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

by rcini＠optonline.net

All: Does anyone have a pointer handy to utilities for merging and splitting ROM images? I have two EPROMs (high and low) that I need to merge into a single image for disassembly. Ultimately I'll need to re-split the image. Thanks! Rich Rich Cini Collector of classic computers Lead engineer, Altair32 Emulator Web site: <http://highgate.comm.sfu.ca/~rcini/classiccmp/> http://highgate.comm.sfu.ca/~rcini/classiccmp/ Web site: http://www.altair32.com/ /***************************************************/

19 years, 9 months

5
4
0 0

old DEC gear wanted

by Bob.Adamson＠sli-institute.ac.uk

> >Zane H. Healy wrote: > > > >At 1:27 AM -0500 11/10/06, Curtis H. Wilbar Jr. wrote: > > > >> but I wouldn't be surprised if a few PDP11s are > >> still doing some oddball stuff out there). > > > > They're still around in various settings, industrial, scientific, > > business, etc. They're used for such things as electron microscopes, > > spectrum analyzers, controlling parts of nuclear plants, etc., > > PDP-11's are still big business. In some cases it's because they're > > still working, why spend the money to replace, in others it would > > simply cost more to replace than it does to keep them running > > (typically places where qualifying new HW/SW can cost insane amounts > > of money). > It's not so long since I visited the Indian Space Agency in Bangalore and they were using a couple of pdp11/34s to control their satellite test rig.

19 years, 9 months

1
0
0 0

cctalk Digest, Vol 39, Issue 33

by spliffrd＠inch.com

I just found a cheap NCR monitor mv0951a in a trashbin. Really small and compact so I snatched/saved it and brought it to the lab. Seems to be VGA but when i bent down to plug it in, I noticed it had a non-standard AC plug with 3 small blades! wtf? no one here recognizes it. I'm googling now. It would be a great little lab monitor if it's not 220v or some alien design. -Matt spliffrd at inch.com spliffrd.livejournal.com On Mon, 13 Nov 2006, cctalk-request at classiccmp.org wrote: > Send cctalk mailing list submissions to > cctalk at classiccmp.org > > To subscribe or unsubscribe via the World Wide Web, visit > http://www.classiccmp.org/mailman/listinfo/cctalk > or, via email, send a message with subject or body 'help' to > cctalk-request at classiccmp.org > > You can reach the person managing the list at > cctalk-owner at classiccmp.org > > When replying, please edit your Subject line so it is more specific > than "Re: Contents of cctalk digest..." > > > Today's Topics: > > 1. Re: lisadraw (Jules Richardson) > 2. Re: VCF 9.0 (Vincent Slyngstad) > 3. Re: VCF 9.0 (David Betz) > 4. TRS-80 Mod 16 on ePay (Chuck Guzis) > > > ---------------------------------------------------------------------- > > Message: 1 > Date: Mon, 13 Nov 2006 05:55:33 -0600 > From: Jules Richardson <julesrichardsonuk at yahoo.co.uk> > Subject: Re: lisadraw > To: General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts > <cctalk at classiccmp.org> > Message-ID: <45585D35.6060404 at yahoo.co.uk> > Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed > > Jim Leonard wrote: >> Jules Richardson wrote: >>> Hmm, not so sure. This laptop's running at 266MHz with 192MB of memory >>> and Openoffice under Linux really struggles[1]; I could believe that a >> >> Stop right there. Openoffice is the source of that bloat; not a good >> example for blaming the OS in the previous example. Run ps to see how >> bad the damage is. > > Oh, I know it is - but so is MS Word, so it seems fair to compare one bloated > word processor with another :-) My point was really that I can believe that a > 'modern' word processor could bring a circa-300MHz machine to its knees easily > enough. > > So I'm not really blaming the OS at all, just the wp software (except that in > the Word case, it's still Microsoft's fault :-) > > cheers > > Jules > > -- > And if eight out of ten cats all prefer whiskas > Do the other two prefer Leslie Judd? > > > > ------------------------------ > > Message: 2 > Date: Mon, 13 Nov 2006 09:43:58 -0800 > From: "Vincent Slyngstad" <vrs at msn.com> > Subject: Re: VCF 9.0 > To: "General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts" > <cctalk at classiccmp.org> > Message-ID: <BAY0-SMTP047EAA5FFF6BF07B01ED50B2F40 at phx.gbl> > Content-Type: text/plain; format=flowed; charset="iso-8859-1"; > reply-type=response > > From: "Jules Richardson" <julesrichardsonuk at yahoo.co.uk> >> My suspicions: >> >> 1) Any given VCF is way too far away for the majority to attend. > > That's why we're interested :-). > >> 2) Pictures and technical info on systems can be found on the 'net >> already. >> 3) Discussions (and banter) with system owners can be regularly be had >> here already. > > Maybe the show talk all happened somewhere else, and I missed it? > >> ... hence for most people a VCF discussion just serves no purpose, unlike >> in the early days when it was something new and different to talk about >> (and hence popular discussion even amongst non-attendees) > > I thought there were going to be some cool workshops and stuff. Didn't > anyone build anything at the workshops? Or maybe everyone did, so it > didn't seem like a big deal? > >> I don't think there's anything wrong with the show(s), or with the list - >> it's just that now it's an 'old' concept there's less interest from the >> people who won't be / weren't there. > > Surely there's still *something* controversial or interesting about them! > > Vince > > > > > ------------------------------ > > Message: 3 > Date: Mon, 13 Nov 2006 12:57:39 -0500 > From: David Betz <dbetz at xlisper.com> > Subject: Re: VCF 9.0 > To: "General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts" > <cctalk at classiccmp.org> > Message-ID: <7.0.1.0.2.20061113125545.021877f0 at xlisper.com> > Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"; format=flowed > > >> I thought there were going to be some cool workshops and stuff. Didn't >> anyone build anything at the workshops? Or maybe everyone did, so it >> didn't seem like a big deal? > > I built both the Replica 1 SE (and got it signed by Woz!) and the ELF > 2K. Both projects were fun and resulted in working boards. I'm now in > the process of adding some of the optional parts to my ELF 2K (like > the serial port and EPROM). Unfortunately, I missed the Apple 30th > celebration because it happened at the same time as the ELF workshop. :-( > > > > > ------------------------------ > > Message: 4 > Date: Mon, 13 Nov 2006 09:37:16 -0800 > From: "Chuck Guzis" <cclist at sydex.com> > Subject: TRS-80 Mod 16 on ePay > To: cctalk at classiccmp.org > Message-ID: <45583CCC.29669.1F1C673B at cclist.sydex.com> > Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII > > Just thought I'd drop a note to the list that I've got a TRS-80 Model > 16 on eBay, item 320048603503. > > Thanks, > Chuck > > > > End of cctalk Digest, Vol 39, Issue 33 > ************************************** >

19 years, 9 months

3
2
0 0

old DEC gear wanted

by rescue＠hawkmountain.net

Checking to see if anyone out there has any of the following they would be willing to part with... and if so, how much/etc... VT78 (also known as W/T78 Word Terminal if memory serves me correct) DecMate II DecMate III+ PDP8/e PDP8/f PDP11/73, PDP11/83, or PDP11/93 DEC Professional Workstation 380 (PRO-380) or other suitable (not overly LARGE) PDP11 class box for home How bout an XKL TOAD-1 :-) ? -- Curt

19 years, 9 months

10
13
0 0

VCF 9.0

by wayne.smith＠charter.net

Great post - thanks for the in depth report. Sad to have missed it but now have some sense of what it was like to be there. -W > Date: Mon, 13 Nov 2006 14:27:44 -0500 (EST) > From: "David Greelish" <david at classiccomputing.com> > Subject: Re: VCF 9.0 > To: cctalk at classiccmp.org > Message-ID: <22875.208.255.229.66.1163446064.squirrel at wm2> > Content-Type: text/plain;charset=iso-8859-1 > > I would like to write about the show, it can also serve as a > good prep for my next podcast where I will be talking about > it. So, you asked for it! > [snip]

19 years, 9 months

1
0
0 0

Overclocking ATs

by alhartman＠yahoo.com

Harris Semiconductor made licensed 80286 CPU's. They made them in 16 and 20mhz versions. I used to sell systems made with them, and at the time the 386sx came out, a 286-20 was MUCH faster than a 386 20mhz... Al

19 years, 9 months

8
11
0 0

Sphere system owned by Larry Pazzolo (was: VCF 9.0)

by aek＠bitsavers.org

I also have a large quantity of Sphere docs and a big pile of hardware, but it was part of a deal with Jim Willing that went bad. I have tried to get the stuff back, but he is not responding. -- It's probably sitting next to the Tektronix 405x documentation I never received. I don't think short of you driving to Kansas and watching him go through everything that he still has that you will ever see the Sphere stuff again.

19 years, 9 months

2
1
0 0

VCF 9 (Jay West) & (Jules Richardson) (Murray McCullough)

by c.murray.mccullough＠gmail.com

My 'excuse' was that I just got back from VCF 9...and a visit to the Digibarn in Snata Cruz - with apologies to Buce Damer. It should be Santa Cruz. A brilliant creation, the Digibarn of Bruce Damer, CEO of DigitalSpace. And VCF Midwest. "Jay West" <jwest at classiccmp.org> <jwest at classiccmp.org> How could I forget! :) Happy computing! Murray-- ------------------

19 years, 9 months

1
0
0 0

Sphere system owned by Larry Pazzolo (was: VCF 9.0)

by aek＠bitsavers.org

> [...] Larry Pazzolo had a Spere( sp? ) system but > has not been able to find much docs. I aquired the collection of the last Sphere User's group president a couple of years ago. It is part of a donation I'm making to CHM. I talked to Larry a bit about it over the weekend, since it includes about 50 cassette tapes and system documentation. Before it is donated the docs will be scanned and the tapes digitized.

19 years, 9 months

3
2
0 0

OT Monitor glass question

by trixter＠oldskool.org

I found what I thought would make a nice spare Trinitron monitor, but there is a tiny pinhole chunk of the glass chipped out on the surface, about maybe 1.5 mm deep with a diameter of 4mm. Against better judgement, I switched it on (from a safe distance) and it appears to function properly. My question is, how stable is it? Other than the visual defect, is it safe to operate the monitor, or should I be worried that it will swiftly implode at any moment? -- 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, 9 months

3
3
0 0

Tales of Ancient E-Mail

by sdc695＠yahoo.com

<<<much deletia about early "first" email systems>>> OK, The first liar doesn't get a chance. Back in the 60's, Tymshare (the company) had a bunch of SDS (later XDS) 940 boxes and they DID have a "mail" command. The problem was that they only could mail between accounts on the same machine. Yes, it was an early form of email, but not routed between machines, only local use. While I don't know about other machines of the era (mostly time sharing boxes) and their "mail" commands, this machine DID have one. I found out (the hard way) that the messages were limited to a few characters (around 300 or so), but since you could share files between "accounts" (file systems were limited in the day), it could be useful to supply pointers to larger things. Thankfully this was before SPAM existed, as we only used mail for "proper" things. Other examples of machines of the day: pdp-6/10, IBM360, GE 235/635. I don't know about what was used on the pdp-6/10 (I have a bit of contact, but not much), but I don't remember any mail commands for IBM360's or the GE machines. (Claim to fame: I've used email in 5 different decades!) -- Tom Watson tsw at johana.com __________________________________________________________________________________________ Check out the New Yahoo! Mail - Fire up a more powerful email and get things done faster. (http://advision.webevents.yahoo.com/mailbeta)

19 years, 9 months

12
13
0 0

Edinburgh Computer History site

by aek＠bitsavers.org

> PS To anyone who happened to notice that the Edinburgh Computer > History site was down for a month - we had a hard drive failure, > but all (well, mostly all) has now been restored. I noticed :-) Thank you for restoring it! Has anything more been found in the last year or two?

19 years, 9 months

1
0
0 0

Pascal in production environments (was Re: lisadraw)

by gtoal＠gtoal.com

>Brad Parker said: > >> I would be interested to hear about other languages people used on >> pdp-11's however :-) > >I've been playing with FIG-Forth on my 11/73. I've been able to >resurrect some code which originally ran on my TRS-80 circa 1979. >Good fun. And of course I have more Imp for the pdp-11 than you can shake a stick at. We also programmed ours in POP2 and LOGO but don't have any of that code remaining. Maybe some Fortran that was used for graphics but not very interesting. But on the Imp side we have compilers, editors, and entire operating systems... Graham PS To anyone who happened to notice that the Edinburgh Computer History site was down for a month - we had a hard drive failure, but all (well, mostly all) has now been restored.

19 years, 9 months

1
0
0 0

VAX 4000-200

by RodSmallwood＠mail.ediconsulting.co.uk

Hi I'm now the lucky owner of a Vax 4000-200. Apart from a bad TK70 drive (which I can get repaired in the UK ) Its fully working with 3 x RF 500Mb Drives (Two in a separate BA215 box) It boots VMS 3.2 and loads the network software. I even have all the license numbers for VMS 3.2, DW-MOTIF,TCPWARE, VAX CLUSTER & VOLSHAD What I don't have is the System password. The system was made in 1991 and had been out of use since 1998.00 I would like to preserve it as is, adding a contempory set of periperals (VT-100, LA-36 and so on) I don't want to replace the VMS or any of the other software. I have no option but to try and recover the system password. I'm not a hacker and have no idea how to go about breaking in. Anybody out there have any suggestions as to how to get in and recover the System password? Rod Smallwood

19 years, 9 months

5
4
0 0

imaging XENIX disks

by chrism3667＠yahoo.com

>from some poor twisted up soul at the opposite end of the globe: > Hi, Can u please tell me how I can make images of > the Xenix disks? Because I > can't read them with DOS since they have a different > format. I've tried > Winimage and ImageDisk but they didn't work. > > I have a lot of these disks, and they are labeled > as: > > Games, Development, Updates, Utilities, > Installation. > > Well, any kind of advice u could give me will be > very much appreciated > because I'm afraid that if I leave them without > making backup they will get > corrupted in the future. Bye! I believe he is using the correct drive (he already booted with these), it crossed my mind. Can't understand why ID or TD wouldn't work. Please help. Please... ____________________________________________________________________________________ Sponsored Link Mortgage rates near 39yr lows. $420k for $1,399/mo. Calculate new payment! http://www.LowerMyBills.com/lre

19 years, 9 months

8
14
0 0

VCF 9.0

by wayne.smith＠charter.net

Thanks for the post on VCF - unfortunately I couldn't make it this year. It's hard to believe that you can't get a thread going about VCF on this list. Don't know if that says something about the show, the list or both. In the old days there was a lot of excitement - daily reports, links to pictures, etc. Now, almost nothing. -W > Date: Wed, 08 Nov 2006 07:57:44 -0800 > From: Marvin Johnston <marvin at rain.org> > Subject: VCF 9.0 > To: ClassicCmp <cctalk at classiccmp.org> > Message-ID: <4551FE78.E95A88B2 at rain.org> > Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii > > > I haven't seen anything about VCF yet, so thought I would put > down a few comments. > > It was a fun time as usual at VCF, and I met a lot of > interesting people there. I got a chance to put some faces > with names, and that is always a lot of fun. The majority of > my time was spent taking care of my vendor booth, and so I > didn't take a lot of time to spend in other areas. > > One of the neat additions was the kit building workshops. > Several people got their Apple I replica kits signed by Woz. > > It seemed like the number of vendors and exhibitors were > down, but the number of people attending were up. One of the > exhibits I liked was the Apple Lisa. The exhibitor, who goes > by Lisa :), was very knowledgeable and I learned a number of > things from her regarding collecting Lisas. > > For those that don't know me, I do have a perverted sense of > humor. I had brought a Chisholm computer that I think might > be a prototype of the first IBM battery operated portable > (later licensed to Olivetti) to see if anyone knew anything > about it. Evan will hopefully be doing an interview with the > company president, and I mainly brought it for him to see. > But after watching people ignore it, I put a $2000 price tag > on it ... and that got it a little more attention :). But > people still didn't ask about it though they took more notice > of it. And no, I don't think it is worth anywhere near that > much money. > > I was talking to Sellam, and it would have been a good place > to at least mention the Vintage Market Place for > selling/trading/buying/etc. vintage computer stuff. And I > also think this and Eric's listservers should also have been > mentioned. If we are to help build this hobby, it might be a > good idea to let people know where to get more information :). >

19 years, 9 months

10
11
0 0

Gould K-450 Logic Analyzers

by root＠parse.com

If anyone is interested, I have a boatload of Gould logic analyzers; I've photographed the innards of the K-450 and have it displayed on my forsale page: www.parse.com/testeq I'm selling them for $5-$15 (other models too) local pickup in Kanata/Ontario/Canada. I might be convinced to ship them if you want them in quantity and you arrange for a truck... The "classic computer" part of the story is that they are 8086 based, with 192kB of EPROM (27128s) and 512kB of RAM (41256 chips). :-) The photos are fun, at the very least. Cheers, -RK -- Robert Krten, PARSE Software Devices Realtime Systems Architecture, Consulting, Books and Training at www.parse.com Looking for Digital Equipment Corp. PDP-1 through PDP-15 minicomputers!

19 years, 9 months

2
1
0 0

PC/XT 286 was Re: PC/AT overclocking

by chrism3667＠yahoo.com

that f/h card being an IDE or MFM? Did IbM even make an IDE card? I really should know the answer to that... ____________________________________________________________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Everyone is raving about the all-new Yahoo! Mail beta. http://new.mail.yahoo.com

19 years, 9 months

3
2
0 0

lisadraw

by aek＠bitsavers.org

" If I had to make the statement, I would say that today's code is a lot more like the Lisa's than the Mac's." -- We are living in a very different world. No one but embedded systems people (and very few of them..) code the way it was done on the original Mac. Today, you have a product that often has a sub-year lifetime. You put things out that are just good enough to sell, and move on to the next generation. No one would buy a PC with the features that could be built with a team the size of the original Mac team today, using their methodology. The only way to get a competitive product is to use a lot of other people's code, because no one is willing to pay for foundation development, only product differentiation. I'm not saying this is a GOOD thing (this is one of the reasons I'm at the Museum and not a start-up) it is just the way products are built today.

19 years, 9 months

19
61
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Any MVME hobbyists here?

by aek＠bitsavers.org

> For example, does anyone have/know about a MVME360 SMD disk controller. > Motorola docs and OS's (System V/68) support it. > Never seen one though. >From memory, they are OEMed cards from Interphase. I have a bunch in storage. Probably time to start selling off the VME stuff. Someone has been bugging me about buying the PPC 750 system I have.

19 years, 9 months

1
0
0 0

VCF 9.0

by david＠classiccomputing.com

I would like to write about the show, it can also serve as a good prep for my next podcast where I will be talking about it. So, you asked for it! This was my first time at the original VCF, and I have only been to one other, the VCFe 1.0 in 2001. This was also my first time to the Computer History Museum. My wife was able to go with me, which made the whole thing so much more enjoyable. She not only supports my hobby, but actually really enjoyed herself in the participation. Living in Florida, the flights / layovers were a bit on the extended side - not so bad getting there, but coming back. We left at 7pm Friday the 3rd, got to Dallas about 9:20pm with a 30-minute layover, then arrived in San Francisco at 2:30am (our time, 11:30pm PST). Not too bad, but as our original flight was delayed an hour and a half, we had to fly into San Francisco instead of San Jose. We were able to stick to the same schedule times pretty much, but the cab ride to the hotel turned into $100 for 25 miles. 150% of the meter because of going outside the 15 miles of that airport! But we made it and the Marriott was a nice little hotel with excellent rooms. And an excellent free breakfast buffet! Kudos to Continental for getting us there on American Airlines too. On the first day, Saturday the 4th, my wife and I were in the Replica 1 workshop at 10am and that was a lot of fun. Vince Briel was great, very helpful and good company; a funny guy too. Some guys in there were done in like 40 minutes I think! By noon, we hadn?t finished, but Vince said that we could come by his exhibit and / or he would be back at the room Sunday at 10am. At Noon, Bob Armstrong began his workshop building the VCF COSMAC Elf 2000 kit. Both of these kits are very well made and just were so fun to work on. It was so much like stepping back in time 30 years and being a hobbyist computer kit builder. Unfortunately, the Apple @ 30 / The Garage Years panel with Steve Wozniak and three other early Apple employees started at 1pm (Randy Wigginton, Daniel Kottke and Chris Espinosa), so we had to leave the Elf workshop early. I really didn?t want to seem rude to Bob and hoped we could be back in there after an hour at most. That would not happen, I think the entire panel discussion was about an hour and a half. My wife went back to work on the Elf after about an hour. The discussion was very lively and good. The stories were fun and I heard about a few things that I?d never heard before. Jef Raskin?s Apple 1 was there in a case, as well as at least two other Apple 1?s. Sellam was part host, but Bruce Draper of DigiBarn headed it up. Also ?Captain Crunch? was in one of the front rows (John Draper). He spoke a little too. Sellam gave away a Replica 1 (per Vince) based on a puzzle at the end. It was Steve Wozniak?s name with the letters jumbled (I forget what this type of puzzle is called, it was stated). I learned why at the bottom of e-mails I have received from Steve Wozniak, it says, ?TV is wake zone.? He likes these sort of puzzles. An aside, before I knew I would be able to go, I wrote Steve and asked if I could send my copy of ?iWoz? in a return postage paid package for him to sign, and he agreed. He?s a nice guy. Instead of course, I was able to get him to sign it in person, as well as the Replica 1 (I got Vince to sign it too) and I got a picture with him. I?m not a touchy-feely person, but he would stand up, and put his arm around you for the picture. This was pretty cool. Also in attendance was Andy Hertzfield, one of the members of the original Macintosh team (see folklore.org). Being a big Mac fan as well, that was pretty cool, but what struck me was that he was also sitting in one of the front rows and listening intently to the stories, especially to Steve. He was just having such a great time and you could see the admiration he had. No big surprise, but this was one of his heroes! Even though he has worked with him at times, probably even heard this stuff before, he was a big fan too. Anyway, what really struck me was that Steve Wozniak also greatly influenced the Mac! He didn?t work on it directly a lot perhaps, but his earlier examples of engineering and his methods and standards were embraced by these later guys. Steve Jobs absolutely pushed his own will on the aesthetics of the box and much of the user experience, but Steve Wozniak deserves more credit than perhaps I had given him before. He didn?t just design the Apple 1, Apple ][ and Disk ][, but influenced so much more. That insight just sparked in me during the discussion anyway. I was able to catch Andy at the door before he left and get a picture with him and tell him what a fan I was. By about 3pm, Steve began signing stuff, probably for almost an hour. I finally made it back to the workshop room where my wife was still working on the Elf. Most had left or finished, but Bob was still there and had helped Tamara quite a bit. She really enjoyed the workshops and soldering, etc. We didn?t finish the Elf until we got back home. We were able to check out the VCF exhibit and market place floor for an hour or so, then left with a friend we had met for dinner. We had a nice dinner and discussion with him into the evening. On Sunday, we met Vince back in the room at 10am and stayed there until about noon. Andre' LaMothe started his workshop building the XGameStation Pico Edition (didn?t have enough money to build all three!). We had lunch at the Museum where Sellam?s wife was selling snacks and wraps and sandwiches. At 1pm started the discussion group featuring Lee Felsenstein about the Processor Technology Sol-20 30th celebration. The panel also included Processor Technology employees Aram Attarian, Diane Ascher and Drew Rogge. Again, this was a lively and interesting discussion of story telling and Q & A. A Sol-20 provided by Stan Sieler of Allegro Consulting. was given away with a drawing at the end. This meeting was perhaps a third of the size of the Apple one. Sunday all around was much slower than Saturday. A few exhibitors and sellers had left after Saturday too. My wife and I didn?t get to go to the DigiBarn, but we spent a good hour or so checking out the visible storage. It was especially neat for me to see some classics ?big iron? up close like the IBM 360, Sage, CDC super computers and Cray?s. Let?s see, as far as exhibits go, pictures are better of course. I will have mine soon. The sellers had some good deals with better than eBay prices for a Z-100, a couple of Lisa?s with profiles, and common Atari?s and Commodores. There was much more to see and do than we did, but we had a great time. With three kids, just time alone with my wife for a weekend was nice, so we weren?t sweatin? it. Sorry for the little book, I hope this conveys a little bit more to some about the show. Best, David David Greelish classiccomputing.com The Classic Computing Podcast Home of Computer History Nostalgia Stan Veit's History of the Personal Computer Audio Book Podcast

19 years, 9 months

1
0
0 0

RA82 questions

by pat＠computer-refuge.org

So, Jay's talk about RA81's spurred me on to work on testing out my RA82 disks. I've got an SA482 which has 4 RA82's, and drive 0 seems to work just fine, after I unlocked the disk heads. :) The other three aren't working as well though, it seems. One seems to give a fault when it spins up, but after it spins up, runs the on-board diagnostics ok. The relevent log of the on-board diagnostics session are below (starting >from when I pressed the "RUN" button to spin it up): ------------------------------------------------------------- RA82> FRONT PANEL FUNCTION IN PROGRESS %RA82-COMPLETED TEST: SUBTEST:1B %RA82-COMPLETED TEST: SUBTEST:1C %RA82-COMPLETED TEST: SUBTEST:1D %RA82-COMPLETED TEST: SUBTEST:1E %RA82-COMPLETED TEST: SUBTEST:20 %RA82-TEST:DIAG SUBTEST:20 ERROR:4B UNIT:001 REFER TO SERVICE MANUAL RA82> %RA82-TEST:DIAG SUBTEST:20 ERROR:FE UNIT:001 REFER TO SERVICE MANUAL RA82> RUN DIAG %RA82-COMPLETED TEST:DIAG SUBTEST:02 %RA82-COMPLETED TEST:DIAG SUBTEST:01 %RA82-COMPLETED TEST:DIAG SUBTEST:04 %RA82-COMPLETED TEST:DIAG SUBTEST:05 %RA82-COMPLETED TEST:DIAG SUBTEST:06 %RA82-COMPLETED TEST:DIAG SUBTEST:07 %RA82-COMPLETED TEST:DIAG SUBTEST:08 %RA82-COMPLETED TEST:DIAG SUBTEST:0B %RA82-COMPLETED TEST:DIAG SUBTEST:03 %RA82-COMPLETED TEST:DIAG SUBTEST:1A %RA82-COMPLETED TEST:DIAG SUBTEST:1B %RA82-COMPLETED TEST:DIAG SUBTEST:1C %RA82-COMPLETED TEST:DIAG SUBTEST:1D %RA82-COMPLETED TEST:DIAG SUBTEST:1E %RA82-COMPLETED TEST:DIAG SUBTEST:20 %RA82-COMPLETED TEST:DIAG SUBTEST:21 %RA82-COMPLETED TEST:DIAG SUBTEST:22 %RA82-COMPLETED TEST:DIAG SUBTEST:25 %RA82-COMPLETED TEST:DIAG SUBTEST:26 %RA82-COMPLETED TEST:DIAG SUBTEST:27 %RA82-COMPLETED TEST:DIAG SUBTEST:28 %RA82-COMPLETED TEST:DIAG SUBTEST:29 %RA82-COMPLETED TEST:DIAG SUBTEST:2A %RA82-COMPLETED TEST:DIAG SUBTEST:0A %RA82-COMPLETED TEST:DIAG SUBTEST:0F %RA82-COMPLETED TEST:DIAG SUBTEST:10 %RA82-COMPLETED TEST:DIAG SUBTEST:0E ---------------------------------------------------------------- Looking at the manual, error 4B is "index pulse error" and FE is "Slave speed check timeout". Considering that they only occur when the disk is first spun up, is it maybe really ok, but the disk doesn't spin up as fast as the logic wants it to? The errors seem to be consistent (they happen each time I power up the drive). Has anyone seen something like this before, and is it something that I should be worried about? The service manual seems to suggest that the servo module or microprocessor module could be bad. Thanks, Pat -- Purdue University ITAP/RCAC --- http://www.rcac.purdue.edu/ The Computer Refuge --- http://computer-refuge.org

19 years, 9 months

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TRS-80 Mod 16 on ePay

by cclist＠sydex.com

Just thought I'd drop a note to the list that I've got a TRS-80 Model 16 on eBay, item 320048603503. Thanks, Chuck

19 years, 9 months

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"Thanks for the memories..."

by ben_myers_spam_me_not＠charter.net

With apologies to Bob Hope's estate, here is a list of the rest of the DEC memory: 24 MS16-BA 54-21245-BA 2Mx36 70ns 72-pin parity for 3000/300 22 54-21246-BA 2Mx32 60ns EDO 72-pin 8 54-19465-02 6 MS44-AA 54-19103-AA 4MB parity 13 54-21277-01 4Mx36 70ns 72-in parity 2 54-24683 EBV14 cache 2 MSP01 54-23170-EA 4Mx33 70ns 72-pin 4 MSP01-FB 54-24340-01 16MB EDO DIMM AlphaStation 500 2 54-23170-FA 2Mx33 70ns 72-pin 5 MS44L-BA 54-19145-BA VAXstation 4000/60 4 MSP01-FA 54-24329-01 8MB EDO DIMM AlphaStation 500 4 30-46506-06 texture memory DIMM for PowerStorm 2 54-23627-JA 2Mx32 60ns 30 MS40-WA 1MB SIMM 5 MS40-WB 4MB SIMM 3 20-45790-D7 64MB EDO DIMM 5 54-21250 16MB 72-pin SIMM 4 MS16-DA 54-21277 8Mx36 70ns 72-pin 17 MSP01-AC 54-23170-EA 4Mx33 70ns 72-pin 5 ME534-DE 54-21246 8MB parity 72-pin 20 MS44L-AA 54-19145-AA 4MB VS4000/60 5 54-23170-AA 4Mx36 70ns 72-pin MANY 54-21225-BA 4Mx36 70ns 72-pin MANY 54-21225-JA 1Mx32 60ns EDO 72-pin Quite a grab bag. Let me know what interests you. Thanks again... Ben Myers On Fri, 10 Nov 2006 23:40:30 -0500, Ben Myers <ben_myers_spam_me_not at charter.net> wrote: >Well, Bing Crosby is a lot better than "Memories may be beautiful and then..." >by Barbra. Gets your attention, too. > >I recently acquired a carton of memory for older DEC computers. The part >numbers are below. I know this is not the usual place to sell stuff, but this >is all now pretty unusual in today's world of computers. I am not looking to >make a killing, either. > >QTY-PART#-DESCRIPTION >4 54-21215-01 MS01-CA >18 54-19813-AE MS02L-AB 8MB DECStation 5000 >~200 54-19145-01 MS44L-BC 4MB for 3100 >12 54-19103-AA MS44-AA 16MB for 3100 >24 54-21139-CP MS15-CA 4MB >39 54-21139-DP MS15-DA 8MB > >Let me know if there is any you can use and give me a fair offer, more than >scrap value which is around $5/lb. Shipping is from Harvard, MA, USA. Thanks >much... Ben > >ben_myers AT charter.net

19 years, 9 months

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Help in identifying chip...

by alhartman＠yahoo.com

I have a load of these chips from NEC... Can anyone help me identify them? NEC D8041C It's a 40-Pin DIP Chip. And I've been unable to find any information on-line about it. We've come into a whole load of 74 and 75 series TTL chips as well as load of Relays and Power Transistors and other assorted parts. Once I get them all inventoried, I'll make a website. Hopefully listmembers looking for classic IC's will find this to be a useful cache of parts... Al Phila, PA

19 years, 9 months

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PC/XT 286 was Re: PC/AT overclocking

by chrism3667＠yahoo.com

Ive learned that many XT-286s were really shrunken ATs, unlike my old ITT XTRA XP. Was the subject really a tiny-AT? ____________________________________________________________________________________ Yahoo! Music Unlimited Access over 1 million songs. http://music.yahoo.com/unlimited

19 years, 9 months

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Anyone need some fuse PROMs?

by classiccmp＠philpem.me.uk

Hi, Just got back from the hamfest with a bag of 19x Signetics 82S129 fuse-PROMs and a single 82S23. I'm kicking myself a little because I've just found out that the 82S23 is another fusePROM (32x8 O/C output) and I spent a good five minutes digging out all the '129s thinking the '23 was a standard logic chip. There were at least half a dozen more in the bag that I separated out.. Oh well, live and learn. All the chips appear to be new - the legs are splayed out a few degrees, and there isn't a scratch on them. So the million-dollar question is.. does anyone need any of these things? I might have another dozen or so in the cupboard too, and '82S129 programmer' is currently sitting in third place on my "Master To-Do List" (right after "build something neat to enter into the Parallax SX design contest" and "look into building a USB floppy disc raw-reader/archiver"). Reply either here or off-list if you're interested. Thanks. -- Phil. | (\_/) This is Bunny. Copy and paste Bunny classiccmp at philpem.me.uk | (='.'=) into your signature to help him gain http://www.philpem.me.uk/ | (")_(") world domination.

19 years, 9 months

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lisadraw

by aek＠bitsavers.org

> If you look through Lisa code from an application through the OS and > back, there are several layers you have to go through. How much of the Lisa OS has been reverse engineered / documented? I haven't looked at this in a LONG time. A while ago, people were trying to get a simulator running, but it didn't seem to get very far. I know there have been people looking for this stuff for a long time.. After the Lisa group purge ("A players", etc.) happened, very few people wanted to be known as having worked on it. Even on the inside, it was tough to get people who worked on Lisa to talk about it.

19 years, 9 months

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Free DEC SCSI cable, centronics 50 male to 68 pin female (HD68?)

by technobug＠comcast.net

On Sat, 11 Nov 2006 00:41:28 -0500, Warren Wolfe <wizard at voyager.net> wrote: > On Sat, 2006-11-11 at 00:47 +0000, Tony Duell wrote: > >>> I've heard them called Amphenol, CHAMP, telco, PBX and RJ21X >>> connectors as well as "Blue Ribbon" (shows my age). But why >>> "Centronics"? >> >> I normally call them 'Blue Ribbon' -- what should be be calling them? >> Amphenol make (made?) a very large range of connectors, so that >> name is >> nowhere near specific enough... > > > It must be that "two great cultures separated by a common language > thing. The big, hooded connectors have been identified well here. > Most > places I have been refer to them as "Amphenol connectors," unless they > are specifically for parallel printers, in which case people refer to > them as Centronics cables. > > The cables made from ribbon cable, with crimp-on square plastic > headers are called, around these parts, "Berg cables" or "ribbon > cables," due to the "Berg connectors," as Berg made most of them at > one > time. Amphenol, the inventor of this type of connector, calls the current connectors "Micro Ribbon". The original connector had connector widths at least twice that of the current connectors and IIRC were called "Blue Ribbon". You occasionally find them on old ('50s) gear - especially old military radios and scientific equipment. The Micro Ribbon 25 pair format was initially used big time by the telecom folks to hook up PBX systems and then transitioned to the computer field where Centronic used the 36 connector version for what became the ubiquitous printer port. Among us old farts the name has stuck whereby we refer to all connectors of that type as "Blue Ribbon" - nothing to do with blue ribbon-cables - where all the newbies call them "Centronics". CRC

19 years, 9 months

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ADB "power key always down" plug

by spectre＠floodgap.com

Anyone seen one of these where the ADB power pin is always forced on so that if the computer shuts down unexpectedly, it is forced to reboot immediately? I know I have seen such a product; there are software-hardware combos but I know I've seen a plug that did this just by manipulating the power pin. Obviously it can't reset a frozen Mac, but it could reboot after a power failure even if the Mac's PMU settings were b0rk3d. Failing that, has anyone built one? It seems like it's just a matter of grounding pin 2 unless someone knows better, as shown on this diagram: http://myweb.tiscali.co.uk/whitefiles/b1_s/1_free_guides/fg1mt/pgs/h10b.htm -- --------------------------------- personal: http://www.armory.com/~spectre/ --- Cameron Kaiser * Floodgap Systems * www.floodgap.com * ckaiser at floodgap.com -- "I'd love to go out with you, but the doorjambs need dusting." -------------

19 years, 9 months

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ra81's are irking me

by jwest＠classiccmp.org

After swapping out 3 HDA's and 2 servo boards, I had one RA81 working - mostly. For some reason the system wouldn't see it on port A, but it would on port B. Oddness. Anyways, since the day I had it working (and got RT11 loaded on it), the system will no longer see it. I have moved around and changed some of the cabling between the drive cabinet and the cpu cabinet, but I don't see that I've done anything wrong. I put the cabling back the way it was (I could be mistaken) and still no joy. During the basic UDA50 diag it says there are no drives connected (same thing for >>>B DU0). I'm still plowing through the docs (again), but can anyone suggest anything "obvious" that isn't clear in the docs with regards to connecting an RA81 to a UDA 50 that a newbie like me could be missing? I'm up for any input :) Jay West

19 years, 10 months

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Apple Tape Backup 40SC question

by compoobah＠valleyimplants.com

I've been talking with someone (the gentleman in Canada who has the A/UX 1.0 media (medium? it's just one tape...)) about getting his drive operational again (gummed roller). We've gotten as far as replacing the capstan with a similarly- sized piece of tubing, and now he's having problems with the tape coming off the reels (no problems on another DC2000 (I think) style drive) I'm at a loss (can't see the setup, either). Any ideas? I've gone over the loose bands problem with him, and it isn't that.

19 years, 10 months

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Couple of things for sale...

by evan＠snarc.net

I'm selling a few things that I no longer need. Greatly prefer to sell it all as one unit: - TI CC-40 (new in box, I just don't need it) - Epson HX-20 (I wound up with two, this one is the computer only + microcassette drive, no AC adapter, but it works fine -- selling because I got bought a better one at VCF) - Psion Organiser II XP (new 9v battery, works fine, with 32 rampak and 32k datapak, bought on impulse and don't really need it) Looking for $100 total + s/h. Will consider trades if it's something * really * interesting related to portables. Advertising this elsewhere as well. Please reply OFF-LIST to evan at snarc.net .... Thanks. - Evan K.

19 years, 10 months

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Free DEC SCSI cable, centronics 50 male to 68 pin female (HD68?)

by vax9000＠gmail.com

DEC P/N 17-02008-02, No physical damage observed. Not tested. Don't know whether it is DEC specific SCSI cable or a generic one. $5 shipping in the US. See attached photo. vax, 9000

19 years, 10 months

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Visible Storage @ Computer History Museum

by legalize＠xmission.com

I flew to San Jose to see The Who in concert (excellent show, btw, I recommend catching them if you can) and had a few hours to kill before the show. So I went down to the CHM to check out the Visible Storage exhibit. Lots of great stuff! There is something about that distinctive smell you get when you walk into a room full of old electronics that is intoxicating! :-) I want to extend a personal thanks to Al Kossow who met me in the lobby and showed me a few 'behind the scenes' areas: his software library storage, the lab where he does restoration work on old tapes, the restoration lab where a crew is currently restoring some old equipment (IBM? SDS? I can't remember) and the big warehouse storage area where they have lots of goodies awaiting restoration and display. I got to see an Evans & Sutherland Picture System II in the flesh for the first time there :-). Definately recommended if you haven't been out there before. -- "The Direct3D Graphics Pipeline" -- DirectX 9 draft available for download <http://www.xmission.com/~legalize/book/download/index.html>

19 years, 10 months

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(no subject)

by compoobah＠valleyimplants.com

> My first thought is the EOT sensor (the optical sensor that detects the >hole in the tape). Maybe it's just clogged up with dirt, maybe it's >electrically malfunctioning. There's normally an IR LED and >phototransistor, one mounted in a block alongside the head, the other at >the bottom of the drive (there's a 45 degree mirror in the cartridge). > >-tony Hadn't thought of the tape "coming off" that way- checked with the owner and confirmed that it was what I thought originally: the tape is not rolling onto the spools evenly and is coming off the spools in the vertical direction (i.e. wrapping higher and higher until it misses the top of the spool). Quite odd- and he says it only happens on this drive. His hypothesis is an irregularity in the capstain, but I don't see how that would be an issue (DC2000 type tapes use the QIC driveband arrangement, right?).

19 years, 10 months

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Help needed: DEC Micorvax II printing

by ying6926＠ureach.com

We have one DEC micovax II that does not have printer so we bought one Okidata 320 with SUB9 connector. Once we try to make connection, the computer is slowed significantly. It does not print. Some one was recommending using another computer to capture using windows. I don't know the exact procedure. free to download from web? I was able to log in from management interface (RS232) but don't know how to get the files now because the application software is very complicated. thanks Henry

19 years, 10 months

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identify this memory board (configuration)?

by jwest＠ezwind.net

I have a unibus memory board with the following markings. Anyone have any docs for it as to jumper and switch settings? Ditronics - 1A Standard Memories MM-144 Assy 102485 There's 2 sets of dip switches, 8 switches each. There's also a jumper DIP plug, 14 pin. There's 4 LED's labled +5v, run, u.err, and c.err. Any help is most appreciated! Jay West

19 years, 10 months

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Pascal in production environments (was Re: lisadraw)

by ethan.dicks＠gmail.com

On 11/7/06, Fred Cisin <cisin at xenosoft.com> wrote: > On Sun, 5 Nov 2006, Chris M wrote: > > what were these routines writtenw in originally? (C > > presumably I suppose, though one could only wonder why > > they werent written in assembly TBW) > > MOST of the Lisa software seems to have been written in Pascal. > Part of Job's "we want the next (sic) generation, NOT a repeat of what we > already have!" philosophy that caused him to hire some CS graduates with > NO experience in order to get a fresh approach. Some of them didn't even > know that current Pascal compilers were designed for TEACHING programming, > and did not produce output suitable for real world. I had the "enjoyable experience" to be the first seasoned programmer to join a small company that was doing work on the PDP-11 and the PC-AT. Most of _my_ work was in PDP-11 and 80286 assembler, but the main guy was in his first programming job of his career and did everything in Pascal. :-P The company was mapping out a switch to C for a variety of good reasons, but unfortunately, due to external causes (not the choice of Pascal), they went out of business before we started the transition. At that company, I learned several times over why Pascal is not my favorite language. -ethan

19 years, 10 months

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Cobol and such was Re: Pascal in production environments

by ken＠seefried.com

From: Dave McGuire <mcguire at neurotica.com> >On Nov 6, 2006, at 6:35 PM, Chris M wrote: >> Wasn't Smalltalk the first OO language? Nope...Simula circa 1962. Smalltalk was '72 as I recall. > I don't recall Modula-2 being OO...? Depends on how much you torture the definition, but really it's just got a few OO features.

19 years, 10 months

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Correction to a looooooong ago post!

by wayne.smith＠charter.net

If you search Google groups you will see that the first appearance of the term in a post ("lap-top") was in July 6, 1983 in a post by Dan Chernikoff, referring to the TRS-80 model 100. http://groups.google.com/group/net.micro/browse_frm/thread/301dac92a10aa 2f6/814b0c6dd096e119?lnk=st&q=&rnum=1&hl=en#814b0c6dd096e119 I think the precursor term was probably "lap computer." If you search that on LEXIS/NEXIS the earliest hit is a July 4, 1983 InfoWorld article that begins: Copyright 1983 InfoWorld Media Group InfoWorld July 4, 1983 SECTION: IN FOCUS; Pg. 23 LENGTH: 2638 words HEADLINE: Is there a lap computer in your future?; The dream is a desirable one, but there's still a lot of technology to develop. BYLINE: By Paul Freiberger, and John Markoff, IW Staff BODY: On the Pope's recent visit to Poland, American photojournalists covering his tour had something extra in their camera bags. Several of the photographers were carrying Radio Shack Model 100 portable computers to stay in touch with editors back home. In the past year, the personal computer has gone through another transformation in size. Now the microcomputer has left the office behind and become mobile. First it was the desktop microcomputer, then the suitcase-size portable and now the true portable, known variously as the briefcase-, lap- or notebook-size computer. A good part of the notebook-size computer explosion is attributable to Radio Shack's Model 100. Introduced several months ago, it is already a big hit for the Fort Worth, Texas, electronics giant, and it has served notice to other companies that a huge demand exists for reasonably priced lightweight computers. The Model 100 wasn't the first lapsize computer, however. Hewlett-Packard introduced the HP-75 last year, and Epson has been selling the HX-20 with a 4-line by 2-column display for almost two years. **** To search Lexis while avoiding the tags, limit the search to the body of the article by searching "Date<1985 and body(Laptop or lap-top)". Doing this will get you to a late 1983 ComputerWorld article that begins: Computerworld November 30, 1983 SECTION: Pg. 59 LENGTH: 2498 words HEADLINE: PORTABLE PRODUCTIVITY BYLINE: By William Murto; Murto is vice-president of marketing, Compaq Computer Corp., Houston. BODY: Today's portables can be divided into several descriptive catagories: the handheld units, the lap-top computers, the transportable units and the integrated portables. These machines range in weight from several ounces (the handheld units) to more than 30 pounds (the transportables). The handheld units, just as their name implies, are typically not much larger than a hand calculator and generally run on batteries. They are limited in function and are normally little more than a combination of a hand calculator and data entry terminal. The lap-top computers fit smartly into most briefcases and are considerably more powerful and capable than the handheld types. However, these versions have limited display screens and limited memory. They are also limited by the applications programs they can run. > Date: Wed, 8 Nov 2006 02:31:27 -0500 > From: "Evan Koblentz" <evan at snarc.net> > Subject: Correction to a looooooong ago post! > To: "'General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts'" > <cctalk at classiccmp.org> > Message-ID: <000101c70307$e713d700$6401a8c0 at DESKTOP> > Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" > > Way back in July 1999, someone wrote thus: > > >>> Byte Magazine first used the term "laptop" in reference to a > >>> production > computer, after viewing the Epson HX-20 at a trade show in > November 1981. <<< > > The original post is here: > http://classiccmp.org/pipermail/cctalk/1999-July/130419.html > .... but it's not true! Recently I looked through all the > Byte issues from that time period and found the reference in > question, which was in the Feb. 1982 issue. In the issue's > main editorial, on page 14, Chris Morgan referred to "...an > intriguing prototype of the Epson HX-20 personal computer... > The beginning of a new trend to what I call 'briefcase' > computers: battery-operated machines that combine portability > with powerful computer features. It's the sort of design > that will appeal to people on the move." > > Byte's earliest use of "laptop" that I could find wasn't > until the Jan. 1984 issue, in an article called > "Portables--1984 and Beyond" by Dave Winer. I contacted Dave > and he said he heard the term from Ester Dyson, but Ester > said she doesn't recall saying it. She did say that > "luggable" was her term, referring to the suitcase-sized > computers. Byte did write about "lap" computers a couple of > times in 1983, but not "laptops" per se. > > I'm bringing this up now because I have seen a few recent web > references which cite the 1999 post as fact. > > Can anyone show me (not just say they remember) a pre-Jan. > 1984 reference to the word "laptop" in the context of > portable computers? > > I searched on Lexis-Nexus but the results were flawed. > Apparently someone tagged all the pre-1984 references to > "mobile" and "portable" computers with the word "laptop" > which may be logical for most searchers but doesn't help me at all. > > - Evan

19 years, 10 months

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cctalk Digest, Vol 39, Issue 19

by wayne.smith＠charter.net

If you search Google groups you will see that the first appearance of the term in a post ("lap-top") was in July 1983 in a post by Dan Chernikoff, referring to the TRS-80 model 100. http://groups.google.com/group/net.micro/browse_frm/thread/301dac92a10aa 2f6/814b0c6dd096e119?lnk=st&q=&rnum=1&hl=en#814b0c6dd096e119 To search Lexis while avoiding the tags, limit the search to the body of the article by searching "Date<1985 and body(Laptop or lap-top)". Doing this will get you to a late 1983 ComputerWorld article that begins: Computerworld November 30, 1983 SECTION: Pg. 59 LENGTH: 2498 words HEADLINE: PORTABLE PRODUCTIVITY BYLINE: By William Murto; Murto is vice-president of marketing, Compaq Computer Corp., Houston. BODY: Today's portables can be divided into several descriptive catagories: the handheld units, the lap-top computers, the transportable units and the integrated portables. These machines range in weight from several ounces (the handheld units) to more than 30 pounds (the transportables). The handheld units, just as their name implies, are typically not much larger than a hand calculator and generally run on batteries. They are limited in function and are normally little more than a combination of a hand calculator and data entry terminal. The lap-top computers fit smartly into most briefcases and are considerably more powerful and capable than the handheld types. However, these versions have limited display screens and limited memory. They are also limited by the applications programs they can run. > Date: Wed, 8 Nov 2006 02:31:27 -0500 > From: "Evan Koblentz" <evan at snarc.net> > Subject: Correction to a looooooong ago post! > To: "'General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts'" > <cctalk at classiccmp.org> > Message-ID: <000101c70307$e713d700$6401a8c0 at DESKTOP> > Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" > > Way back in July 1999, someone wrote thus: > > >>> Byte Magazine first used the term "laptop" in reference to a > >>> production > computer, after viewing the Epson HX-20 at a trade show in > November 1981. <<< > > The original post is here: > http://classiccmp.org/pipermail/cctalk/1999-July/130419.html > .... but it's not true! Recently I looked through all the > Byte issues from that time period and found the reference in > question, which was in the Feb. 1982 issue. In the issue's > main editorial, on page 14, Chris Morgan referred to "...an > intriguing prototype of the Epson HX-20 personal computer... > The beginning of a new trend to what I call 'briefcase' > computers: battery-operated machines that combine portability > with powerful computer features. It's the sort of design > that will appeal to people on the move." > > Byte's earliest use of "laptop" that I could find wasn't > until the Jan. 1984 issue, in an article called > "Portables--1984 and Beyond" by Dave Winer. I contacted Dave > and he said he heard the term from Ester Dyson, but Ester > said she doesn't recall saying it. She did say that > "luggable" was her term, referring to the suitcase-sized > computers. Byte did write about "lap" computers a couple of > times in 1983, but not "laptops" per se. > > I'm bringing this up now because I have seen a few recent web > references which cite the 1999 post as fact. > > Can anyone show me (not just say they remember) a pre-Jan. > 1984 reference to the word "laptop" in the context of > portable computers? > > I searched on Lexis-Nexus but the results were flawed. > Apparently someone tagged all the pre-1984 references to > "mobile" and "portable" computers with the word "laptop" > which may be logical for most searchers but doesn't help me at all. > > - Evan > > > > ------------------------------ > > Message: 20 > Date: Wed, 08 Nov 2006 02:47:42 -0500 > From: Warren Wolfe <wizard at voyager.net> > Subject: Re: lisadraw > To: "General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts" > <cctalk at classiccmp.org> > Message-ID: <1162972062.2911.69.camel at linux.site> > Content-Type: text/plain > > On Tue, 2006-11-07 at 22:18 -0700, woodelf wrote: > > > > Richard wrote: > > > > > You're not a user. You're a geek. You don't count! ;-) > > > > Umm... Just in HEX do they count! Nerds are binary! > > > Speaking of which... People used to be amazed that I > could count in hex on my fingers. Remember that? 0... 1... > 2 (pardon me, no offense intended)... 3... 4... 5, and so on. > > > > Peace, > > Warren E. Wolfe > wizard at voyager.net > > > > > ------------------------------ > > Message: 21 > Date: Wed, 08 Nov 2006 02:54:26 -0500 > From: Warren Wolfe <wizard at voyager.net> > Subject: Re: OT: Where have electronics hobby stores gone? > To: "General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts" > <cctalk at classiccmp.org> > Message-ID: <1162972466.2911.73.camel at linux.site> > Content-Type: text/plain > > On Sat, 2006-11-04 at 14:40 -0500, jwhitton wrote: > > > > I agree.., I'm appalled that RS has abandoned the hobbyist. It > > seems to be the trend..., retailers so driven by profit numbers and > > markets that they abandon those who put them in business in > the first > > place. I've started haunting hamfests and buying almost any dip > > package logic I run across. If I needed ANY ordinary 74xx > piece, there > > is no longer any place that it could be purchased where I live. > > *Maybe* as an outrageously priced ECG part from the one or two > > remaining repair shops..., but that's it. Sad...., and it bodes ill > > for the sort of Science Fair / Boy Scout level projects that kids > > might want to do..., oh, wait, I forgot, they've got video > games and > > the Internet.. > > > Hey, it's worse than that. I recall seeing, about a year > ago, an ad for an electronics project SIMULATOR in Windows > software. You build the project, and it pretends to run it, > and does what real components would do, producing a signal on > screen, and as sound, if appropriate. *SIGH* > > > > Peace, > > Warren E. Wolfe > wizard at voyager.net > > > > > ------------------------------ > > Message: 22 > Date: Wed, 08 Nov 2006 08:54:11 +0000 > From: Adrian Graham <witchy at binarydinosaurs.co.uk> > Subject: Re: lisadraw > To: "General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts" > <cctalk at classiccmp.org> > Message-ID: <C1774BB3.55EB%witchy at binarydinosaurs.co.uk> > Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" > > On 8/11/06 01:37, "Chris M" <chrism3667 at yahoo.com> wrote: > > > Ok, but let's be specific. Who has spent >$200 for a > > piece of equipment, software, hardware, paraphenalia, > whatever, that > > was at least 15 years old? I want to say 20+, but let's > make it easy. > > And not for work/profit...for umm, pleasure (?). I for one > > qualify. oi > > *raises hand* > > I paid a bit more than I was comfortable with for an Acorn > BBC Master Turbo, but it WAS a machine owned by the BBC and > used for the creation of titles and suchlike for the famed > BBC Domesday Project in 1985 and therefore one of less than > 20 produced in that format. Sadly I haven't found anyone yet > who can remember what software it used to run its genlock.... > > -- > Adrian/Witchy > Binary Dinosaurs creator/curator > Www.binarydinosaurs.co.uk - the UK's biggest private home > computer collection? > > > > > ------------------------------ > > Message: 23 > Date: Wed, 8 Nov 2006 10:19:05 +0100 > From: "Gooijen, Henk" <henk.gooijen at oce.com> > Subject: PDP-11/44 problem - RUN stays on > To: "General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts" > <cctalk at classiccmp.org> > Message-ID: > > <447524F844B59D48B8F7AE7F560935EE084880D3 at OVL-EXBE01.ocevenlo.oce.net> > Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" > > Yesterday evening I had a look at my sick 11/44. > The notes I had kept said that the VT100 displays > "?CP didn't start". I already knew that this is the > typical bus hang condition, so I opened the BA11 box. > I was surprised to see the FP11 board (I did not know > I had that one), but I also saw that the last slot of > the CPU backplane has a G727 ... I remember that in > that quad slot had been the TU80 controller, sure an > NPR device. So, I pulled the G727 and inserted a G7273, > and pushed all other boards firmly into place. > A few boards actually moved a little (say, 1 mm). > > Powering up ... > the 11/44 shows the ">>>" prompt and is responsive, > but I was too lazy to unlock the heads of the RA81 > and tension the motor/spindle belt. The RA81 is the > boot device for the 11/44. The system has an RL02 so I > tried >>>B DL0: but then the 11/44 shows on the VT100 > "no such PROM" (IIRC, or something close like this). > > OK, I was glad not to see "?CP didn't start" anymore, > and I turned off the machine. > Half an hour later I had thought of entering the > boot code for the RL02, so I turned the 11/44 back on. > > However, ... besides the DC ON light, the RUN light > stays ON too. I am sure the RUN light should go OFF. > It does not matter if the switch is in the HALT or > CONT position at power up. > The VT100 only displays: > > (Console V3.40C) > > (Program) > > and nothing more, no ">>>" prompt anymore! > > Also, the FAULT lamp on the RL02 drive stays ON. > In the normal behaviour, the FAULT lamp is OFF, and if > you toggle the switch to the "BOOT" position, the FAULT > lamp will flash ON briefly. > The TK50 (also connected to the 11/44) flashes the red > push button lamp and after a few seconds the red lamp > goes OFF and the green LED goes ON. > Now, in its faulty state the TK50 still behaves the same > when I push the switch to the BOOT position, but the RL02 > drive keeps the FAULT light ON. > > As the FAULT lamp stays ON of the RL02, I am *guessing* > that the 11/44 does not issue a "reset", keeping the CPU > hung, and the RL11 controller ...? > Where do I start? > What are the obvious things in this machine? > Don't read this line Tony. I have 2 spare set 11/44 CPUs. > > thanks for any hints! > > - Henk, PA8PDP. > > > > This message and attachment(s) are intended solely for the > use of the addressee and may contain information that is > privileged, confidential or otherwise exempt from disclosure > under applicable law. > If you are not the intended recipient or agent thereof > responsible for delivering this message to the intended > recipient, you are hereby notified that any dissemination, > distribution, or copying of this communication is strictly > prohibited. > If you have received this communication in error, please > notify the sender immediately by telephone and with a "reply" > message. > Thank you for your cooperation. > > > > > > ------------------------------ > > Message: 24 > Date: Wed, 8 Nov 2006 10:34:12 +0100 > From: "Gooijen, Henk" <henk.gooijen at oce.com> > Subject: RE: PDP-11/44 problem - RUN stays on > To: "General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts" > <cctalk at classiccmp.org> > Message-ID: > > <447524F844B59D48B8F7AE7F560935EE084880D4 at OVL-EXBE01.ocevenlo.oce.net> > Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" > > Sorry, one follow-up on my own message. > I forgot to mention that I searched the classiccmp archive, > but was not successful. I remember a thread about a voltage > comparator issue on the CIM (M7090), but could not find it. > Perhaps that was on usenet ... I must take a look at the > M7090 electrical diagram! > > - Henk. > > > > This message and attachment(s) are intended solely for the > use of the addressee and may contain information that is > privileged, confidential or otherwise exempt from disclosure > under applicable law. > If you are not the intended recipient or agent thereof > responsible for delivering this message to the intended > recipient, you are hereby notified that any dissemination, > distribution, or copying of this communication is strictly > prohibited. > If you have received this communication in error, please > notify the sender immediately by telephone and with a "reply" > message. > Thank you for your cooperation. > > > > > > ------------------------------ > > Message: 25 > Date: Wed, 08 Nov 2006 09:54:16 +0000 > From: Pete Turnbull <pete at dunnington.plus.com> > Subject: Re: New monitors on old machines > To: General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts > <cctalk at classiccmp.org> > Message-ID: <4551A948.3040103 at dunnington.plus.com> > Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed > > Roger Merchberger wrote: > > Rumor has it that Allison may have mentioned these words: > > >> 7) Three way switch at the other enough of the hall. > > > > It's already on a three-way switch with the bottom of the > stairs... do > > they make 4-way switches? > > You mean a two-way switch (single pole, double throw), and > yes there is > a way to have three or more, if you use DPDT switches or a crossover > switch in the middle. Over here, the major manufacturers make > "crossover" or "changeover" light switches for exactly this purpose: > > Conventional use of two two-way (SPDT) switches: > > o-------------o > LIVE --------o--- ---o----------- BULB ------ NEUTRAL > o-------------o > > If one switch is "up" and the other is "down", the light is off > If both switches are "up", the light is on > If both switches are "down", the light is on > > > Actually it's usually wired with one switch the other way up, so the > light is on if one is "up" and the other "down": > > o---. .------o > LIVE --------o--- \/ ---o----------- BULB ------ NEUTRAL > o____/\o______o > > > > Using three (or more) switches: > > o----------o|o----------o > LIVE --------o--- --- ---o----- BULB ---- NEUTRAL > o----------o|o----------o > > ^^^^^^ > crossover switch > connects upper left to upper right (and LL to LR) > or lower left to upper right (and UL to LR) > > If one end switch is "up", and the other is "down", the crossover > switch in the middle can switch current from the upper leg to the > lower, and turn the light on. > > Another layout with a DPDT: > > o--------------.------ > o----------o--- | > LIVE --------o--- : o--------.------------ > o------+ : | | > | : o--------+ | > +---o--- | > o--------------+ > > ^^^^^^^^ ^^^^^^^^ > a DPDT switch with wiring arranged to switch > current from upper leg to lower leg > ('o's are contacts, '.'s are connections, > ':'s represent the mechanical > linkage between > the poles) > > > You can extend this ad infinitum with additional crossover or > DPDT switches. > > -- > Pete Peter Turnbull > Network Manager > University of York > > > ------------------------------ > > Message: 26 > Date: Wed, 8 Nov 2006 06:55:30 -0500 > From: "Dave Dunfield" <dave06a at dunfield.com> > Subject: Re: imaging XENIX disks > To: "General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts" > <cctalk at classiccmp.org> > Message-ID: <200611081100.kA8B0GEH005230 at hosting.monisys.ca> > > > > I made images of the Xenix disks I have for my Altos > > > with ImageDisk and it worked for me. > > > Oohhh.. which Altos would this be ? I'm looking for Xenix for my > > Altos 886. > > It's a 586 - and unfortunately I don't have a full set of > install media - just a couple of "homemade" disks that I got > with the machine, one of which boots (IIRC). > > > > As I understand it Altos Xenix (for the 886) at least was > quad density > > disks. 80 tracks, double density. Should be able to image > them using > > a 1.2M 5.25" PC floppy as long as software can understand > the format > > (I'd think it should do it anyway). > > ImageDisk has no problem reading/writing 80 track DD on > 1.2M drives. > > 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 > > > ------------------------------ > > Message: 27 > Date: Wed, 08 Nov 2006 07:18:35 -0500 > From: Ray Arachelian <ray at arachelian.com> > Subject: Re: lisadraw > To: General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts > <cctalk at classiccmp.org> > Message-ID: <4551CB1B.5060405 at arachelian.com> > Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 > > Warren Wolfe wrote: > > > > It's too bad, in a way. The effort put into the Lisa was > > gargantuan, and directed very well. On its own, it was a great > > product. It was just the user interface which was > appropriated without > > permission. > I'm not sure that the above is correct. All the historical > sources point to the exact opposite. Steve Jobs gave Xerox a > ton of Apple stock to "sort of open the kimono at Xerox > PARC." It was allowed and well known, and if you read the > stories on folklore.org and compare a Star or an Alto to a > Lisa you'll find there are vast differences in the UI. It > simply wasn't just copied, much less without permission. > > > ------------------------------ > > Message: 28 > Date: Wed, 08 Nov 2006 08:06:13 -0600 > From: John Foust <jfoust at threedee.com> > Subject: Re: lisadraw > To: <cctalk at classiccmp.org> > Message-ID: <6.2.3.4.2.20061108080409.05c93e50 at mail> > Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii; > x-avg-checked=avg-ok-71884434 > > At 01:19 PM 11/7/2006, der Mouse wrote: > >There are at least two PC operating systems that cost $0 and work > >perfectly well on hardware that's available for $0 because > the latest > >bloatware no longer runs tolerably on it. > > I don't know what's with you retro kids these days. Back in > the old days, speed was cool. You wanted a faster machine. > Now that the most whizzy machines are 1/100th the price (in > inflation-adjusted > dollars) you're still playing with the stuff in the dumpster. > Programs still start more quickly on a faster CPU. > > - John > > > > ------------------------------ > > Message: 29 > Date: Wed, 08 Nov 2006 03:24:10 -0600 > From: Jules Richardson <julesrichardsonuk at yahoo.co.uk> > Subject: Re: Someone want to 'splain this one to me? > To: General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts > <cctalk at classiccmp.org> > Message-ID: <4551A23A.7030207 at yahoo.co.uk> > Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed > > Chuck Guzis wrote: > > Re: Someone want to 'splain this one to me? > > hmm, I might if I could be bothered to wait the few minutes > it takes for a web > browser to load on this old beastie :-) > > From the mention of ebay in the URL I'm guessing that it's some > way-overpriced item that can be purchased *far* cheaper > elsewhere, quite > possibly in superior form (faster, more reliable, more flexible etc.). > > At least, that's the usual situation whenever ebay and > puzzlement occur in the > same message :-) > > "It doesn't have to make sense - people will still buy it" > should be ebay's > marketing slogan... > > > > > ------------------------------ > > Message: 30 > Date: Wed, 08 Nov 2006 09:27:24 -0500 > From: Sridhar Ayengar <ploopster at gmail.com> > Subject: Re: Someone want to 'splain this one to me? > To: General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts > <cctalk at classiccmp.org> > Message-ID: <4551E94C.2070405 at gmail.com> > Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed > > Chuck Guzis wrote: > > Sorry for harping on an old topic, but this really has me mystified: > > > > http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=320044031900 > > Prices on old new-in-box hardware always tends to get a little wonky. > > Peace... Sridhar > > > ------------------------------ > > Message: 31 > Date: Wed, 08 Nov 2006 03:30:25 -0600 > From: Jules Richardson <julesrichardsonuk at yahoo.co.uk> > Subject: Re: lisadraw > To: General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts > <cctalk at classiccmp.org> > Message-ID: <4551A3B1.4050706 at yahoo.co.uk> > Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed > > Richard wrote: > > In article <C17524C0.9D71%aek at bitsavers.org>, > > Al Kossow <aek at bitsavers.org> writes: > > > >> I'm not saying this is a GOOD thing (this is one of the > reasons I'm > >> at the Museum and not a start-up) it is just the way products are > >> built today. > > > > I'll say its a good thing, otherwise a PC with an operating system > > would still cost $10K, instead of $300. > > Of course if every PC cost 10k then buyers would make darn > sure they learned > how to use it properly, rather than the current situation of > buying one and > sticking it on the 'net with no kind of firewall or virus protection. > > Giving complex tools to the masses when they expect to be > able to just jump > right in and use them with no training whatsoever seems like > a pretty insane > plan. > > > End of cctalk Digest, Vol 39, Issue 19 > ************************************** >

19 years, 10 months

1
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ra81 troubleshooting

by jwest＠classiccmp.org

Humm I may be out of luck for any SDI drives on my 11/44. I've tested almost all my HDA's and they all do appear to be bad. None pass the spinup diagnostics internal to the drive except one. On the one drive that passes the internal drive diags (both pre and post spinup), it also passes the internal spinup diags in a 30 minute loop. Good... but... If I boot RT11 off an RL02 and do an INIT on DU0 it runs ok. If I do a Squeeze/out:du0: dl0: it does copy all the files. However, periodically during the copy process the ra81 ready light goes off and the fault light goes on. But it doesn't fail... after perhaps 30 seconds the fault light goes off and the ready light goes back on and the copy proceeds. It may do this 3 or 4 times, but it eventually gets through that copy with no errors on the terminal (no RT11 errors). I can then boot RT11 off DU0. But that frequent fault light coming on give me the whillies. So.. I went to the diags. The basic controller diags for UDA50 pass ok, all 3 tests. The disk excerciser runs ok with default values... but the moment I tell it to also write in the customer data area, I start getting errors immediately. The errors say something to the effect of "R/W Ready lost during write". I'm assuming that's bad. But how come it only shows up if I tell it to write in the customer area? Given all the above, I was thinking perhaps I should reformat the drive (not knowing what else to try). The format "diagnostic" has all kind of warnings saying "do NOT run this unless you are positive you need to....". Not being familiar with these drives, I thought I'd ask those "in the know" here if it's really no big deal to run the reformat (preserving factory badspots). I'm just wondering if the format is messed up in the normal data areas of the drive but not in the diagnostic portion. Just out of curiosity, one of the HDAs that doesn't pass diags points to the R/W board mounted on the drive. I was thinking of replacing it, but then is a reformat mandatory? If none of these drives pan out, my /44 will be driveless. I'll have to hunt for some other RAxx drives. Thanks for any advice! Jay West

19 years, 10 months

1
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WinUAE - Amiga emulator

by chrism3667＠yahoo.com

I don't actually own an Amiga 2000, but I do have a 600. I didn't check to see if there was an emulator for the 600, but I doubt it's roms would be useful to a 2000's emulator. Regardless, assuming I had the right roms, or wanted to try my 600's...um what do I do? Never used an Amiga at all. And I would like to get my hands on a 1000 and 2000 (an any later models too, but they tend to be expensive). ____________________________________________________________________________________ Want to start your own business? Learn how on Yahoo! Small Business. http://smallbusiness.yahoo.com/r-index

19 years, 10 months

2
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Free SGI R8k POWER Challenge L (Deskside) (CO)

by compoobah＠valleyimplants.com

Found this on another list: > >Guys: > >I've got a POWER Challenge L deskside that was given to me a while back. I've got no use for it and will be moving soon. I'd like to get it to someone who will do something with it other than use it as >furniture. > >I have powered it up and did a hinv. It works, at least as far as working goes with no hard disks and no OSs. > >Seems to have six R8000 processors and 512 MB RAM. No drives. Otherwise complete. > >Weighs, I would guess, about 150 lbs. > >Come and get it and it's yours. in Trinidad, Colorado. I can forward messages. R8k fits timewise (1995) and oddness.

19 years, 10 months

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postage stamps with computers or on computing?

by legalize＠xmission.com

Does anyone here collect stamps and has amassed a collection by theme on computing? -- "The Direct3D Graphics Pipeline" -- DirectX 9 draft available for download <http://www.xmission.com/~legalize/book/download/index.html>

19 years, 10 months

2
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free DEC video cable

by vax9000＠gmail.com

The computer side is 15 pin femail D shape connector. The other side has GRB connectors and one 4pin telephone style port which might be a keyboard port. $5 shipping if you are in the US. Dirty, but no physical damage is observed. Not tested and I don't know what system it was used with. See attached photo. vax, 9000

19 years, 10 months

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semi-ot: are zip drives being phased out?

by chrism3667＠yahoo.com

goofy question, but what sounds easier, a scsi or cflash type interface for a 2K? There probably are any # of scsi designs that could be modified. ____________________________________________________________________________________ Sponsored Link Mortgage rates near 39yr lows. $420k for $1,399/mo. Calculate new payment! http://www.LowerMyBills.com/lre

19 years, 10 months

4
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Fwd: C-64 for cctalk

by tpeters＠mixcom.com

>Subject: C-64 for cctalk >Date: Thu, 9 Nov 2006 10:04:37 -0600 >Thread-Topic: C-64 for cctalk >Thread-Index: AccEGMGi6nldNWUoQnSxvF+J8ptvVg== >From: "PETERS, THOMAS $SBLD$" <tp7156 at att.com> >To: <tpeters at mixcom.com> >X-OriginalArrivalTime: 09 Nov 2006 16:04:37.0936 (UTC) >FILETIME=[C1BB6B00:01C70418] >X-TM-AS-Product-Ver: SMEX-7.0.0.1433-3.6.1039-14802.003 >X-TM-AS-Result: No--5.457100-0.000000-31 >X-Spambayes-Classification: ham > >[24-Oct-2006] FOUND: NIB Commodore 64C (white case)Sitting on closet >shelf since I can't remember when .Has PS cube plus all cables , etc . >No Monitor or Floppy Drive just Computer. If interested make an offer . >I would like to trade for a New SK-410 socket. Will talk about anything. >Joe Chastain , N4JC via josw at bellsouth dot net . > >http://www.arrl.org/RadiosOnline/ads.html?ordby=&wanted_category=Computers%… > > >Thomas M. Peters >ATT LD Sr. Network Services Mgr >N9QQB (6m/2m/70cm) [Bachelors] Nowadays, all the married men live like bachelors, and all the bachelors like married men. --Oscar Wilde --... ...-- -.. . -. ----. --.- --.- -... tpeters at nospam.mixcom.com (remove "nospam") N9QQB (amateur radio) "HEY YOU" (loud shouting) WEB ADDRESS http//www.mixweb.com/tpeters 43? 7' 17.2" N by 88? 6' 28.9" W, Elevation 815', Grid Square EN53wc WAN/LAN/Telcom Analyst, Tech Writer, MCP, CCNA, Registered Linux User 385531

19 years, 10 months

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old DEC software

by compoobah＠valleyimplants.com

For the most part, no software is available because DEC/Compaq/HP hasn't given permission for redistribution (other than the implicit one in your being allowed to borrow someone's VMS set with a valid Hobbyist license). The rumors I've heard indicate that OSF/1-DIGITAL Unix-Tru64 is "encumbered" and so is unlikely to ever be freely released. The GossipNet indicates that this (encumberances and royalty payments) is why the "Enthusiast" license is $100 instead of the VMS program's $0 (or $30 if you want the disk). Sadly, Alpha died at the end of October and the enthusiast Tru64 program likely died with it. Ultrix seems to be a slippery beast, though, and pops up from time to time on the Internet, in both VAX and MIPS forms- look around.

19 years, 10 months

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Need Docs for XT RAM Board...

by alhartman＠yahoo.com

I'll take a look. But I think all four rows are soldered in. Thanks!!! Al > If it's an IBM XT mainboard, there's an easy way to do this (and not use > up any expansion slots). > > Put 41256 chips in banks 0 and 1, and 4164s in banks 2 and 3 on the > mainboard. Put a 74S158 (or 74F158) multiplexer chip in the emptu socket > at the front right, pointing the same way as the chips around it. Set the > DIP switches for 256K RAM, and solder a jumper wire between pads E1 and E2. > > That's it. You have a 640K XT mainboard. > > -tony

19 years, 10 months

3
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cctech Digest, Vol 39, Issue 13

by roger.holmes＠microspot.co.uk

On 8 Nov, 2006, at 19:38, cctech-request at classiccmp.org wrote: > > Yes, that is infact, the Apple Dot Matrix Printer (aka ADMP) which is > identical to the ImageWriter, except that it works over a VIA 6522 > parallel port instead of the serial port that the ImageWriter uses. > They are all versions of the C. Itoh 8510. I'm not familiar with the > DEC LA50, but it's very likely that, it too, is a C. Itoh. My brother has a couple of these, I had both connected up to an Apple ///, which acted as a cash register in my father's ironmongery shop. One was for printing customer receipts and one for printing bar code labels. The computer had an old till drawer attached and a one bit output from the Apple /// operated a solenoid to open the drawer. There was a bar code reader for the Apple ][ which I reverse engineered the software for to made it work on the Apple ///, it just had a one bit input and lots of clever timing code, interrupt driven on my version if I remember correctly. I translated the whole lot for Lisa (while had one or two parallel cards), and the software was definitely interrupt driven there. > > The Inkjet printer for the Lisa is the Canon PJ 1080A. I wish I had > some real docs for this printer, but I don't. I had one of these too but it seems I put the manual back in the box with the printer, which has of course been chucked. Nearly all the other printers and plotters I've had on loan in the 80s and 90s (for writing drivers for) I managed to hang on to the manuals, but the Cannon (which we had to buy) is not with them. > Lisa's LisaDraw routines > (later rewritten in 68000 assembly and ported to the Mac and > renamed as > QuickDraw) do support color, I am fairly sure it was called QuickDraw on the Lisa as well. I think I still have two really thick binders for the Lisa programming environment somewhere. I remember writing my own code to do pull down menus in QuickDraw, CopyBits-ing the pixels the menu was going to cover up to an offscreen buffer, bringing up the menu, highlighting the items as the cursor went over them and reinstating the pixels after the cursor was released. Why Apple did not make these routines available I don't know. I chucked a lot of code away when we moved over to Macintosh. Most of the early Mac data structures were handle based but QuickDraw's GrafPorts remained pointer based right through to core graphics and Cocoa. > although its display is 1 bit black and white, > so, if you print a graphic that has color on this printer, you'll > get color. > I believe these were 16 colors, so 4 bit. There were just eight predefined colour names, and these mapped onto constants which were masks in both RGB and CMYK colour spaces. You could assign the foreground(paint,fill etc) or background (erase) patterns to any one of the eight colours. > > There was also a Daisywheel printer for the Lisa too, which was very > interesting, since it supposedly could also print graphics too > according > to the advertisements. I can imagine that it must have used a single > period character to poke dots, so it must have been super slow. I > couldn't find any real docs for it however. > Not practical for graphics. I remember seeing a daisywheel doing inverse text, bashing away with the vertical bar and then using the erase part of the ribbon to print the white text.

19 years, 10 months

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4-way switches (was Re: New monitors on old machines)

by sdc695＠yahoo.com

der Mouse <mouse at Rodents.Montreal.QC.CA> said: > >> 7) Three way switch at the other enough of the hall. > > It's already on a three-way switch with the bottom of the stairs... > > do they make 4-way switches? > > Yes. You need two SPDTs (which you already have) plus as many DPDTs as > necessary to fill out the desired quota of switches (which means just > one of them, in your case). I've seen it done (at least for three > switches). House 4-way switches DO exist. They have 4 terminals (thus the [USA/NEMA] "4-way" designation). They preform the "normal"/"cris-cross" switching function. A quicky web search <"4-way" switches> got lots of answers, and you can buy these (new, sorry not 10 year old) devices. The first return from a yahoo search has a nifty animation on how this all works. The technology has been in use for quite some time (the house I grew up in used a 4-way switch in the 50's). The problem is that not many places stock the things (I looked on Home Depot's site to no avail). Basically the switch train is a bunch of exclusive-or's so that any switch can make the "sum" 1 (on), or 0 (off). I had to get a computer reference in there somewhere! If you do decide to do some wiring, be careful. There are lots of references on the web on the "how-to" aspects. Ob antique stuff: Yes, the house also (the part built in 1946) had knob & tube wiring. The other part (built in 1952) where the 4-way switch was had something resembling romex. -- Tom Watson tsw at johana.com ____________________________________________________________________________________ Want to start your own business? Learn how on Yahoo! Small Business. http://smallbusiness.yahoo.com/r-index

19 years, 10 months

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Discussion of large systems (cctech Digest, Vol 39, Issue 11 9/11/2006)

by roger.holmes＠microspot.co.uk

Al Kossow <aek at bitsavers.org> wrote: On 8 Nov, 2006, at 19:38, cctech-request at classiccmp.org wrote: > > If you are interested, I could probably get you one of these when > they're > available > > http://bitsavers.org/tools/wizl/tapewizl/ > > Paul Pierce built something similar to what you did for recovering > 7-track > data, and discovered that you really need to recover the data using > analog > techniques to get any reliability. > > http://www.piercefuller.com/collect/proj.html > > Thanks for the offer. I will see how we get on using the original hardware first. The decks have ten tracks so I guess I would need two of them. Each frame contains 4 bits of data and six error correction bits so I am hopeful that the original hardware, after recalibration etc, will be able to read almost all of the data, and where we can't, at least know which frames have errors in them.

19 years, 10 months

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It feels SOOOO good to run a modern OS on classic computers

by dzubint＠vcn.bc.ca

ahhhh, I just finished installing the newest (Nov 1 2006) v4.0 OpenBSD on my MicroVAX 3100 (17 years old) It really gives me a warm fuzzy feeling that they're still useable. Thomas Dzubin

19 years, 10 months

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Spending $$$ on classic hardware (was Re: lisadraw)

by mtapley＠swri.edu

At 22:30 -0600 11/8/06, Ethan wrote: >$600 for an RL8A in the mid '80s, $400 for a KT24 (to run 2BSD), over >$1000 for a PDP-8/S, $800 for a SPARC1 in the early 90s... > >Guilty, guilty, guilty. $800 for a pile of NeXT gear, because it included a NeXTDimension card. Still working on restoring, equipping, and distributing the slabs, which has cost hundreds more dollars so far. $800 for a NeXT cube, but at the time that wasn't "classic". I'm not quite sure how to count the gas, storage space, etc. over the years, but that might be substantial. Still a cheap hobby, compared to many things. -- Mark Tapley, Dwarf Engineer (I haven't cleared my neighborhood) 210-379-4635 Dwarf Phone, 210-522-6025 Office Phone

19 years, 10 months

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SN94281

by PLM3128＠aol.com

Do you have any SN94281 or know where I might acquire them I need a fist full. Thank You

19 years, 10 months

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Gould Biomation K-105D Logic Analyzer Available

by sloboyko＠yahoo.com

Certainly, there are a lot of logic analyzsers (or analysers, if you are English) floating around. I was told by a guy who specializes in "refurbished" (i.e. dusted off) test equipment that this is because a lot of it is gov't surplus where they just grab the unit. He also mentioned that a lot of university surplus has partially blown pods because of carelessness - due to the nature of what they do, not much protection on the inputs. I have a Tek 1230 which I was lucky enough to get some pods with. I had another one w/o pods and GOOD LUCK on getting schematics, etc on this stuff - it's a "black art" proprietary sort of thing. ===== -Steve Loboyko Incredible wisdom actually found in a commerical fortune cookie: "When small men cast long shadows, then it is very late in the day." Website: http://juliepalooza.8m.com/sl __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? New Yahoo! Photos - easier uploading and sharing. http://photos.yahoo.com/

19 years, 10 months

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OT: Where have electronics hobby stores gone?

by cclist＠sydex.com

Awhile ago there was a thread on the decline of electronic hobby- related retailers in the US and UK. Well, I think I've figured out where they've gone--Thailand! Take a look at the catalog on this site (Warning--it's a 12MB PDF): http://www.etteam.com/ I wish I could read Thai... They have a English-language dealer site at http://www.futurlec.com but they don't carry half of the good stuff in the catalog. Cheers, Chuck

19 years, 10 months

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Someone want to 'splain this one to me?

by cclist＠sydex.com

Sorry for harping on an old topic, but this really has me mystified: http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=320044031900 Cheers, Chuck

19 years, 10 months

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FA: Litton disk drives?

by legalize＠xmission.com

What do these go with? I didn't know Litton made disc drives. Pics: <http://web.govliquidation.com/auction/view_photo?eventId=2619&lotNumber=45&…> Lot: <http://cgi.govliquidation.com/auction/view?auctionId=1036131&convertTo=USD> -- "The Direct3D Graphics Pipeline" -- DirectX 9 draft available for download <http://www.xmission.com/~legalize/book/download/index.html>

19 years, 10 months

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OT: Software for Transtronics/Intronics EPROM programmer

by KCOCF＠NETINS.NET

Bob, I have the pocket programmer and have lost the disk as well, did you ever find a file to run it? I know it's a dos only disk, but that is not a problem. Let me know. Mike IOWA

19 years, 10 months

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OT: Where have electronics hobby stores gone?

by compoobah＠valleyimplants.com

What Warren Wrote: > Hey, it's worse than that. I recall seeing, about a year ago, an ad >for an electronics project SIMULATOR in Windows software. You build the >project, and it pretends to run it, and does what real components would >do, producing a signal on screen, and as sound, if appropriate. *SIGH* Perhaps the software in question was slightly different, but electronics simulation software (such as PSPICE and its variants) have been around for a while- used it in college. Very convienient to be able to mock something up with the magic smoke being completely virtual, especially when you barely know what you're doing.

19 years, 10 months

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semi-ot: are zip drives being phased out?

by chrism3667＠yahoo.com

I just found a bow of brand new Iomega 100meggers for $20 (x10). Was thinking of hacking a scsi card for the T2K, but how long will zips be available? ____________________________________________________________________________________ Sponsored Link Mortgage rates near 39yr lows. $420k for $1,399/mo. Calculate new payment! http://www.LowerMyBills.com/lre

19 years, 10 months

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Need Docs for XT RAM Board...

by chrism3667＠yahoo.com

is anyone familiar with a IIrC sip module that has probably smt 4164s (or 41256s). Besides the obvious physical difference, could they replace normal ics? ____________________________________________________________________________________ Sponsored Link Get a free Motorola Razr! Today Only! Choose Cingular, Sprint, Verizon, Alltel, or T-Mobile. http://www.letstalk.com/inlink.htm?to=592913

19 years, 10 months

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imaging XENIX disks

by chrism3667＠yahoo.com

several have that same look. Methinks the 586 has a 186. old-computers.com. There might be an Altos on ebay right now. ____________________________________________________________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Everyone is raving about the all-new Yahoo! Mail. http://new.mail.yahoo.com

19 years, 10 months

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test

by jwest＠classiccmp.org

test, please ignore Jay West

19 years, 10 months

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epay listings

by jwstephens＠msm.umr.edu

There are a number of listings by one vendor that are of interest. the thing I found was an LNW-80 system board, but he also has a full system, system expansion board as well. Also are some Ohio Scientific parts, and Imsai, apple Pineapple clone. Also someone may know what a Commodore MSD super disk is listed. vendor is "fdbruce" one listing number is 170045443608 LNW auctions for parts end today. others are out as far as a week. (Today is Wednesday@ 418pst) FWIW, the transit of Mercury ended a bit ago. Jim

19 years, 10 months

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paging jerome fine

by jwest＠classiccmp.org

My email address for Jerome Fine is dead.... anyone have a working email for him please email me offlist! Jay West

19 years, 10 months

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Spending $$$ on classic hardware (was Re: lisadraw)

by ethan.dicks＠gmail.com

On 11/9/06, Richard <legalize at xmission.com> wrote: > > In article <20061108022926.45215.qmail at web61017.mail.yahoo.com>, > Chris M <chrism3667 at yahoo.com> writes: > > > --- Richard <legalize at xmission.com> wrote: > > > > > Guilty as charged, Sir! And by definition, that > > > takes me out of the > > > category of the lowly user :-). > > > > A full confession is in order. > > Um, let's see... $350 for a Beehive terminal. > $1200 for a lot of Tektronix terminals :-) > $500 for a PDP-11/03 w/peripherals > > I think those are the only ones where I broke the $200 barrier. $600 for an RL8A in the mid '80s, $400 for a KT24 (to run 2BSD), over $1000 for a PDP-8/S, $800 for a SPARC1 in the early 90s... Guilty, guilty, guilty. At least the SPARC was an investment in my future (my SPARC experience was directly responsible for getting me my first trip to the South Pole in 1996). The others were just toys. -ethan

19 years, 10 months

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New monitors on old machines

by ajp166＠bellatlantic.net

> >Subject: Re: New monitors on old machines > From: woodelf <bfranchuk at jetnet.ab.ca> > Date: Sun, 05 Nov 2006 13:27:53 -0700 > To: General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts <cctalk at classiccmp.org> > >Fred Cisin wrote: > >> >> 1) X10 (quite a bit more than 10 yrs old, controllable by TRS80) >> 2) train your dog how to work a light switch >> 3) switch with delay >> 4) auxiliary lighting in the hallway >> >5) Sleep on the sofa :) >6) Night light > 7) Three way switch at the other enough of the hall. Allison

19 years, 10 months

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uber-nerds (was Re: lisadraw)

by aliensrcooluk＠yahoo.co.uk

--- Chris M <chrism3667 at yahoo.com> wrote: > >> snip << > > Fine, but how many qualify for the uber-nerd > category > (I mean how much more of a nerd is there then > someone > who didn't get enough of this crappola when it was > current LOL LOL). > Ok, but let's be specific. Who has spent >$200 fo r > a > piece of equipment, software, hardware, > paraphenalia, > whatever, that was at least 15 years old? I want t o > say 20+, but let's make it easy. And not for > work/profit...for umm, pleasure (?). I for one > qualify. oi > Hmmm... I spent about $400 (err.. $200 USD and $200 AUD) on 60 issues of 80 Microcomputing. But that probably doesn't count as it's 60 items (magazines) instead of just one. My other expensive purchases don't count as they were all made in the last decade. Regards, Andrew B aliensrcooluk at yahoo.co.uk

19 years, 10 months

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KENBAK-1 documentation

by aek＠bitsavers.org

A box surfaced at CHM yesterday with documentation on some mid-80s donations. They would often include small items in the folder for the artifact, and I was plesantly surprised that all of the documentation that came from John Blankenbaker's KENBAK-1 donation was there. I've scanned the brochure, hardware and programming manuals and still need to do the lab manual. All up on bitsavers.org/pdf/kenbak. Erik, if you happen to have the parts list in the docs you have, that would be useful, since the schematics don't give component values for the passive components.

19 years, 10 months

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PDP-11/44 problem - RUN stays on

by jwest＠classiccmp.org

Henk wrote... > "?CP didn't start". I already knew that this is the > typical bus hang condition, Yup it is, seems you fixed it with the G7273 > However, ... besides the DC ON light, the RUN light > stays ON too. I am sure the RUN light should go OFF. Disclaimer... I'm new to these machines, the below is a newbies guesses :) Perhaps your M7098 (UBI) module is set to autoboot from one of the proms upon powerup, and that's why it comes up in run mode. This is a personal preference thing, but I never have a machine autoboot to anything other than the console emulator. I then always select the boot device by hand. Many people instead set the switches on the UBI to attempt a boot from a particular device upon powerup. This may be why you power on in run mode. I would suggest that you look at the 10 position dip switch on the UBI and set 1,2, and 7 on and all the rest off. Then power up and see if you dont get just the console prompt. > and nothing more, no ">>>" prompt anymore! > > Also, the FAULT lamp on the RL02 drive stays ON. If I was to make a newbie guess... you have a problem with your RL02 subsystem (drive, cable, or controller) and your UBI is perhaps set to autoboot the DL prom. So when you power it on it attempts to boot the RL02 and hangs because of another problem. Setting the switches as above would identify this possibility. If it then comes up to the CONSOLE prompt correctly, you can at least know it's time to zero in on the RL02 subsystem. Jay

19 years, 10 months

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VCF 9.0

by marvin＠rain.org

I haven't seen anything about VCF yet, so thought I would put down a few comments. It was a fun time as usual at VCF, and I met a lot of interesting people there. I got a chance to put some faces with names, and that is always a lot of fun. The majority of my time was spent taking care of my vendor booth, and so I didn't take a lot of time to spend in other areas. One of the neat additions was the kit building workshops. Several people got their Apple I replica kits signed by Woz. It seemed like the number of vendors and exhibitors were down, but the number of people attending were up. One of the exhibits I liked was the Apple Lisa. The exhibitor, who goes by Lisa :), was very knowledgeable and I learned a number of things from her regarding collecting Lisas. For those that don't know me, I do have a perverted sense of humor. I had brought a Chisholm computer that I think might be a prototype of the first IBM battery operated portable (later licensed to Olivetti) to see if anyone knew anything about it. Evan will hopefully be doing an interview with the company president, and I mainly brought it for him to see. But after watching people ignore it, I put a $2000 price tag on it ... and that got it a little more attention :). But people still didn't ask about it though they took more notice of it. And no, I don't think it is worth anywhere near that much money. I was talking to Sellam, and it would have been a good place to at least mention the Vintage Market Place for selling/trading/buying/etc. vintage computer stuff. And I also think this and Eric's listservers should also have been mentioned. If we are to help build this hobby, it might be a good idea to let people know where to get more information :).

19 years, 10 months

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1983 Micro prices (was Re: The Origins of DOS)

by RodSmallwood＠mail.ediconsulting.co.uk

BBC Micro everybody had one!! -----Original Message----- From: cctech-bounces at classiccmp.org [mailto:cctech-bounces at classiccmp.org] On Behalf Of Jules Richardson Sent: 01 November 2006 10:44 To: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts Subject: Re: 1983 Micro prices (was Re: The Origins of DOS) Chris M wrote: >>> What this implies is that the PC was several years >> delayed in UK. >> >> No, this implies I was quoting from a magazine. > > I've heard stuph to the effect that there wasn't alot of Big Blue > stuph in the UK, at least not in the early days. Not on the desktop - I think there were a fair few 'server' class systems around though. But yes, my understanding is that the PC just didn't take off in the UK like it did in the USA (and elsewhere?). Remember that the UK had a massive amount of choice when it came to general desktop machines - quite probably more so than the USA did. UK society at the time was very much "squeeze every last possible drop out of what you had", whilst the impression I've got of the US was that people were far more willing to upgrade systems reasonably frequently to whatever the latest thing available was. > Research Machines was a big name though, and common. In education, yes. Not so much for home or business use, though. What timeframe are we talking - say 1982 to 1985 or so? The education market was split primarily between Research Machines and Acorn, with a few others picking up the scraps. The home computer market was amazingly diverse, but frequent names were Sinclair, Acorn and Commodore. The corporate world of desktops was similarly diverse (with the likes of CP/M crates, Commodore, Apple, and IBM all featuring) - but there were also a huge number of business people making use of the same machines that were found in the home. Often these people were talented enough to write their own bespoke software to manage their business, but there was a healthy market in 'business' software written for these machines too. A while back I came up with a list of early-80s UK computer manufacturers (in order to see how much space we'd need for a UK-specific room at the museum). It ended up being pretty massive... > I still want the blooming Nimbus Good grief, why? They're pretty nasty. If you want something from RML, go for a 380Z or a 480Z - those are 'real' computers; the 380Z has that lovely rugged 'military' feel to it with all the fun of a modular system (albeit without a rigid backplane :-) whilst the 480Z is a great example of good design, both hardware and packaging. cheers Jules

19 years, 10 months

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Correction to a looooooong ago post!

by evan＠snarc.net

Way back in July 1999, someone wrote thus: >>> Byte Magazine first used the term "laptop" in reference to a production computer, after viewing the Epson HX-20 at a trade show in November 1981. <<< The original post is here: http://classiccmp.org/pipermail/cctalk/1999-July/130419.html .... but it's not true! Recently I looked through all the Byte issues from that time period and found the reference in question, which was in the Feb. 1982 issue. In the issue's main editorial, on page 14, Chris Morgan referred to "...an intriguing prototype of the Epson HX-20 personal computer... The beginning of a new trend to what I call 'briefcase' computers: battery-operated machines that combine portability with powerful computer features. It's the sort of design that will appeal to people on the move." Byte's earliest use of "laptop" that I could find wasn't until the Jan. 1984 issue, in an article called "Portables--1984 and Beyond" by Dave Winer. I contacted Dave and he said he heard the term from Ester Dyson, but Ester said she doesn't recall saying it. She did say that "luggable" was her term, referring to the suitcase-sized computers. Byte did write about "lap" computers a couple of times in 1983, but not "laptops" per se. I'm bringing this up now because I have seen a few recent web references which cite the 1999 post as fact. Can anyone show me (not just say they remember) a pre-Jan. 1984 reference to the word "laptop" in the context of portable computers? I searched on Lexis-Nexus but the results were flawed. Apparently someone tagged all the pre-1984 references to "mobile" and "portable" computers with the word "laptop" which may be logical for most searchers but doesn't help me at all. - Evan

19 years, 10 months

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New monitors on old machines

by chrism3667＠yahoo.com

right...so whos in charge of that dept? --- cctalk-bounces at classiccmp.org <Watzman at neo.rr.com> wrote: > Re: "Indeed, a series of DACs would be needed to convert the T2K TTL to > analog for modern monitors but it doesn't solve the scanning frequency." > > The level issue is easily solved with just a couple of resistors. > > The real problem is the scan rates. > > > ____________________________________________________________________________________ Yahoo! Music Unlimited Access over 1 million songs. http://music.yahoo.com/unlimited

19 years, 10 months

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New monitors on old machines

by Watzman＠neo.rr.com

Re: "Indeed, a series of DACs would be needed to convert the T2K TTL to analog for modern monitors but it doesn't solve the scanning frequency." The level issue is easily solved with just a couple of resistors. The real problem is the scan rates.

19 years, 10 months

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quads and imagedisk

by chrism3667＠yahoo.com

no problemo. At least the Tandy 2000 variety. ____________________________________________________________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Everyone is raving about the all-new Yahoo! Mail. http://new.mail.yahoo.com

19 years, 10 months

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Craziest ebay price EVER

by evan＠snarc.net

Not that I or anyone else really needs another Apple IIe, but fyi: http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=140044907978

19 years, 10 months

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Litton disc drives

by aek＠bitsavers.org

The drive is a CDC 9762. The tape is a variant of the Cipher 880

19 years, 10 months

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X10 Hall light (was New monitors on old machines)

by dm561＠torfree.net

--------------Original Message: From: Roger Merchberger <zmerch-cctalk at 30below.com> Subject: Re: New monitors on old machines >my X10 setup won't work thru the ol' knob-n-tube (already tested >that) installed in my house -- depending on which circuit's going thru >which fuse. However, I've been slowly rewireing the place where I can - >specifically so I can use the X10 modules I have. I doubt that the knob-n-tube is the problem; have run X10 stuff 100% reliably in my ancient 3-story knob & tube house for a decade (except for the occasional module failure). The RF stuff is another story however... Have you tried the .1 uf phase coupling cap (or the "official" phase coupler)? >> 2) train your dog how to work a light switch >He died a few months ago. :-( Sorry to hear it; so did my cat... :-( >> 3) switch with delay >Hadn't thought of that... might have to check the lighting shops here to >see what they have in stock... While you're there, look for a wall switch with IR sensor & delay; sounds perfect for your app, although you might have trouble finding one that'll work in your 3-way setup (if you'd still need it). >7) Three way switch at the other enough of the hall. >It's already on a three-way switch with the bottom of the stairs... do they >make 4-way switches? Yes, but that'd require additional wiring. >And everyone forgot #8: Win a home remodeling contest so I can get $100,000 >so I can afford to pay someone *else* to gut & redo the house in an >expedient manner. ;-) Can't beat that! m

19 years, 10 months

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FA: LOT (9) HP MDL 9825B DIGITAL COMPUTER SYSTEMS

by legalize＠xmission.com

Pics: <http://web.govliquidation.com/auction/view_photo?eventId=2619&lotNumber=100…> Lot: <http://cgi.govliquidation.com/auction/view?auctionId=1034224&convertTo=USD> -- "The Direct3D Graphics Pipeline" -- DirectX 9 draft available for download <http://www.xmission.com/~legalize/book/download/index.html>

19 years, 10 months

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FA: HP 7970E digital tape unit

by legalize＠xmission.com

Dunno what this is, but its from Hooks/Texarkana which seems to be disposing of lots of minicomputer stuff over the past year. Photos: <http://web.govliquidation.com/auction/view_photo?eventId=2619&lotNumber=532…> Lot: <http://cgi.govliquidation.com/auction/view?auctionId=1025334&convertTo=USD> -- "The Direct3D Graphics Pipeline" -- DirectX 9 draft available for download <http://www.xmission.com/~legalize/book/download/index.html>

19 years, 10 months

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1983 Micro prices

by javickers＠solutionengineers.com

Witchy wrote: > > Hi folks, > > I know this was published in the UK media in 1983 which > doesn't really vouch for its authenticity, but it gives a > good idea of prices for the micros that were available at the time. > > It's the A-Z of Personal Computers published by Video Press > in 1983 and some of its prices are thus: (all UK pounds, > multiply by roughly 2 to get the $) > > Tandy TRS80 M1: 199 > Apple ][ and ][e: 1209/1270 > Osborne 1: 1430 > Commodore 4016: 632 > Apple ///: 2418 > Apple Lisa: 7500 > DEC Rainbow 100: 2300 > HH Tiger: 2700 > IBM PC: 2390 > N* Advantage/Horizon: 2300/2295 > ACT Sirius 1 (Victor 9000): 2754 > Intertec Superbrain II: 2100 Well, I have in front of me here the Winter 1983 edition of Micro Choice (published by Argus), which gives the following prices (all UKP): Apple ][e 845.00 Atari 800 245.00 BBC Model A 299.00 BBC Model B 399.00 Commodore 64 299.00 Dragon 32 199.00 Epson HX-20 499.00 Jupiter Ace 89.95 Lynx 225.00 NASCOM3 376.00 NewBrain 233.00 Osborne 1 (not priced) Research Machines RML 380Z From 500.00 Sharp MZ-80A 549.00 Sord M5 189.95 TI 99/4A 199.00 VIC-20 169.99 Genie I 279.00 Genie II 299.00 ZX81 49.95 ZX Spectrum (16K) 125.00 ZX Spectrum (48K) 165.00 The following machines are all reviewed (some in great depth), with several optional extras priced. Note that many appear in the table above with different prices.... Why? Who knows...: Sharp MZ-80A: 477.00 MZ-80AEU Expansion Unit: 115.00 MX-80FB Dual Disk Unit + Cable: 706.00 (!!!) MZ-8AFI Disk Interface: 115.00 MZ-80P6 Printer + cable: 496.45 MZ-8BP51 Printer Interface: 34.50 MZ-80IO2 Universal Interface: 51.75 MZ-8AP5R Character Generator: 14.95 Disc BASIC: 34.65 Epson HX-20: 411.00 + VAT Microcassette (drive I assume) 75.00 extra 16KB RAM Module 80.00 + VAT 16KB RAM/16KB ROM Module 80.00 + VAT Acoustic Coupler 220.00 + VAT TV Display Adapter 100.00 to 150.00 Laser 200: 69.95 16K RAMpack 29.95 64K RAMpack 59.95 Printer Interface 19.95 Joysticks (price per pair) 19.95 Lightpen 19.95 Colour Genie: 168.00 Pair of Joysticks 49.49 EG 2012 Centronics Printer I/F 30.50 (includes cable) Discs TBA ACT Sirius 1: Single Floppy with 128K RAM 2,195.00 + VAT Dual Floppy with 128K RAM 2,695.00 + VAT Dual Floppy with 256K RAM 2,895.00 + VAT 128K RAM board 395.00 + VAT Sinclair ZX Spectrum: ZX Spectrum 16K 99.95 ZX Spectrum 48K 129.95 ZX Printer 39.95 ZX Microdrive 49.95 RS232 Interface 49.95 (or, if purchased with a m/drv) 29.95 Acorn Electron: 199.00 Sharp MZ-700: 250.00 Modular Printer/Plotter 130.00 Modular Cassette recorder 40.00 Jupiter Ace: 89.95 Oric 1: Oric 1 16K RAM 99.95 Oric 1 48K RAM 139.95 Oric MCP-40 Printer/Plotter 169.95 (40.00 voucher with every Oric 1) Hitachi 3" drive under 200.00 Sharp PC-1251: 79.95 Including CE125 printer/cass 99.95 BBC Micro: Model A 299.00 Model B 399.00 Sord M5: (without joypads) 149.95 Sharp MZ-3541: 000.00 (a typo, presumably) Dragon 32: 175.00 Joystick Unit 10.00 ROM Cartridges 20.00 Cassette software 8.00 5.25" disc drive SSSD 275.00 48k Lynx: 225.00 Commodore 64: 299.00 + VAT Graphics Cartridge 50.00 approx Cheers, Ade. -- No virus found in this outgoing message. Checked by AVG Free Edition. Version: 7.1.409 / Virus Database: 268.13.28/518 - Release Date: 04/11/2006

19 years, 10 months

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Discussion of large systems

by aek＠bitsavers.org

> Ok so you do know different. Why is there so little discussion of > these on the list? There are VERY VERY few people that have such systems. I only know of at most a dozen in the US, and most of them do not participate in on-line discussions. A few rairly use email. > Is there a more appropriate list? Maybe as we all have different > manufacturer's kit we have little to talk about, but we still face > Similar problems, thing like tracking down media, repairing peripherals, fault > finding logic, keeping the machine clean and stopping them rusting, > keeping the offline support stuff working - keypunches, Flexowriters, > Teletypes etc, though maybe that is not a problem for you as your > machine has a comms controller. The Computer History Museum is formalizing the restoration process, now that several machines have either been restored, or are in the process. Surviving systems from before 1975 are very rare animals, esp mainframes, since so many of them have been scrapped for precious metals. Sadly, there is even less software that has survived. CHM didn't start seriously collecting documentation nor software prior to the move to the West Coast in the 90's. While they have an impressive collection of hardware, and a pretty decent collection of US computer documentation now, the software holdings pre 1975 are minimal. I will be giving a talk at VCF this Saturday on the CHM software collection.

19 years, 10 months

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Pascal in production environments (was Re: lisadraw)

by charlesmorris＠hughes.net

----Original Message---- All I remember from Pascal programs I have seen is that every thing is 1 large program. I/O is from the punched card era and every body handles SETS differently. Did any one ever use TINY Pascal? I remember back in '81 writing a lot of 1802 assembly language for a Discrete Fourier Transform processor (TTL and HC chips) in a sonobuoy project (PC boards 20" long and only 3" wide)... now you just throw in a DSP chip that runs on milliwatts... Anyhow I was very happy when "Micro Concurrent Pascal" came out, so I could write the control program and user-interface routines in a high- level language. Of course it didn't have good checking, as I discovered after chasing an intermittent crash for days with only a scope and logic analyzer. A junior programmer had put a subscript value of 60 in the middle of a group of variables, although the array itself was defined as [1..20]. It wasn't easy to spot by eye even once we had found it. So a location 40 bytes away was being overwritten, and sometimes to a value that would kill the program, sometimes not! -Charles

19 years, 10 months

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Lisa history

by kossow＠computerhistory.org

> I'm curious why Larry Tesler and his team from Xerox Parc picked Pascal as > the language to build Lisa on...esp. considering the Alto was a BCPL machine > (forerunner of C). > I know Apple was an early adopter of USCD Pascal...I wonder if had any > influences. The original Lisa was going to be a 2901 based machine running a variant of P-Code. This died off pretty quickly once the 68000 was announced. I assume David Craig has this all documented somewhere. I heard the early history from Paul Baker. Lisa had been going for a while before Larry came over from PARC. Just before Larry left Apple, there was an internal talk on Lisa history which gave a chronology of events. Maybe Larry has written this all up somewhere. > Did Apple write their own compiler? See the previous message. It was written by Silicon Valley Software

19 years, 10 months

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lisadraw

by chrism3667＠yahoo.com

what were these routines writtenw in originally? (C presumably I suppose, though one could only wonder why they werent written in assembly TBW) ____________________________________________________________________________________ Low, Low, Low Rates! Check out Yahoo! Messenger's cheap PC-to-Phone call rates (http://voice.yahoo.com)

19 years, 10 months

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Lisa history

by aek＠bitsavers.org

> I'm curious why Larry Tesler and his team from Xerox Parc picked Pascal as > the language to build Lisa on...esp. considering the Alto was a BCPL machine > (forerunner of C). > I know Apple was an early adopter of USCD Pascal...I wonder if had any > influences. The original Lisa was going to be a 2901 based machine running a variant of P-Code. This died off pretty quickly once the 68000 was announced. I assume David Craig has this all documented somewhere. I heard the early history from Paul Baker. Lisa had been going for a while before Larry came over from PARC. Just before Larry left Apple, there was an internal talk on Lisa history which gave a chronology of events. Maybe Larry has written this all up somewhere. > Did Apple write their own compiler? See the previous message. It was written by Silicon Valley Software

19 years, 10 months

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Lisa Pascal

by aek＠bitsavers.org

Lisa Pascal was developed by Silicon Valley Software, who also sold it and a Pascal based operating system to Corvus for the Corvus Concept. SVS also sold a FORTRAN compiler into the early Unisoft Unix market. If you do a hex dump of the Lisa Workshop disc 5, you'll find a 1981 SVS copyright at location 38bb0

19 years, 10 months

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Lisa inside Apple

by aek＠bitsavers.org

>> I know there have been people looking for this stuff for a long time.. After >> the Lisa group purge ("A players", etc.) happened, very few people wanted to >> be known as having worked on it. Even on the inside, it was tough to get >> people who worked on Lisa to talk about it. >> >I'd presume that some of that may be NDA's. I was a Senior Engineer at Apple for almost 20 years, first in ATG, then in CPU Engineering, and knew most of the people still there during that time that worked on Lisa. They didn't (and for the most part still) don't want to talk about it. > I don't know why there should be any stigma associated with having > worked on the Lisa project. Don North was there earlier than I was, and worked closely with one of the main hardware guys that didn't leave with Jobs when they formed NeXT. He could probably answer this better than I can, but there was an attitude internally that people who worked on Lisa worked on the 'losing' project. This faded out as time went on, and the Mac II and Laserwriter pushed profits up, but it was clearly still there when I started in 1986.

19 years, 10 months

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imaging XENIX disks

by chrism3667＠yahoo.com

I cant rightly say cuy I dont rightly know. I suggested he join so maybe well be hearing from him shortly. --- cctalk-bounces at classiccmp.org <aek at bitsavers.org> wrote: > > > I've tried > > Winimage and ImageDisk but they didn't work. > > "didn't work" isn't particularly helpful > > HOW didn't ImageDisk work? > > Did he try using a 360K drive? > > > ____________________________________________________________________________________ Sponsored Link Get an Online or Campus degree Associate's, Bachelor's, or Master's - in less than one year. http://www.findtherightschool.com

19 years, 10 months

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imaging XENIX disks

by aek＠bitsavers.org

> I've tried > Winimage and ImageDisk but they didn't work. "didn't work" isn't particularly helpful HOW didn't ImageDisk work? Did he try using a 360K drive?

19 years, 10 months

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It feels SOOOO good to run a modern OS on classic computers

by dzubint＠vcn.bc.ca

Mon Nov 6 18:24:38 CST 2006, Zane H. Healy wrote: > Or... You could just run OpenVMS V7.3 on that MicroVAX :^) Well, yes... how about I meet you halfway and just say that OpenBSD is on my one RZ26 drive and VMS v5.5-2 is on the other internal drive. So I get the best of both worlds :-) Thomas Dzubin ps: will OpenVMS 7.3 run in 8MB of RAM? (yeah, yeah, I know...google is my friend)

19 years, 10 months

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CCAG 2007 May 26, 2007 Lorain, OH

by legalize＠xmission.com

In case anyone didn't already know: The Classic Computing and Gaming Show <http://www.ccagshow.com/index.html> -- "The Direct3D Graphics Pipeline" -- DirectX 9 draft available for download <http://www.xmission.com/~legalize/book/download/index.html>

19 years, 10 months

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frequency doubling

by chrism3667＠yahoo.com

Isnt this a relatively simple matter? There wont a circuit that halves the duration/doubler the freq of 5 digital signals be run of the mill? __________________________________________________________________________________________ Check out the New Yahoo! Mail - Fire up a more powerful email and get things done faster. (http://advision.webevents.yahoo.com/mailbeta)

19 years, 10 months

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11/44 is alive, as is the 11/34!

by jwest＠ezwind.net

The 11/44 has come to life. It passed all the diags I threw at it, plus booted RT11. I did that on an RL02 and would like to switch that system to an RA81. Once the RA81 is in place, that system is done. But at least the cpu is known working. In case I didn't mention it here, the 11/34 is also alive. Turns out the "odd" diagnostic results I was seeing are actually what a working system prints. The /34 booted RT11 as well and ran a few small compiles. All I have to do now is move the cpu from the table on the side of the rack and mount it inside the rack. Then that box is done as well. Once those above cosmetic issues are done, I'll take a short break and then revisit the 11/45 project which was temporarily shelved :D I'd love to spend more time now with the /44 and /34 to get TSX up and running, play with sysgening a new system, etc. But no time to play yet, I'm under orders to consolidate and get rid of stuff. Thanks to all who gave input, advice, and knowledge! Jay West

19 years, 10 months

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fyi: new superPET doc

by superfiko74＠libero.it

E' il manuale dell' Apl per il superpet. Se hai un superpet allora puo' servirti :) Mai visto un superpet se non in foto, sarebbe una macchina interessante da vedere ed usare, so che ci vuole poco ma e' il piu' particolare ed interessante dei vari PET/CBM. Ciao Andrea ---------- Initial Header ----------- >From : cctalk-bounces at classiccmp.org To : cctalk at classiccmp.org Cc : Date : Sun, 5 Nov 2006 12:36:42 -0800 (PST) Subject : fyi: new superPET doc > I've added the SuperPET Waterloo APL manual on my site. > > http://www.trailingedge.com/cbm8/ > > (Warning it is 38 meg) > > ----- > David Williams > http://www.trailingedge.com > > > > ------------------------------------------------------ Mutuo da 200.000?? Tassi ridotti:euribor +0.70%. Solo per richieste online. www.mutuionline.it http://click.libero.it/mutuionline6nov

19 years, 10 months

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