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

Public Service Announcement: AVOID "bobsbid1"

by ajp166＠bellatlantic.net

> >Subject: Re: Public Service Announcement: AVOID "bobsbid1" > From: Gordon JC Pearce <gordonjcp at gjcp.net> > Date: Sun, 16 Oct 2005 14:36:25 +0100 > To: General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts <cctalk at classiccmp.org> > >woodelf wrote: > >> But I think the reason the cable makes a difference is you got all the feed >> back in a transistor amp ( less in a valve ) and any noise on the speaker >> cables like ac hum? and other noise will get fed back to the amp > >What *exactly* do you live near that couples that much mains hum into >speaker leads? Consider that the leads have very little inductance, and >are shunted with a very low impedance load... > >Gordon. It's that oxygen free copper its so pure it hears galactic noise. Gag! Magnetic hum is square law, unless one of the speaker wires are wrapped around the power line I'm sorry it ain't there. Besides paired wires are naturally resistant. Every time I hears this stuff I do an eye roll. Allison

20 years, 10 months

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OS/2 vs Win3.1

by ajp166＠bellatlantic.net

> >Subject: OS/2 vs Win3.1 > From: Bert Thomas <bert at brothom.nl> > Date: Sat, 15 Oct 2005 09:15:19 +0100 > To: General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts <cctalk at classiccmp.org> > >Allison wrote: >> How does OS/2 warp V3 compare to other PC OSs like CDR Concurrnet386 or >> win3.1? > >I don't know anything about Concurrent386, but comparing OS/2 Warp with >win 3.1 is like comparing pigs with streetlights. > >Win3.1 is a graphical shell around DOS. To overcome DOS' memory >limitations is uses some more advanced techniques of the processor, such >as protected mode. However, win3.1 programs are 16-bit. Win3.1 itself is >16 bit. Win 3.1 only allows cooperative multitasking. That means that a >another program can only get control if the running program gives it up. >This is a very short summery of Win3.1 > >OS/2 2.0 and higher are 32-bit operating systems. However, compatibility >with older OS/2 applications was considered very important and therefore >parts of the kernel and all device drivers are mainly 16 bit. Only >recently some 32-bit device drivers were written. > >OS/2 has its own graphical subsystem - a very advanced one. It can run >DOS programs in 'virtual dos machines' or VDM. A special mode of the 386 >processor allows a task to act as if it where a real mode task. Anything >that task does can trap the processor and thus can be handled by >exception handlers. OS/2 is very strong is this area. > >OS/2 has its own file system with some special features like "extended >attributes". > >OS/2 has dynamic priorities for tasks, that makes it more responsive. >For example, a task that has focus in the GUI is slightly raised in >priority. Or when a background task was blocking for something it might >receive a slight priority boost when that something becomes available. > >OS/2's time critical priority is handled "soft realtime". I've used OS/2 >in the past for process control, dosing in particular. For such >applications realtime behaviour is very important as a lattency of 1 sec >or more is disasterous for the product being manufactered. > >I can go on and on, but if you want to know more let me know and I write >it down later on. > >Regards, >Bert Thankyou for the informative comparison. I know 3.1 was 16 bit, I really didn't bother bringing W9x up and Concurrent386 was the other. Concurrent is interesting as the copy I have is a 10 user license. I fully read everything but it appears to support multiple users on one system as a time sharing and task sharing alternative to DOS. I susuect it's also 32bit or has some core task controls as 32bit code. Allison

20 years, 10 months

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Looking for RL02 cable and terminator

by James＠jdfogg.com

> Now that my 8/A is up and running it's time to hook up the > RL02. I do have the interface board plugged into the Omnibus, > the correct boot ROMs on the option board, and the RL02 has > the Unit "0" plug but no cable or terminator. I could make my > own if someone can tell me where to get the connectors that > fit the drive end. Are you anywhere near Northern New England?

20 years, 10 months

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Releasing OS/2

by vp＠cs.drexel.edu

ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk (Tony Duell) wrote: > There were certauinly : > > Transputer (both all-on-one cards (host adapater + transputer + RAM) and > TRAM motherboards) > [...] IBM had even produced a 370 as a set of adapter cards for the original PC. The package was called PC/370. The processor(s?) were 68000s with IBM microcode. AFAIK they used more than one, but I am not sure how many. **vp

20 years, 10 months

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Radio Shack TRS-80 Models I and III available near NE Ohio

by vcf＠siconic.com

See below. Contact original sender directly. Reply-to: Kirk Worcester <kirk at neo.rr.com> ---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Mon, 19 Sep 2005 14:35:32 -0400 From: Kirk Worcester <kirk at neo.rr.com> To: vcf at vintage.org Subject: Radio Shack I have a RS Model I and Model III and I'm looking for a good home. Any suggestions? Ideally I'd like to find a local collector (NE Ohio) that could come and pick these up. Thank you, Kirk Worcester -- Sellam Ismail Vintage Computer Festival ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ International Man of Intrigue and Danger http://www.vintage.org [ Old computing resources for business || Buy/Sell/Trade Vintage Computers ] [ and academia at www.VintageTech.com || at http://marketplace.vintage.org ]

20 years, 10 months

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HP 262X terminal bits available (junk)

by jwest＠classiccmp.org

I got around to taking a mess of 262X terminals in poor condition and mixing/matching parts to get two clean good working units. This means I have a lot of bits & pieces of junk left over. I already kept some bits for spare parts, so the rest of this is going to hit the trashcan. Note - amongst all these pieces, you could not make a good terminal just with these items - there's little incompatabilities and/or missing parts. I figured I'd offer the pieces in case someone had one of these with a broken bezel, missing set screw, etc. 2628A terminal parts: brown bezel/faceplate, main logic board w/2 94020A ports, very white top & bottom cover (no pedestal), power supply. 2821P terminal parts: printer unit, yellowed top & bottom cover, pedestal, brown bezel/faceplate, power supply. In addition to the above - two crt tubes that fit either unit, both have a fair amount of spottage under the glass The above is all going in to the trash today, which will be picked up thursday afternoon. So... let me know if you need any cosmetic bits asap! Next on the list... 264X parts may be made available... Jay West

20 years, 10 months

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Public Service Announcement: AVOID "bobsbid1"

by ajp166＠bellatlantic.net

> >Subject: Re: Public Service Announcement: AVOID "bobsbid1" > From: woodelf <bfranchuk at jetnet.ab.ca> > Date: Sat, 15 Oct 2005 11:33:54 -0600 > To: General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts <cctalk at classiccmp.org> > >Gordon JC Pearce wrote: > >> William Donzelli wrote: >> >>>> Why would you buy audio tubes, or valves as we call them over here, >>>> from eBay, when they're cheap enough in Maplins? >>> >>> >>> >>> Because a 12AX7 (ECC83) made by ICC and an identical 12AXY (ECC83) >>> made by >>> Telefunken makes ALL the difference. >> >> >> Mmm. To the gold-plated speaker cable brigade, perhaps. > >But I think the reason the cable makes a difference is you got all the feed >back in a transistor amp ( less in a valve ) and any noise on the speaker >cables like ac hum? and other noise will get fed back to the amp >.. > >> >> Gordon. Ugh, never mind. Allison

20 years, 10 months

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HP 9133XV jumper query

by john_a_s2004＠hotmail.com

Hi, J?rgen Keller recently cracked how to access his 9133XV combined hard drive and floppy drive unit from his HP-85 - see full article here: http://www.hpmuseum.org/cgi-sys/cgiwrap/hpmuseum/articles.cgi?read=562 I would like to check with other 9133XV owners if their drives also had the same A/B/C jumper, I suspect this was only present on certain revisions of the drive. If it seems to be on all revisions this is excellent news as these drives often crop up on the second hand market. Regards, John >From: J?rgen Keller To: John S <john_a_s2004 at hotmail.com> >Subject: Re: Extended Mass Storage ROM >Date: Fri, 14 Oct 2005 20:16:55 +0200 > >Hi John, >I'm very happy that I have a working connection to my PC. It makes much >more fun if you can feed your HP-85 with some nice programs... > >If have no explanation why I could not initialize the drive with my >HP-85. Perhaps, the 86 Mass Storage ROM is more advanced. Anyway, the >main point for me is that it works now. Hopefully it helps others to get >their drives working. John wrote: >>I suspect that not all 9133XVs have this jumper. Did you want to post a >>message on classiccmp cctalk, I know several people there have this drive. > >I'm currently not subscribed to cctalk. May I ask you to post the >information? Perhaps it sheds some light on the jumper question. > >Have a nice weekend, >Juergen _________________________________________________________________ The new MSN Search Toolbar now includes Desktop search! http://toolbar.msn.co.uk/

20 years, 10 months

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OT: Language for the ages

by carlos＠jimulco.autonoma.edu.co

Gordon JC Pearce wrote: > Carlos E Murillo-Sanchez wrote: > >> by the numerical scientific computing community. I even know >> why, but I don't want to star a language war. > > Aw go on, tell us... I for one would love to know why, if only to see > if it's worth brushing up my rather rusty FORTRAN "skills". Ok, you asked for it... 1) There is an inertia factor, of course, with all those superb routine libraries in FORTRAN (LAPACK, SCALAPACK and all that stuff at the legendary netlib) 2) FORTRAN has been optimized for many decades to do just one kind of task: computations involving arrays of floats, with a very specific fetch/multiply/add to accumulator/increment pointers sequence. This is a very regular task and the optimizations in FORTRAN are directed to do this very efficiently. C compiler optimizers must address many other possibilities (C is a much more "general purpose" language). Thus, like it or not, for numeric computations involving matrix/vector float operations, FORTRAN is usually slightly faster than C. Of course, if you program a fast Fourier transform in FORTRAN, it might actually be slower because some of the operations don't fit the structure described above: you have to negate bits in pointers to form the "butterflies" (the basic FFT block). Why, even the storage scheme in FORTRAN reflects numerics-specific thinking: 2D matrices are stored column-wise, an appropriate choice if you know that en numerics, matrix/vector multiplication is best thought of as a weighted sum of the columns of the matrix, with the weights being the elements of the vector. C, being designed by non-numerics people, stores numbers row-wise. If you program numerics in C, you must always store matrices transposed to get around this fact. So, short explanation: FORTRAN is faster for array numerics, which forms the core of scientific numeric computing, simply because that's what the optimizer expects to find. C, having a more general purpose, considers many other possibilities and is less "tuned" to the needs of numerics. Carlos. Carlos E. Murillo-Sanchez email: carlos_murillo at ieee.org Dean of Engineering, Universidad Autonoma de Manizales, Manizales, Colombia ---- "Western civilization... thought like the greek, organized itself like the romans and believed in itself like the hebrew." -- Ortega y Gasset.

20 years, 10 months

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OS/2 vs Win3.1

by ajp166＠bellatlantic.net

> >Subject: OS/2 vs Win3.1 > From: Bert Thomas <bert at brothom.nl> > Date: Sat, 15 Oct 2005 09:15:19 +0100 > To: General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts <cctalk at classiccmp.org> > >Allison wrote: >> How does OS/2 warp V3 compare to other PC OSs like CDR Concurrnet386 or >> win3.1? > >I don't know anything about Concurrent386, but comparing OS/2 Warp with >win 3.1 is like comparing pigs with streetlights. > >Win3.1 is a graphical shell around DOS. To overcome DOS' memory >limitations is uses some more advanced techniques of the processor, such >as protected mode. However, win3.1 programs are 16-bit. Win3.1 itself is >16 bit. Win 3.1 only allows cooperative multitasking. That means that a >another program can only get control if the running program gives it up. >This is a very short summery of Win3.1 > >OS/2 2.0 and higher are 32-bit operating systems. However, compatibility >with older OS/2 applications was considered very important and therefore >parts of the kernel and all device drivers are mainly 16 bit. Only >recently some 32-bit device drivers were written. > >OS/2 has its own graphical subsystem - a very advanced one. It can run >DOS programs in 'virtual dos machines' or VDM. A special mode of the 386 >processor allows a task to act as if it where a real mode task. Anything >that task does can trap the processor and thus can be handled by >exception handlers. OS/2 is very strong is this area. > >OS/2 has its own file system with some special features like "extended >attributes". > >OS/2 has dynamic priorities for tasks, that makes it more responsive. >For example, a task that has focus in the GUI is slightly raised in >priority. Or when a background task was blocking for something it might >receive a slight priority boost when that something becomes available. > >OS/2's time critical priority is handled "soft realtime". I've used OS/2 >in the past for process control, dosing in particular. For such >applications realtime behaviour is very important as a lattency of 1 sec >or more is disasterous for the product being manufactered. > >I can go on and on, but if you want to know more let me know and I write >it down later on. > >Regards, >Bert Thank you. I'd been wondering why OS/2 had a following and that was it about OS/2 that made it worth following. It would seem that it's 32bit core and task management do make it distinct. Since I have the complete Warp V3 kits with bonus packs 1/2/3 I'll have to put it on one of the 486s and see. Any good sites for apps, tools and drivers? Allison

20 years, 10 months

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OT: Language for the ages

by ajp166＠bellatlantic.net

> >Subject: Re: OT: Language for the ages > From: Paul Koning <pkoning at equallogic.com> > Date: Sat, 15 Oct 2005 12:33:58 -0400 > To: cctalk at classiccmp.org > >>>>>> "William" == William Donzelli <aw288 at osfn.org> writes: > > >> Is it? Given that we don't have 20-20 prescience, how about 20-20 > >> hindsight? Could you implement C on any computer with sufficient > >> memory? > > William> In 30 years, our processor-memory model might be a thing of > William> the past. > >Why? It's 60-70 years old already and shows no signs at all of going >away. > > paul I've exprimented with a rather simple microprogam state machine where there is no ALU or other logic. Just one huge eprom with all the possible results of two factors. The machine reduced to a fetch instruction, lookup results (the factors are addresses to the eprom), return result. At a 50,000ft view its a standard Von looking thing, close in there is none of the usual hardware. So I would be suggesting that which externally conventional in programming the implmentation could really be off the current map. Allison

20 years, 10 months

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OT: Language for the ages

by pete＠dunnington.plus.com

On Oct 15 2005, 11:03, Gordon JC Pearce wrote: > Tony Duell wrote: > > > outputs of the 11/44 PSU,. There's a 5V rail (120A or so) for the logic > > That's not a power supply, that's a MIG welder. Possibly. The PSU in my Origin 2000 is for spot welding, I think: 5V @ 85A, 12V @ 22A, and 3.45V @ 375A. There's one in each module. -- Pete Peter Turnbull Network Manager University of York

20 years, 10 months

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OT: Language for the ages

by ajp166＠bellatlantic.net

> >Subject: Re: OT: Language for the ages > From: Gordon JC Pearce <gordonjcp at gjcp.net> > Date: Sat, 15 Oct 2005 10:02:32 +0100 > To: General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts <cctalk at classiccmp.org> > >Carlos E Murillo-Sanchez wrote: > >> by the numerical scientific computing community. I even know >> why, but I don't want to star a language war. >> >> Carlos. > >Aw go on, tell us... I for one would love to know why, if only to see >if it's worth brushing up my rather rusty FORTRAN "skills". > >Gordon. This is opinion and observation over 36years of computing I've been hands on with. The term "large frame" is any computer that is not a micro but includes examples like the LSI-11 which was the cusp of mini to micro. Micro is specifically anything that exists as a chip fromthe basic 8bitter 8008, through the non racked Pentium. Fortran is definately one of the languages. There are many languages based on or spawned from it. FOCAL comes to mind as a varient. Just about any multipurpose cpu has Fortran for it. Considered a large frame language by many but the major micros have compilers too. The legacy of Fortran is is number crunching in all its forms which covers a lot of ground. The most strongly held ground I've seen is numerical modeling. BASIC is another widespread language. Likely the second most(runs neck and neck with fortran) widely ported to micro and large frame processors. The legacy of BASIC is one language, billions of dialects. BASIC runs from interger minimum subsets to full bore structured languages with data typing to the fully visual forms that do not look like BASIC at all. Those two alone run close to assembly in frequency of occurance for any cpu. For "systems work" it would appear C is it. Though C is a common cross compiled language for wide variety of embedded cpus. The biggest assumption I've seen with C is that it's likely in or around a unix (or unix like) environment for use or development. Since the mid 80s that is less so. Once you get past those the what language for what work tends to stratify based on application and preference. Allison

20 years, 10 months

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Public Service Announcement

by brother_cadfael＠sbcglobal.net

William <snip> There are plenty of extremely valid 2nd chance offers. In the surplus business, it is extremely common to buy a lot of one item, and if one of the auctions does extremely well, only a foolish seller would not try to take advantage of the deal. I use them all the time, and yes, they do work enough times that I keep using them. <snip> I've been the buyer in two such transactions myself, I was glad to have the chance. <snip> I have said it before - I will say it again - pissing off a dealer is one of the dumbest things a collector can do. <snip> I couldn't agree more, it's right up there with pissing off food servers, doctors & auto mechanics! BTW what is the name of your eBay business? Brian Hanson

20 years, 10 months

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Releasing OS/2

by ajp166＠bellatlantic.net

> >Subject: Re: Releasing OS/2 > From: Scott Stevens <chenmel at earthlink.net> > Date: Fri, 14 Oct 2005 22:21:53 -0500 > To: "General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts" <cctalk at classiccmp.org> > >On Fri, 14 Oct 2005 17:11:19 -0400 >Allison <ajp166 at bellatlantic.net> wrote: > >> My original intent was limited to OSs that were operable on PCs. > >Well, then. Definitely FOCAL running on a PDP-8 emulator. On a PeeCee. Nah, taks all the fun out of it. Focal running on the 8f, blinkin lights! Allison

20 years, 10 months

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Releasing OS/2

by ajp166＠bellatlantic.net

> >Subject: Re: Releasing OS/2 > From: woodelf <bfranchuk at jetnet.ab.ca> > Date: Fri, 14 Oct 2005 14:14:24 -0600 > To: General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts <cctalk at classiccmp.org> > >Allison wrote: >> >>What I'd like to see is a comparison of OS/2 to say DRI Concurrent386 >>and Win3.1 or Nt3. I picked the latter two as I know them well. I have >>both concurrent386 and OS/warp 3 but never used them. Maybe I'm missing >>something and I'd like to have an idea of and how practical their use >>would be in the present as part of my PC based supporting systems. >> >> >Lets not forget OS/9 for the 6809 , just for a reality check of >multi-tasking. My original intent was limited to OSs that were operable on PCs. If there is OS/9 for PC then by all means but I'd suspect comparison would be to unix/linux rather than Dos/win. While I'd not mind seeing that I have no real 6809 hardware other than a COCO-II that is sans case. Found it on the side of the road with smashed case but fully intact and operable. While 1+ing the question we can add 8bit multitasking for Z80 other than MP/M to look at. Allison

20 years, 10 months

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FW: LARGEST COMPUTER COLLECTION IN THE WORLD (?) FOR SALE

by news＠computercollector.com

Hey folks, last night I recieved the message below. This guy posted an identical message to Erik's www.vintage-computer.com/vcforum page as well. I have no information about the credibility of the seller. It's certainly not the "largest computer collection in the world" but it should be an interesting discussion. ;) - Evan _____ From: INFO at FKI.BE [mailto:info at fki.be] Sent: Friday, October 14, 2005 6:18 AM To: news at computercollector.com Subject: LARGEST COMPUTER COLLECTION IN THE WORLD (?) FOR SALE Hi there, I am selling my complete collection of computers (over 570 different ones). If you are interested in some computer(s) from my collection, just mail me at info AT fki DOT be (replace AT by @ and DOT by .) and I'll add you to the list of possible buyers. I will then mail you back explaining how I intend to sell the computers. As you can see from my 100% positive feedback on Ebay (member ChaosDM) this is not a scam, but a serious sale. I don't want to go through Ebay directly, because listing 570 different items separately would take AGES! Anyway...the list of the collection can be seen here : <http://users.pandora.be/F-242/Computers.htm> http://users.pandora.be/F-242/Computers.htm There are a LOT of very and ULTRA rare items in there For example : A GOLDEN C64 WITH COMMEMORATIVE PLAQUE! A LOT OF ARABIC MSx's A LOT OF RUSSIAN COMPUTERS ETC... Cheers, Dimitri Kokken Belgium

20 years, 10 months

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Releasing OS/2

by ajp166＠bellatlantic.net

> >Subject: Re: Releasing OS/2 > From: "Chuck Guzis" <cclist at sydex.com> > Date: Fri, 14 Oct 2005 15:37:43 -0700 > To: cctalk at classiccmp.org > >On 10/14/2005 at 5:11 PM Allison wrote: > >>While 1+ing the question we can add 8bit multitasking for Z80 other than >>MP/M to look at. > >Molecular was running MT software simply by using a CPU card for each user. One approach. I ran a multiprocessor Z80 system back in '81-82 with one difference idle processors (or processors idling) could take on tasks >from the system exec. > >That Durango system (that I'm STILL trying to give away) was designed from >the ground up with MT in mind. Since the 8085 can't do dynamic address >relocation very easily, we simply put the MT facilities in the compiled (to >a sort of P-code) BASIC. File access control and data sharing was a part >of it. Except for the very lowest level system utilities, all programs >were written in it. A 5 MHz 8085 could support 5 users quite comfortably. >Added memory was 1K pages, mapped through 64x9 bipolar RAM. I've done a memory paged 8085 system, interesting. I have to ask, how does all of this fit with the question?: How does OS/2 warp V3 compare to other PC OSs like CDR Concurrnet386 or win3.1? Allison

20 years, 10 months

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MPX-16 census

by trag＠io.com

>Date: Wed, 12 Oct 2005 15:25:03 +0000 >From: Gordon JC Pearce <gordonjcp at gjcp.net> >Subject: Re: MPX-16 census >der Mouse wrote: >>>I've never heard of anybody making more than double-sided PCBs at >>>home (I would love to be proved wrong!). >> >> >> I can't *prove* you wrong. But I've spoken with someone who claimed to >> have done it, and when I started asking questions, talked a good enough >> line that I found it believable. As she described it, you need >> epoxy/fibreglass mix, which you cast a thin sheet of. You then sand it >> smooth, copper-plate it, and etch. Slap on another coat of epoxy and >> fibreglass, let it cure, sand it smooth, copper-plate, and etch. >> Lather, rinse, repeat. >> >> The hard part is of course quality control (and plated-through vias, >> which you can get somewhere with by drilling holes before doing the >> last copper-plating). And registration of the layers. But with >> patience and attention to detail...after all, anyone doing this is >> considering time to be worth a great deal less than money, or the job >> would simply be shipped off to a commercial pcb fab house. :) > >It's the sort of thing I can see our Mr Duell doing though. This is a topic that interests me. The most useful sounding site I've found so far is this one <http://www.thinktink.com/stack/volumes/volvi/pcbproto.htm> IIRC, they recommend drilling your boards before etching so that you can use the hole locations to help with your layer registration. They also have an interesting ink and electroplating system to create plated-through vias. (As an aside, I found another site one time where a fellow had replaced the pen in a plotter with a drill and was using it to drill boards with an Apple II(?) driving the thing. <http://rich12345.tripod.com/PCB/> It would be an interesting project if one could make it interpret Excellon drill files.) However, the information on greater than 2 layer boards is thin. They seem to imply that you can etch seperate thinner boards and then laminate them together, but there's no detail on what kind of board would work for this. There's an obscure reference to not fully cured fiberglass or some such. The implication is that, e.g. one could make a total .062" thick board with four layers out of three boards laminated together--perhaps three .020" boards. The two outer boards would be double sided circuit boards and the center would be a separator with plated-through vias and "doughnuts" at the plated-through holes to make contact from one board to the next. I'm curious about what one would need in terms of board or additives to laminate multi-layer boards together. A standard fully cured board isn't going to stick, I don't think. Building multi-layer boards out of raw fiberglass/epoxy mix and copper plating it oneself does not sound like a viable home project. At least, not for me. Jeff Walther

20 years, 10 months

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PING: Ashley Carder

by charlesmorris＠direcway.com

I've been trying to contact you... Are my emails getting through or vanishing into the ether? Direcway is notorious as a conduit for spammers and is often blocked without warning, but it's my only option here in the country other than dialup :( -Charles

20 years, 10 months

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how_to_build book online

by jack.rubin＠ameritech.net

I finally (re)found my copy of "How to Build A Working Digital Computer" by Alcosser, et al, published in 1967. This is the "paper clips and spools" computer - definitely worth a look - http://www.sideslip.net/digital_compu/ . It's a scan of a copy from a dying book so parts of it are not too pretty but I think its all there. Enjoy - Jack

20 years, 10 months

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Releasing OS/2

by ajp166＠bellatlantic.net

> >Subject: Re: Releasing OS/2 > From: "Chuck Guzis" <cclist at sydex.com> > Date: Fri, 14 Oct 2005 19:55:01 -0700 > To: cctalk at classiccmp.org > >On 10/14/2005 at 9:28 PM Allison wrote: > >>I have to ask, how does all of this fit with the question?: > >You asked about Z80 MT outside of MP/M. I pointed out that there's more >than one way to skin a cat. In particular, MT does not have to be an >integral feature of the OS itself. I did not ask about Z80 MT as a direct part of the question on OS/2. In fact any comments made were along the lines of scarcasm while we are talking about OS/2 lets let in the world of other OSs even the 8 bit ones that are not relevent to OS/2. Maybe for once I was too subtle? As to Z80 MTasking OSs there are several but I elected to layer a task executive on/under CP/M V2 as I had it and there was nothing to say it wouldn't work. Its big value was using all those idle cycles waiting for keystrokes. I did it back around '81-2. and it was an interesting exercise in hardware and software. The real question, the one I'd really like to know more about, was and is: I have OS/2warp3 how does it compare to Concurrent386 and win3.1 in the PC realm? I have both OS/2W3 and CC386 but never installed them for no real reason. What have I missed? Allison

20 years, 10 months

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Unisys, shame on you

by James＠jdfogg.com

> While surfing the Unisys websight, I found nearly NO mention > of either Burroughs or Univac. One more reason to > like IBM. William Donzelli aw288 at osfn.org > > And what did you expect? I worked for Unisys, and for Sperry > before. I am surprised Unisys is still in business, since > they don't seem to know what market to get into. Can you still buy a system that supports Poll Select? I love that protocol.

20 years, 10 months

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Archival storage

by James＠jdfogg.com

> This whole discussion about the volatility of storage reminds > me of a conversation I had recently with a friend who's a > professional archivist. I asked her what medium was used for > archival storage--CD-ROM, DVD, etc.? > > Paper. No ifs ands or buts about it. Sorry to steal your thread, but... I have been talking with my state's historical archiving group. They are very interested in some form of digital media for archiving, and are now aware that paper (and microform) still offer the best solutions. They are back to the issue of digital archiving for a new reason, space. They would like to have some form of high density storage (higher than paper) and they can accommodate a shorter shelf life if they can get it into the 10+ year range. They are exploring a digitization program with long-term remote storage of the original material in a storage facility (off-line storage if you will), and a technology refresh program to re-format the digital storage as mediums change (like the recent move >from CD-ROM to DVD-ROM). Does anyone know if there are optical formats that can reliably deliver 10 year shelf-life? How does one achieve it (different types of cd-r chemistry, using cd-rom, etc)?

20 years, 10 months

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Unisys, shame on you

by tradde＠excite.com

--- On Fri 10/14, William Donzelli < aw288 at osfn.org > wrote: From: William Donzelli [mailto: aw288 at osfn.org] To: cctalk at classiccmp.org Date: Fri, 14 Oct 2005 19:19:09 -0400 (EDT) Subject: Unisys, shame on you While surfing the Unisys websight, I found nearly NO mention of either Burroughs or Univac. One more reason to like IBM. William Donzelli aw288 at osfn.org And what did you expect? I worked for Unisys, and for Sperry before. I am surprised Unisys is still in business, since they don't seem to know what market to get into. _______________________________________________ Join Excite! - http://www.excite.com The most personalized portal on the Web!

20 years, 10 months

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A few items for sale

by jcwren＠jcwren.com

Some of these items may interest folks. http://search.ebay.com/_W0QQfgtpZ1QQfrppZ25QQsassZjcwren --jc

20 years, 10 months

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Looking for a IBM 5110 EMI filter.

by henk.stegeman＠shell.com

Hi all, Who can help me with an EMI filter from an IBM 5110 ? Mine has an internal non-repairable short circuit. This EMI filter is a CORCOM type F2280 and is located in the mains entry box underneath the screen tube. Any one ? Thanks Henk

20 years, 10 months

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OT: Language for the ages

by dave04a＠dunfield.com

>Suppose you wanted to write an application for a manufacturing process that >will, in all probability, run for the next 30 years. No direct control of >the process itself is entailed (i.e., you don't need the program to >operation valves or run motors), but you do need this program to compute >manufacturing parameters for each customer. I/O requirements are very >modest, mostly simple keyboard and display. > >What would you write it in? Clearly, you'd want to be independent of a >particular software vendor, so the likes of Visual BASIC isn't an option. >You'd also want to write in a language that isn't nearing obsolesence, nor >one that's still evolving. "Niche" languages would be out of the question, >as longevity could be a problem. > >So what would it be? My vote is for FORTRAN. Impossible to say without a better specification of the application, however given the longevity requirement, unless it was a very bad fit, I would probably use 'C' (not C++, C# etc - plain vanilla 'C') for several reasons: - It's been around a long time, and has been ported to many different platforms, making it a well known and popular language. - It has a reasonably clearly defined standard. - It has always been developed with an eye to portability. - It is still being used in many systems, and is likely to continue to be used for a considerable time into the future. - It's flexible enough to use as a general purpose language, and has the ability to get "down and dirty" if you need. (Ie: It will probably not be a bad environment for the task at hand). But what is probably the most important reason to me: - I have a mature 'C' compiler (I first released it in 1988) which I can port to any damn platform I need, so I don't have to count on having a vendor to support C tools on this future unknown system. Regards, Dave -- dave04a (at) Dave Dunfield dunfield (dot) Firmware development services & tools: www.dunfield.com com Collector of vintage computing equipment: http://www.parse.com/~ddunfield/museum/index.html

20 years, 10 months

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Releasing OS/2

by ajp166＠bellatlantic.net

> >Subject: Re: Releasing OS/2 > From: "John Allain" <allain at panix.com> > Date: Fri, 14 Oct 2005 15:59:09 -0400 > To: "General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts" <cctalk at classiccmp.org> > What I'd like to see is a comparison of OS/2 to say DRI Concurrent386 and Win3.1 or Nt3. I picked the latter two as I know them well. I have both concurrent386 and OS/warp 3 but never used them. Maybe I'm missing something and I'd like to have an idea of and how practical their use would be in the present as part of my PC based supporting systems. Allison

20 years, 10 months

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OT: Language for the ages

by ajp166＠bellatlantic.net

> >Subject: Re: OT: Language for the ages > From: "Zane H. Healy" <healyzh at aracnet.com> > Date: Fri, 14 Oct 2005 12:37:39 -0700 (PDT) > To: cctalk at classiccmp.org > >> >> > Are there any schools teaching FORTRAN and more? Does it >> >have an active community? If not, ... >> >> Amazingly*, Yes. >> I go visit my old college bookstore every few years for fresh titles >> in Computer Science (this year: I bought O/S internals by Stallings). >> It's a top 25 undergraduate engineering ranked place with a big >> budget for new equipment so I was quite surprised to see this year >> the book "Classical Fortran" by Kupferschmid. In my head I'm thinking >> Fortran is Only for classiccmps and classiccmps are Retired equipment. >> Apparently this course is for maintenence programmers. >> >> John A. >> * to me, for one. >> > >Fortran seems to still be the favorite language for number crunching. > > Zane That is the forte' of Fortran. However user interfaces in fortran are sparse as the language is not well suited to textual data. I feel there is no one language for all tasks. For example older 8080/z80 hardware was likely programmed in ASM for embedded apps due to size constraints of availabe ROMs. However I've seen a lot of stuff with basic in ROM and the programming in BASIC so the hardware could be somewhat self supporting. It would seem that languages that persist are those best able to cope with large changes in computing environments. Fortran and BASIC are old and well known as are Pascal and C and likely a few others. The rest are dialects or specializations that live in specific application environments. When those environments become passe` or surperceeded the languages will either evolve or become "old". Allison

20 years, 10 months

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luddites!

by ajp166＠bellatlantic.net

> >Subject: Re: luddites! > From: Brad Parker <brad at heeltoe.com> > Date: Fri, 14 Oct 2005 13:15:00 -0400 > To: "General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts" <cctalk at classiccmp.org> > > >"Jeff Davis" wrote: >> >>Well, your own example proved the existance of productivity gains - 3 people >>with a machine could produce as much as 10 people without the machine, ergo >>the 3 people are more productive. If you give 9 of those workers the >>machines, and keep 1 around to do maintenance on the machines, the whole group >>is nearly 3x as productive. > >yes, but what if the 7 people who loose their jobs leave town and the town >goes belly up? > >if you measure at the planet level it all probably makes sense, but at a >local level it's not so clear. > >20,000 unemployed textile works in NC who won't ever be retrained may >have a better understanding of this effect... (but only in NC). > >-brad I cannot argue with that. Nor did I say that it was pleasent. I will say that technological change has been responsable for several migrations and those that didn't now commute a distance that took as many as 3-4 days by wagon at one time. The wholesale movement of production from one local to another of far lower employement is older than automation and has always come with a social and economic price that automation alone did not always entail. It's very different to have ones job change then the facility disappear completely. Allison

20 years, 10 months

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PCs that support only one floppy drive in hardware

by ajp166＠bellatlantic.net

> >Subject: Re: PCs that support only one floppy drive in hardware > From: "Chuck Guzis" <cclist at sydex.com> > Date: Thu, 13 Oct 2005 21:08:13 -0700 > To: cctalk at classiccmp.org > >On 10/13/2005 at 9:36 PM Allison wrote: > >>OK I have one so I know what it is. FD55BVR, care to guess? Also a >>FD55BFR? > >Let's see, the BV is a 360K unit with head-load solenoid. The BF has me >stumped. The F would indicate a 720K drive, but if that were so, the B >wouldn't be part of it. FWIW, the "R" is a delimiter and ends the >capacity/special feature field. What follows next is a number, such as >200, that signifies revision, bezel color, etc. A final "U" means the >drive is UL approved. > >Cheers, >Chuck > No, the 55FV has a door latch solinoid as the head load when the door latch is closed. The 55BF is same drive with light beige front, the latch lever is opposite side a different lever shape the led shape is round. Otherwise they are interchangeable. Allison

20 years, 10 months

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Releasing OS/2

by jfoust＠threedee.com

Speaking of Gates, he showed up as guest lecturer at an entry-level CompSci course at UW-Madison this week: http://www.news.wisc.edu/11679.html for MTV's "mtvU" network's "Stand In" series: http://www.mtvu.com/on_mtvu/stand_in/ The other episodes are available on broadband but this one isn't up yet. >From the looks of the picture, I'd say this was a smaller discussion session. It's not the big lecture hall they'd use for a popular freshman course like 302. - John

20 years, 10 months

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Bendix Guidance Computer

by Arno_1983＠gmx.de

Hi everybody! Firstly, if anybody tried contacting me in the last month, please forgive me for being absent. I'm still catching up on my e-mail backlog since I had a math exam on 10th of October that was quite important to prepare for. Next, we've received quite an interesting donation at the University Museum yesterday: what looks like an electromechanical guidance system for a missile. A few photos are on http://www.iser.uni-erlangen.de/anzeigen.php?inventarnummer=I1062 (click on small one for bigger version, click "Weitere Infos" (further information) for two pictures of the innards (front and back)). I'm asking here because we'd like to acquire some background information on this unit, what type of missile it came from and so on. According to its former owner, it was purchased from a scrapper in the mid-70s. A small metal nameplate above the connectors reads: | U.S. | Guidance Computer | G&C | | PART NO.10586600-39 |MOD NO.4 | | SER NO. 614 |WT. 55.75 | | MFD BY THE BENDIX CORP E-P DIV | | CONTR.NO.DA-01-021-AMC-11344 Z | | ARMY MISSILE COMMAND | Below that is a sticker reading "SA PROGRAM" with four boxes, the first one stamped "T2". The small dial between the connectors (two of which are covered with adhesive tape) is an hours run meter with two hands, indicating a run time of 157 hours. Next to that is a sticker with "Pueblo Army Depot" and a large "R" in a box. There is also a material tag of the Bundeswehr (German armed forces) stuck onto one lid. On the inside, there are eight (!!) subassemblies of mechanical calculating gear, as follows: CR/SA DISPLACEMENT MODULE, 2x CR/SA VELOCITY MODULE, 2x PROGRAM GEN. MODULE SR VELOCITY MODULE SR INTEGRATOR MODULE SR DIPLACEMENT MODULE. The last three are linked via gear trains, the first five only have electric I/O. There are lots of Autosyn Transmitters, precision potentiometers, switches, small relays and motors on those! As far as electronics go, we have: SERVO AMPLIFIER MODULE 5x INT MOD & PREAMP MODULE 2x CUTOFF NULL DET. MODULE ROLL ARMING MODULE ELECTRICAL MODULE VOLTAGE MONITORING MODULE. There was no documentation whatsoever with it, so if it is declassified by now (I hope so), any information (or pointer to) is welcome. Yours sincerely, -- Arno Kletzander Stud. Hilfskraft Informatik Sammlung Erlangen www.iser.uni-erlangen.de Lust, ein paar Euro nebenbei zu verdienen? Ohne Kosten, ohne Risiko! Satte Provisionen f?r GMX Partner: http://www.gmx.net/de/go/partner

20 years, 10 months

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MPX-16 census

by chrism3667＠yahoo.com

a scholar and a gentleman. I even considered building my own, though not sure if MM made the artwork available. Was put off by the fact that the board has 7 layers according to the article. If anyone is knowledgeable enough of pcb production - is it possible to make a 7 layer board w/o special equipment/materials? Why did it even need 7 layers? How many layers were did the IBM PC mobo have? I know for a fact that the RE robot puter (80188) mobo had 2 sides (top and bottom, no sandwich). --- cctech-bounces at classiccmp.org <chenmel at earthlink.net> wrote: > On Fri, 7 Oct 2005 07:29:40 -0700 (PDT) > Chris M <chrism3667 at yahoo.com> wrote: > > > dont have one, but want one. I hope youll make disk > > images available. > > I certainly will. A list member has extended a warm welcome to the idea > of me imaging my disks and putting them on his site. More to follow > when they're all imaged and online. > > > --- cctech-bounces at classiccmp.org > > <chenmel at earthlink.net> wrote: > > > Does anybody else on the list have an MPX-16 system? > > I recently > > > acquired one from a list member and am wondering how > > many of these > > > systems still exist. I have a large (relatively) > > collection of > > > diskettes with mine. > > > > > > The MPX-16, for those not familiar with it, was > > published as a project > > > in Steve Ciarcia's 'Circuit Cellar' column in Byte > > magazine. It was a > > > three part 'construction' article and the machine > > was sold by MicroMint > > > for a time. What I've heard is that about 500 > > machines in total were > > > produced. > > > > > > It's an early 'IBM Compatible' in that they designed > > it to be similar to > > > the PC, but only to a certain degree. It uses a > > serial console rather > > > than keyboard/display adapter, and it runs CP/M-86 > > and supposedly MS-DOS > > > though I don't have DOS diskettes for mine. It has > > ISA slots and a > > > similar architecture to the IBM-PC, coming out of > > that early era before > > > there were PC clones from the likes of Compaq. > > > > > > I'm curious of how many other MPX-16 systems have > > survived to today. > > > There isn't a lot about it online. I can share what > > information I have, > > > as I have manuals and docs with my system. I'm > > interested in hearing > > > from other people with this machine. > > > > > > Scott > > > > > > > > > > __________________________________ > > Yahoo! Mail - PC Magazine Editors' Choice 2005 > > http://mail.yahoo.com __________________________________ Yahoo! Music Unlimited Access over 1 million songs. Try it free. http://music.yahoo.com/unlimited/

20 years, 10 months

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Classic hardware tours and KIM-1 repair advice

by pete＠dunnington.plus.com

On Oct 7 2005, 12:51, Hans Franke wrote: > Am 7 Oct 2005 0:09 meinte Pete Turnbull: > > > As some of you know, I'm helping with an exhibition of classic > > machines in the Department of Computer Science -- for Open Day > > tomorrow (Friday), and running conducted tours on Wednesday as well. [ ... ] > > Well, one of the supposedly-working exhibits is my KIM-1, but it > > died this afternoon. > That's unusual, standard procedure is that a machine dies at > the opening day at the first real presentation - no matter > how often you testet before. :-) Well, I *was* demoing it to the organisers and senior staff... Final death toll was one KIM-1, the top 1K of my Commodore PET (one of the early ones with the nasty MOS Technology 6550 RAMs) and a Mac Plus which got rather unhappy midmorning. Probably all fixable in one way or another. "Thank you" to the various people who replied about the KIM. I never had time to look at it again this week, perhaps I'll have a go at the weekend. I did actually know about the site that several of you mentioned, and I also have the schematic and most manuals, just not handy at the time, so I was really just wondering if there was a common failure mode. The suggestion of using small components on the back, out of sight, is an interesting one, though, and the suggestions made about other methods may be helpful too. In other respects the tours for the students were a great success -- and the staff loved them. Some went and fetched their colleagues and came back with them! We had a display of generations of computing from a 1920s mechanical card tabulator through bits of ENIAC (valve), Pegasus (valve), LEO (transistor, well the last version was anyway), and various TTL-based boards (some SSI, some with 74181 MSI ALUs, etc) to LSI/VLSI ending up with an 8008 board (we don't seem to have a 4004 between us, surprisingly -- if anyone would like to donate one for next time, feel free ;-)). We had a display of three generations (densities) of core memory, static and dynamic RAM chips and SIMMS/DIMMS/etc, several generations of EPROMS (oh, and a diode ROM board) and a few chips to see under a fairly powerful binocular microscope. We had a whole range of drives and discs, from RK05 to modern SCSI,including some hard drives running with perspex covers, and all sorts of floppies, stiffies, flopticals and zips, and tapes from paper tape (one of the quiz questions was how much paper tape would it take to store the same data as you'd fit on a 3.5" floppy?) through 1/2" magtape and C10 cassettes to TK50s, DLT-IVs and 200GB LTO Ultrium-IIs. The microcomputer section included an Altair 8800B, some S100 cards, Motorola MK6800D2, KIM-1, Scrumpi (an SC/MP kit), PET (running moonlander), Apple ][ (displaying a rolling demo of digitised pics), a BBC micro running games and with no less than 4 second processors, an untidy heap[1] of "lots of micros from the late 70s and early 80s", an Apple Mac (supposedly running Pagemaker 1.0 but that was the Mac that got ill) with a modified "1984" promo video[2] at the side, an original pristine 5160 PC/XT, an Amiga, and an Acorn Archimedes. [1] the "untidy heap" was to convey the idea of the explosion of micros that appeared around this time, and included -- some with the tops off -- Exidy Sorcerer, Acorn Atom, TRS-80, Sharp MZ80K, Sinclair ZX80, TI99/4, Sinclair ZX81, Jupiter Ace, Sinclair Spectrum, Dragon 32, Vic-20, Acorn Electron, Sinclair Spectrum Plus, Commodore 64, Commodore 128, Sinclair QL, Sony MSX and probably a couple I've forgotten. Altogether, we counted 16 different microprocessors in the display (another pop quiz question the students were supposed to answer). [2] the video is the 2004 version where the runner is wearing an iPod. We wondered (another quiz question: what was the anachronism) how many students would not notice the iPod because they're so common now, but most of them spotted it. What most didn't get without prompting was the question about how that related to the displays on either side -- which were an Acorn ARM Development system and an Archimedes (with an ARM processor). We also asked them what the most common microprocessor is, and a small number thought it was a Pentium (which doesn't even make the top three, actually). The "business and scientific" section covered a longer period, starting with a PDP-8/E (pop quiz: which machine has been through a dishwasher?) with attached ASR33 and which was running the inchworm and basic accumulator test programs, as well as a little routine to punch "HELLO, WORLD!" souveniers on tape (written by one of the staff who'd never seen PDP-8 code before, so he was dead pleased when it worked). Then we had an 11/40 opened up to the gaze of the onlookers (plus the "Ken and Den" photo at the side) and boards from an 11/03, 11/23, and 11/73, followed by a microVAX-II (no room for an 11/780, alas). The final item in that row was a 20-year-old working 11/53 system running an exam marking system under RSX-11M, with a mark-sense reader -- which booted first time and ran without problem all week, demonstrating -- as we hoped and expected -- that things were built to be reliable in those days. The other side of that aisle was mostly RISC-based machines, starting with an early Sparcstation, then the first microSPARC, a Mac Classic (last 68K Mac, first under 1000UKP), then Indigo, Indy and O2 SGI workstations (what machine do you see in Jurassic Park?) running assorted demos and finally a modern mid-range dual-processor Sun server. Note the complete absence of Wintel PCs (apart from the 5160) :-) We managed to relegate them to a corner table of their own, but we did have a full range of motherboards from XT (couldn't find a 5150 in time), through AT, 386, 486, assorted Pentium and AMDs to a big dual-core machine that will finally be put into service on Friday. The last section was sort of unusual odds and ends -- a piece of one of the Crays the Meteorological Office used to use for forecasting, some transputer boards from a Meganode and a Paramid system, a Presence-II neural net processor board (a PCI card designed and built by the Advanced Computer Architectures group at the University), one module >from my Origin 2000 "supercomputer" with some superfluous Craylinks to make more lights flash, an Origin 200, and some FPGA stuff from CompSci. We also had some pieces of Elliot 803 and English Electric KDF9 along with someone who had actually worked on these systems, and could talk enthusiastically about the novel and innovative aspects of their architectures, but sadly he got called away mid-morning. We all had an interesting and enjoyable day, though some of us are a bit hoarse from running sixteen tour groups through our parts of the exhibition! One of the technicians took lots of photos so I'll see if I can pick some out when I get a set and put them up online somewhere. -- Pete Peter Turnbull Network Manager University of York

20 years, 10 months

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Old (1980s) Computer Giveaway, UK, North West

by chris.shallcross＠gmail.com

Hello, This seems to be the better of the two lists to put this, so here goes. Recently we've had a bit of a clearout at the company where I work. As it's a SW house from the early 80s we've unearthed all sorts of kit in the cellars. As I know people collect and use old computers I've gained a "stay of execution" for the old computer kit while I try to find a better home than a disposal site. If anyone can give a good home to any of the items in the following list please get in touch with me. Conditions: * All equipment is unwarranted. I don't know if any of it actually works. I can try to find out, but I can't guarantee anything. * Shipping not included. This isn't a for-profit exercise, but I can't run a for-loss exercise either - I don't think the powers that be would like that. * If you want to make a donation it'll be most welcome. In short, pay the shipping and I'll get it to you - carrier of your choice so long as they'll pick up from here. I don't know if any of it works, but I can try plugging it in and see what happens. It's all UK-spec, so if it's shipped elsewhere I don't know if it will work on your mains power, etc. If you want to cover the cost, I'll ship it to just about anywhere. List as follows: 1x Apricot F10 (whirrs, beeps and flashes lights when plugged in) 1x Apricot 5.25 drive, model no XN525F 1x Apricot Monitor, model no 12HM 1x Maxi 150MB tape drive (it's as big as a modern thin desktop and weighs as much, no media) 1x Tandon 286/N 1x Peanut PC2000 (this looks pretty old) 1x Northstar 100 (early 80s server, pretty big), and keyboard 1x Hasler telex, model no TU/014/10 4x Signet 3 boxes 1x Signet PC? (it looks like a PC, only it's dated Jun 1982) 1x Ampex ATL Model 210 + keyboard 1x Victor V286 1x Unisys <something> 5059 There's a fair amount of 386/486/pentium 1 + 2 class stuff, old CRTs (working). We're based in Blackburn, UK. If you have any questions feel free to contact me and I'll try to answer them as best as I can. I hope someone can give at least some of this a home - it seems a real shame to let it all go. Regards, Chris Shallcross my.name at gmail.com

20 years, 10 months

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Looking for ancient FreeBSD

by vp＠cs.drexel.edu

> This is almost Classic - I'm looking for a place to download an old > version of FreeBSD, specifically the last release of the 2.2.x branch, > which I think was 2.2.8. Hey, don't call it classic, I use 2.2.7 on a file server at home! :-) When the FreeBSD team moved on to 3.0 I thought they left the "true path" - too many changes to the BSD core. Eventually I switched to OpenBSD, but this one has also changed too much recently. > http://ftp.csie.chu.edu.tw/FreeBSD/ISO-IMAGES-i386/ FreeBSD-2/2/8-mini.iso: 140Mb distribution! That's more like it! I bet it also contains the source. **vp

20 years, 10 months

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Need some help with TRS-80 research

by news＠computercollector.com

I'm doing some homework about the TRS-80. This is for a follow-up to the article I published on Aug. 8, "The controversial birth of the TRS-80". http://www.snarc.net/c-trs80.htm What I'm looking for now is ANY information about a company called "Microcomputer Techniques". Any help is appreciated. - Evan ----------------------------------------- Evan Koblentz's personal homepage: http://www.snarc.net Computer Collector Newsletter: http://news.computercollector.com Mid-Atlantic Retro Computing Hobbyists & Museum: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/midatlanticretro/

20 years, 10 months

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PCs that support only one floppy drive in hardware

by ajp166＠bellatlantic.net

> >Subject: Re: PCs that support only one floppy drive in hardware > From: ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk (Tony Duell) > Date: Fri, 14 Oct 2005 00:20:23 +0100 (BST) > To: cctalk at classiccmp.org > > >> you might be right by coincidence. However the second letter and third are >> for options to the basic drive such as door latch or media ready indicator. > >The third letter, sure. But I thought single speed/density drives had >just 2 letters (type and options), dual speed/dual density drives had 3. >I've certainly seen HFR (or some other 3 letter combination starting with >'HD') for 3.5" drives capable of 720K and 1.44M. OK I have one so I know what it is. FD55BVR, care to guess? Also a FD55BFR? Hint neither are dual speed. Allison

20 years, 10 months

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Spotted at local surplus (STL) - IBM, SGI

by jwest＠classiccmp.org

Been so busy with work, finally took some "me time" and went to the local scrapper/junkyard/surplus place and noticed these items there: SGI Impact Indigo II (probably about six of them) SGI Indy R5000 (probably about six of them) IBM 3480 If someone has interest, let me know. Jay

20 years, 10 months

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Luddite...aren't we all a bunch of Techno-Luddites

by cmurray＠eagle.ca

A techno-luddite? How apropos! I like to question what technology gives us. Old computers or new. They can challenge us but that's as far as I care to go. Murray--

20 years, 10 months

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luddites!

by ajp166＠bellatlantic.net

> >Subject: Re: luddites! > From: Brad Parker <brad at heeltoe.com> > Date: Thu, 13 Oct 2005 20:14:52 -0400 > To: "General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts" <cctalk at classiccmp.org> > > >>>After all, aren't we all a bunch of Techno-Ludites :^) > >i haven't wasted any bandwidth *all day* so, > >I'd like to point out that the Ludites where not anti-technology. > >They were anti-loosing-your-job-due-to-technology. They didn't think it >was right that 10 people working should become 3 people working just >because a new machine was installed... > >(and, I think they had a point. I think economists are all smoking >really good dope when they talk about mythical 'productivity gains') > >-brad What wasnt noticed by the displaced employees was the 7 that got bumpped went to making more machines, fixing them, selling them teaching those three left behind how to run them. Just a different view. With 35 years of high tech I've seen a few cycles and even displaced a few times. Allison

20 years, 10 months

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Public Service Announcement: AVOID "bobsbid1"

by zmerch＠30below.com

Rumor has it that 9000 VAX may have mentioned these words: >I am not familiar with those new ATX style power supplies, Not ATX... think "laptop." There are some mini-ITX motherboards that use laptop-type power supplies - external, 1 or *maybe* 2 voltages on the pins, and an external LED to actually show if the sucker's got power & working. That is the dark LED that tells Sellam the PS (and in this case, PoS) is no worky. Very handy if you want a small, very quiet, yet somewhat powerful PC. Somewhat in this case means: Laptop < mini-ITX < Desktop PC I'm looking at one to build a new TiVo out of. JDR's got a decent deal on a VIA (think: "Used to been Cyrix") 1GHz box for <$300. Quiet is good when you want to watch TV. ;-) Laterz, Roger "Merch" Merchberger -- Roger "Merch" Merchberger -- SysAdmin, Iceberg Computers _??_ zmerch at 30below.com (?||?) If at first you don't succeed, nuclear warhead _)(_ disarmament should *not* be your first career choice.

20 years, 10 months

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Intel 80C186/80C188 Evaluation Board? Re: Single Board Computers

by chrism3667＠yahoo.com

>Can't help with the evaluation board, but the mention >of the 80186 reminds me of a system I worked on >(Durango Poppy) using one (an added 80286 was an >option if you wanted to run Unix). Interesting. Wish there was some info on that. >It's a great chip for its time with DMA done the >right way and lots of I/O pins. Unfortunately, any >programs that play with PC hardware are doomed to >failure. Right. Those aspects of typical pc hardware that had been integrated on the chip. Seemingly though, the Tandy 2000 ignored at least some of the extra facilities of the 80186 and simply utilized it as a fast 8086. That board has one of the highest chip counts I've ever seen. But it's also true that video and much else was integrated. >I've got a little FAX receiver box that was designed >to fit between a printer and a PC and would either >print FAXen as received or store them on a DOS->formatted 1.44MB floppy drive that was part of the >unit. It uses an 80C188 and I recall looking at the >27C256 BIOS and noting that it implemented many of >the PC BIOS calls, particularly those for diskette >I/O. It has 256K of RAM. The thing isn't much >bigger than a floppy drive and is powered by a wall >wart. It'd make a neat little CP/M-86 system if I >ever got around to programming it. I'd guess the bios was bought, or at least parts of it, from a supplier of such (AMI, Phoenix...). >But this brings up a question--how many early non-PC >PC's are there wandering around? IOW, things that >have the ability to run a full operating system, but >aren't PC's per se. My DSL model is certainly one-->runs Linux (just telnet to it and you get a login). I opened up a color IBM terminal years ago, mainly because I wanted to see if the monitor could be utilized as a vga (apparently had analog inputs, and only r,g,b, and sync lines). Phor phun. 3179 is the # sticking in my head, which might correspond to the model number. But then again it might not. I never actually bothered, but upon cursory observation of the logic board - 8088 based - I was amazed how much "pc stuph" was present. In other words most of the makings of a pc/xt motherboard were present as I recall. Of course there were no provision for disk drives and whatnot, and may not even have had a bios as we know it. I'd like to get another one. BYTE tried to deal with a similar issue issue years ago ~'85 in one of their special issues. They wanted a baseline for IBM compatibility. As loopy as it sounds, the Zenith Z-100 was elected a basis by which all others were compared. Funny that an incompatible was used to judge all the other compatibles. >I'm not sure if that counts, though. It may well not >be running Linux >on anything that you would recognise as PC hardware. >It might not have >a BIOS as such, even. Someone told me that MINIX didn't deal with the bios at all. What about Linux? >How about a TIVO or an MP3 player? Certainly most >video game boxes have the necessary resources (I seem >to recall a web site dedicated to getting early >Xboxes running Linux--it wasn't as simply as you'd >think). No, but they figured out a way of doing it w/o cracking the box. There was a couple of games with bugs that upon crashing (intentionally) made a back door available. You need some sort of usb device (a thumb drive was often utilized). Blah blah blah. I'm going there one of these days. I'm just hoping the release of the 360 brings down the price of the original ;). I wrinkled my nose when I found out a sort of special distro was needed, but I guess the hardware differed, however slightly, enough from a vanilla pc to warrant it. There's a kewell book called "Hacking the Xbox" that goes into different aspects of reverse engineering. Doesn't deal with installing Linux too much though. The TIVO's I looked at didn't use intel procs. I want to say PowerPC, but it might even be different from that. And I don't think any (other) game consoles used an 80x86. The Genesis used the 68000 I know. Show me wrong if I'm wrong. __________________________________ Yahoo! Mail - PC Magazine Editors' Choice 2005 http://mail.yahoo.com

20 years, 10 months

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PCs that support only one floppy drive in hardware

by ajp166＠bellatlantic.net

> >Subject: Re: PCs that support only one floppy drive in hardware > From: ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk (Tony Duell) > Date: Thu, 13 Oct 2005 14:07:28 +0100 (BST) > To: cctalk at classiccmp.org > >> >> >> >F : 80 cylinder double sided >> >> >> >> 300 rpm only >> >> >> >> >G : 80 cylinder double sided, 360RPM, high density (1.2M for PCs) >> >> >> >> Does both 300 and 360. (can replace the E and F with correct jumpers). >> > >> >I am not convinced of that. I think 'G' implies 360RM. The drive in >> >question is a 'GFR', thus having the capabilites of both the 'G' and the >> >'F', in other words both 360 and 300 rpm. >> >> I am certain of the GFR, I have maybe 8 spares and 5 in use to confirm it > >I am also certain about the GFR. I agree with you. The GFR is a dual >speed drive, 360 rpm and 300rpm. > >What I am saying is that the letter 'G' as a suffix indicates a 360rpm >drive. The letter 'F' indicates a 300 rpm drive (both being 80 cylinder >double-sided). So both G and F mean a dual speed drive. No Tony, the 55F in single speed only. Now if you mean 55GF is dual speed you might be right by coincidence. However the second letter and third are for options to the basic drive such as door latch or media ready indicator. Allison

20 years, 10 months

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PCs that support only one floppy drive in hardware

by ajp166＠bellatlantic.net

> >Subject: Re: PCs that support only one floppy drive in hardware > From: Alexey Toptygin <alexeyt at freeshell.org> > Date: Thu, 13 Oct 2005 22:39:22 +0000 (UTC) > To: "General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts" <cctalk at classiccmp.org> > >On Wed, 12 Oct 2005, Allison wrote: > >> Another good choice is the 4" tall Dell Pizza boxes such as the 425/np >> though 466/np. Theses are small, use PS2 connectors for keyboard >> and mouse and the board supports most floppies (x2), IDE disks to 500mb >> and S3 VGA video. There is room enough to add a CDrom or 5.25 floppy. > >I have 2 of these, and they're quite nice. You can run 25, 50, 33 and 60 >MHz chips in them with the right rejumpering (so my 425s are running 66Mhz >now). I have done the same thing with 425s. all mine are DX/66. >Dell even had the motherboard docs online, last I checked. There's >only one problem: the BIOS won't boot off any non-FAT formatted floppies, Mine do! There is a bios selection for that. The bios in these either boots the floppy or hard disk but doesn't switch well if HD is selected. Cdroms work well in them too. >though it's happy to boot anything off the HD. This makes putting a >'modern' OS (linux, in my case) on them a bit of a challenge. I've stuffed >one full of ne2k, intel and 3com cards and use it as a firewall. I've run DOS, win3.1, Linux, Win95b, Nt4/server on these with 32m of ram. Not super fast with a 486/66 as there is no external cache but remarkably solid. Drives larger than 500mb must have a 500mb primary boot partition but I have the NT4 system using a 4.3gb as NT4 fits easily in 500mb and handles the remaining partition after boot as "d:". Allison

20 years, 10 months

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PCs that support only one floppy drive in hardware

by ajp166＠bellatlantic.net

> >Subject: Re: PCs that support only one floppy drive in hardware > From: Dan Williams <williams.dan at gmail.com> > Date: Wed, 12 Oct 2005 09:17:32 +0100 > To: "General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts" <cctalk at classiccmp.org> > >> Dan, I don't think I've ever seen a 5.25" PCMCIA drive. Do they exist? There's actually not a huge amount of difference between the PCMCIA bus and ISA. IIRC, you can get PCMCIA-PC104 adapters and PC104 is very close to ISA. >> >> Cheers, >> Chuck >> >These guys made one ten years ago, there might be some around. > >http://www.accurite.com/PR-PC.html > >Dan On the whole I prefer my solution. A simple 486/66 on a board that doesnt have any "chip set" and ISA cards that are easy to find in junkers. Convenient, you bet. The board board I selected uses PS2 keyboard and mouse. I have two spare boards and the nicads have been removed to prevent leakage. Thse have done well for floppy futzing from any 5.25 to any 3.5" (excluding the near unseen 2.88). Another good choice is the 4" tall Dell Pizza boxes such as the 425/np though 466/np. Theses are small, use PS2 connectors for keyboard and mouse and the board supports most floppies (x2), IDE disks to 500mb and S3 VGA video. There is room enough to add a CDrom or 5.25 floppy. A third candidate just a shade larger than the Dell pizza boxes is a AT&T Golbalist 620. That's a P100 box with three ISA or PCI slots, mouse, and keyboard are PS2, video is VGA and room for a IDE disk, CDrom and a 3.5 floppy inside. Beats wailing ones head against the wall with trying to retrofit current solutions. Also solves the how to reuse older hardware that exists for free. Allison

20 years, 10 months

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PCs that support only one floppy drive in hardware

by tim＠tim-mann.org

On Sat, 8 Oct 2005 03:25:49 -0500 (CDT), cctech-request at classiccmp.org wrote: > Message: 22 > Date: Fri, 7 Oct 2005 21:51:09 -0700 > From: jim stephens <james.w.stephens at gmail.com> > Subject: Re: TEAC FD-55GFR = Quad Density? > To: "General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts" > <cctalk at classiccmp.org> > Message-ID: > <ae0bc2000510072151o541c0ad3u8dbc114f37216beb at mail.gmail.com> > Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 > > <snip> > > > > > > <snip> > > Actually, I am still slowly getting over my long painful struggle to get > > two floppy drives enabled on a Dell Optiplex system. There's support > > for a second floppy in the BIOS but it appears the hardware support is > > entirely missing. I had to just do away with the 3-1/2" disk to get a > > 5-1/4" disk installed in one of my (many, since I get them for < $5 all > > kitted out with Pentium III processors) beloved (!!??!!) Optiplex boxes. > > Was there THAT much savings in not including hardware support for two > > floppies, DELL? Why not patch settings for the second drive out of the > > BIOS so we don't pound our heads against the wall trying?? > > > > I'm curious about the comment about second drive support missing. I > am curious why the addition of a proper multiheaded cable doesnt > fix this? > > they actually dont drive the drive select in the cable? I built a new machine around an EPoX 9NPA nForce 4 motherboard and found out to my surprise that it was only capable of running one floppy drive. In my case the BIOS provides no way to enable a second drive, so at least it's consistent. Having a BIOS that lets you put in settings for a second drive when the hardware doesn't support it would really be a screwup. EPoX makes schematics available, so I downloaded one and studied it to try to confirm whether there really was no way to get a second drive to work. It turns out the super-IO chip they use to run the floppies and several other system functions (fan control, temperature sensors, serial and parallel ports, etc.) has only a limited number of pins. Several have multiple functions, and the motherboard designer has to select which function he wants to use for each pin and do without the others. EPoX chose to use the pins that could have driven the second floppy's motor-on and drive select for other functions (I forget what offhand). So those pins are no-connects on the floppy cable. As a small compensation, it's possible to reconfigure the parallel port as an external floppy connector. If you do that, you can put two drives on it. (Whoopee.) This all is not a huge deal for me since I can pop a Catweasel card into the machine if I really want more floppies in it, but it's a bit annoying. -- Tim Mann tim at tim-mann.org http://tim-mann.org/

20 years, 10 months

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A few items for sale

by Gary.Messick＠ngc.com

> > > Some of these items may interest folks. > > > > http://search.ebay.com/_W0QQfgtpZ1QQfrppZ25QQsassZjcwren > > Or Not? > > How about a clue as to what they are before making us go and look... > One of the items is a pretty nice collection of early 8-bit computers w/software. I do have to point out that his "Z-100" is an H/Z-89/90 Z-80 system though! For pick-up only near Atlanta

20 years, 10 months

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So I been looking for an 8 inch floppy drive...

by tlindner＠ix.netcom.com

But it needs to be double sided. Does anyone know if this is a double sided floppy drive: http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=8708388143&ssPageName =ADME:B:SS:US:1 I have about 150 8 inch disks to image and I am also hoping someone can help me wire such a drive to a catweasel. -- tim lindner tlindner at ix.netcom.com Bright

20 years, 10 months

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Need a driver: Intel PCMCIA Flash card

by r_a_feldman＠hotmail.com

Type I cards are thinner than Type II which are thinner than Type III. If you look at at Type II card, you will notice that it is thinner on three sides than in the middle. The thin part, which acts as the card guide, retains the Type I size specifications. Thus, you can use a Type I card in a Type II slot. The types should not be confused with the PCMCIA electrical standards, which used a different (arabic) numbering system. Most "current" PCMCIA cards (such as an XJack modem or 3Com network card) are Type II and PCMCIA 2.0. Type I came out first, so many SRAM cards are Type I. For example, the first Poqet SRAM cards are Type I in size, but used a pre-PCMCIA 1.0 protocol. Later Poqets were PCMCIA 1.0 compliant. The HPLX 95 palmtop is PCMCIA 1.0 compliant (IIRC) and can read either Type I or Type II SRAM cards, but needs a driver for using Flash cards -- it came out a little later than the Poqet and is more compliant with the early PCMCIA standards. Windows through Win 98 can handle SRAM cards with a couple of device drivers (CARDDRV.SYS is one) installed. I forget the exact drivers needed, but just search in the Windows Help for SRAM to find the information. Win XP seems to have dropped support for SRAM cards. At least some Intel flash cards used a different format than other flash cards, such as SunDisk/SanDisk, so the two types are not compatible. Bob Message: 18 Date: Wed, 12 Oct 2005 20:24:36 -0400 From: Sridhar Ayengar <ploopster at gmail.com> Subject: Re: Need a driver: Intel PCMCIA Flash card To: General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts <cctalk at classiccmp.org> Message-ID: <434DA944.30707 at gmail.com> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed Ethan Dicks wrote: >On 10/12/05, Simon Fryer <fryers at gmail.com> wrote: > >>I am guessing, by looking at the size of the card, this is a Type II >>card. Most PCMCIA card readers fitted to laptops and PCs will only >>read Type III PCMCIA memory cards. > > >Perhaps you have an off-by-one error? > >Most recent laptops only have a single Type II slot, but many Pentium >laptops have a "dual Type II/Type III socket" meaning you can use two >Type II cards simultaneously or one Type III (the thickness of the >card blocks the upper slot) > >Type I cards were strange and most semi-modern stuff doesn't support >them, AFAIK. But aren't most of those Intel Series 2b cards Type I? I mean the ones that hold IOS images in slightly older Ciscos. As far as I can tell, they're just a bit thinner than your average ethernet/wireless/etc card. Peace... Sridhar

20 years, 10 months

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Looking for ancient FreeBSD

by ajp166＠bellatlantic.net

The oldest set I have is 2.2.6 the 4cd set. It's solid enough and useful that I never tried later. I keep the set as my backup case the system needs a new drive. Allison > >Subject: Re: Looking for ancient FreeBSD > From: William Pechter <pechter at gmail.com> > Date: Thu, 13 Oct 2005 09:35:47 -0400 > To: General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts <cctalk at classiccmp.org> > >I've got a set back to 1.0.2 if anyone needs it... IIRC I also rolled >out a 1.1.5.1 or was it 1.5.1 set just before the mandatory move to 2.0 >and the removal of the AT&T embargo'd files. > >Bill > >Jay West wrote: > >> if you can't find it... I'm sure I have the cd here somewhere. I think >> I have a complete set of freebsd distro cd's back to 2.0. >> >> Jay >> ----- Original Message ----- From: "Michael Sokolov" >> <msokolov at ivan.Harhan.ORG> >> To: <cctalk at classiccmp.org> >> Sent: Wednesday, October 12, 2005 3:37 PM >> Subject: Looking for ancient FreeBSD >> >> >>> Hello fellow ClassicCmp'ers, >>> >>> This is almost Classic - I'm looking for a place to download an old >>> version of FreeBSD, specifically the last release of the 2.2.x branch, >>> which I think was 2.2.8. However, it seems to have totally vanished off >>> the net, including of course ftp.FreeBSD.ORG, apparently removed by the >>> dark forces of the evil reptilian conspiracy who want to force everyone >>> to run the modern crap. Has anyone saved a copy of the FreeBSD 2.2.8 >>> distribution or some nearby version? TIA, >>> >>> MS >>> >> >>

20 years, 10 months

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PC Collection on eBay

by john_boffemmyer_iv＠boff-net.dhs.org

He also appears to be full of B.S. as he claims he packed everything meticulously in anticipation of long term storage. No freaking way. The picture alone shows that he just threw stuff in there and did not box a lot of the important stuff (as you can see several computer items jumbled up in the mess out in the open and a bike that's obviously shoved into the mess. I don't know if anything is salvageable from the pile outside of using them as props and displays. =/ Would be nice if at least a few things worked well and were valuable enough to make it worth taking the rest of the mountain that didn't work. -John Boffemmyer IV At 06:23 AM 10/13/2005, you wrote: >I sent a message asking to go look next week if possible. We will see what >they say. It doesn't seem anyone I know. > >Paxton > > >-- >Paxton Hoag >Astoria, OR >USA > > >-- >No virus found in this incoming message. >Checked by AVG Anti-Virus. >Version: 7.0.344 / Virus Database: 267.11.14/131 - Release Date: 10/12/2005 > > > > > >-- >No virus found in this incoming message. >Checked by AVG Anti-Virus. >Version: 7.0.344 / Virus Database: 267.11.14/131 - Release Date: 10/12/2005 -- No virus found in this outgoing message. Checked by AVG Anti-Virus. Version: 7.0.344 / Virus Database: 267.11.14/131 - Release Date: 10/12/2005

20 years, 10 months

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Original PDP-8 spares

by prbotha＠hotmail.com

As promised, here's the list: 1 x Faceplace w/ circuit board & functional toggle switches. Unfortunately no key. 42 x double-width logic boards 93 x single-width logic boards 6 x ribbon cables w/ connectors 1 x Ferroxcube core module complete w/ connectors 2 x Marginal Power strips 2 x Wired backplanes 3 x nameplates (one bent, one nicked, one perfect) >From the nameplates it seems to have had a serial number in the late 700's. I would appreciate some advice as to how I should go about selling this. Obviously eBay would command the greatest exposure in terms of interested parties, but I would really like it to go to somebody who will really be able to restore it (or maybe who needs spares to complete an existing one). Any suggestions ? Many thanks ! Pieter Botha ============================ _________________________________________________________________ Upgrade to MSN Hotmail Plus - your e-mail, your way! http://join.msn.com/?pgmarket=en-xe&DI=1054&XAPID=1816

20 years, 10 months

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PCs that support only one floppy drive in hardware

by ajp166＠bellatlantic.net

> >Subject: Re: PCs that support only one floppy drive in hardware > From: ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk (Tony Duell) > Date: Thu, 13 Oct 2005 10:39:21 +0100 (BST) > To: cctalk at classiccmp.org > >> >The _drive_ is HD, I am not sure what the controller can do, though. The >> >suffix letters of Teac drive numbers seem to indicate the specs as >> >follows : >> > >> >A : 40 cylinder single-sided >> >B : 40 cyclinder double sided >> >C : 77 cylinder single sided (??? I have never seen this) >> >D : 77 cylinder double sided (??? or this) >> >E : 80 cylinder single sided >> >F : 80 cylinder double sided >> >> 300 rpm only >> >> >G : 80 cylinder double sided, 360RPM, high density (1.2M for PCs) >> >> Does both 300 and 360. (can replace the E and F with correct jumpers). > >I am not convinced of that. I think 'G' implies 360RM. The drive in >question is a 'GFR', thus having the capabilites of both the 'G' and the >'F', in other words both 360 and 300 rpm. I am certain of the GFR, I have maybe 8 spares and 5 in use to confirm it with. Dec use that drive in the VAXMATE at 1.2mb and as RX33 in uPDP-11 at 400/800KB (low speed) units I've used for both are exact same units. one oddity of the FD55GFR series is I have at least 5 different PC board patterns that function the same, they are of different date codes. I have also used them in my S100 system for the infrequent DSQD 780kb CP/M format that is compatable with my Kaypro 4/84 with Advent turborom. I also have a supply of FD55B, E and F series drives as spares and in use My three Visual 1050s have the FD55E in them. My knowledge is first hand. Read the data for that drive and you will see that FD55GFR is a DUAL speed drive. >> >H : 80 cylinder double sided, 300RPM, high density (1.44M for PCs) >> >> Never seen an FD55H. > >No, but the same suffix letters are used on 3.5" drives too. I would have guessed it was 3.5" too. Allison

20 years, 10 months

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PCs that support only one floppy drive in hardware

by ajp166＠bellatlantic.net

> >Subject: Re: PCs that support only one floppy drive in hardware > From: ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk (Tony Duell) > Date: Wed, 12 Oct 2005 17:18:42 +0100 (BST) > To: cctalk at classiccmp.org > >> I'm sitting here looking at a TEAC FD-55GFR 5.25" floppy drive with a >> TEAC-branded SCSI daughterboard mounted on it. Picked this thing up for a >> buck at a flea market and don't know much about it. Anyone else familiar >> with it? I'm not even sure if this is a HD drive. > >The _drive_ is HD, I am not sure what the controller can do, though. The >suffix letters of Teac drive numbers seem to indicate the specs as >follows : > >A : 40 cylinder single-sided >B : 40 cyclinder double sided >C : 77 cylinder single sided (??? I have never seen this) >D : 77 cylinder double sided (??? or this) >E : 80 cylinder single sided >F : 80 cylinder double sided 300 rpm only >G : 80 cylinder double sided, 360RPM, high density (1.2M for PCs) Does both 300 and 360. (can replace the E and F with correct jumpers). >H : 80 cylinder double sided, 300RPM, high density (1.44M for PCs) Never seen an FD55H. Allison

20 years, 10 months

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PCs that support only one floppy drive in hardware

by ajp166＠bellatlantic.net

> >Subject: Re: PCs that support only one floppy drive in hardware > From: Scott Stevens <chenmel at earthlink.net> > Date: Wed, 12 Oct 2005 18:39:30 -0500 > To: "General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts" <cctalk at classiccmp.org> > >On Wed, 12 Oct 2005 08:06:10 -0400 >Allison <ajp166 at bellatlantic.net> wrote: > >> >> On the whole I prefer my solution. A simple 486/66 on a board that >> doesnt have any "chip set" and ISA cards that are easy to find in >> junkers. Convenient, you bet. The board board I selected uses PS2 >> keyboard and mouse. I have two spare boards and the nicads have been >> removed to prevent leakage. Thse have done well for floppy futzing >> from any 5.25 to any 3.5" (excluding the near unseen 2.88). >> > >I don't know that I've ever seen a 486 motherboard that didn't use a >'chipset.' The ASIC >'chipset' motherboards came in the late 286/early 386 era. The big >'Full AT footprint' '286 motherboards don't use a 'chipset' but rather >lots and lots of TTL gates and standard Intel 8xxx LSI chips. I differentiated ASIC glue from the other types of chipsets that are programable like the PCI bridges and resident FDC/IDE/Serial/parallel. Ever try to get W9x to run on a PCI machine without the correct PCI bridge driver? It's painful. For example the 486slc/33 mb I have in fornt of me is one of those small footprint styles (6.75x8.75") with 5 ISA-16 slots and four 30pin simm slots. There is an asic on that that really only glues the 486slc to the bus and contains the 8237 DMA not any of the other LSI (5818 RTC/Cmos and 8242 keyboard) functions. For it's size the board is mostly connectors! >Tony can probably add a few comments about the switch from 'regular >logic' PeeCee motherboards to 'chipset' based ones, as he seems to be >running a 'processor upgraded' IBM AT system specifically to avoid >'black box' ASIC-base motherboards. No doubt. But I hope he reflects on my use of chipset adverse to ASIC. >I definitely don't have any 'current solution' hardware here that I am >wailing about not being able to use. My Dell systems are >first-generation 100MHz bus Pentium III systems, which makes them >'rather old' in current terms. Today somebody at work gave me an 'old' >machine out of his car from home that he didn't want anymore. Said 'you >can probably salvage something out of it.' Then he dropped the comment >that it probably has an 800 MHz process. Uh... That 800mhz machine and definatly the PIII are way faster than anything I have. The main PC here for most on line cruft is a P166mmx from around 1998 an asus board. >I agree about the usefulness of keeping around some 'plain old' legacy >systems from the '486 or early Pentium era. I've always kept boxes like >that around for things like the machine at the bench that programs >EPROMS (my EPROM programmer is one of those Needham PB-10 ISA card >programmers (it will last FOREVER since the most 'proprietary' parts on >it are two 6821 PIAs) One of those 486s has the BGLA logic analyser in it. Handy 16channel thing. Allison

20 years, 10 months

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Archival storage

by mtapley＠swri.edu

At 16:03 -0500 10/10/05, Fred wrote: >Message: 27 >Date: Mon, 10 Oct 2005 13:45:02 -0700 (PDT) >From: Fred Cisin <cisin at xenosoft.com> >Subject: Re: Archival storage >... >How much would it cost to move Sellam's collection >to the dark side of the moon? </Pedant> ...and keep moving it every 2 weeks, as the _dark_ side of the Moon moved around to the other side of the Moon (even if it was on the _far_ side)? Better to use those craters around the lunar North Pole. If Sellam's collection didn't fill them up... </Normal> If I'm gonna be a smart-ass, I *really* should be caught up, shouldn't I? Sorry... -- - Mark 210-522-6025, temporary cell 240-375-2995

20 years, 10 months

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ISA and derivitive non-PCs (was PCs that support only one floppy drive in H/W)

by compoobah＠valleyimplants.com

In the almost-UNIX front, Apollo workstations were ISA based. SGI Indigo2 and some HP-9000 PA-RISC desktops run EISA, with the unrealized hope (same as PCI, really) that more hardware would work with them. Few companies wrote drivers, though

20 years, 10 months

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Looking for ancient FreeBSD

by msokolov＠ivan.Harhan.ORG

Brad Parker <brad at heeltoe.com> wrote: > just curious, do any of these fit the bill? > > http://ftp.csie.chu.edu.tw/FreeBSD/ISO-IMAGES-i386/ Thanks! When I get a chance to download and burn that ISO image, I'll know whether it fits the bill. :-) MS

20 years, 10 months

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Looking for ancient FreeBSD

by msokolov＠ivan.Harhan.ORG

e.stiebler <emu at ecubics.com> wrote: > I know it is evil too, but did you try to check it out from the CVS ? That would give me just the source and not an installable distribution. I actually want to install it on a pee sea. MS

20 years, 10 months

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Restoring broken plastic

by cclist＠sydex.com

I'm looking at a couple of old tape drives that have severe front panel damage. Parts of each are broken off into many small pieces. I don't know what polymer was used, but it does seem to use a large amount of filler in proportion to resin (i.e., there's not much strength to this stuff--it doesn't break with a sharp "snap", but seems to fracture like a damp cracker). What adhesive is recommended for repairing these items? Cyanoacrylate (super glue)? Polyurethane (Pro bond)? Something else? A solvent cement is out of the question, I think. Would reinforcement wtih glass cloth be an option to strengthen things? Suggestions are most welcome. Cheers, Chuck

20 years, 10 months

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PCs that support only one floppy drive in hardware

by ajp166＠bellatlantic.net

> >Subject: Re: PCs that support only one floppy drive in hardware > From: "Nico de Jong" <nico at FARUMDATA.DK> > Date: Wed, 12 Oct 2005 14:44:31 +0200 > To: "General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts" <cctalk at classiccmp.org> > > >----- Oprindelig meddelelse ----- >Fra: "Steven N. Hirsch" <shirsch at adelphia.net> >> >> I'm sitting here looking at a TEAC FD-55GFR 5.25" floppy drive with a >> TEAC-branded SCSI daughterboard mounted on it. Picked this thing up for a >> buck at a flea market and don't know much about it. Anyone else familiar >> with it? I'm not even sure if this is a HD drive. >> >GFR is the 1.2M (HD) drive >Nico That is way to terse an answer. The board _may_ have been a comonent in a DEC system (microVAX3100 series) as an RX33 drive via SCSI. The FD55GFR Floppy disk drive is a 5.25 dual speed, two sided drive capable of PC 1.2mb mode as well as operation at all lower density 96tpi modes and if double stepped will reliabily read 48tpi formats both single and double sided. This type drive in the nonPC world was also called DSQD(Double Sided Quad Density for up to 800kb) or DSHD (Double Sided High Density for up to 1.2b) While used in PC based system it also appeared in Digital in both their VAXmate, DECmateIII, PDP-11 and microVAX (3100 series) systems as RX33. Somebody should archive that. Allison

20 years, 10 months

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OT && !OT Apple Warning

by dogas＠bellsouth.net

Its been PowerPC season down here. First, found and have been playing AIX on that IBM RS/6000 520, and then a couple of more recent Macs appeared, a sweet 700mhz g4 imac lamp/flatpanel model with OSX Jaguar CDs for almost nothing. Been enjoying OSX. too Then the other day I got a 350mhz slot-loading g3 all-in one imac. OS 9.1 was screwed up a little and the CDROM drive wasnt working, just spitting CDs back out. Big pause too on startup. I finally got OS 9.0 to boot and reinstall from an attached USB cdrom. And then I figured what the hell, and proceeded to install OSX/Jag on the g3... WARNING! Don't do that without updating the computer's firmware first! Too late for me. It highly screwed up the computer (pram/analog video settings/black screened) http://db.tidbits.com/getbits.acgi?tbart=06973 ...has a good article on it, but I'm trying something different... The logic board on the G3 doesn't have the VGA connector, but I have a junk imac logic board with the VGA port.. It was a good enough excuse to break out the blow torch and tonight I'll solder it onto my 350mhz board, hoping to get maybe at least get the 'alternate' video instead of just the imac's "Black Screen of Death" OS9.0 might still be in there but I think I still need a OS 9.2.2 CD (or a dmg) too and some way to genate a bootable HD with new firmware, externally. Anyone want to trade and get a nice MAC 0S 7.0 floppy package for a 9.2.2 CD? (open to other trades too) I've got the g4 imac and a beige g3 somewhere still, I hope, to work on the imac's HD if needed, but I sure could use some apple help. I bet many of us here will begin seeing some of these newer macs in our searches for the older stuff, watch out.... UPDATE FIRMWARE BEFORE INSTALLING OSX Dammit, I'm still mad that Apple's OS install can so f$&&ht up their own semi-current machine... Apple should never again be able to bitch about anything Microsoft... ;) - Mike: dogas at bellsouth.net

20 years, 10 months

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PCI Floppy controller wanted

by RMeenaks＠olf.com

And here: http://www.softhut.com/cgi-bin/test/Web_store/web_store.cgi?page=catalog /hardware/accelerators/catweaselmkiv.html&cart_id=5987695_891 Ram > -----Original Message----- > From: cctalk-bounces at classiccmp.org > [mailto:cctalk-bounces at classiccmp.org] On Behalf Of Ram > Meenakshisundaram > Sent: Wednesday, October 12, 2005 1:20 PM > To: General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts > Subject: RE: PCI Floppy controller wanted > > > maybe this can help: > > http://www.jschoenfeld.de/products/cwmk3_e.htm > > > Ram > > > -----Original Message----- > > From: cctalk-bounces at classiccmp.org > > [mailto:cctalk-bounces at classiccmp.org] On Behalf Of Barry Watzman > > Sent: Wednesday, October 12, 2005 12:22 PM > > To: cctech at classiccmp.org > > Subject: PCI Floppy controller wanted > > > > > > Ok, anyone know where I can get a PCI floppy controller that > > will work on a modern PC (Pentium 4 with Hyperthreading)? > > The Asus P4T533 only supports a single floppy drive (it's > > sister board, the P4T533-C, supported two). > > > > Barry Watzman > > Watzman at neo.rr.com > > > > > > > > > >

20 years, 10 months

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PCI Floppy controller wanted

by RMeenaks＠olf.com

maybe this can help: http://www.jschoenfeld.de/products/cwmk3_e.htm Ram > -----Original Message----- > From: cctalk-bounces at classiccmp.org > [mailto:cctalk-bounces at classiccmp.org] On Behalf Of Barry Watzman > Sent: Wednesday, October 12, 2005 12:22 PM > To: cctech at classiccmp.org > Subject: PCI Floppy controller wanted > > > Ok, anyone know where I can get a PCI floppy controller that > will work on a modern PC (Pentium 4 with Hyperthreading)? > The Asus P4T533 only supports a single floppy drive (it's > sister board, the P4T533-C, supported two). > > Barry Watzman > Watzman at neo.rr.com > > > >

20 years, 10 months

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PCI Floppy controller wanted

by Watzman＠neo.rr.com

Ok, anyone know where I can get a PCI floppy controller that will work on a modern PC (Pentium 4 with Hyperthreading)? The Asus P4T533 only supports a single floppy drive (it's sister board, the P4T533-C, supported two). Barry Watzman Watzman at neo.rr.com

20 years, 10 months

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Ringout on Overland Data TX-8/TX-16 cable?

by allanh-cctalk＠kallisti.com

"Nico de Jong" <nico at FARUMDATA.DK> wrote: > Fra: "Allan Hessenflow" <allanh-cctalk at kallisti.com> > > Chuck Guzis <cclist at sydex.com> wrote: > > > > > Does anyone have the wiring details for the Pertec-to-Overland Data > > > TX-8 or TX-16 cable used on OD's non-SCSI 9-track equipment? It's > > > got a D-sub 62-pin male connector on one end and two 50 conductor female > > > edge connectors on the other labeled P1 and P2. > > > > I rung one out, here is my documentation: > > > <snip data > > > IS this data for the TX8/TXi16 ? Your answer is not completely clear in this > respect (anyway, the way I read it= Yes, that is for the cable provided with an Overland Data TX-8. What's the "blue" adapter? I've never heard of any Overland Data Pertec controllers besides the TX-8 and the TXi-16 before. Did the same company really use the same connector for the same purpose but a different pinout? allan -- Allan N. Hessenflow allanh at kallisti.com

20 years, 10 months

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Archival storage

by James＠jdfogg.com

> Back when small printers were hard to come by, there was at > least one technology that used a "paper' made of a black > layer on a paper substrate covered by a very thin layer of > aluminum. The printer burned through the aluminum, leaving > the black spots exposed. Oddly enough, this sounds like a > fiarly permanent process. Was the stuff called > "electrographic" paper? This might be Readex Microprint technology. I've never seen an example of Readex output, although the company is a few miles from me and used to be a microfiche customer. I do know they got significant storage reduction compared to paper.

20 years, 10 months

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Archiving the Freeman Computer Museum

by julesrichardsonuk＠yahoo.co.uk

Sorry... just wanted to make Sellam and William D puke... ;)

20 years, 10 months

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Snoopy calendars/ASCII art

by James＠jdfogg.com

> There's a listing on eBay for ASCII art TTY printouts > (#8707360741) and it raised an interesting question. I > remember as a kid going to my father's office (he worked for > New York Telephone in New York City) at Christmas and they > had various computer systems that they let the kids play on. > One of them (I don't remember which) had a program to print calendars. > In the eBay listing, there's a Snoopy Red Barron calendar, > which I distinctly remember printing out. I remember these! I made a printout too. I also remember taking typing classes in high school (1977) and the teacher had training books that would create a text picture if you followed the directions correctly. I wish I had them as I'd like to do some ASCII art.

20 years, 10 months

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New stuff (HP9000)

by jondjohnston＠hotmail.com

Pete, I saw your posting on Classic Computers. Do you still have your HP 9040 and/or 9050? Would you be interested in selling or trading? Thank you for your consideration. Regards, Jon Johnston HP Computer Museum http://www.hpmuseum.net

20 years, 10 months

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PCs that support only one floppy drive in hardware

by ajp166＠bellatlantic.net

A simpler way to beat the only one floppy problem. Find a PCI floppy/IDE card and disable the onboard controller. Simple fix. I used that fix at work to solve a problem mother board that lost all floppy control due to lightining/power transient. Since everything else worked and I needed to get to other problem systems that was a good fix. Allison

20 years, 10 months

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System 23 Data Master information

by wayne.smith＠charter.net

There were two varieties of System 23/Datamaster: (i) the all-in-one model - the frequently seen 5322; and (ii) the seldom seen tower model, the 5324. The 5324 came in three or four pieces: a CPU unit, with our without floppy drive, a monitor, a keyboard and external floppy drive unit (if the CPU unit lacked a floppy drive). Both units could also be coupled with a 5347 hard drive, which came in either 23 or 37 MB sizes housed in a heavy (110 lb.) cabinet. I have never owned a complete 5324, but I once had a monitor unit from the 5324 from which I removed the display module to replace a burned out one in my 5322, which was basically the same except for the connector. I displayed my 5322 at VCF 5 and 6. (http://www.vintage.org/pictures/VCF%206.0%20-%20Wayne%20Smith%20Exhibit .jpg) Although I don't have a 5324, I have full documentation on it, the necessary disks to get it to work, etc. The yellow user binders that Al Kossow sent you the pictures of were essentially the same for the 5322 and 5324 except that Volume 1 varied slightly depending on which unit you owned. I have both versions. -W > Date: Sun, 09 Oct 2005 07:45:16 -0500 > From: Shannon Spurling <shannon068 at centurytel.net> > Subject: System 23 Data Master information > To: General Discussion: On-Topic Posts Only <cctech at classiccmp.org> > Message-ID: <434910DC.9020206 at centurytel.net> > Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed > > Hi, I'm new to the list, but not new to classic computers. > I picked up a rare beast (Apparently) years ago when I bought > a System > 23 tower system at a thrift shop years ago, and it's been > sitting in my > basement for a few years after a rough life in makeshift > storage. I want > to see if I can get this thing cleaned up and running, but there's no > system 23 docs, much less even any acknowledgment of there being a > tower format for that system. Any help would be appreciated, but > schematics would be the best. > > Thanks

20 years, 10 months

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Didn't we decide this was a hoax?

by dwight.elvey＠amd.com

>From: "Scott Stevens" <chenmel at earthlink.net> > >On Tue, 11 Oct 2005 16:06:11 -0700 (PDT) >steven stengel <tosteve at yahoo.com> wrote: > >> Maybe he should split it up a little - 3 tons of >> computers is a lot for anyone to take... >> >> > >Perhaps his 'ego' is wrapped up in it remaining a collection. It isn't >unusual for somebody to spend a lifetime putting together what they >consider 'the ultimate collecton' and despairing at the idea of it being >split apart into fragments, undoing the thing the collector worked long >and hard to accomplish. It isn't unusual for collectors of various >things to want to bestow them, complete, to an institution that will >keep it together as a collection. > > Hi There is also the issue of putting together the documentation. Often times one piece of documentation or even a piece of software is really relevant to several items. Figuring what goes with what is not straight forward in all cases. Splitting these items into the smallest pieces detracts from the value of the hole group. To make things a little more difficult is that the overlap many not make nice partitioning either. It is difficult to say to what level he should split things. If he splits things into categories, like all the AppleII's in one pile, he may make the package less desirable to someone that already has most of the pieces. If he splits it down to the smallest piece, it loses value as a collection. On top of it all, he may not be physically or mentally able to handle splitting it up because of a medical condition. All that being said, it would be unlikely that he'd find a buyer for the entire lot that would compare with the individual values of the items. He needs to find a way to partition it into reasonable blocks. Dwight

20 years, 10 months

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Dying PCjr drive; options?

by dave04a＠dunfield.com

>Ironically, I have a 5150 with the full-length FDC with a very long port on it >(something like 40-pin female?) that I assume I could connect drives to... but >I have no idea what the pinout is or where to obtain a cable. I am not the >soldering type (watch me duck as the flying tomatoes come from the peanut gallery) If I recall correctly, the 37-pin 'D' connector on the back of early XT controllers is 1:1 with the 34 pin ribbon cable, and you can use a ribbon cable 'D' connector to make up a nice tidy cable (check position on pin-1). Btw, I made some changes to ImageDisks Align/Test function this morning which may be useful to you. I added a real-time display of the following bits from status register 3 at the top of the screen: F - Fault W - write protect R - Ready Z - Track 0 D - Two sided In this case, 'Z' would let you see exactly when the track-0 sensor comes on and off (as you adjust it's position). I also added commands to Format and to Write individual tracks "on the fly" >from the test function (there was already a function to read tracks). So now you can do pretty much anything the drive is capable of under manual control. I should have it posted in a day or two. Regards, Dave -- dave04a (at) Dave Dunfield dunfield (dot) Firmware development services & tools: www.dunfield.com com Collector of vintage computing equipment: http://www.parse.com/~ddunfield/museum/index.html

20 years, 10 months

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PCs that support only one floppy drive in hardware

by pete＠dunnington.plus.com

On Oct 11 2005, 12:03, Sridhar Ayengar wrote: > Chuck Guzis wrote: > > On 10/11/2005 at 9:24 AM Sridhar Ayengar wrote: > > > >>How about SCSI floppy drives? > > > > The problem with SCSI floppies is essentially the same--addressing is on a sector number basis, not CHS. So the drives have limited format recognition capabilities. I've never seen a 5.25' SCSI floppy I have a couple, from SGI equipment IIRC. They're basically a standard floppy with a bridge board fitted, and so are 3.5" TEAC floppies from SGI workstations. The Insite flopticals, though, are made as a native SCSI device. > But a DECstation 2100/3100 comes with a floppy drive hooked to a board > with a 34-pin floppy header, and then the SCSI bus from the motherboard > plugs into the translator board. Could something like this be used? Up to a point. You can certainly put either a 5.25" or a 3.5" drive on those boards, but as far as I remember, they still only recognise fairly standard (read "IBM PC/MS-DOS style") formats -- certainly that's true of the floptical and SGI devices. Anything with sector numbers starting at zero is hard to handle, for example. -- Pete Peter Turnbull Network Manager University of York

20 years, 10 months

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CP/M on an Apple II ?

by hilpert＠cs.ubc.ca

So I was listenting to a radio play (a police investigation/drama) on the CBC (Canadian Broadcasting Corp.) today in which the plot centred around recovering data (the offshore bank account #, how cliche) from the dead guy's ancient Apple II/e. (The dead guy was apparently like a lot of people on this list: still used an old machine for his main/daily computing ...just so you all know you're actually getting portrayal in the popular arts :/ ) Well, that went by me OK, then they threw in the plot twist: the guy wasn't using the standard OS, he was using an oddball system which was going to make the data recovery more problematic, that system being CP/M. At this point my pedantic-critic bells went off. So somebody either confirm my pedanticism or show me up as the ignorant one: nobody ever bothered to rewrite CP/M (which to my understanding was all targeted to Intel procs) for the Apple II did they? ... maybe the scriptwriting 'computing consultant' figured it would be a good inside joke, ... maybe it's somebody on this list!

20 years, 10 months

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9-track round-reel tapes available

by George.Wallace＠po.state.ct.us

Any chance that these tapes are still available? Yea, somebody is still using them !! I don't know about coming to Nebraska but we'll pay the shipping if they're in decent shape. Thanks, George Wallace CONNDOT

20 years, 10 months

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Electronics recycling (Now OT)

by compoobah＠valleyimplants.com

On Sun, 9 Oct 2005 Sellam wrote: On Sun, 9 Oct 2005, Chuck Guzis wrote: On 10/9/2005 at 1:03 PM Vintage Computer Festival wrote: Whatever the case, we have enough problems to solve domestically that we shouldn't concern ourselves with what's going on 8,000 miles away. ...and neither should we export our problems to far-flung lands. :) If they didn't want it, they wouldn't be taking it in at the rate of thousands of tons per day ;) and creating toxic dust that blows back to us . . . In the US, companies are liable for cleanup expenses if their contractors dispose of hazardous waste improperly. Do we not have an ethical obligation to ensure that our potentially toxic waste does not harm others, even if they are 8,000 miles away? I may not be able to control what others do, but I have an ethical obligation to not become complicit in evil/wrongdoing.

20 years, 10 months

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Archival storage

by mamcfadden＠cmh.edu

Fred Cisin wrote: >>I would suspect yes ... I think too the computer could be kept at just >>above zero >>in a dark place in a light vacuum too. > > > How much would it cost to move Sellam's collection > to the dark side of the moon? Actually the other half of Sellam's collection is already there waiting for indexing after Google finishes indexing the net. :) Mike

20 years, 10 months

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VINTAGE COMPUTER FESTIVAL 8.0 - November 5-6

by brain＠jbrain.com

As part of the 20th anniversary celebration of Quantumlink and the formal introducation of QuantumLink RELOADED, the system will be displayed and available for use at the VINTAGE COMPUTER FESTIVAL. Keith Henrickson, the genius behind the reverse engineering of the Q-Link protocol, will be on hand to demonstrate the new system and answer questions about his work and the new system. There will be live connections for attendees to chat with Q-Linkers or play games on the system. Jim -- Jim Brain, Brain Innovations brain at jbrain.com http://www.jbrain.com Dabbling in WWW, Embedded Systems, Old CBM computers, and Good Times!

20 years, 10 months

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Kaypro help desperately needed in Ohio...

by news＠computercollector.com

Got this message today; a guy in the Columbus, Ohio area needs help reading his father's will which was made 20 years ago on a Kaypro 2x. Do not contact me, contact the guy directly at gpgammon at sbcglobal.net. ----------------------------------------- Hi Evan - I got your name from David Weil at the Computer Museum of America in San Diego. I have a unique situation and he suggested you may be able to help or provide some direction. I would appreciate any assistance. Here it is, briefly: I have a 5.25" DS/DD diskette that contains my deceased father's will (he died in April). It was created on a Kaypro 2x in 1986. I am desperately trying to locate a Kaypro 2x that will read the diskette. I have the Kaypro that it was written on in my possession, and I have had no luck in reading the diskette - I have a CP/M diskette for a Kaypro 2, and each time I put it in Drive A:, the message "No operating system is present on this disk" appears. I have tried swapping Drive A: and Drive B: - no luck. I have tried reading the diskette using a DD drive hooked up to a PC running Windows - no luck. The only success I have had is using EnCase Forensic software to read the data sector by sector. Of course, that produces unformatted text, so it hasn't been helpful. Any thoughts? If you would like, I would be willing to call you to discuss this over the phone. Thank you. Greg Gammon Westerville, OH ----------------------------------------- Evan Koblentz's personal homepage: http://www.snarc.net Computer Collector Newsletter: http://news.computercollector.com Mid-Atlantic Retro Computing Hobbyists & Museum: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/midatlanticretro/

20 years, 10 months

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Archival storage

by ajp166＠bellatlantic.net

> >Subject: Re: Archival storage > From: Patrick Finnegan <pat at computer-refuge.org> > Date: Sun, 09 Oct 2005 15:39:22 -0500 > To: "General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts" <cctalk at classiccmp.org> > >Vintage Computer Festival declared on Sunday 09 October 2005 03:12 pm: >> On Sun, 9 Oct 2005, James Fogg wrote: >> > Does anyone know if there are optical formats that can reliably >> > deliver 10 year shelf-life? How does one achieve it (different types >> > of cd-r chemistry, using cd-rom, etc)? >> >> Just use hard drives. Cheap, high capacity, and reliable. > >And make sure you keep them spinning, so that you can tell when they >fail, along with a redundant copy on another machine which you mirror to >periodically (even automatically once every N days is fine). Migrate to >newer media when the old stuff is pretty much obsolete. > >If you manage to do that, your data will long outlast any CDRs that you >store in a filing cabinet next to the computer(s). I've done that exactly. The oldest of the lot is a ST506 from 1982 that still runs CP/M and still has stiction since day one! Other than the need to give it a manual twist it's been relaible. Of course that data is backed up to a newer Quantum 31mb (AKA RD52) and thats been backed up to a newer 45MB SCSI and a newer still 52mb SCSI and so on. Along with 8", 5.25, and 3.5" floppy copies and those on the PCs where that process sorta repeats itself it would be hard to create a total loss. The key is many copies, in many places and at lest a few on current or reasonably current media. Allison

20 years, 10 months

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HP terminal question

by jwest＠classiccmp.org

Ok, I give. I'm afraid to try harder for fear of breaking it.... Just exactly how does one get the cover off an HP 262X terminal? I can't seem to find any service information. I have a few in poor condition I'm trying to consolidate into two good working ones. There may be leftover parts to offer to the list. Jay

20 years, 10 months

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IBM System/34 with diskettes & documentation available in Iowa (JP Hindin)

by ceby2＠csc.com

Jay, & All, Dude I am seriously jealous. An S/34 and media!? Pity I just moved to England. I'm in the same straight, anyway. I have a 5360 I've been paying storage on. I offer it to the group, but for pickup only. It's in Hartford, CT. Lemme tell you, the S/34 is a beast, but this 5360 is an out and out monster. There are two tape drives, two line printers four hard disks, extended main cabinet, as well as a magazine style 8" floppy. I'd love to elimanate the bill for that, and the flat does have 220 (though of course nowhere near the amperage required). If you can get Jay's S/34 because your a Yank without the four days to do an Iowa run, be tempted by the S/36, please. Jay, keep me posted, I'll do what little I can to facilitate. That machine MUST be preserved. Thanks, Colin Eby -- ceby2 at csc.com CSC - EMEA Northern Region - C&SI -Technology Architect ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- This is a PRIVATE message. If you are not the intended recipient, please delete without copying and kindly advise us by e-mail of the mistake in delivery. NOTE: Regardless of content, this e-mail shall not operate to bind CSC to any order or other contract unless pursuant to explicit written agreement or government initiative expressly permitting the use of e-mail for such purpose. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

20 years, 10 months

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Original PDP-8 spares

by prbotha＠hotmail.com

Apologies, I've been off-the-air for a couple of days. Judging by the replies I got, there does seem to be some interest in the straight-8 spares I'd like to sell. I guess the first step would be for me to catalogue everything and publish the list here. Maybe some kind soul can then suggest a sensible way to bunch the stuff together. There are several options I can think of: The whole lot in one go, sets of a variety of cards, sets of the same cards together, one card at a time (shudder) By the way, I also have two metal strips with a lot of slide switches on them, ISTR they were at the bottom of the frame, and by the looks of them they could have something to do with tweaking voltages ? I might be persuaded to get rid of the front panel as well. There is a little bit of damage to the paint at the back of the glass, but as near as I can tell the bulbs and certainly the switches are still eminently usable. I'll go make a list and get back to the list ;^) Pieter Botha ============================ _________________________________________________________________ We've overhauled MSN Search Toolbar - FREE download! http://toolbar.msn.co.za?DI=1054&XAPID=2083

20 years, 10 months

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UNIX on BBC micro with 16032 coprocessor

by compoobah＠valleyimplants.com

Not sure about BBC XENIX, but SCO XENIX 386 release 2.3.4 (1991) requires 1 MB RAM (20MB disk space, though)

20 years, 10 months

1
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E&L Instruments Fox 1 Z80 Trainer chip questions

by leeedavison＠yahoo.co.uk

> Schematics for the original MPF-1 board can be found here: > http://themotionstore.com/leeedavison/z80/mpf1/index.html Hmmmm, that looks familiar. 8^)= > The monitor EPROM in the MT-80Z I have is slightly different > than the monitor EPROM in the MPF-1, but I think the changes > are very minor. How about a dump of it for the site? Lee. . ___________________________________________________________ Yahoo! Messenger - NEW crystal clear PC to PC calling worldwide with voicemail http://uk.messenger.yahoo.com

20 years, 10 months

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Fwd: questions about Sanyo MBC 55x collectors

by jfoust＠threedee.com

>Date: Tue, 4 Oct 2005 23:57:02 -0400 >From: Stuart Pomerantz <stuartpomerantz at gmail.com> >To: jfoust at threedee.com >Subject: questions about Sanyo MBC 55x collectors > >Dear Mr. Foust, > >I came across your website and your interest in old computers. I have a Sanyo MBC-555 computer in perfect condition with both color and amber monitors, all the old documentation/packing and several years worth of SoftSector, a Sanyo MBC 55x enthusiast magazine. Is there anyone in the world interested in this hardware/material or is it time to add to the world's landfills? Hope you can be of help (and can have first dibs, if interested). > >Sincerely, > >Stuart Pomerantz

20 years, 10 months

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Intel 80C186/80C188 Evaluation Board? Re: Single Board Computers

by dwight.elvey＠amd.com

Hi These usually are not very complicated. I have one of these from AMD. You might hunt around by using the search engine on the Intel site. I found quite a bit of information for mine by doing that with the AMD site. Mine has some flash and RAM with a few I/O's. I've put a simple Forth on mine that was adapted >from fpc ( A Forth for the PC ). The only tricky thing about these is the resetting of the special registers. These you can understand by looking at the data books for the C186/C188 version you have. These registers are slightly differnt for each letter version so make sure you are looking at the same one. The AMD had a special monitor on board to upgrade the flash. I'd suspect that the Intel board might be the same. If you should fiddle with the flash, make sure and save a copy. I found some information on an upgrade for the monitor but it required having the previous monitor loaded. Mine was an even earlier version. I did some fiddle faddle by loading the monitor at another location, as an application program and then using that to upgrade to the current version. It was tricky but it did work :) It now still has the monitor and the Forth as one of the applications. Dwight >From: "jim stephens" <jwstephens at msm.umr.edu> > >Joe R. wrote: > >>Speaking of SBCs. Does anyone know anything about an Intel 80C186/80C188 >>Evaluation Board? It's NOT Multibus. >> >> Joe >> >> >>At 02:25 PM 10/10/05 -0500, you wrote: >> >> >>>A while back >>> >intel still produces sample boards for all processors to send out. If >you get one of >the older eval boards, it probably has some support for expansion, but >more importantly, >it would have connections (or should have) to bring out run control and >processor bus to >be hooked to trace devices. This can require an interposer for a lot of >systems, and >is nice if you want to play with a processor and see what it does w/o >having to do such >a thing. > >A lot of these used to be on the intel site, but are no longer there. >jim >

20 years, 10 months

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Dying PCjr drive; options?

by Watzman＠neo.rr.com

Re: "Yes, doing the 'radial alignment' is not that hard. I've never had any success with the 'digital alignment disks', I prefer a 'catseye disk' and an oscilloscope conencted to the differential outputs of the read amplifier." The digital alignment disks are intended for checking alignment to see if it needs to be done. It's not practical to use them for actually doing the alignment. It's not impossible, absolutely, but it's not a good way to go about it, nor was it really the intent of the digital disks.

20 years, 10 months

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Archival storage

by James＠jdfogg.com

> Back in the late '60s I remember seeing a unit from IBM that > used film storage. The film was a small rectangle, maybe 1" x > 2-1/2". These were stored in magazines of some sort, IIRC. > They could be individually selected randomly. > > I have one of the film rectangles somewhere. When I run > across it again I will post a link to an image. In the mean > time, does this ring a bell with anyone? Aperture cards. An IBM punch card with a square of film in it. The punch coding was a filing system serial number. There were variations that looked like 35mm slides with a bigger than normal cardboard mount too. I used to work for the Terminal Data Corp, and along with Kodak we made 90% of the microfiche/microfilm cameras in the American market. Many other manufacturers, esp. COM systems (Computer Output to Microfilm) used our cameras.

20 years, 10 months

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Resources for archiving

by news＠computercollector.com

...Thought this might be of interest to some people: http://www.archivists.org/prof-education/seasonal_schedule.asp ----------------------------------------- Evan Koblentz's personal homepage: http://www.snarc.net Computer Collector Newsletter: http://news.computercollector.com Mid-Atlantic Retro Computing Hobbyists & Museum: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/midatlanticretro/

20 years, 10 months

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Snoopy calendars/ASCII art

by wacarder＠earthlink.net

>>Do you need me to give you a copy of anything? My calendar program >>actually reads compressed versions of the picture files, since our system >>ran from RK05 disks (2.5 megabytes) back in the 1970s. The version of >>the program that I have was developed at Wofford College around 1976 >>and was based on another calendar program. > >Hmmm, wonder if it's Y2K-compliant? :) Surprisingly, I think the answer is YES. Actually, I seem to recall that our version would print calendars into the 21st century and beyond. I remember using the same calendar / day of week routines to do a computer programming assignment that calculated the date of Easter from the years 1500 to 2500. We did not use the built-in date functions of RSTS and Basic-Plus. I'll have to take a look at the code to verify this. Ashley

20 years, 10 months

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Snoopy calendars/ASCII art

by wacarder＠earthlink.net

> What program would have made this calendar and is one still > available, somewhere, that I could run on Windows or through something like > SIMH? > > Rich I have a program on my PDP-11/40 that will print these calendars. This program is from around 1977-78 and is written in Basic-Plus. I'll have to check to see which pictures I have on my system. I have printed several, including Snoopy, the USS Starship Enterprise, and a couple more. They print ok on my LA120 DecWriter III or LA36 DecWriter II as long as I have a fresh ribbon on the DecWriters. Do you need me to give you a copy of anything? My calendar program actually reads compressed versions of the picture files, since our system ran from RK05 disks (2.5 megabytes) back in the 1970s. The version of the program that I have was developed at Wofford College around 1976 and was based on another calendar program. Thanks, Ashley

20 years, 10 months

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Archival storage

by mamcfadden＠cmh.edu

I know aperture cards have a long life. In one of my previous work lives, 1973-1975, I copied X-ray film from 14" X 17" film to aperture cards. They were the size of computer punch cards and had a line of text typed along the top. There was a 1" X 1" film embedded in the card. We were the beta test site for Kodak for a medical image archive based on them. Retnar was the product name I think. I tried scanning them with a Vidicon camera attached to the bioengineering lab's PDP-11/20. The camera was only 256 X 256 by 8 bits per pixel, not enough resolution to recover an image. The display on the system was a RAMTEK display with 256 X 256 by 8 bits, 3 bits red, 3 bits green and 2 bits blue. I think the display system was about $50K. I still have some intact 30 years later. I am also scanning old family slides that are at least 40 years old. I think the storage conditions are the key to good longevity of film. Cool and dry is essential. I'm partial to film. My family has 16mm and 8mm film originals of family events from the last 40 years, copies on VHS tape and copies on VCD. The magnetic tape is beginning to fade. The VCD's are copies of the VHS version. The film is a pain to thread into the projector but it's still great quality. I've heard that pen on paper is very good because the ink is embedded/absorbed into the paper. This is unlike a laser printer where the plastic toner is melted onto the surface of the paper. Maybe an archival quality ink on a pen plotter on vellum is what you want. I think that's what the local plat and land documents are created on. Mike

20 years, 10 months

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FA: DEC MINC disks, Optical PT reader, HP 2100 manual

by rigdonj＠cfl.rr.com

<http://search.ebay.com/_W0QQsassZrigdonjQQhtZ-1>. I'll be posting more neat stuff tomorrow. Joe

20 years, 10 months

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PDP-8/A bus levels?

by charlesmorris＠direcway.com

I am trying to figure out the voltages on my PDP-8/A (Omnibus) logic lines. DEC's documentation, as usual, is confusing at best on this (and other) subjects, and sometimes apparently self-contradictory... DEC used suffixes -L and -H to mean active-low and -high respectively (that is, a logical assertion). They also say when interfacing to the Omnibus that standard TTL levels are used. But elsewhere in the manual it says Logic 1 levels are near 0 volts and logic 0 is near 5 volts! So does this statement apply only to the bus signals that are already active-low? Am I correct or not in interpreting, for example, an address line named "MA 11 L" to be a logic 1/true/asserted when 0-0.8 volts and logic 0/false when 2.0+ volts (TTL levels)? thanks for any assistance. -Charles

20 years, 10 months

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