2/7/07, Cameron Kaiser <spectre at floodgap.com> wrote: >> >> > Anyway, this is the big reason why you can, with looking, still buy a >> > turntable to play your records. >> >>In fact, I just bought my folks a USB turntable (i.e., a turntable with a >>built-in USB Audio output) so that they could start digitizing their old >>LP catalogue. I imagine, though, with the way they care for their LPs that >>they may outlast whatever CD-Rs they make of them. >> >>-- >>--------------------------------- personal: >>http://www.armory.com/~spectre/ --- >> Cameron Kaiser * Floodgap Systems * www.floodgap.com * >>ckaiser at floodgap.com >>-- Adore, v.: To venerate expectantly. -- Ambrose Bierce >>----------------------

19 years, 7 months

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Synertek 2650-P-01

by tshoppa＠wmata.com

Christian Corti writes: > I have some Synertek 2650-P-01 (date code 7720) that > are definitely *not* 2650 CPUs, along with some > AMI 1315-P-2 (seems to be some kind of keyboard > encoder). They come from some old Courier 270 > display terminals. So what's a 2650-P-01 ? Synertek made character generator chips (really mask ROM) and LSI video scan generators that commonly appeared in 70's devices. Doesn't help narrow down what was in that terminal, but the point is they did a lot of stuff for that market (including CPU's in the first microprocessor terminals). Didn't somebody from that era at Synertek talk at VCF East last year? Tim.

19 years, 7 months

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Removing labels (alternate methods?)

by trixter＠oldskool.org

I hate to re-open a common thread, but I've tried both Goo-Gone and a hair drier to remove old labels from diskettes, and it hasn't gone well: Hair drier: I have to heat the disk so much that I warp the jacket if I'm not careful. Way too much work (5+ minutes of low heat) per disk. Goo-Gone: doesn't appear to penetrate the paper of the label! I mean, it does, but I have to apply it twice (both times with my finger, otherwise the cloth soaks up too much)... and only then does it marginally work. But worse, what's left over is some petroleum-ish film that I can't remove, even with soap and water. Check the following photo: http://www.oldskool.org/misc/residue.jpg So I wonder how well a new label will stick with that film on it... So, are there any other alternatives? Or am I incredibly inept and missing a step or botching a procedure? -- 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, 7 months

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wire wrap machine

by aek＠bitsavers.org

> There's a wire-wrap machine of some sort on Ebay This is a semi-automatic unit. A from-to list is generated on a computer with lengths and the unit moves to the start-end points. The manual wire-wrap gun sits in the slot that the table moves to. Don't see the wire bins.. Normally a light would appear next to the bin to pull the wire from.

19 years, 7 months

2
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Preservation of correspondence

by Billy.Pettit＠wdc.com

arcarlini at iee.org wrote: > It is rare that they fail completely (they usually slowly develop > errors over time in heavy use until you have to replace them). But > let me tell you, if you get the one rare one that does fail, it fails > SPECTACULARLY. As in, it takes the drive with it! I've had one CD-R shatter and the drive was indeed unusable after that. I tried to repair it, but after an hour of clearing bits out and putting the thing back together, testing, dismantling, rinse, lather, repeat I decided it wasn't worth the hassle. I still have it in case I magically run out of CD drives in some far distant future ... Antonio ------------------------------------------------------- One of the last projects we did at Philips US, was a study to see how fast we could spin the disk before it shattered. A friend of mine, a mechanical engineer, did the testing. He had a blast. It was like a mini version of Mythbusters. Even had the high speed television camera. To accelerate the process he would often nick or chip the edge of the inner hole. When they split - literally - it was right through the front door of the drive. He finally got his own lab so the rest of us would feel safer. But what a fun job he had! He loved his work. Billy

19 years, 7 months

2
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Preservation of correspondence

by Billy.Pettit＠wdc.com

aliensrcooluk at yahoo.co.uk wrote: I remember CD caddies :) I recall back at secondary school in my first year there (year 7 for UK'ers), in 1990/1, that the new computer in the library used CD's which were in see through plastic. Essentially the "CD" of the time was like floppy discs - the writable media (medium?) was encased in protective plastic shell. I haven't seen any like that ever since. I don't suppose anyone on this list has any like that?? If so, I'd love to see a picture of it, please. Regards, Andrew D. Burton ---------------------------------- I have a couple at home but can't get to them right now. If you want, I'll write myself a tickler note and send you one the next time I come across them. Also see them in the flea markets occasionally. Billy

19 years, 7 months

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Preservation of Correspondence - And Media

by Billy.Pettit＠wdc.com

aliensrcooluk at yahoo.co.uk wrote: Woah... I thought CD's were invented in 1982? I remember it easily as thats the year my younger brother was born. Or was that the year they first came to the UK/Europe?? Regards, Andrew D. Burton -------------------------------------------- CDs were being developed for more than a decade before they became commercial products. When I worked at Philips in the Optical Storage Group, I made several trips to the Philips labs in Eindhoven. There, Philips has displays of many of the original CD's and players, a few still working. It also gave me a chance to talk to some of the original engineers, at least the few who haven't retired by now. Going commercial with the new technology was a hell of a battle for Philips and later Sony. It was not instantly embraced. Billy

19 years, 7 months

1
0
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Arty computers

by dkelvey＠hotmail.com

Hi The one I'm looking for was made at a similar time but about a year later was made by Diehl and sold here in the US by SCM. It was also transistors and it used two delay lines. It booted from a metal tape with two rows of holes. I assume clock and data. It had a connector that was suppose to be able to read punch cards. It could store a program of about 60 steps. I used one of these years ago but I don't recall if it had conditional flow. I think most people would consider conditional flow to be the defining line between a calculator and a computer. At least from the users point of view. No one would dispute that the guts of these calculators were computers. Dwight >From: Scott Austin <us21090 at yahoo.com> > >I like the looks of the Olivetti Underwood Programma 101. It even had two >blinky lights: green (solid=ready, blinking=busy) and red (error) >http://www.silab.it/frox/p101/boxbig.gif > >If I recall correctly it was the first computer(*) I programmed. Back in >'72-73, while in Jr. High (btw, not "Middle School"). > >Several interesting things about the P101: > >Introduced in 1965 (same year as PDP-8). > >No ICs; all discrete components. The boards were placed component side to >component side, designed with one board's components fitting in the spaces >between the components of the other board. > >Programs were stored on magnetic cards, which Olivetti received patents for >(HP had to pay about $900K in royalties for the technology use in the >HP9100) > >Its approximate 240 bytes of memory used acoustic delay line technology. > >Scott Austin > >(*) Computer? Programmable Calculator? I'll let someone else debate about >this. > > > > > > > >____________________________________________________________________________________ >Looking for earth-friendly autos? >Browse Top Cars by "Green Rating" at Yahoo! Autos' Green Center. >http://autos.yahoo.com/green_center/ _________________________________________________________________ Search for grocery stores. Find gratitude. Turn a simple search into something more. http://click4thecause.live.com/search/charity/default.aspx?source=hmemtagli…

19 years, 7 months

5
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Preservation of correspondence

by aliensrcooluk＠yahoo.co.uk

--- arcarlini at iee.org wrote: > Jim Leonard wrote: **>> snip <<** > > I'd like to read up on DVD technology too but I've > not been able > to locate much (I'd like to read the various > standards that > detail the physical layer and so on, not some > non-technical > overview - I can find plenty of those.) **>> snip <<** > > Antonio > Yeah, me three. I'd like to know what the difference is between a writable (write/rewrite) CD/DVD and ordinary ones. How do you "write-protect" a CD/DVD?? This would be useful knowledge, especially when I get a DVD-recorder (sometime this year). Regards, Andrew D. Burton aliensrcooluk at yahoo.co.uk

19 years, 7 months

8
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Egg TV adverts - old computer spotted

by javickers＠solutionengineers.com

Right at the end of the latest Egg Money advert, is that a TRS Model 3 or Model 4? This link should be viewable for a while: http://www.visit4info.com/preview-flash.cfm?vm=0&type=2&adid=41634 Also, a previous ad has featured a CBM PET shaped "mockuter" (mock computer), with the tape deck replaced with an oversized trackball: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M0nZwyua8Ao Cheers, Ade. -- No virus found in this outgoing message. Checked by AVG Free Edition. Version: 7.1.411 / Virus Database: 268.17.25/669 - Release Date: 04/02/2007

19 years, 7 months

5
6
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Preservation of correspondence

by aliensrcooluk＠yahoo.co.uk

--- Adrian Graham <witchy at binarydinosaurs.co.uk> wr ote: > On 6/2/07 21:55, "aliensrcooluk at yahoo.co.uk" > <aliensrcooluk at yahoo.co.uk> > wrote: > > > I remember CD caddies :) > > > > I recall back at secondary school in my first > > year there (year 7 for UK'ers), in 1990/1, that > > the new computer in the library used CD's > > which were in see through plastic. > > Essentially the "CD" of the time was like > > floppy discs - the writable media (medium?) > > was encased in protective plastic shell. > > Sounds like the Philips 1x speed CD that was used by > DEC as the RRD40. It > took standard CD-ROMs but they were inserted in a > plastic shell because the > drive had no tray or any other means of supporting > the CD. > > My own RRD40 caddies are 250 miles away but I've g ot > a drive at work :) > > In the meanwhile, look towards the bottom of this > page: > > http://home.claranet.nl/users/pb0aia/cm/sroom.html > > -- > Adrian/Witchy > Binary Dinosaurs creator/curator > Www.binarydinosaurs.co.uk - the UK's biggest priva te > home computer > collection? > Thanks. Yeah, that looks about right. So why were the caddies ditched?? Was it simply cost, or that the CD drives themselves were improved? Regards, Andrew D. Burton aliensrcooluk at yahoo.co.uk

19 years, 7 months

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Preservation of correspondence

by aliensrcooluk＠yahoo.co.uk

--- arcarlini at iee.org wrote: > aliensrcooluk at yahoo.co.uk wrote: > > > Yeah, me three. > > > > I'd like to know what the difference is between > > a writable (write/rewrite) CD/DVD and > > ordinary ones. > > How do you "write-protect" a CD/DVD?? > > The "ordinary" ones are pressed at a factory. A > glass > master (I _think_ it is glass) is produced and is > used to press the CD. As long as it is assembled > correctly (and especially, it seems, sealed around > the > edges) then that it likely to be the most stable > form of CD. Unless something gets inside and start s > to eat the aluminium, then it should be fine. > (Obviously > I'm excluding physical damage, etc.) > > For +/-R media the laser burns a pit in a special > layer > in the disc to create a pit. For the +/-RW forms t he > laser causes a > reversible phase change to create an optical pit > (heating it > up again causes the change to reverse, hence > blanking the pit). > > >From the point of view of the user, the +/-R form s > cannot be > erased once they are written, although you can wri te > a new > table of contents (TOC), so that it looks like you > have > overwritten the old data, but in fact it is still > there > There are programs which will dig it out for you. I > supposed > theoretically you could blank a CD-R by burning > every possible > pit, but if you are security conscious, just break > it (or > shred it). When you "finalise" a DVD-R it can no > longer be > written to. I _think_ that all that has happened i s > that > some bits have been set on a reserved area of the > medium > to tell the drive not to write to it any more. > Unless > you have a rogue drive (or maybe rogue software) > then this > is probably as safe as a floppy write-protect tab. > > The +/-RW forms can be fully erased and reused > (1000x is the > claim, yeah right!). Regardless of whether these a re > more or > less stable than -R, they are clearly of limited u se > for > long term archiving, since there is always a risk > that they > will get blanked and reused for "something more > important". > > There's also DVD-RAM, but I don't think that's ver y > important > for our purposes. > > Then there is the whole +/- debate, but these days > that has > mostly died away. You ?20 (high-end :-)) DVD > rewriter will > write to > CD-R,CD-RW,DVD-R,DVD+R,DVD-RW,DVD+RW,DVD-RAM > and dual layer DVD-R (~8GB, but the disks are abou t > 5x the > cost of a DVD-R). > > Antonio > Thanks for that. Regards, Andrew D. Burton aliensrcooluk at yahoo.co.uk

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Where to obtain diskette labels?

by trixter＠oldskool.org

While the subject of *removing* diskette labels has cropped up before (for example, http://www.classiccmp.org/pipermail/cctech/2002-October/003294.html), I don't think I've seen any discussion on where to obtain *new* ones. I'm setting up a PCjr system for a friend and would like to prepare a nice set of software for him, but I have no labels. A while ago, I tried generic Avery mailing labels that I thought would work, but after a few months the adhesive dried up and they all fell off. Any suggestions? Newly-created sources preferred; I tried some old labels in "new old stock" I have but after 20 years they're dead on arrival; they don't stick as soon as you pull them off their backing. On a related note, what's the best adhesive to re-apply labels that have fallen off? I have some commercial software (games, etc.) where the label is historically relevant and I'd like to re-attach it. -- 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, 7 months

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TRS-80 Model I

by buseyl＠yahoo.com

> > Jay West wrote: > > Al wrote... > >> I have a HUGE softspot in my heart for the TRS-80 Model I, having > >> purchased a 16k, Level I unit in December of 1978. A unit, I still own > >> today, > > That's the one system I don't have in my collection that I'd really like > > to - a TRS-80 model I with tandy monitor and perhaps the expansion unit. > > I never owned one, but a lot of my friends in the late 70's timeframe > > did and we always fought about if my Apple ][+ was better than their > > TRS80 :) > > > > Jay > > That must have been a short argument. I used both a lot in high school. > The model I was unreliable in the extreme. The model III's were much > better in that regard. And for the counter-argument, I have a model 1 that I've had from new, and which has never failed me. COnversely I had nothing but trouble with the Apple ][, a design which i feel is marginal at best! -snip- -tony ************************ Interesting. Most people seem to say nice things about the Apple ]['s design. I'd love to hear some informed bashing ;) . Could you elaborate some about the machine's short comings from your perspective? My biggest annoyance is being unable to determine what state the softswitches are in at any given time. I also understand the cassette interface left something to be desired (I've always enjoyed the luxury of floppies). Beyond that, the machine just oozes quirky charm in my eyes. - Liam Busey (an Apple ][/ ][+ fan) ____________________________________________________________________________________ Need a quick answer? Get one in minutes from people who know. Ask your question on www.Answers.yahoo.com

19 years, 7 months

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CBM 8032 Garbage on Screen

by marvin＠rain.org

I've got a CBM 8032 that powers up "fine", but the screen is filled with "!" on every other character position. When some letters are repeated, they can change, i.e. "nnnn" becomes "onon" which seems like (without checking the ASCII charts) that the "n" and "!" are ORed to become the "o". Anyone have any ideas what the problem might be? Most of the schematics I have are buried someplace, so I thought I would start here.

19 years, 7 months

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Preservation of correspondence

by aek＠bitsavers.org

>> "Personal papers" aren't on paper any more, if they exist >> at all they are directories full of email. > Why is this a "huge issue"? My father made xerox copies of his > important papers; I make regular backups. What's changed? The volatility of the preservation medium, future ability to recover a document in obscure formats, and the sheer volume of digital content vs saved paper. Is everything you're 'backing up' checksummed? How do you KNOW it hasn't already been corrupted?

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Preservation of correspondence

by aek＠bitsavers.org

> As strange as it seems, I think we lost a lot of personal > correspondence when hard disks became the rule on PC systems. This is a huge issue amongst archivists. "Personal papers" aren't on paper any more, if they exist at all they are directories full of email.

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Thanks!

by marvin＠rain.org

On the CBM 8032, I downloaded the schematics from http://www.zimmers.net/anonftp/pub/cbm/pet/, and that helped a lot. Tony's comment about odd and even made things start to make sense. My only question there was did the count start at zero or one :). It appears that the count does start at zero (even). I have some doubts about the schematics since D3 is the one line (on a clear screen) that seems to be always high, and that doesn't correspond to bit 0 always on. BUT it appears that the 4114 at C4 is bad, and I'll scope it out before removing it and putting in a socket. BTW, what is the difference (if any) between the 8032 with the wide plastic label, and the 8032 with the two plastic logos? The one on the right says "CMB Model 8032" and the one of the left says "Commodore". I have both models, but this one is the one with the two plastic logos. And many thanks for the help on copying a floppy on the Mac 128. That worked like a champ. I did find that putting an icon into the trash didn't eject the disk for some reason. However the flower E worked great. Thanks!

19 years, 7 months

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Copying a Mac Disk with a Single Drive

by marvin＠rain.org

I have a Mac 128 and I want to duplicate the system disk. Probably a stupid question, but how do you make a copy of a disk on that computer (single internal disk drive.) Needless to say, I am not a Mac person. Thanks!

19 years, 7 months

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TRS-80 Model I

by chrism3667＠yahoo.com

some pcs didnt have dma. Tandy 1000...IBM Peanut...Sanyo MBC-5xx too IIRC... --- cctalk-bounces at classiccmp.org <bfranchuk at jetnet.ab.ca> wrote: > Tony Duell wrote: > > > I thought every PC (maaning IBM compatible) did that. The floppy system > > in the PC. XT and ZT has a DMA channel associated with it. You ask it to > > read some secotyors from the current track, it does so and transfers the > > data into memory, then gives you an iterrupt when it's done. > Well on some computers, like the COCO the IRQ only is used > to end the cpu polling loop for the floppy.Since the default > OS is CP/M err MSDOS I expect the hardware is not used effectivly. > > > > I know for a fact that other tasks carry on running on this (slow) linux > > machine when it's doing floppy drive operations. > > > > -tony > ____________________________________________________________________________________ Looking for earth-friendly autos? Browse Top Cars by "Green Rating" at Yahoo! Autos' Green Center. http://autos.yahoo.com/green_center/

19 years, 7 months

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Preservation of correspondence

by r_a_feldman＠hotmail.com

I sent a longer email to Al off-list, but I wanted to let the rest of you know about something the company I work for (Kristine Fallon Associates) is doing. We did a study for the Art Institute of Chicago about how their Department of Architecture and Design could collect and preserve the "digital design data" (CAD files, images, Poiwerpoints, etc.) that architects are using more and more. Our report is online at http://www.artic.edu/aic/collections/dept_architecture/ddd.html. We are now just about finished creating a working prototype archival system. I'm programming a Web client for entering the metadata and a programmer for the AIC is doing the back end. We are using the DSpace archive software (developed by MIT and HP) as the storage mechanism. Our approach is certainly not directly applicable to preserving software -- we suggest using PDF's as wrappers for a lot of data -- but I think the report addresses a number of important, and common, issues. Bob +++++++++++++++++ Message: 18 Date: Mon, 5 Feb 2007 15:54:47 -0500 From: "William Donzelli" <wdonzelli at gmail.com> Subject: Re: Preservation of correspondence To: "General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts" <cctalk at classiccmp.org> Message-ID: <e1d20d630702051254l6a6d3c01qdae2375b462c7c64 at mail.gmail.com> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed >One of the things I've been disturbed to discover is CHM appears to be one >of the few institutions who are attempting to archive software. CHM is a fairly unique institution, that is why. There are only a handful of computer museums that are run like museums. Many "computer museums" are just glorified users groups, informal circles of friends, or just guys that like hoarding machines and docs. -- Will _________________________________________________________________ FREE online classifieds from Windows Live Expo ? buy and sell with people you know http://clk.atdmt.com/MSN/go/msnnkwex0010000001msn/direct/01/?href=http://ex…

19 years, 7 months

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Looking for an AT&T 3B1 (7300) for a friend

by brad＠heeltoe.com

Hi, a friend would like to buy an AT&T 3B1 (7300) for her husband. She asked me to help. Apparently he has fond memories of them. I've seen these (long ago) and used one once but really have no clue. Are they obtainable? Anyone have one they want to sell? Any pointers or advice appreciated... thanks! -brad Brad Parker Heeltoe Consulting +1-781-483-3101 http://www.heeltoe.com

19 years, 7 months

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Preservation of correspondence

by aek＠bitsavers.org

> What do government and corporate data archives do? > Surely a long-lived company like IBM has already had to deal with this > problem? They deal with the problem by throwing things away. There are essentially no corporate archives of software older than a few decades. This goes back to the discussions here a while back about companies discarding software after a product's life ends. One of the things I've been disturbed to discover is CHM appears to be one of the few institutions who are attempting to archive software. Corporate archives today are essentially all paper or microform. Trying to deal with digital content is not a solved problem there. If you look at the literature, they are only thinking in terms of documents, not software, with the exception of trying to preserve some subset of software needed for document recovery.

19 years, 7 months

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Write protect tabs

by compoobah＠valleyimplants.com

Quoth Chuck: > I just had a thought about another possible alternative for write- > protect tabs. > > How about the foil tape used in the construction trades, such as 3M > 425? I seem to recall that the adhesive on this stuff is pretty > heavy-bodied and should stick well, but be easy to remove. You could also use book tape if it's a mechanical sense system. Very heavy, quite sticky plastic.

19 years, 7 months

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Looking for an AT&T 3B1 (7300) for a friend

by marvin＠rain.org

Take a look on VCM ... there is one on there now. http://www.vintagecomputermarketplace.com/bid.cfm?ad=2707 > a friend would like to buy an AT&T 3B1 (7300) for her husband. She > asked me to help. Apparently he has fond memories of them. > > I've seen these (long ago) and used one once but really have no clue. > Are they obtainable? Anyone have one they want to sell? > > Any pointers or advice appreciated... thanks! > > -brad

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