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

Fwd: questions about Sanyo MBC 55x collectors

by ajp166＠bellatlantic.net

> >Subject: Re: Fwd: questions about Sanyo MBC 55x collectors > From: Chris M <chrism3667 at yahoo.com> > Date: Mon, 10 Oct 2005 12:25:37 -0700 (PDT) > To: "General Discussion: On-Topic Posts Only" <cctech at classiccmp.org> > >> The Sanyo ran at 3.58MHz (8088) >> so that they could use >> CHEAP color burst crsytals for the oscillator. > > Almost all the pc's used a crystal that was some >multiple of color burst frequency. Did the Sanyo >actually use a 3.58mhz crystal? The PC had a crystal >that was 4x that, and divided it by 3 to get 4.77mhz. the IBM PC used the 8284A clock generator to pump the 8088 and that chip generates the 30% duty cycle required by dividing a higher frequency (14.31818mhz) to 4.77mhz. That higher frequency was high enough for Video clock generation as well. The IBM PC also another osc for the baud rate clocks and the Video had it's own clock. Many other machines used 3.58 (3.57545mhz) as it was easy to find and cheap, almost 4mhz and related to US video color burst. However the primary reason it was cheap crystal. In some cases the cpu was also limited to 4mhz or lower and that factored into the clock used. Allison

20 years, 10 months

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Dying PCjr drive; options?

by dave04a＠dunfield.com

At 20:16 09/10/2005 -0500, you wrote: >Dave Dunfield wrote: >> - Run ImageDisk, select the drive etc. and execute the A)lign/Test function. > >Sadly, the drive is so far off that I can't get the thing to boot at all to run >ImageDisk :-( But thanks for the instructions; I will clip'n'save them. Actually, it never occured to me that anyone would try to do this by booting >from the drive. I was thinking that you would pull the drive and drop it onto a working system. One thing I have on my bench which is very handy, is the PC has modified drive cable which brings drive 'B' out to a 37-pin 'D' connector on the back, and a plug-in cable to allow me to easily connect external drives. I use this both for testing drives, and for imaging from/to 5.25" and 8" drives. I have details/photos on how to make the cables and adapters posted to my site. Look at "Disks/Software images" near the bottom, and then "notes on connecting an 8" drive. 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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Dying PCjr drive; options?

by trixter＠oldskool.org

As the subject implies, I've got a PCjr with a floppy drive that is having trouble reading disks and fails the internal CTRL-ALT-INS diagnostics. Symptoms include a very loud/bad noise at first seek (rest of seeks sound ok), and a "B" ("have drive serviced") result of the diags. The diskette I used for diags was tested in a 5150 and found to be good. This drive was working a week ago but has declined steadily until it can't successfully boot the machine. (I bought some time by formatting disks 8 sectors per track instead of 9, but that no longers works :-) I've already cleaned it using a cleaning diskette and alcohol. What are my options? Is the floppy drive in a PCjr as goofy/proprietary as the rest of the machine? If so, should I even attempt to repair it? By the bad clunk/buzz noise, I am assuming the head is slamming into the side of the drive or something equally heinous. Another related question: When I was first getting started with personal computers 25 years ago, I seem to recall that track alignment was a common problem and could be fixed by using a calibration diskette and special software that you could monitor as you turned the alignment screw. Without one of those factory calibration diskettes, is it even possible to align/calibrate a floppy drive for track alignment? -- Jim Leonard (trixter at oldskool.org) http://www.oldskool.org/ Want to help an ambitious games project? http://www.mobygames.com/ Or check out some trippy MindCandy at http://www.mindcandydvd.com/

20 years, 10 months

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System 23 Data Master information

by aek＠bitsavers.org

> 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 I just picked up a set of manuals for one. The same person has a system, and software also. http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=5812578529

20 years, 10 months

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TEC FD-50x drives - known issues?

by dave04a＠dunfield.com

>A disk drive performs several different functions. In particular, it >rotates the disk, it detects the index hole and write protect notch, it >moves the heads between cylinders and detects the track0 position, and it >actually does the reading and writing. This much I actually know :-) >Do you know which, if any, of these systems are working? Can you get the >disk to spin? Do you get an index pulse? Can you get the head to move? >And so on. All functions appear to work (Motor, Index, Step) - problem in all cases is in the read/write circuitry. Drive goes through all the motions, it just can't read/write. >A drive exerciser is handy for this, but by no means essential. Imagedisk's "Align/Test" function lets me excercise the drive with a fair bit of manual control. >You can >often get away with just pulling pins on the interface connector low with >bits of wire connected to the 0V line. And look at the outputs with a >logic probe. Remembr there output drivers are open-collector, so you need >to add terminating/pullup resistors (traditionally 150 ohms to +5V) for >tssting. > >Note that some drives with a big ASIC or microcontroller on them do some >kind of power-on initialisation. In particular, a few drives do odd >things if inputs are held active (low) at power-on. Other drives will >ignore all inputs if the power-on seek-to-track-0 fails. > >If you have one of the latter units, you should be able to see >transitions on the stepper motor drive outputs just after power-on. And >you can check the track0 sensor by hand, of course. All of this works. >I can't believe it would be that hard to trace out a schematic. Even if >there's a big ASIC in the middle of the board (likely on half-height >drives), you can often figure out what it's doing from the surrounding >circuitry. You can at least check if things like senosr inputs do the >right things as you move a bit of card in and out of the sensor, etc. It may come to this - At least I do have a couple of working drives that I can compare signals with - but I asked in case a) someone has the technical documentation or b) someone might say "oh yeah, thats a common problem caused by xxx...", either of which could save me a lot of time. I think I agree with Allison however that these drives are crap, and I'm not sure I want to spend a lot of time on them if suitable substitutes can be found - in this case, the physical constraints make this a but more challenging. 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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8" floppy system needed to recover old game data

by Kieron.Wilkinson＠paretopartners.com

Wow. Thanks to the 10's (!!) of people who have offered to help me with this! I still need to wade my way though all the replies :) Anyway, I have had an offer for somebody who can go round there personally. Hopefully the disks are not already stuffed so we can get a copy of this previously-thought-lost game! I'll post an update on this list when I know more. I very much appreciate the great response! Kieron Wilkinson ============================ Pareto Investment Management Limited is a Mellon Financial Company. Pareto Investment Management Limited is authorised and regulated by the Financial Services Authority (Firm Ref. No. 416024), and registered in England and Wales with Number 03169281. Registered Office: Mellon Financial Centre, 160 Queen Victoria Street, London EC4V 4LA, United Kingdom. Pareto is the registered trademark of Pareto Investment Management Limited. This message may contain confidential and privileged information and is intended solely for the use of the named addressee. Access, copying or re-use of the e-mail or any information contained therein by any other person is not authorised. If you are not the intended recipient please notify us immediately by returning the e-mail to the originator and then immediately delete this message.

20 years, 10 months

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8" floppy system needed to recover old game data

by ajp166＠bellatlantic.net

> >Subject: RE: 8" floppy system needed to recover old game data > From: "Kieron Wilkinson" <Kieron.Wilkinson at paretopartners.com> > Date: Mon, 10 Oct 2005 14:33:53 +0100 > To: "General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts" <cctalk at classiccmp.org> > > >Not sure if I repled to this... But anyway, I founf somebody who can do >it, but thanks anyway! > >Kieron > >> -----Original Message----- >> From: cctalk-bounces at classiccmp.org >> [mailto:cctalk-bounces at classiccmp.org] On Behalf Of Chuck Guzis >> Sent: 06 October 2005 16:53 >> To: General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts >> Subject: RE: 8" floppy system needed to recover old game data >> >> If your customer will ship the media up the coast to Eugene, >> OR, we'll do the conversion, no matter what the format is, >> even if it isn't CP/M. Our fee depends on the number of diskettes. >> >> We've had a little experience at this. :) >> >> Cheers, >> Chuck >> >> >> >> > >============================ >Pareto Investment Management Limited is a Mellon Financial Company. Pareto Investment Management Limited is authorised and regulated by the Financial Services Authority (Firm Ref. No. 416024), and registered in England and Wales with Number 03169281. Registered Office: Mellon Financial Centre, 160 Queen Victoria Street, London EC4V 4LA, United Kingdom. Pareto is the registered trademark of Pareto Investment Management Limited. This message may contain confidential and privileged information and is intended solely for the use of the named addressee. Access, copying or re-use of the e-mail or any information contained therein by any other person is not authorised. If you are not the intended recipient please notify us immediately by returning the e-mail to the originator and then immediately delete this message. >

20 years, 10 months

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8" floppy system needed to recover old game data

by Kieron.Wilkinson＠paretopartners.com

Not sure if I repled to this... But anyway, I founf somebody who can do it, but thanks anyway! Kieron > -----Original Message----- > From: cctalk-bounces at classiccmp.org > [mailto:cctalk-bounces at classiccmp.org] On Behalf Of Chuck Guzis > Sent: 06 October 2005 16:53 > To: General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts > Subject: RE: 8" floppy system needed to recover old game data > > If your customer will ship the media up the coast to Eugene, > OR, we'll do the conversion, no matter what the format is, > even if it isn't CP/M. Our fee depends on the number of diskettes. > > We've had a little experience at this. :) > > Cheers, > Chuck > > > > ============================ Pareto Investment Management Limited is a Mellon Financial Company. Pareto Investment Management Limited is authorised and regulated by the Financial Services Authority (Firm Ref. No. 416024), and registered in England and Wales with Number 03169281. Registered Office: Mellon Financial Centre, 160 Queen Victoria Street, London EC4V 4LA, United Kingdom. Pareto is the registered trademark of Pareto Investment Management Limited. This message may contain confidential and privileged information and is intended solely for the use of the named addressee. Access, copying or re-use of the e-mail or any information contained therein by any other person is not authorised. If you are not the intended recipient please notify us immediately by returning the e-mail to the originator and then immediately delete this message.

20 years, 10 months

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ACMS: Dispersal Day at Homebush. (fwd)

by vcf＠siconic.com

FYI to all you Aussies...see below. -- 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 ] ---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Mon, 10 Oct 2005 17:49:07 +1000 From: "John Geremin, Computer Engineer." <geremin at iprimus.com.au> Reply-To: VCF-OZ at yahoogroups.com To: VCF-OZ at yahoogroups.com Subject: [VCF-OZ] ACMS: Dispersal Day at Homebush. Greetings friends, The President has decided that there is to be a Dispersal Day at the Australian Computer Museum Society storage shed at Homebush (due to lack of financial support from State or Federal governments). Items - include Hardware, Software, Media, Documentation, Furniture. Place - Rear, 6 Parramatta Road, HOMEBUSH, 2140. Entry via Columbia Lane, [next to Kennards Self Storage] Time - approx 9am to 4pm, Date - Sunday, 16th October, 2005 Prices - starting at $1 - all reasonable offers considered. Bring - your own transport and muscle power for moving items. Regards, John G. John GEREMIN, Ph 02-9758 5686 or 0427 10 20 60 note: new E-MAIL address geremin at iprimus.com.au ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ Australian COMPUTER MUSEUM Society Inc. ABN 89 972 080 502. Looking for a site for 'A Working Australian Computing Museum'. http://www.acms.org.au/ my mobile: 0427 10 20 60 ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ My web page http://home.iprimus.com.au/geremin/ -- No virus found in this outgoing message. Checked by AVG Anti-Virus. Version: 7.0.344 / Virus Database: 267.11.13 - Release Date: 09-Oct-05 ------------------------ Yahoo! Groups Sponsor --------------------~--> Get fast access to your favorite Yahoo! Groups. Make Yahoo! your home page http://us.click.yahoo.com/dpRU5A/wUILAA/yQLSAA/S_NqlB/TM --------------------------------------------------------------------~-> Yahoo! Groups Links <*> To visit your group on the web, go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/VCF-OZ/ <*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: VCF-OZ-unsubscribe at yahoogroups.com <*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to: http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/

20 years, 10 months

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8 old computers to go, and vaxstation stands. Dallas TX

by recycler＠swbell.net

where else ya gonna get 8 PCs for $1 ? compaq luggables and deskpros, XT to 386 types, all for one deal. ebay Item number: 8707188867 http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=8707188867 and if you want stands for your 4000 series vaxstations, http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=8707191662 PJ

20 years, 10 months

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identifying PC Simms

by trag＠io.com

>Date: Wed, 28 Sep 2005 23:53:00 -0400 >From: "Joe Stevenson" <ikvsabre at comcast.net> >I have 16 30-pin simms left over from various past incarnations of >my PCs, and I'm > trying to figure out what I've got. > I no longer have a motherboard to test them, so I have no idea what is what. > >Is there any not-to-painless way to figure out what I've got? Not all that painless, but the only way I know that works... Take a SIMM. Count the number of chips. Find the model markings on one of the chips. There are usually two or three lines of writing on a chip. One of these will be a date or batch code and is irrelevant. The line you want will start with a one, two or three (usually two) character manufacturer code (e.g., K or KM for Samsung, TC for Toshiba, M(numeral)M for Mitsubishi, HM or HN for Hitachi, etc.), followed by some longish, about four to eight, alphanumeric code which is mostly numerals, then a dash or space and a speed number in nanoseconds, which may or may not have the trailing zero truncated. For example: HM5116400BS-8, MSM511000C-7, KM44C16100B-5, TC514400AJ-6. Then go to a datasheet archive such as <http://www.datasheetarchive.com/> and enter the part number in the search field. It often helps to truncate the trailing characters back to the first number in the body. E.g. HM5116400, MSM511000, KM44C16100, etc. The datasheet will tell you the capacity and organization of the chip. For example, a 1 MB 30 pin SIMM with eight chips on it will be composed of 1M X 1 chips. These have one million addresses with 1 bit at each address. Eight of them working in parallel provide 1 million addresses with eight bits at each address or 1 megabyte. Multiply the total capacity of the chip by the number of chips on the SIMM. Remember that you're working with bits here, not bytes. Divide by 8 and you've got the capacity in megabytes--except... Some SIMMs are parity SIMM and they are based on 9 bits of data rather than 8 bits of data, so you'll need to divide that capacity by 9, not by eight for a parity SIMM. A 30 pin parity SIMM will have nine or three chips instead of eight or two, so they're fairly easy to identify. However, a three chip 30 pin SIMM will have two chips with a certain capacity and a third chip with 1/4 the capacity or either of the other two. In this case, calculate the total capacity of the two larger chips and divide by eight. Or find the capacity in bits of one big chip and divide by four. In most cases, if the SIMM has eight or nine chips, then the capacity in bytes is equal to the number of addresses any of the chips supports (see the datasheet). If the SIMM has three chips, then the capacity in bytes is still equal to the number of address which any of the three chips supports. For example, you find a three chip SIMM with two 4M X 4 chips and one 4M X 1 chip on board. The capacity of this SIMM is 4MB or 4 Megabytes. You find a SIMM with eight or nine 4M X 1 chips on board, its capacity is also 4MB. The real trick is figureing out the capacity of the chips from the markings on them. Google searches sometimes help, but often (almost always) just lead you to chip distributers spamming the search engine space with part numbers to lead part searches to their sites. They often don't even have the chip in question, and rarely have any useful information available on their website. SIMMs that can steer you wrong are composite SIMMs where groups of smaller capacity chips are used to build a higher capacity SIMM. For example, building a 16 MB 30 pin SIMM out of eight 4M X 4 chips. These are rare and should be easily identified because there should be a non-memory chip on board to handle the address translations. Jeff Walther

20 years, 10 months

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OT for a sec: US wiring sources of info

by julesrichardsonuk＠yahoo.co.uk

One for the US members... any idea of a good usenet resource for questions relating to US wiring / electrics? (I'm thinking an equivalent to uk.d-i-y) We've got a cable decoder box here that trips out the house breakers when plugged into certain outlets - irrespective of whether it's via a surge protector (probably not surprising there) or of what other loads might be sharing the same wiring to that outlet. It works fine in other outlets though, which seems like a strange problem - but I have no idea how US houses are wired (and the wiring in this place is ancient anyway!) Be nice to get it sorted out as the cable box currently requires a cable trailing across the lounge from an outlet in another room! cheers Jules

20 years, 10 months

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Unix on BBC micro with 16032 coprocessor

by ken＠seefried.com

From: Jules Richardson <julesrichardsonuk at yahoo.co.uk> >Would Xenix likely even run in the 1MB of the BBC Micro's 32016 copro? I >can believe it'd be usable on the 4MB of the ACW, but might be pushing >it a bit in 1MB. Xenix would certainly run in 1MB of memory. That is...at least on the i286 (512K was the minimum when I was subjected to Xenix). As I recall, it ran in even less on the 8086. On the Tandy 16 (68000), I *think* it ran in 256K, but please don't hold me to that. I understand that it also ran on the z8000, but I never saw that. I don't recall ever seeing that Xenix was ported to the 32016 for any machine. BSD4 was, of course, among other Unixen of dubious lineage. Considering the bugs, it's amazing any of them worked. Of course...why you would want to run Xenix on something other than a PoS system, other than to say you did, is a bit beyond me...;-)

20 years, 10 months

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Dying PCjr drive; options?

by dave04a＠dunfield.com

>As the subject implies, I've got a PCjr with a floppy drive that is having >trouble reading disks and fails the internal CTRL-ALT-INS diagnostics. >Symptoms include a very loud/bad noise at first seek (rest of seeks sound ok), A failed track-0 detector can cause a drive to make loud noises at first seek, and to misalign on subsequent track accesses - if the drive hits the physical stop before the track-0 sensor trips, then the head will "rattle" against the stop until the controller gives up trying (usually around 77-80 steps). If the physical setup of the drive is such that the stepper is able to "make a step" past track-0 in this case, the alignment for subsequent accesses will be off as well. >Another related question: When I was first getting started with personal >computers 25 years ago, I seem to recall that track alignment was a common >problem and could be fixed by using a calibration diskette and special software >that you could monitor as you turned the alignment screw. Without one of those >factory calibration diskettes, is it even possible to align/calibrate a floppy >drive for track alignment? You can't do a proper job of drive alignment without an alignment disk and a scope. As with most things, there are fine to not-so-fine lines between "proper" and "passable". I've built a Align/Test function into ImageDisk which will let you do a reasonable job of track-to-track alignment of the drive to a known good disk (alignment is at best only as good as the disk you are using). With a known good disk in the drive (I would suggest using a factory original diskette from a high-profile software vendor, or a disk freshly formatted on a NEW high-quality drive): - Run ImageDisk, select the drive etc. and execute the A)lign/Test function. - Step out the middle of the disk. 'S2' will step to track 20. - Execute 'A'nalyze. This will identify the format of the track, which will be displayed at the top of the screen. - ImageDisk will continue reading the track, and will beep at about a 2hz rate, with a tone which is 500hz + 100hz for every unique sector which it reads that matches the cylinder id of the track you have stepped to. It will also show counts of matching and non-matching cylinder sectors. - If your disk is far out of alignment, you may need to start at the inside or outside edge to get matching sectors. In really bad cases you may need to fiddle with the drive alignment in order to get to this point. - Once you are reading sectors, listing to the audible tones while slowly adjusting the position of the head will allow you to determine the limits of where the head can read the track without taking your eyes off of it. Set the position to the 1/2 way point between these limits. - Repeat on inner and outer tracks, working toward the best compromise that you can achieve. - To adjust the track-0 switch, use 'Z'ero (recalibrate) and '+' (step out) to move the head back and forth between track-0 and track-1 at each track ImageDisk will beep as described above, and display a running count of the matching and non-matching sectors read from the tracks. When the sensor is set correctly, the counts will be correct (all matching, no non-matching) and the head will perform a single step in each direction, without banging against the stop. - If the head "rattles" against the stop on 'Z', move the track-0 sensor slightly toward the center of the disk. - If the head does not step out to track-0 on 'Z', then move the track-0 sensor slightly away from the center of the disk. The adjustments are interrelated, in that the drive has to find track-0 before it can reliably seek to any track - some going back and forth is to be expected (you get MUCH better at it after having done it a few times). Nowhere near as good as using a proper alignment disk, however I have used variations of this technique a number of times on drives that have worked reliably for many years afterward. As always, your mileage may vary. 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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Unix on BBC micro with 16032 coprocessor

by gtoal＠gtoal.com

> On Sat, October 8, 2005 6:32 pm, Pete Hollobon said: >> Does anyone know if Xenix / Unix were ever available on the NS 16032 >> second >> processor for the BBC micro? I remember reading that it was intended to be >> made available in the user's guide years ago. > It was supposed to be an option for the Cambridge Workstation since that > also had a 16032/32016 2nd processor but I don't know if it ever made it > into the wild. Graham Toal's the man who'll know I suspect, also Paul > Williams (if he's around) and Jules R. To the best of my recollection this was only ever talked about but never implemented by anyone at Acorn. If it was done externally I have no knowlege of it. I was one of the 3 or 4 people who argued in favour of us selling the systems with Unix but Acorn was very much a 'not invented here' company. I think way back then there were also significant costs associatated with licensing Unix, plus there were few ports to archiectures other than Vax and 68000. While we're on the subject of the NS processor... A couple of years ago I got in touch with Peter Robertson, the author of Acorn's compilers for that system (Pascal, C and Imp77) in the hope of getting the source of the compiler from him. Unfortunately he had not kept a copy of that code generator. I vaguely remember that there were sources escrowed somewhere at the time. Obviously the escrow will be long gone, but on the vague offchance that someone from Acorn retained a copy... does anyone have the source code for that compiler? (Really just the back-end Icode to binary Pass3, but _anything_ anyone has is wanted for the Edinburgh Computer History Project!) By the way I have copies of quite a few binaries for this platform. Has anyone ever written an emulator for this architecture? I haven't found one. It ought to be an easy one to write, it was a very regular instruction set. My guess for why there isn't one is that it was never a very popular chip, but that hasn't stopped emulators being written for lots of other obscure architectures! I can imagine that it wouldn't take much more than just a basic instruction set emulator to make Panos live again, as the I/O could be done by emulating an I/O processor Beeb and the tube chip. There must be several Beeb emulators around that can handle second processors to which we could graft a NS emulator? I think somewhere I have a paper listing of Mark Taunton's linker for Panos. It was a very well written piece of code. I think it was Acorn's only piece of Panos code (except for the compilers themselves) that was written in Imp77. Everything else was in Modula II. I also recently discovered Keith Rautenbach's & my editor for Panos, the one which was a sort of EMACS-alike written in ModII with a built-in mock LISP. I have all the sources *except* the LISP init files needed to start it up :-( Also, the editor shot some code over to the IO processor when it was invoked, which did some extended keystroke handling - that part I do have... A small aside: when I built my 6809 second processor for the Beeb, while I was waiting for the chips to arrive I wrote a 6809 emulator that ran on the 16032, written in Imp77. It was faster than the real chip! Also it was my first emulator. I wrote it on a 32016 2nd proc that was on a Beeb with one of the early experimental Winchester disks. Of course the disk died, - about 2 days after I finished the emulator - and the backup floppy was corrupt and the only source I had was on paper. I was too depressed to key it all in again (and the paper listing was about a week from the final version) and what's worse I lost the paper listing along with *all* my historical computing papers when I emigrated from the UK to the US 10 years ago :-/ Anyway, moral of this story was that it was a very early wake-up call for me on the value of backups :-) Ever since then I have always had two hard drives containing everything I've ever written, with one of them offline so they don't both get taken out by the same lightning strike! I am so glad that disk drives are getting bigger faster than I can fill them - I've always been able to keep everything I've ever done and just move it over to the latest biggest drive when it becomes cheap enough to afford. I saw 500Gb hitachi drives at $260 today so I'm thinking it's time to migrate again :-) Graham PS Joe Rigdon, the US Beeb you loaned me will be sent out in tomorrow's mail. Thanks very much for letting me use it!

20 years, 10 months

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8" floppy system needed to recover old game data

by rigdonj＠cfl.rr.com

At 12:07 PM 10/6/05 +0100, you wrote: > >> I'm located in DK > >Is that Dakota? Not likely. More like Denmark! A LONG ways from San Fransisco! Is that a long way? I'm pretty sure the person who has >the disks are not going to be willing to send them by post. They are >very precious - being the only copies of this stuff in existance. That's rather silly. The disks are worthless where they're at now. Find a reliable shipper, such as FedEx, insure the hell out of the package and ship them. I've shipped handreds of pounds (weight) of one of a kind books and disks to Al Kossow and others with no problems. Strong containers, good packing and insurance are the key factors. Joe

20 years, 10 months

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Analyzer was Re: KIM-1 repair advice wanted

by ajp166＠bellatlantic.net

> >Subject: Analyzer was Re: KIM-1 repair advice wanted > From: "Dwight K. Elvey" <dwight.elvey at amd.com> > Date: Fri, 07 Oct 2005 09:29:36 -0700 (PDT) > To: cctalk at classiccmp.org > >>From: "Hans Franke" <Hans.Franke at siemens.com> >---snip--- >> First thing would be >>to connect a logic analyzer to see if the CPU is still running >>a programm in ROM or not. > >Hi > What is it with logic analyzers. Why not just an >oscilloscope. In most cases, one can be farther along >with an 'oscope in finding what is wrong by the >time one can get an analyzer connected and setup. >I've only had one time that I ever needed an analyzer >and even that time, it didn't work well because >of the complexity of the problem ( design not failure ). > I'll admit that I've often thought of making one >of those address compare circuits to trigger the 'scope >but by the time I'd get serious, I'd found the problem. > Am I alone here or does everyone else think that an >analyzer is the ultimate tool? >Dwight Hi, ;) Yes, the analyser is the ultimate tool, biggest hammer and all that. With all that in the case of 'shooting a KIM-1 the first tool I'd grab is the trusty VOM to check power and then the logic probe (you know those things that run off 5V and have three leds for logic levels aka logic dart) and proble around for the simple presence of pulses. If warrented then the O'scope. Last (by a lot) is the big gun logic machine as that also takes the longest time to drag out and set up. The other three live on the bench. One of the things to watch on the KIM-1 is a lot of the signals come to the edge unbuffered. Can you say ESD? I've also lost as much TTL as MOS to ESD as most TTL lives near accessable connections (edge connectors, Keypads and the like). Typical TTL ESD failures are "stuck input syndrome" and threshold shifts. Allison

20 years, 10 months

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Great Shipment Today

by jrkeys＠concentric.net

A Budget rental truck pulled in today a load of items: 22 cases of books, 2 scopes (tube types-Teks), 2 printer/plotters, DATUM disk controller, Inex 6800 microcomputer system, Scientific micro system dual 8" floppy drive and controller, Atari Gravitar Video arcade game, and many other items. Took 3 1/2 hours to unload and store it all. From one of the book boxes I pulled digital logic handbook 1972 and it's a great read. There is a section on the LAB series with great pictures, one on hardware, power supplies, accessory modules, cables, and many other items. It's about 484 pages. Once I get a chance open all the book boxes and test out the hardware I will list the items fully.

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: Roger Merchberger <zmerch at 30below.com> > Date: Sun, 09 Oct 2005 12:47:02 -0400 > To: "General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts" <cctalk at classiccmp.org> > >Rumor has it that Chuck Guzis may have mentioned these words: >>On 10/9/2005 at 11:04 AM Scott Stevens wrote: >> >> >I've never seen a PCI card that had a floppy interface on it. I'm sure >> >they exist. Not in my junkbox, however, and I don't have the schematic >> >diagram for them. >> >>And there's a good reason for that. The PCI bus has no access to legacy >>8237-type DMA, so legacy driver code would not work on such a beast. > >I've seen several BIOSs can be set up for that - you can set the IRQ & DMA >on a per-slot basis. > >However, I'll admit that it's a crapshoot... you'd want to make sure that >the mobo supports what you want to do. ;-) I'm also *not* going to say that >WindersXP will actually support it, as you *might* have to disable >Plug-N-Pray to get it to work. > >Laterz, >Roger "Merch" Merchberger >-- Roger, you hit the nail on the head. If you want to use XP and the latest PentiumMMV at 200ghz and read old media it'seems there is an incongreuity there. It would appear more reasonable to use an older less underloaded machine and a more flexible version of winders for such a task. For tasks like this where the interface is going to be "unusual" XP, win2000 and NT are likely not the best choice as they are known to poorly or not support untested/certified hardware. 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: Sun, 09 Oct 2005 09:52:22 -0500 > To: "General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts" <cctalk at classiccmp.org> > >One thing I am wondering is if an 8-bit floppy controller card (the ones >from the PC-XT generation, which didn't have floppy IO on the >motherboard) could be modified (if needed) and contrived to work in a >more modern system that still has the ISA bus. If the particular I/O >locations are being used, simple cuts and adds could re-direct the I/O >ports. This would give the enterprising programmer a 765 controller >with relevant hardware to plug additional drives into. The original >PC-PC/XT controller is fully documented in the TechRef, and even has all >the cabling in place to support four floppies. Gee I posted about doing just that. If the machine has ISA there is no need to mod the card. Just disable (in bios) the mainboard level FDC and plug in the ISA unit and go. Also PCI cards work nice for that. Allison

20 years, 10 months

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8" floppy system needed to recover old game data

by ajp166＠bellatlantic.net

> >Subject: RE: 8" floppy system needed to recover old game data > From: "Joe R." <rigdonj at cfl.rr.com> > Date: Thu, 06 Oct 2005 09:06:17 +0000 > To: "General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts" <cctalk at classiccmp.org> > >>I'm afraid I am not very familiar with CPM systems. Could you please >>tell me why a conversion system is needed? > > It all depends on what system they were written on. There are hundreds >if not thousands of different CPM formats. Some of them are litterally one >of a kind and were only used on one type computer and can not be read on Hundreds but not thousands. It was not as bad as it seems as many systems could handle thir native formats plus a few. >anything else. A good example is the M2FM format that Intel used on their >MDS machines. That was a really breaker. As that could only read it's own. >Some also used hard sectored disks and there's no way that a >modern disk controller can deal with that. OTOH if you're lucky, they used In the 8" world there were fewer formats and most of the systems that were hard sector (altair and some text management systems) didn't run CP/M. Beside in the 8" world CP/M itself had established that 8" SSSD was the interchange format. For 8" stuff the prognosis is not so bad. However the media is so old that may be more of a problem with oxide shedding. Allison

20 years, 10 months

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8" floppy system needed to recover old game data

by ajp166＠bellatlantic.net

> >Subject: RE: 8" floppy system needed to recover old game data > From: Vintage Computer Festival <vcf at siconic.com> > Date: Sat, 08 Oct 2005 17:39:48 -0700 (PDT) > To: "General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts" <cctalk at classiccmp.org> > >On Thu, 6 Oct 2005, Allison wrote: > >> For 8" stuff the prognosis is not so bad. However the media is so old that >> may be more of a problem with oxide shedding. > >I haven't yet seen a floppy disk (and I have some probably as old as 30 >years by now) that have shed oxide. I have. It's not common and some vendors were more prone to it and humidity is a big factor. The earlier quality stuff as I said before didn't do it. Bit I do have some crap Nashua stuff from around 84ish that was known for it. Allison

20 years, 10 months

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MPX-16 census

by chenmel＠earthlink.net

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

20 years, 10 months

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PCs that support only one floppy drive in hardware

by pete＠dunnington.plus.com

On Oct 9 2005, 9:52, Scott Stevens wrote: > One thing I am wondering is if an 8-bit floppy controller card (the ones > from the PC-XT generation, which didn't have floppy IO on the > motherboard) could be modified (if needed) and contrived to work in a > more modern system that still has the ISA bus. If the particular I/O > locations are being used, simple cuts and adds could re-direct the I/O > ports. This would give the enterprising programmer a 765 controller > with relevant hardware to plug additional drives into. The original > PC-PC/XT controller is fully documented in the TechRef, and even has all > the cabling in place to support four floppies. It will work, at least on machines I've tried. I've had exactly the same problem as the restr of you -- only one pin for one drive select on the board, so only one floppy where I need (at least) two. And the BIOS behaved once it saw there were two floppies there. -- Pete Peter Turnbull Network Manager University of York

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: Patrick Finnegan <pat at computer-refuge.org> > Date: Sun, 09 Oct 2005 11:29:07 -0500 > To: "General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts" <cctalk at classiccmp.org> > >Allison declared on Sunday 09 October 2005 10:39 am: >> >Though, I'll have to say that I've never seen a PCI card with a >> > floppy controller on it (well, um, other than the Catweasel, of >> > course). >> >> I have a few and JDRmicrdevices still sells them. > >They don't list any on their website. They have ISA floppy controllers, >and PCI IDE controllers, but no PCI floppy controllers. Never seen much of what they sell on the website because they list only volume sellers there but the hard copy catalog listed them. >I guess it's possible that they have existed, but I can't find any >reference to anyone actually *selling* them. Can you come up with a >link to one? Not a problem for me. I have spares. Maybe they discontined then since 2004. Next step if ISA is out is a USB to floppy thing. Then again maybe you could just scrounge an older machine that isn't so crippled. Allison

20 years, 11 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: Sun, 09 Oct 2005 09:12:47 -0700 > To: "General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts" <cctalk at classiccmp.org> > >On 10/9/2005 at 11:04 AM Scott Stevens wrote: > >>I've never seen a PCI card that had a floppy interface on it. I'm sure >>they exist. Not in my junkbox, however, and I don't have the schematic >>diagram for them. > >And there's a good reason for that. The PCI bus has no access to legacy 8237-type DMA, so legacy driver code would not work on such a beast. Any PCI at the slowest was 33mhz, so PIO will do a floppy no problem. Allison

20 years, 11 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: Sun, 09 Oct 2005 11:04:39 -0500 > To: "General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts" <cctalk at classiccmp.org> >> Gee I posted about doing just that. If the machine has ISA there is >> no need to mod the card. Just disable (in bios) the mainboard level >> FDC and plug in the ISA unit and go. >> > >But does that work without digging in further? Does a PC/XT-era floppy >card replicate a PC-AT diskette controller? I am asking, since I've >never tackled such a project. It did for me. Though I had one really old XT class card that was so crippled 1.44 3.5" was out of it's range. Most of the later smaller ISA-8 cards were never a problem. >> Also PCI cards work nice for that. >> > >I've never seen a PCI card that had a floppy interface on it. I'm sure >they exist. Not in my junkbox, however, and I don't have the schematic >diagram for them. I must have a bigger junk box. I have two FDC/IDE (jumpers for disables) and several FDC/IDE/Serial/parallel Combo cards for PCI. They came out of PCI machines that predated the everything_on_one boards. JDRmicrodevices still sells some of them. Even if you can't (never ran into one) disable the on_main_board function many of the older cards can be set up for secondary FDC, IDE and so on. Then you may have to give up using the latest version of XP too. Allison

20 years, 11 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: Patrick Finnegan <pat at computer-refuge.org> > Date: Sun, 09 Oct 2005 10:14:31 -0500 > To: "General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts" <cctalk at classiccmp.org> > >On Sunday 09 October 2005 10:00, Scott Stevens wrote: >> On Sun, 09 Oct 2005 09:25:29 -0400 >> >> Allison <ajp166 at bellatlantic.net> wrote: >> > 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 >> >> An even better 'fix' would be to disable just the floppy interface on >> the motherboard and use an ISA SCSI interface (i.e. a 1542) of the >> generation when there were versions with a floppy interface onboard > >This doesn't work well when you have a recent enough machine that it >doesn't have ISA slots. Heck, I've got UNIX boxes from 1996 (getting >nearly on topic now) that have PCI but no ISA slots. > >Though, I'll have to say that I've never seen a PCI card with a floppy >controller on it (well, um, other than the Catweasel, of course). I have a few and JDRmicrdevices still sells them. Most hoever are not plain FDC though I have a few of those too. There are PCI FDC/IDE/serial combo cards that that can have any of all of those functions disabled. Around here it's not hard to find older cards at used computer stores. Allison

20 years, 11 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: Sun, 09 Oct 2005 11:00:30 -0500 > To: "General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts" <cctalk at classiccmp.org> >> This doesn't work well when you have a recent enough machine that it >> doesn't have ISA slots. Heck, I've got UNIX boxes from 1996 (getting >> nearly on topic now) that have PCI but no ISA slots. >> >Well, PCI was and is perceived as a 'good thing' and was never >PC-specific. It's no surprise that UNIX vendors adopted PCI but never >touched ISA. (didn't SGI have ISA, or maybe EISA slots, in some of >their workstations?) > >I don't have any machines 'recent' enough that they don't have ISA >slots, for the record. And, in fact, the particular Dell Optiplexes >that I continue to drone on about have a LOT of ISA slots if the >motherboard is installed in the mini-tower case. More, even, than we >had available on a stock PC-AT once you tied up a bunch of the slots >with disk controller, video, network card, etc. I've worked with a few machines that had NO ISA slots and the solution was PCI cards as they were available to do the job. With many of the cheaper all_on_one mainboards it was convenient to disable board level resources like video or sound to use a better or more convenient PCI or even ISA board. In some cases I did that avoid the sound system they used because it was impossible to get a good driver for the OS in question at that time. I never regarded that as a big deal or even difficult. Allison

20 years, 11 months

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LF: MIL MOD8 parts/software/information

by dave04a＠dunfield.com

Hi Guys, Recently acquired most of a MIL MOD8 - this is a Canadian 8008 machine >from 1974. Photos and documentation on my site. I got a complete chassis, as well as unpopulated ROM and RAM cards. What I don't have is the CPU board, Restart/TTYboard, input board or output board. If anyone has some leads on where I can locate these components, please let me know. I do have a copy of the MF8008 applications manual, which includes complete documentaion and schematics of the MOD8 machine. I also have several vector board which fit the backplane and match the form-factor of the MIL boards, so if I cannot find boards by other means, I will build them (which means I would need to find an 8008 CPU). Any parts, documentation or software for this machine would be most welcome - being keenly interested in Canadian vintage computers and their history, I would very much like to see this running someday. 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, 11 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: Sun, 09 Oct 2005 10:00:52 -0500 > To: "General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts" <cctalk at classiccmp.org> > >On Sun, 09 Oct 2005 09:25:29 -0400 >Allison <ajp166 at bellatlantic.net> wrote: > >> >> 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 >> > >An even better 'fix' would be to disable just the floppy interface on >the motherboard and use an ISA SCSI interface (i.e. a 1542) of the >generation when there were versions with a floppy interface onboard >(from systems that had NO 'AT Hard Disk Controler' hardware in them at >all back in the era when '286 motherboards didn't have onboard disk >I/O.) In fact, I have at least one such a card here and should give >that a try. (added benefit would be having SCSI I/O in the system) Is there are reading problem here? From the second sentence: "and disable the onboard controller" Was that clear enough? I spent five years maintaining PCs (over 40 of them) for a small company and I did a lot of hacking and fixing to keep old hardware going to not bust the budget. I've taken the newest of the new and disabled the onboard (on mainboard) functions to plug in better or prefered interfaces be they FDC, Sound of Video to avoid funky drivers or broken driver support. Why is a simple FDC such a big deal? Allison

20 years, 11 months

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eBay: Alphaserver 8400 (12x 21164@425MHz), VAX 8800, PDP/11-24

by jbglaw＠lug-owl.de

Hi! This is quite a nice collection of hardware: http://cgi.ebay.de/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&rd=1&item=5816476462 Starting bid is 500?, unfortunately the guy selling it is located in Switzerland. From a first view at the images, all parts are in quite good condition. MfG, JBG PS: I'm not affiliated with the seller, I just found that listing. -- Jan-Benedict Glaw jbglaw at lug-owl.de . +49-172-7608481 _ O _ "Eine Freie Meinung in einem Freien Kopf | Gegen Zensur | Gegen Krieg _ _ O f?r einen Freien Staat voll Freier B?rger" | im Internet! | im Irak! O O O ret = do_actions((curr | FREE_SPEECH) & ~(NEW_COPYRIGHT_LAW | DRM | TCPA));

20 years, 11 months

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Univac panel and mystery TTL chips

by pdp11＠saccade.com

Hi, I have a control panel from a Univac mainframe that I hope to re-animate someday. Unfortunately I know very little about Univac mainframes. First I'll go for broke: does anybody recognize this unit and have schematics for it? http://www.saccade.com/writing/projects/UnivacPanel/UnivacPanel.html No? OK, time for plan B, reverse engineering it. Most of the chips on the panel are straightforward 74xxx TTL, however, a number of them appear to have a seven digit part number instead of a regular 74xxx stamp. Is there a translation guide between this seven digit number and regular 74xxx numbers? Most of the 74xxx parts on the board also have these seven digit numbers. Any tips on how to guess the actual function would be most appreciated. Thanks, John Peterson www.saccade.com

20 years, 11 months

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

by cclist＠sydex.com

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 might be able to figure this one out, but if someone's got the wiring diagram (or knows of a source) , I'd be obliged. Thanks, Chuck

20 years, 11 months

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TEC FD-50x drives - known issues?

by ajp166＠bellatlantic.net

> >Subject: Re: TEC FD-50x drives - known issues? > From: Dave Dunfield <dave04a at dunfield.com> > Date: Sat, 08 Oct 2005 21:51:46 -0400 > To: "General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts" <cctalk at classiccmp.org> > >I've found a few Newtronics/Mitsumi HD drives which will fit (Data >connector is on the back left corner when drive faces you) ... one >option I am considering is to see if I can modify the motor control >board to go to 300 rpm (as far as I can tell there is no jumper) and >strap Pin2 to keep the drive in low-density mode - I can regen and >copy the disks to 80 track... But something more original would be >preferable if I can find it... Do the Newtronics DD drive have the >data connector in the position I described? Holding it face down and looking at the top the connector is bottom left side. Connector location is tight locations can be a pain. I've found sometime if it's far enough away (wrong enough) a jumper cable can be used to make ends meet. Space permitting. >Note that it's not so much a size problem, as the fact that there is >a little board directly behind the drive with 1" cables for the data >connectors - you simply can't put in drives with the data connector >on the other side (which is where most of the drives I have put it). Sounds like some of the TRS80 drive boxes. The connector landed just right for SA400 and nothing else. Again if the drive is the mirror opposite flipping the drive may fit IF mounted vertically. For example the FD55BV works in the NS* horizon only if the drive is oriented so that the connector is on the up side rather than down because the added depth for the connector hits the rectifiers. If mounted horizonatly that sorta stinks as most work poorly upside down. One other solution, this is bizzarro. It assumes the media is soft sector. Replace the drive with a 720k compatable 3.5" floppy in a 5.25 adaptor. The problem here is getting software from the 5.25" down to the 3.5" if there is only one drive possible. If there are two drives a simple copy from one to the other works. I hear crowds screaming, sure you will not use the full capacity but, it works. I've done this stunt in many machines (my 4/84 kaypro has two thin 3.5" where one HH 5.25" used to fit.) Allison

20 years, 11 months

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Analyzer was Re: KIM-1 repair advice wanted

by dwight.elvey＠amd.com

>From: "Hans Franke" <Hans.Franke at siemens.com> ---snip--- > First thing would be >to connect a logic analyzer to see if the CPU is still running >a programm in ROM or not. Hi What is it with logic analyzers. Why not just an oscilloscope. In most cases, one can be farther along with an 'oscope in finding what is wrong by the time one can get an analyzer connected and setup. I've only had one time that I ever needed an analyzer and even that time, it didn't work well because of the complexity of the problem ( design not failure ). I'll admit that I've often thought of making one of those address compare circuits to trigger the 'scope but by the time I'd get serious, I'd found the problem. Am I alone here or does everyone else think that an analyzer is the ultimate tool? Dwight

20 years, 11 months

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11/750 Boards

by allanshimer＠aol.com

Do you still have any of the CPU boards. I need an L0001, L0002 and L0008. Sincerely, Allan Shimer

20 years, 11 months

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TEAC FD-55GFR = Quad Density?

by dave04a＠dunfield.com

>>More and more machines are showing up without physical support (ie: >>a select) for drive B: ... I have two Intel P3 board which do not >>drive the B: select (which is very annoying since these are two of >>the best systems for handling oddball formats with Imagedisk). >> >>Floppy drives are disappearing completely from some new machines, >>and I doubt it will be long before the controller disappears along >>with them (if it hasn't started already). >> >> >> >That I suspect will still be built into the support chips since it will >be too much trouble >to remove it. Floppies are now a extra option -- I had to have new >computer built with one. >Everybody is going to R/W DVD's now.. First the drives/cables go, then the connectors (why pay for a connector on the board that "nobody wants") - eventually the FDC itself may go when new chipsets appear (next round of CPU). Me: I hanging on to my stash of P1/P2 full ISA machines...! 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, 11 months

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TEC FD-50x drives - known issues?

by dave04a＠dunfield.com

>Well some comments. I used to have a lot of them, most all ahve died. >I regard that particular drive as junk. Agreed completely. >The size problem.. I've encountered it with NS* Horizon and Advantage. >However I put FD55BVs in the NS* after moving the rectifier as I >prefer them for reliability. > >I found a few PC 360k drives (48tpi) marked Newtronics D503 which are >Mitsumi drives that seem ok and are the shorter length (7-3/8"). >They look like the TEC drives but not quite. > >I have toshiba, FD55xx(B, E, F and Gs) and they are the same length. >Older 286/386 PCs are the source of many of the TEC and mitsumi drives. In this case the attempt is to keep the machine as original as possible. I think replacing the drives is not too bad, however to put in a drive with the data connector in the "wrong" place will require modification to the interface board in the back of the disk enclosure, which I think he would prefer not to do. I've found a few Newtronics/Mitsumi HD drives which will fit (Data connector is on the back left corner when drive faces you) ... one option I am considering is to see if I can modify the motor control board to go to 300 rpm (as far as I can tell there is no jumper) and strap Pin2 to keep the drive in low-density mode - I can regen and copy the disks to 80 track... But something more original would be preferable if I can find it... Do the Newtronics DD drive have the data connector in the position I described? Note that it's not so much a size problem, as the fact that there is a little board directly behind the drive with 1" cables for the data connectors - you simply can't put in drives with the data connector on the other side (which is where most of the drives I have put it). 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, 11 months

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Analyzer was Re: KIM-1 repair advice wanted

by ajp166＠bellatlantic.net

> >Subject: Re: Analyzer was Re: KIM-1 repair advice wanted > From: "Jay West" <jwest at classiccmp.org> > Date: Sat, 08 Oct 2005 19:19:54 -0500 > To: "General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts" <cctalk at classiccmp.org> > >Someone wrote.... >>> I've been watching Ebay for one for over a year and >>> there have been NONE >>> listed. I guess their owner's don't want to part >>> with them. > >Actually, I saw an HP Logic Dart on ebay maybe.... six months ago or so. > >Jay West My use of logic dart was not aimed at the HP device but a lesser but similar varient. That name came from back when in a shop I ran many years ago one of the techs like to call the logic probe a "logic dart". Little did I know then. Tom was bit of a klutz and could trip sitting down so.. The story behind it was that one time he asked for "it" and ended up getting darted (stick) in the inner upper thigh because of a fumble dropping it on his lap. The descriptive name sorta stuck[sticks]. The one we used around the shop for minor logic work in scanners and the like was an Eico product had been modded with a sharp stainless point (aka Dart!). I still remember the look on his face when it happend. Can you say a near miss? He almost did. Now, all the pundits can have fun. Remember _logic dart_. Allison

20 years, 11 months

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Big-assed Nerd belt buckle

by vcf＠siconic.com

For the hickish nerds: http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=8224062317 -- 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, 11 months

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TEAC FD-55GFR = Quad Density?

by rigdonj＠cfl.rr.com

I found a pair of these drives and picked them up since my reference said that they were quad density drives AND they had DS-QD disks in them. However I looked on the net and found that everyone including Teac's site says that they are HD (1.2Mb) drives. Which are they? I THINK these have a jumper that chages the speed from 360 RPM to 300RPM. Will this make the drive a QD drive? I thought the heads needed to be differnt since the magnetic media on the disks have different permeability. Joe

20 years, 11 months

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Datum half inch controller

by james.w.stephens＠gmail.com

This is a really good controller if you want to run a pertec tape deck with a formatter. This puts out the classic 100 pin formatted pertec that can be run by any pertec controller. There is a converter from this 100 pin connection to the dual 50's that became predominate when cipher popularized them. I have one of the pertec adapters somewhere if someone needs the pinout if you don't already have the 100 pin cable :-) Datum Inc. Magnetic Tape Controller 5091 Item number: 5816293974 Jim

20 years, 11 months

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8" floppy system needed to recover old game data

by Watzman＠neo.rr.com

Re: "Each track (77 tracks per side * 2 sides) can hold about 8 sectors of 1024 bytes each, or about 15 sectors of 512 bytes, or about 28 sectors of 256 bytes." It's not a standard format, but it is actually possible to reliably get nine sectors of 1024 bytes on each track of a double-density 8" disk. I supported such a format in all of the operating systems that I wrote for the Zenith Z-100. It gives you 1,419,264 bytes of formatted storage per diskette.

20 years, 11 months

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Adding another floppy /

by ajp166＠bellatlantic.net

pulling the thread further off.... One solution for the floppy problem in the dos/winders world is your run of the mill 486 board with ISA bus. They do not disallow much as it was easily done to install two floppy/ide/serial/parallel cards using all of the available port addresses that were nominally assigned. The result of that is a system with 4 floppies, 4 IDE drives and 4 serial ports and two parallel ports. The motherboard is later 486/DX66 with 24mb and ISA16 bus and a large (256k cache). I was lucky to find a large horizontal case that allowed for a lot of drives and 300W of power. So the result is a 3.5 (720/1.44 floppy), 5.25 (48tpi teac FD55BV) and 5.25 (96tpi teac fd55gfr) and two 3.5" IDE drives at 512mb, IDE CDrom each plus N2000 compatable NIC and a 1mb VGA video card. The box is still not full at this point. With this transfers from any to most is easy, it runs any OS I'd care to use and have on hand (DOS, W3.1, W95b, NT4[WS and server], Linux, OS/2warp3, DRI Concurrent dos386V3). Rather than futz with the latest and greatest hardware and software for doing stuff that is mostly routine and very nontaxing for a 486 and DOS this was the easiest solution. It's proven handy for more than a few tasks and having most needed hardware in the box it is a workhorse. Having at least 500mb per drive is enough for most OSs if not choked with apps and still plenty of space for storage. CDrom makes install easy and fast. The extra parallel port is handy with a kangaroo parallel port to IDE adaptor. The three floppies means nothing common is likely unreadable. It's also a respectably fast enough to run MYz80 CP/M/z80 emulator. That is handy for pulling stuff off CP/M disks and munging it or even development. Allison

20 years, 11 months

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8" floppy system needed to recover old game data

by ajp166＠bellatlantic.net

> >Subject: Re: 8" floppy system needed to recover old game data > From: "Chuck Guzis" <cclist at sydex.com> > Date: Sat, 08 Oct 2005 10:30:15 -0700 > To: "General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts" <cctalk at classiccmp.org> > >On 10/8/2005 at 1:14 PM Barry Watzman wrote: > >>It's not a standard format, but it is actually possible to reliably get >>nine sectors of 1024 bytes on each track of a double-density 8" disk. I >>supported such a format in all of the operating systems that I wrote for >>the Zenith Z-100. It gives you 1,419,264 bytes of formatted storage per >>diskette. That was not a particulary strange format, I'd seen it on a Morrow system and the 765 even supported it. Here's an oddball. 28sectors by 128 bytes single density 8". Seems with minor programming differnces of the 1771 for smaller gaps you could end up with enough space at the end of a track for 2 more sectors or nearly 20k per disk. I had always found that 8" at 256k per side (128/26) single density was a good medium and for DD 512k per side and DDDS at 1mb was clean and easy to live with. The CP/M world had an oddity that people using it may have noticed. At 256k (241k useable) was near the minimum for not feeling terribly cramped. Smaller was painful and always needed more drives and once you hit 512k or bigger life got easier. I found that for 8" DSDD (1meg) and two drives was a good working environment for serious work. When I started with 5.25 floppies life got hard (80k perdisk!) and didn't improve till 320/360k (40track 2sDD). The prefered when I build a CP/M system with floppies these days is not less than 720/780k (either 3.5" or 96tpi 5.25 DSDD) or the minimum equivelent in semiconductor (eeprom,flash or battery backedRAM). Hope this sorta give a clue why people in the CP/M space tended to push for more space per disk. Keep in mind that hard disks and controllers were expensive even past the mid 80s. Allison

20 years, 11 months

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Adding another floppy (Was: TEAC FD-55GFR = Quad Density?

by ajp166＠bellatlantic.net

> >Subject: Re: Adding another floppy (Was: TEAC FD-55GFR = Quad Density? > From: woodelf <bfranchuk at jetnet.ab.ca> > Date: Sat, 08 Oct 2005 10:50:09 -0600 > To: General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts <cctalk at classiccmp.org> > >> >I could never figure why windows only expected 1 drive -- C: ??? winders defaults to C: but I've installed it as other. The gotcha is the default boot in many bios was C: is first hard drive and also default hard drive boot. >When I used dos the problem was pached DOS's to support >more than 32 MEG of data. My gripe with windows it does not >support back of the system, but only what it thinks you need >backed up. DOS you could back up. ??? using W95B I never had problems with backup (aka hackup and destroy) (is was an instal time option). Under win 3.1 There were both backup for dos and winders if properly installed (an option!). Allison

20 years, 11 months

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CP/M on an Apple II ?

by ajp166＠bellatlantic.net

> >Subject: Re: CP/M on an Apple II ? > From: Fred Cisin <cisin at xenosoft.com> > Date: Sat, 08 Oct 2005 09:46:53 -0700 (PDT) > To: "General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts" <cctalk at classiccmp.org> > >Did the Quadlink and/or Trackstar 128 cable to Apple drives? I have a trackstar 128 and it did all of the "Apple" disks. It also could access regular PC drives I understand. Strange beast for a non Apple user. Allison

20 years, 11 months

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8" floppy system needed to recover old game data

by ajp166＠bellatlantic.net

> >Subject: Re: 8" floppy system needed to recover old game data > From: Andy Piercy <andy.piercy at gmail.com> > Date: Thu, 06 Oct 2005 18:05:14 +0100 > To: "General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts" <cctalk at classiccmp.org> > >Kieron, > >I have an operational Z80 CP/M system that has 8" floppy drives which >can read both DSDD, DDSD, SSDD, SSSD disks, and I can push the data >out the serial port to a PC. > >Only problemo is I'm also located in the UK Fleet in Hampshire, but >any good to you? > >Ta, > >Andy. I have a operational z80 8" system here and it's 3000 miles closer to something thats' still 3000miles away. :) Hardly helps though. Ideally someone on the US west coast can handle it and ship the data via internet. Allison > >On 06/10/05, Kieron Wilkinson <Kieron.Wilkinson at paretopartners.com> wrote: >> >> Hi, >> >> I am hoping to help an ex-games developer access some very old game data >> and source code stored on 8" floppy disks from a CPM system, data that >> simply does not exist anywhere else and will otherwise be lost. (It is >> the kind of stuff destined for MAME :)). I personally can possibly get >> access to such a system, however we do not want to risk transporting the >> media any more than necessary, and I am far FAR removed from where the >> disks are located in San Francisco (I live in the UK). >> >> Does anybody near here (or willing to travel there!) have such a system >> and could help us out? As I said this is a one-of-a-kind opportunity >> which should unearth games that were previously thought not to exist >> (though most were not completed AFAIK). There is always the chance that >> they are already lost (corrupted media), but we just won't know until we >> try. >> >> I would be over the moon if somebody could help us out with this! If you >> can help, or know somebody else who can help, please contact me! >> >> Thanks, >> >> Kieron Wilkinson >> >> ============================ >> Pareto Investment Management Limited is a Mellon Financial Company. Pareto Investment Management Limited is authorised and regulated by the Financial Services Authority (Firm Ref. No. 416024), and registered in England and Wales with Number 03169281. Registered Office: Mellon Financial Centre, 160 Queen Victoria Street, London EC4V 4LA, United Kingdom. Pareto is the registered trademark of Pareto Investment Management Limited. This message may contain confidential and privileged information and is intended solely for the use of the named addressee. Access, copying or re-use of the e-mail or any information contained therein by any other person is not authorised. If you are not the intended recipient please notify us immediately by returning the e-mail to the originator and then immediately delete this message. >> >> >>

20 years, 11 months

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TEAC FD-55GFR = Quad Density?

by dave04a＠dunfield.com

>> 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? More and more machines are showing up without physical support (ie: a select) for drive B: ... I have two Intel P3 board which do not drive the B: select (which is very annoying since these are two of the best systems for handling oddball formats with Imagedisk). Floppy drives are disappearing completely from some new machines, and I doubt it will be long before the controller disappears along with them (if it hasn't started already). 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, 11 months

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8" floppy system needed to recover old game data

by ajp166＠bellatlantic.net

> >Subject: Re: 8" floppy system needed to recover old game data > From: Jules Richardson <julesrichardsonuk at yahoo.co.uk> > Date: Sat, 08 Oct 2005 15:35:53 +0100 > To: General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts <cctalk at classiccmp.org> > >Scott Stevens wrote: > >I'm not so sure - I seem to find that 3.5" floppies bought today only >handle a few read/write cycles before they die, whereas floppies from >back in the disks' heyday are *much* more reliable. There seems to have >been a drop in the quality of the physical media itself over time. there has been. However I ran into this problem in a work situation and EVERY failed disk had a radial scratch at teh directory track. So I checked the drives and guess what. The heads had a nasty buildup of oxide. After cleaning new media would last till the problem occured again due to same cause. Some sleuthing found this. In every case the drive was lightly used, maybe once every few days. The inside of the systems were filled with dust and lint. The airpath was usualy PC suck in blow out the back and unfiltered. Changing the direction of the fan, adding a filter and cleaning the dust and lint made the problem go away. Seems one of the paths for air going in was through the floppy drive despite the door and the dust and lint would build up and make the head a good abrasive. This fix reduced the media failure rate for maybe one or two uses to months of reuses. >Funnily enough, storage quality seems to have got *worse* over time. >CDs, DVDs and modern hard drives all seem piss-poor when it comes to Thre are two problems. Media changes for faster writers and also plain poor quality. I've seen worng media for the writer in use give poor results. > >Maybe there is some sense in all these USB storage devices (much as I >dislike USB). At least there are no moving parts or optical shenanigans >to go wrong, so if data written to such a device verifies it presumably >should be good for subsequent reads... The USB flash devices are neat, relaible and can die completely unexpectedly. I friend lost 3-400mb of stuff on one when it just quit after a year of use. Fortunatly it was used for a transfer for backup between non-networked systems. Redundancy: With media and drive being cheap I have no qualms using a 1GB drive as removable media be it SCSI or IDE. Same for smaller or larger stuff. In the IDE arena I use a Parallel to IDE adaptor to utilize a bunch of 200-500mb drives as bulk store, install disks and working backups. Same thing with SCSI drives, I must have near 10 RZ56 (680mb 5" full size SCSI) and those not in systems have copies of those in systems. The safest backup is multiple backups on multiple medias. Here I use two systems where the system has two drives (non raid) and the nominal D: is for storage as any winders messups generally only munges drive C:. then there is a slow p90 with BIG SCSI disks playing catch for backup. Add to that floppies and CDroms(multiple copies) it would take a serious disaster to make the data and applications install sets a total loss. This while PC centric is not limited to PC only, I do same for CP/M via multiple systems and even use the PC systems to save CP/M stuff via emulator then there are the VAX backups. Layers of layers. Allison

20 years, 11 months

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TEC FD-50x drives - known issues?

by dave04a＠dunfield.com

Hi Guys, I've been trying to get the drives from a Nabu Cable PC working for the museum in Toronto who wants to put a working system on display... The drives are TEC FD-501, single-sided DD drives. Some time ago I posted a request for technical information on the TEC FD-503 drives in one of my Morrows, because one of them had failed - the 501 is the same drive, same board, just without the top head and connector/components on the board. I didn't find any information, and ended up abandoning the drive and installing a panasonic DD drive - unfortunately this isn't an option for this system without a fair bit of work, because the drives are contained in an enclosure just big enough for the drives, and connect to a board located directly behind them with 1" cables for the data connectors. The data connectors are on the oppposide side from all the other DD drives I have (of course - and I have a fairly good selection!). The drives also have a silkscreened "Nabu" faceplate which would be nice to keep for the display. Both drives have failed - It is not a configuration/jumpering issue, because they were working - also, I have the exact same system, disk box and drives, and mine work - they are jumpered exactly the same. I've tried cleaning the heads, checking for other mechanical issues, and replacing all of the electrolitics on the drive boards - I can't do much more without technical information. I did try connecting a panasonic drive (had to hold it out of the case to get the cables to go on), and it worked perfectly - the problem is definately the drives. After some looking, I managed to find another pair of identical TEC FD-501 drives - these came from a MSI disk box which had stopped working, and guess what - both of those drives do not work either (jumpered exactly the same as my working ones). That makes 5 out of 8 TEC FD-50x drives drives that I have come across in the past year which are faulty - does anyone know if there is a known issue with these drives? So, I'm looking for (in this order): - Technical information on the drives which would enable me to repair these ones. - A pair of working FD-501 (or FD-503) drives which I could swap the faceplates with to closely aproximate the "original" drives. - Any DD 5.25" drives which will fit. Only need single sided, but double-sided will work. With the drive sitting on the table facing you (connectors at rear), the data connector must be in the left rear corner with pin2 on top, closest to the centerline of the drive. Can anyone help? 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, 11 months

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TEC FD-50x drives - known issues?

by ajp166＠bellatlantic.net

> >Subject: TEC FD-50x drives - known issues? > From: Dave Dunfield <dave04a at dunfield.com> > Date: Fri, 07 Oct 2005 23:38:55 -0400 > To: cctalk at classiccmp.org > >Hi Guys, > >I've been trying to get the drives from a Nabu Cable PC working >for the museum in Toronto who wants to put a working system on >display... > >The drives are TEC FD-501, single-sided DD drives. > >Some time ago I posted a request for technical information on the >TEC FD-503 drives in one of my Morrows, because one of them had >failed - the 501 is the same drive, same board, just without the >top head and connector/components on the board. --------------snip---------- - A pair of working FD-501 (or FD-503) drives which I could swap > the faceplates with to closely aproximate the "original" drives. > >- Any DD 5.25" drives which will fit. Only need single sided, but > double-sided will work. With the drive sitting on the table facing > you (connectors at rear), the data connector must be in the left > rear corner with pin2 on top, closest to the centerline of the > drive. Well some comments. I used to have a lot of them, most all ahve died. I regard that particular drive as junk. Never tried to troubleshoot any and it appears to be in the read or write logic (they select, spin, light the light but no data). For most systems better working drives were easy to fit so no concern was given. The size problem.. I've encountered it with NS* Horizon and Advantage. However I put FD55BVs in the NS* after moving the rectifier as I prefer them for reliability. I found a few PC 360k drives (48tpi) marked Newtronics D503 which are Mitsumi drives that seem ok and are the shorter length (7-3/8"). They look like the TEC drives but not quite. I have toshiba, FD55xx(B, E, F and Gs) and they are the same length. Older 286/386 PCs are the source of many of the TEC and mitsumi drives. Allison

20 years, 11 months

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CP/M on an Apple II ?

by ajp166＠bellatlantic.net

> >Subject: Re: CP/M on an Apple II ? > From: jim stephens <jwstephens at msm.umr.edu> > Date: Sat, 08 Oct 2005 03:19:11 -0700 > To: General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts <cctalk at classiccmp.org> > >Brent Hilpert wrote: > >><snip> >> > >>the dead guy's ancient >>Apple II/e. >> >> 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! >> >> >> >> >There of course the card made for the apple ][ which booted and ran >cpm. I think there was (is) >an equivalent for the 2/e. There were a number of Z80 cards for the Apple ][ for the purpose of running cpm and compatable apps. >actually this version is not that uncommon. main problem was getting >data from other cpm's of the >time (early 80's) to this system. If you ran it w/o 80 column support, >the 40 column video of the apple 2 was very annoying. There was also an 80 column card and with a serial card there were two simple problems to move data from other CP/M systems (UP and DOWN). >I would assume there would be dbase or some spreadsheet program he could >be using to keep >data. Also the 5 1/4 disks would be much better than the original cpm >8" for a traveler. Dbase was available for Apple as both native (6502) and CP/M (8080/z80) along with multiplan. Allison

20 years, 11 months

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CBM 1541 to PC

by ygehrich＠yahoo.com

Does anybody know anything about this or have experience with it or other ways to access a 1541 from a PC ... XM1541 System ... ... Connects your WINDOWS PC to a Commodore 1541 ...

20 years, 11 months

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Manuals available :

by jos.mar＠bluewin.ch

I have available the folllowing manuals : Plessey PM80 Core Memory manual ( Omnibus core mem boards,, extensive description ) Applied Digital Data Systems "How to use the Consul 520" (Description of an ascii terminal) Calcomp 836 Technische beschreibung ( Manual for early Calcomp plotter, in German ) Calcomp Pen and Paper user guide. DEC OS8 mark sense batch user guide Control Data NOS2 reference set volume 3 "System commands" (For CDC cyber machines) Terms : Free , you pay P&P from Zurich Switzerland. In case of multiple requests i will decide in an utterly undemocrating way who gets what. Jos Dreesen

20 years, 11 months

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uk.comp.vintage

by julesrichardsonuk＠yahoo.co.uk

I've not seen anyone else mention it, so for the other UK folks on the list it's worth mentioning that this newsgroup has shown up. So far low-traffic, and seems to be mainly 8-bit fans who are into games, but it might be worth keeping an eye on. I mentioned there that we're all over here on classiccmp :-) cheers Jules

20 years, 11 months

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TEAC FD-55GFR = Quad Density?

by ajp166＠bellatlantic.net

> >Subject: TEAC FD-55GFR = Quad Density? > From: "Joe R." <rigdonj at cfl.rr.com> > Date: Fri, 07 Oct 2005 19:15:04 +0000 > To: cctalk at classiccmp.org > > I found a pair of these drives and picked them up since my reference said >that they were quad density drives AND they had DS-QD disks in them. >However I looked on the net and found that everyone including Teac's site >says that they are HD (1.2Mb) drives. Which are they? I THINK these have a >jumper that chages the speed from 360 RPM to 300RPM. Will this make the >drive a QD drive? I thought the heads needed to be differnt since the >magnetic media on the disks have different permeability. > > Joe TEAC FD-55GFR aka DEC RX33. Quad density/1.2mb PC drive. QD term is appled to any drive that does 96TPI two sided normal rotation speed(300rpm). The Teac can also do the abnormal(360rpm) PC speed and there are both jumpers and pins on the edge connector to control that. Good solid drive that is very flexible. I have a bunch I kept as they cant be beat with a big stick. Allison

20 years, 11 months

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Two Zenith MiniSports listed at VCM

by chenmel＠earthlink.net

I thought I would try something new, so I just posted two Zenith MiniSport systems I have for auction at Sellam's VCM website. This is my first VCM listing, I thought I should give it a try.

20 years, 11 months

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The MSCPSCSI project status

by vax9000＠gmail.com

Hi, list, I am happy to let you know that Rev. 1 cought up with Rev. 0 almost surely (a.s.). There is still long way to go, though. cheers, vax, 9000

20 years, 11 months

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KIM-1 repair advice wanted

by pete＠dunnington.plus.com

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. I can't get it to do more than occasionally display a single zero, on the leftmost 7-segment display. A cursory look with a logic probe (and no docs to hand) shows the clock is running and at least a few address lines are too. I bet it's a memory fault. What are the common faults? I'm hoping it's one of the 2102 RAMs, because I stand a chance of having a suitable replacement. However, I fear it's more likely a 6530, and I assume they're unobtanium. Has anyone ever come up with a kludge to effectively use a 6532 (and are they any easier to find?) with an EPROM? Or anything else? -- Pete Peter Turnbull Network Manager University of York

20 years, 11 months

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Original PDP-8 spares

by prbotha＠hotmail.com

Hi About 10 years ago I obtained what seems to be the entire set of plug-boards, the two wire-wrapped backplanes as well as the complete core memory module from an original PDP-8. I also have the front panel, but I might want to keep that in my collection. I'm thinking of selling these components (possibly on eBay) to somebody who might want to keep them as spares, or who is reviving one of these monsters. The catch is that it is in South Africa, though I don't expect the postage on the cards themselves to be prohibitive. The backplanes might be a quite a bit more (heavy & large) Obviously I cannot say whether they are still working, but what I can say is that I rescued as much of the complete computer as I could from a guy who was going to sell it to a scrap iron place. He had tendered on it at a redundant equipment auction held by a prominent SA scientific institution. I had no storage space at the time so I was forced to let the (very heavy & bulky) frame and power supplies go :^( Do you guys (and gals) expect it to be worth my while listing it ? Maybe at the marketplace ? Would there be import restrictions into the USA on something like this ? Any comments greatly appreciated... Many thanks Pieter Botha ============================ _________________________________________________________________ Get a massive 2 GB e-mail inbox - upgrade to Hotmail Plus today! http://join.msn.com/?pgmarket=en-xe&DI=1054&XAPID=1816

20 years, 11 months

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TEAC FD-55GFR = Quad Density?

by dave04a＠dunfield.com

At 19:15 07/10/2005, you wrote: > I found a pair of these drives and picked them up since my reference said >that they were quad density drives AND they had DS-QD disks in them. >However I looked on the net and found that everyone including Teac's site >says that they are HD (1.2Mb) drives. Which are they? I THINK these have a >jumper that chages the speed from 360 RPM to 300RPM. Will this make the >drive a QD drive? I thought the heads needed to be differnt since the >magnetic media on the disks have different permeability. > > Joe One of my favorite FDDs. These will do either HD or DD (called QD because it is 80 tracks). The recording density (HD or DD/QD) is defined by interface pin #2. 'LG' strap ON : Pin2 Hi = DD/QD, Pin2 Low = HD 'LG' strap OFF: Pin2 Hi = HD, Pin2 Low = DD/QD You also need to run the drive at 300 RPM in you are using a standard 250khz transfer rate controller - To do this, put strap 'I' ON - this will run at 360 during HD operation, and 300 during DD/QD operation - with 'I' OFF, the drives runs at 360 rpm all the time. NOTE: A PC controller transfers data to HD drives running in DD/QD mode at 300khz, which means that PC drives always run at 360rpm - but for a non PC/HD controller, the data rate will be 250khz, and you need to jumper the drive to run at 300rpm. 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, 11 months

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KIM-1 repair advice wanted

by dwight.elvey＠amd.com

>From: ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk > >> >> On Oct 6 2005, 22:03, Tony Duell wrote: >> > > fear it's more likely a 6530, and I assume they're unobtanium. Has >> > > anyone ever come up with a kludge to effectively use a 6532 >> >> > My Commodore 8250LP disk drive has an official kludgeboard in what >> seems >> > to be a socket designed for an 6530. It contains a 6532, a ROM, and a >> > simple TTL chip ('04 or something like that). >> >> Sounds like a start. I obviously can't get this fixed for, er, today, > >Argh, I misremembered it :-(. I've found the schematic I traced out. It >contains a 6530 (not a 6532), a 2716, and a 74LS04. > >The 6530 pins are wirrd to corresponding pins on the header, apart from >RS0/, which is tied high (to disable the internal ROM of that chip). The >2716 A0..A9 go to the corresponding header pins, A10 is grounded. D0..D7 >on the 2716 also go to the obvious header pins. OE/ goes to RS0/ on the >header. CS/ is Phi_2, inverted by one of the gates in the '04. > > I don;t know if you could do a similar thing with a 6532, I think you >could. At least this would let you use any 6530 with the appropriate >chip-select polarites, no matter what was in the ROM. Hi Tony This is not totally true. I don't recall just what it was but there are some mask options that are not easily handled from the outside of the part. I just don't recall what it was. I was looking at doing something similar rather than pay about $120 to replace a sound board on my Gottlieb Genie pinball machine. As I recall it was an inversion of one of the data port's outputs as a mask option or something like that. Dwight

20 years, 11 months

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MPX-16 census

by chrism3667＠yahoo.com

dont have one, but want one. I hope youll make disk images available. --- 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

20 years, 11 months

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OT for a sec: US wiring sources of info

by ajp166＠bellatlantic.net

> >Subject: Re: OT for a sec: US wiring sources of info > From: Alistair MacDonald <a.macdonald+classiccmp at slitesys.demon.co.uk> > Date: Fri, 07 Oct 2005 17:50:53 +0100 > To: General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts <cctalk at classiccmp.org> > >Chuck Guzis wrote: > >> If I remember what my friend from Aylesbury told me aobut UK wiring, it >> isn't uncommon for a 50 amp 220 volt pair to be run to all outlets; > >Your friend would appear to live in a different UK to me. It is however >common practice for the outlets to be in a ring with a 30A fuse in the >fusebox. Well UK and USA differ on wiring and voltage. We often have large numbers of outlets (parallel connection) per fuse/breaker. For example this house has 9 rooms and three breakers control the bulk of the outlets (1957 construction). And added outlets since then are on new breakers. This is typical of homes more than 15-20 yers old and varies a lot. the other is MY understanding is UK is 230V where we use 115/120. Further the mains are Line/Line in UK and here they are line/neutral. The differnce is under nominal conditions one side of the outlet is at earth potential (or very close). We add the third prong as earth or safety ground. >> the fuse being in the plug of the appliance. He also mentioned that, >> although in theory, each appliance is to be fused according to its >> current use, the common practice is to install a 13 amp fuse in >> everything as a replacement. > >Most people don't understand the difference and it is more annoying to >get the correct fuse. It isn't helped by the manufacturers supplying >items with the wrong fuse. Those of us who perform Portable Appliance >Tests on things get very annoyed at having to replace the fuses on the >first test. Anyone want any 13A fuses? 8-) While a good practice the design differnce here is internal fuse (or on equipment) for equipment fault and circuit (breaker box) fuse to protects building wiring from fault or overload. fire people often report that electrical fires resulting from circuit overload (impropper fusing or use of under weight extension cords.) more often than an appliance causing fires. From what you say it's done the same there only location of the equipment fuse is at the connector. Each has it's merits. I may add here we also have fixed appliences that use 230V line/line for power too allow lower line currents that come with higher voltages. Devices like that are electric ranges, Ovens, clothes dryers and generally any non portable appliance that would draw 20A or more at 115/120V. US household generally have power delivers from the pole as 230V Line/Line aand 115/120V line/neutral. A code specifies that neutral will be bonded to earth (via pipe or ground rod) at only one point. From that point protective ground and neutral will be distributed to all loads either as star or bus. Allison

20 years, 11 months

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2002 issues of IEEE Annals?

by RMeenaks＠olf.com

I have the digital subscription for these via my school. I'll see if I can get them for you... Cheers, Ram

20 years, 11 months

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2002 issues of IEEE Annals?

by news＠computercollector.com

Hi, does anyone have the April/June and July/September issues (Vol. 24, nos. 2 and 3) of the IEEE Annals of the History of Computing? I need these for a research project. Thanks! - 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, 11 months

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KIM-1 repair advice wanted

by pete＠dunnington.plus.com

On Oct 6 2005, 22:03, Tony Duell wrote: > > fear it's more likely a 6530, and I assume they're unobtanium. Has > > anyone ever come up with a kludge to effectively use a 6532 > My Commodore 8250LP disk drive has an official kludgeboard in what seems > to be a socket designed for an 6530. It contains a 6532, a ROM, and a > simple TTL chip ('04 or something like that). Sounds like a start. I obviously can't get this fixed for, er, today, but perhaps I can look at it over the weekend. If not, it will just have to be a static display on Wednesday. -- Pete Peter Turnbull Network Manager University of York

20 years, 11 months

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EECO Paper Tape Reader Pinout?

by rigdonj＠cfl.rr.com

Does anyone know what the pinout for this PTR is? This is a EECO model TRS9200BBDED. It appears to be ann 8 bit reader and has a DB-25M connector and mounts in a 19" rack. Joe

20 years, 11 months

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8" floppy system needed to recover old game data

by ajp166＠bellatlantic.net

> >Subject: 8" floppy system needed to recover old game data > From: "Barry Watzman" <Watzman at neo.rr.com> > Date: Fri, 07 Oct 2005 11:46:29 -0400 > To: <cctech at classiccmp.org> > > >Let's simplify this ... A LOT. > >The most common disk format (BY FAR) for CP/M was 8-inch, single sided, >single density. Already stated but it's very important to repeat it. >If they are in that format, then virtually any CP/M system with 8" floppy >disk drives can read the disks (assuming that they are still readable). It >is very unlikely to matter what disk controller was used to write the disks, >it is very unlikely to matter what system originally created the disks. The >8" SSSD format is "gold standard interchangeable" among virtually all CP/M >systems with 8" floppy drives. And it was, BY FAR, the most common CP/M >disk format. Most 8" softsector systems that did "other formats" also maintained the 8" SSSD standard. >Finding a working CP/M system with 8" drives should not be difficult. I >have 3 of them here (I'm in Ohio, USA). There are still many thousands of >running CP/M systems around. A slightly greater problem is getting the >files moved from the 8" CP/M floppy disks to another [more useful] form of >media. What you really want is a system with both 8" and 5.25" floppy >drives, and a PC with 5.25" floppy drives. Such a system would allow you to >move the files from 8" CP/M to DOS/Windows, which is probably the objective. The latter, moving the files is trivial. Procomm on a PC and any of the modem programs on the CP/M system is easily done. Some systems like mine runs 3.5" floppies as well plus a program called dos to write 720k format DOS floppies which is very handy! Other do it by writing 8" to 360k 5.25 and relying on a pc with same disk and using one of many programs to read the disk at the file level. >My experience in reading 8" diskettes written in the 1970's has been >excellent. I have hundreds, probably a couple of thousand such disks, and I >have only had a single digit number of diskettes that I have been unable to >read out of all of those. Others who have actually had experience with >large numbers of 8" disks also report very high success rates with disks >that have been stored in climate-controlled environments. Now if the disks >were outside in a garage for 20 years, that would be another matter of >course, but for well stored disks, readability is not usually an issue. My experience is mixed, I generally assume readable but occasional bad media show up. I've had more likely due to poor storage they were subjected to beforehand. A side note is that most of the bad media was mid 80s 3M manufacture [remember the "blackwatch" audio tape that binder crapped after a few years] or poorly stored. My PDP-11 (RX01) disks are typically 35 years old for some masters. Yet some of the early 80s cheap (third party) 8" media has failed. Maxell Dysan and BASF were always the best and I still have an unopened box or two. >It is possible that the disks are not SSSD (single sided, single density), >and if that is the case, then the problem becomes far more complex. Once >you get away from 8" SSSD, there is no standard disk format, rather there >are hundreds of different formats specific to each implementation of CP/M. >This could [greatly] complicate recovery, however, under no circumstances >would this make recovery impossible. CP/M is highly adaptable, and with >some effort (programming) it would be possible, first, to determine the >format, and, second, to adapt any CP/M system to be able to read any disks >for which it had the correct type of drive. The only other format that shows up is Intel MDS using the double density M2FM(oddball), I must have a dozen of these that I can't read. I point this out as some games developers used MDS as their development platform and debug platoform using the MDS ICE. Usually thier budget was smaller and they used generic systems. >In general, unless the format is ***VERY*** non-standard, it doesn't matter >what the controller was that wrote the disks. Most systems used Western >Digital 17xx controllers, some did use NEC 765 controllers (which existed >for a couple of years before the PC came out), and a few used discreet logic >controllers. But for the most part (and in particular between the WD and >NEC based controllers), disks were interchangeable with regard to being >READ. FYI: the NEC 765 was sampled in early 1980, production 1980 4thQ, IBM PC was Q3 1981. It wasnt a few years. The 1771/1793 was the defacto CP/M FDC through 1981 and dominent after that with only new designs after '81 picking up on the 765 (compupro and some of the system on a single board vendors). In any case for 8" SSSD it was not an issue as both NEC and WD controllers were fully capable and compatable. >A few people mentioned hard-sectored media. While hard sector 8" disk >systems did exist (I have two of them here), it was very, very rare for >hard-sectored media or systems to run CP/M. Invariably, systems using >hard-sector 8" media ran proprietary operating systems. You can assume that >any 8" CP/M system was soft-sectored and be correct at about the 99% level. Hard sector 8" system were rare, unusual and many of the host systems were difficult to program (new bios) or unsuitable for CP/M operation. Another watch for thing. I have media (Maxel 2Dxd, two sided) that was usually used for two sided and the sector hole is different and some older drives do not see index as a result. This occured to me using an old SA800 and the media was actually used and formatted as as single sided SD on a Compupro Disk1 using QUME drives. It was a simple matter of using an 8" drive that could sense index in either location (sa860). I mention this as users and integrators of CP/M systems often did an occasional strange thing and if a disk doesnt read it can be an innocent error thats easily fixed. As been repeated else where and by myself the 5.25" world was not as orderly. Allison

20 years, 11 months

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8" floppy system needed to recover old game data

by Watzman＠neo.rr.com

Let's simplify this ... A LOT. The most common disk format (BY FAR) for CP/M was 8-inch, single sided, single density. If they are in that format, then virtually any CP/M system with 8" floppy disk drives can read the disks (assuming that they are still readable). It is very unlikely to matter what disk controller was used to write the disks, it is very unlikely to matter what system originally created the disks. The 8" SSSD format is "gold standard interchangeable" among virtually all CP/M systems with 8" floppy drives. And it was, BY FAR, the most common CP/M disk format. Finding a working CP/M system with 8" drives should not be difficult. I have 3 of them here (I'm in Ohio, USA). There are still many thousands of running CP/M systems around. A slightly greater problem is getting the files moved from the 8" CP/M floppy disks to another [more useful] form of media. What you really want is a system with both 8" and 5.25" floppy drives, and a PC with 5.25" floppy drives. Such a system would allow you to move the files from 8" CP/M to DOS/Windows, which is probably the objective. My experience in reading 8" diskettes written in the 1970's has been excellent. I have hundreds, probably a couple of thousand such disks, and I have only had a single-digit number of diskettes that I have been unable to read out of all of those. Others who have actually had experience with large numbers of 8" disks also report very high success rates with disks that have been stored in climate-controlled environments. Now if the disks were outside in a garage for 20 years, that would be another matter of course, but for well stored disks, readability is not usually an issue. It is possible that the disks are not SSSD (single sided, single density), and if that is the case, then the problem becomes far more complex. Once you get away from 8" SSSD, there is no standard disk format, rather there are hundreds of different formats specific to each implementation of CP/M. This could [greatly] complicate recovery, however, under no circumstances would this make recovery impossible. CP/M is highly adaptable, and with some effort (programming) it would be possible, first, to determine the format, and, second, to adapt any CP/M system to be able to read any disks for which it had the correct type of drive. In general, unless the format is ***VERY*** non-standard, it doesn't matter what the controller was that wrote the disks. Most systems used Western Digital 17xx controllers, some did use NEC 765 controllers (which existed for a couple of years before the PC came out), and a few used discreet logic controllers. But for the most part (and in particular between the WD and NEC based controllers), disks were interchangeable with regard to being READ. A few people mentioned hard-sectored media. While hard sector 8" disk systems did exist (I have two of them here), it was very, very rare for hard-sectored media or systems to run CP/M. Invariably, systems using hard-sector 8" media ran proprietary operating systems. You can assume that any 8" CP/M system was soft-sectored and be correct at about the 99% level.

20 years, 11 months

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OT for a sec: US wiring sources of info

by melamy＠earthlink.net

3 or so meter grounding rod driven into the earth and then attached with a single run of wire to the meter box and the service panel. Current standards usually require 12 gauge copper wire with three wires in it for 110v runs. White, black, and a ground wire (usually 14 gauge). For the 110v runs, each has the ground wire and white wire connected to the panel's ground. Black goes to the breaker and becomes the hot lead to circuits. The ground wire should be connected to any metal boxes and should be attached to the ground terminals on switches and outlets. hope that covers what you were asking. What is the earthing arrangement? Simon -- ------------------------------------------------------------------------ "Well, an engineer is not concerned with the truth; that is left to philosophers and theologians: the prime concern of an engineer is the utility of the final product." Lectures on the Electrical Properties of Materials, L.Solymar, D.Walsh

20 years, 11 months

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PDP-11 Hard Drives

by madcrow.maxwell＠gmail.com

I've been looking for a list of the various hard drive units available for the PDP-11 and their capacites, but have not been able to find one online. Can anybody help me out here?

20 years, 11 months

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KIM-1 repair advice wanted

by pete＠dunnington.plus.com

On Oct 6 2005, 18:25, Dwight K. Elvey wrote: > I've seen this done for pinball machines. [ ... ] > http://www.6502.org/oldmicro/buildkim/buildkim.htm Thaks -- I'd seen that link but it's good to know someone's seen another instance in real life :-) -- Pete Peter Turnbull Network Manager University of York

20 years, 11 months

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KIM-1 repair advice wanted

by dwight.elvey＠amd.com

>From: ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk > >> fear it's more likely a 6530, and I assume they're unobtanium. Has >> anyone ever come up with a kludge to effectively use a 6532 (and are >> they any easier to find?) with an EPROM? Or anything else? > >My Commodore 8250LP disk drive has an official kludgeboard in what seems >to be a socket designed for an 6530. It contains a 6532, a ROM, and a >simple TTL chip ('04 or something like that). > >IIRC, though, the chip select levels of the 6530 were mask-programmable, >so this might not work in all cases. And I don't think I can get any >details of this to you by tomorrow anyway. > Hi I've seen this done for pinball machines. There are some potential issues other than just mapping the ROM. Some of the internal selects are also mask programmed ( usually different than the 6530 ). As I recall, one can even invert the data going to the port( a real pain to handle ). I think there is a document on the web someplace on making this patch. Ahh, here it is. Look at: http://www.6502.org/oldmicro/buildkim/buildkim.htm later Dwight

20 years, 11 months

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ASR-32 troubleshooting

by dwight.elvey＠amd.com

>From: "Vintage Computer Festival" <vcf at siconic.com> > >The problem turned out to be a tine in the reader that slipped out of its >linkage. I fixed that and now everything is working again. > >Phew! > >Thanks for all the suggestions and advice! Hi Sellam Sorry I didn't get back to you right away ( I do have a job ). There are a number of clutches along the main shaft. Each one is the shiny disks that you see along the shaft. I forget how many there are (4 or 5 as I recall ). There is a little paw that lifts up to allow each clutch to engage, doing any number of things like resetting keyboard or running some other function. When the paw is down there are two little tabs that stick out >from the clutch and rotate when the clutch is engaged. When the forward tab hits the paw, it should disengage the clutch. When the machine is running at speed, inertia causes the two tabs to push together, fully releasing the clutch. When running slow by hand, you need to squeeze the two together when the forward tab hit the paw. This fully disengages the clutch. I know this is a little late but in the future it should help. Dwight

20 years, 11 months

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ASR-32 troubleshooting

by vcf＠siconic.com

I just found that if I hold down the third typebar from the rear the correct characters come out. Any ideas what's happening here? -- 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, 11 months

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ASR33 platten problem

by dwight.elvey＠amd.com

>From: "Jim Beacon" <jim at g1jbg.co.uk> > > >> > in the process of repairing an ASR33 for someone else, I've found that >the >> > platten roller moulding has swollen, so that it no longer turns in the >end >> > plates. Has anyone else come across this problem, or know what may have >> > caused it? (I suspect exposure to a solvent at sometime in the past). >> > >> > Luckily, I have a spare platten assembly! >> >> Well, presumably all you really needed was the roller? >> >> Since the old one is useless in its current state, it might be worth >> putting the roller in a lathe and turning down the bearing areas. This >> would be a pretty easy job ofr anyone with a metalwork lathe, so even if >> you don't have access to one yourself, you might find a friend who would >> do it for you. The sort of people who make model steam engines almost >> always have a suitable lathe... >> >> -tony >> > >Tony, > >I had considered skimming the roller, and if it was my machine I would, >however, as the machine is going elsewhere, I'm opting for replacement (I >don't like my repairs coming back after a couple of months.........) > >Jim. Hi It is most likely the oil used. Some oils swell the rubber while others shrink it. Your not suppose to have so much oil that the platten gets soaked. Dwight

20 years, 11 months

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Need ASR-32/33 in Brooklyn, NY area ASAP

by vcf＠siconic.com

I shipped an ASR-32 into NY for a movie shoot and all was going relatively well until I tried to run a punched tape through. Now wrong characters are being printed (i.e. C comes out as K, return and linefeed don't work but instead print characters). Something's stuck/slipped but I have niether the skill nor time to try to diagnose and repair (though I'm trying). If someone in the NY city area has an ASR-32/33 that they can bring down I'll be sure they get compensated for the time and effort. Please try calling me at 925/216-0569. If you don't get an answer, call 718/930-8092 and ask for me, and say it's regarding the teletype. TIA!! -- 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, 11 months

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ASR-32 troubleshooting

by dwight.elvey＠amd.com

>From: "Vintage Computer Festival" <vcf at siconic.com> > > >I just found that if I hold down the third typebar from the rear the >correct characters come out. Any ideas what's happening here? > Hi It isn't clear if you have a reader or printer problem. Does it work fine from the keyboard in local? If so, it is most likely in the reader. If it is the reader, look for a spring that may be disconnected or a piece of crud inside. Try disconnecting the motor power and operating by hand. Remember that when going slow, you need to lockup the clutches by hand by squeezing the two tabs together or they will drag. With the motor power off, you can turn the fan and go slow. Dwight

20 years, 11 months

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PDP-11 Hard Drives

by ajp166＠bellatlantic.net

> >Subject: Re: PDP-11 Hard Drives > From: "Joe R." <rigdonj at cfl.rr.com> > Date: Thu, 06 Oct 2005 14:25:01 +0000 > To: "General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts" <cctalk at classiccmp.org> > >At 09:17 AM 10/6/05 -0400, Allison wrote: >>> >>>Subject: PDP-11 Hard Drives >>> From: Madcrow Maxwell <madcrow.maxwell at gmail.com> >>> Date: Thu, 06 Oct 2005 08:40:54 -0400 >>> To: cctalk at classiccmp.org >>> >>>I've been looking for a list of the various hard drive units available >>>for the PDP-11 and their capacites, but have not been able to find one >>>online. Can anybody help me out here? >> >>Reason is your asking too broad a question. >> >>PDP-11 was a series of CPUs/systems that used at least 4 busses and >>an even greater array of storage facilities over the period from 1970 >>to current(yes current!). So to even start answering the question. >> >>What cpu or bus? Or what time period? Fixed or removable? > > And factory and/or 3rd party drives. If you want to include 3rd party it >would take a book to list them all! > > Joe I also forgot to ask what OS as tere wer device limits on some such as exists with RT-11 (32mb per logical device). And what generation of OS such as Unix V6 (no mscp). Allison

20 years, 11 months

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Need help on multibus HD controller

by dwight.elvey＠amd.com

Hi I've acquired hard disk controller card. I'm in need of some information on it as well as I seem to be missing at least one PROM. The board uses the WD1100 parts with a 8X300 control processor. It has an array of 9 sockets for program of the 8X300 ( only 3 are populated on my board ). It has 3 locations for MK4802 SRAM's and a 82S191 ( also missing ). It is manufactured by Codata Systems Corp and has a part number 92-1011-01. I was hoping that someone might have information on this or have one of these boards that I could get a copy of at least the 82S191. I suspect that the 3 PROMs I do have are sufficient to run the 8X300. I would guess the additional sockets are for expansion of control. Other 8X300 controllers I've seen use less code. I'd guess the 82S191 had formatting information on it since it is on the data side of the 8X300, along with the RAM. Any help would be great. Thanks Dwight

20 years, 11 months

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Interesting stuff on E-bay

by rigdonj＠cfl.rr.com

I just posted these: 'A Pocket Guide to the 2100 Computer' Hewlett Packard '72 Drytek S-100 I/O card Clamp On Ampmeter with 5 Scales (You have to see this one!) Sperry Univac Computer Quick Reference Card 1978 HP 35 calculator box, manual, charger Adobe Acrobat 5.0 New in Box DEC A8000 ADV11-C 16-channel 12-bit A-to-D Converter card Also some DEC cards and other interesting items. see <http://search.ebay.com/_W0QQsassZrigdonjQQhtZ-1> Joe

20 years, 11 months

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ASR33 platten problem

by jim＠g1jbg.co.uk

Hi All, in the process of repairing an ASR33 for someone else, I've found that the platten roller moulding has swollen, so that it no longer turns in the end plates. Has anyone else come across this problem, or know what may have caused it? (I suspect exposure to a solvent at sometime in the past). Luckily, I have a spare platten assembly! Jim. Please see our website the " Vintage Communication Pages" at WWW.G1JBG.CO.UK

20 years, 11 months

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The indefeatable 8" floppy Was : 8" floppy system neededtorecoverold game data

by ajp166＠bellatlantic.net

> >Subject: Re: The indefeatable 8" floppy Was : 8" floppy system neededtorecoverold game data > From: "John Allain" <allain at panix.com> > Date: Thu, 06 Oct 2005 14:14:13 -0400 > To: "General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts" <cctalk at classiccmp.org> > >> The other case was media that was stored next to a large (50hp) >> AC motor. The media was good but usedless until formatted. >> The previously held data was largely gone due to partial erasure. > >How close and for how long? >I mean, everything we deal with emits EM radiation. >It would be interesting to know the details. Close in this case was on top of and laying against and the motor itself was an much older partially open frame type used for a large screw compressor. The field was strong enough to make a screwdriver buzz if held against it. I suspect the heat given off (maybe 45-55C) didn't help either. The disks in question were stored above it untill a shelf collapse resulting in their close association in such a haphazard way. Though the heat in the room (110F) is not good for the media either. Very unusual case most likely. I didn't include those disks that went through the motor fan or got caught in the drive. My biggest problem has been media stored in basements and garages where temerature and moisture did their worst. Mold and mildew are also a problem but can be managed. Allison

20 years, 11 months

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The indefeatable 8" floppy Was : 8" floppy system needed to recoverold game data

by ajp166＠bellatlantic.net

Hi, I have around here maybe 400-1000 8" disks. Most are not less than 15 years old and some easily approaching 25-30. I've seen a perfectly good head and pad get gummed when the binder failed on the media. The other case was media that was stored next to a large (50hp) AC motor. The media was good but usedless until formatted. The previously held data was largely gone due to partial erasure. >[worse if mishandled] By that I meant stored in enviromental conditions that may result in binder failure. You may have interpreted that as mechanical bend, fold and spindle. Binder failure is treatable if anticipated but be prepared for read once. I've had a number of my oldest 8" media die that way. Backups and copies prevented loss. Allison > >Subject: The indefeatable 8" floppy Was : 8" floppy system needed to recoverold game data > From: "Nico de Jong" <nico at FARUMDATA.DK> > Date: Thu, 06 Oct 2005 16:09:19 +0200 > To: "General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts" <cctalk at classiccmp.org> > >Fra: "Allison" <ajp166 at bellatlantic.net> >> >> Again most 8" media is real old and there were a few brands of media that >> aged poorly [worse if mishandled] with media shedding being a really big >> problem. >> >I'm not quite sure that I agree with you. I remember a case where a customer >called me, panic stricken, and said that his Mountain 8" loader (I still have >the power supply...) had eaten a disc with financial transactions. >When I arrived at the site, I saw that the 8" was now a 4" on one side. It was >totally mangled by the loaderpart shoving the disk into the drive. Head broken >of, etc. >New drive, but that was expected. Now we had to look at the mangled disk. There >were some dents and scratches, but we decided to try. >I sacrificed another 8" disc, in that I opened the sleve and discarded the >floppy. In with the "mangled" floppy. It read perfectly, although with a few >retries. >The epilogue was that my customer sent a civilized letter to his customer, >asking him not to put staples through the disc for the future. > >Nico >

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8" floppy system needed to recover old game data

by Kieron.Wilkinson＠paretopartners.com

Hi, I am hoping to help an ex-games developer access some very old game data and source code stored on 8" floppy disks from a CPM system, data that simply does not exist anywhere else and will otherwise be lost. (It is the kind of stuff destined for MAME :)). I personally can possibly get access to such a system, however we do not want to risk transporting the media any more than necessary, and I am far FAR removed from where the disks are located in San Francisco (I live in the UK). Does anybody near here (or willing to travel there!) have such a system and could help us out? As I said this is a one-of-a-kind opportunity which should unearth games that were previously thought not to exist (though most were not completed AFAIK). There is always the chance that they are already lost (corrupted media), but we just won't know until we try. I would be over the moon if somebody could help us out with this! If you can help, or know somebody else who can help, please contact me! Thanks, Kieron Wilkinson ============================ Pareto Investment Management Limited is a Mellon Financial Company. Pareto Investment Management Limited is authorised and regulated by the Financial Services Authority (Firm Ref. No. 416024), and registered in England and Wales with Number 03169281. Registered Office: Mellon Financial Centre, 160 Queen Victoria Street, London EC4V 4LA, United Kingdom. Pareto is the registered trademark of Pareto Investment Management Limited. This message may contain confidential and privileged information and is intended solely for the use of the named addressee. Access, copying or re-use of the e-mail or any information contained therein by any other person is not authorised. If you are not the intended recipient please notify us immediately by returning the e-mail to the originator and then immediately delete this message.

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8" floppy system needed to recover old game data

by dwight.elvey＠amd.com

Hi First thing is to try to determine format. Many 8 inch disk were labeled as being SSSD, DSDD, or similar. This will help as a starting point. Also, looking to see if it has a single index hole or multiple in the media needs to be determined. If it is soft sectored SSSD, 128 bytes per sector and FM format, I can read them relatively easily. I live in Santa Cruz, Ca. That is about 50 miles south of SF. If the disk have text files, figuring the file formating will not be a big issue. As you note, getting the sector images is the important part. Sorting the sectors is relatively minor. Dwight

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Anyone have a 3U (single slot) VME chassis hanging around?

by RMeenaks＠OLF.COM

I need a chassis that can take 3U (not 6U) VME-style cards. The cards are not VME, so I don't care if it does not have the backplane as I have my own. It needs to have a powersupply though.... Thanks, Ram

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8" floppy system needed to recover old game data

by rigdonj＠cfl.rr.com

At 12:57 PM 10/6/05 +0100, you wrote: > >> -----Original Message----- >> From: Nico de Jong >> >> Sorry, Denmark.... > >Ah, oops. And there is me always using the UK acronym... :) > >> He could use DHL, they are very reliable. >> I dont think anyone is going to log a conversion system to > >I'm afraid I am not very familiar with CPM systems. Could you please >tell me why a conversion system is needed? It all depends on what system they were written on. There are hundreds if not thousands of different CPM formats. Some of them are litterally one of a kind and were only used on one type computer and can not be read on anything else. A good example is the M2FM format that Intel used on their MDS machines. Some also used hard sectored disks and there's no way that a modern disk controller can deal with that. OTOH if you're lucky, they used a computer that used the "standard" CPM format (actually it was an early IBM format). If your disks were written in that format then it should be easy to read them. Even a PC with an 8" drive adapted to it can read that format. If you have no idea what kind of machine wrote the disks then I'd suggest at least looking and see how many sector holes are in the disks. If only one then they're soft-sectored and there's a good chance they can be read. If they have more than one then they're hard sectored and are likely to be a problem since many of the machines that used that are long gone. That will at least give you an idea of what you're dealing with. Joe Didn't they use similar FDC >chips? I (perhaps naively) assumed it would be some sort of a >NEC765-derived one and we could get a simple track-by-track dump... > >> the US. It would be cheaper for him to take a plane to >> Denmark, and have a nice weekend in Copenhagen, while I >> hopefully do the job. > >While this is true, the problem we have is that although we have >convinced the ex-developer to let us help them preserve this data, it >will be very much harder to get them to go out of their way to get it >done. This is the reason I was trying to get somebody local to them to >help us do it, even though they do treasure it. > >It's a difficult situation for sure. > >I'll try again on the mailing of the media, but it will probably have to >be a last resort. > >> The only "local" one I can think of from the top of my head, >> is Sellam Ismail > >Ah great. Well if he does not reply to this thread, I will send them a >mail. Thanks! > >Kieron > >============================ >Pareto Investment Management Limited is a Mellon Financial Company. Pareto Investment Management Limited is authorised and regulated by the Financial Services Authority (Firm Ref. No. 416024), and registered in England and Wales with Number 03169281. Registered Office: Mellon Financial Centre, 160 Queen Victoria Street, London EC4V 4LA, United Kingdom. Pareto is the registered trademark of Pareto Investment Management Limited. This message may contain confidential and privileged information and is intended solely for the use of the named addressee. Access, copying or re-use of the e-mail or any information contained therein by any other person is not authorised. If you are not the intended recipient please notify us immediately by returning the e-mail to the originator and then immediately delete this message. > > >

20 years, 11 months

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Big-assed Nerd belt buckle

by James＠jdfogg.com

> http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=8224062317 > Perfect for the Redneck nerd. Would that be a Rednerd? Nerdneck?

20 years, 11 months

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Yellowing plastic?

by starmaster＠gmail.com

Anyone know the best way to handle the restoration of plastic that has yellowed due to being in someones basement or something? Has that dingy brownish/yellowish tint to it. I thought I saw a posting about it earlier, but cannot locate it now... Thanks

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CRT implosions

by technobug＠comcast.net

On or about Wed, 5 Oct 2005 13:34:32 -0700 (PDT), Fred Cisin <cisin at xenosoft.com> wrote: > On Tue, 4 Oct 2005, CRC wrote: > >> In the mid 50s they used to show on TV a tape of a ball on a string >> launched into the face of an unprotected CRT. The neck proceeded >> through the faceplate and embedded in a 1/2" piece of plywood. >> Definitely made one careful when playing with the old sets. >> > > Yes, but being TV, had they filled the tube with propane and > ignited it? The tape was made from high speed photography played back at normal speed. I remember the faceplate imploding followed by the neck being propelled through the faceplate. If propane had been used, the faceplate would have exploded and the neck gone in the opposite direction. CRC

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Johnny Billquist's List of PDP-11 drives

by madcrow.maxwell＠gmail.com

Thanks for that huge list... That was exactly what I was looking for... As for the "what bus" question, it doesn't really matter to me as I can emulate either depending on what hardware I need to emulate and what software I want to play around with (simh is nice that way) I mainly needed to know what was available as I plan on creating several actual useful simh configurations and RL-series disks are so small as to be rather useless to me... It would be nice if simh would provide this sort of info in the "emulated hardware" list.

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PDP-11 Hard Drives

by bqt＠Update.UU.SE

On Thu, 6 Oct 2005 Madcrow Maxwell <madcrow.maxwell at gmail.com> wrote: > I've been looking for a list of the various hard drive units available > for the PDP-11 and their capacites, but have not been able to find one > online. Can anybody help me out here? Phew, that's a long list. I can't give you all, but I can list some from my head atleast. And these are just older DEC drives. You are aware of the fact that PDP-11s can have SCSI disks, which means you can grab almost any current SCSI disk as well? Okay... Here we go: Type Capacity RS series RS03 512 Kbyte RS04 1 Mbyte RF series RF11 512 Kbyte RK series RK02 1.2 Mbyte RK03 2.5 Mbyte RK05 2.5 Mbyte RK06 14 Mbyte RK07 28 Mbyte RL series RL01 5 Mbyte RL02 10 Mbyte RM series RM02 63 Mbyte RM03 63 Mbyte RM05 256 Mbyte RM80 124 Mbyte RP series RP01 5 Mbyte RP02 20 Mbyte RP03 40 Mbyte RP04 83 Mbyte RP05 83 Mbyte RP06 176 Mbyte RP07 504 Mbyte RA series RA80 124 Mbyte RA81 456 Mbyte RA82 622 Mbyte RA90 1.2 Gbyte RA92 1.5 Gbyte RA60 205 Mbyte RA70 280 Mbyte RA71 684 Mbyte RA72 1 Gbyte RA73 2 Gbyte RC series RC25 25 Mbyte * 2 RD series RD31 20 Mbyte RD32 40 Mbyte RD33 71 Mbyte RD50 5 Mbyte RD51 10 Mbyte RD52 31 Mbyte RD53 71 Mbyte RD54 159 Mbyte RX series RX01 256 Kbyte RX02 512 Kbyte RX33 1.2 Mbyte RX50 400 Kbyte RZ series (SCSI disks) And I know that a few of these numbers don't match some pages turned up by Google, but this is what my memory is telling me... Johnny Johnny Billquist || "I'm on a bus || on a psychedelic trip email: bqt at update.uu.se || Reading murder books pdp is alive! || tryin' to stay hip" - B. Idol

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PDP-11 Hard Drives

by ajp166＠bellatlantic.net

> >Subject: PDP-11 Hard Drives > From: Madcrow Maxwell <madcrow.maxwell at gmail.com> > Date: Thu, 06 Oct 2005 08:40:54 -0400 > To: cctalk at classiccmp.org > >I've been looking for a list of the various hard drive units available >for the PDP-11 and their capacites, but have not been able to find one >online. Can anybody help me out here? Reason is your asking too broad a question. PDP-11 was a series of CPUs/systems that used at least 4 busses and an even greater array of storage facilities over the period from 1970 to current(yes current!). So to even start answering the question. What cpu or bus? Or what time period? Fixed or removable? Allison

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8" floppy system needed to recover old game data

by ajp166＠bellatlantic.net

Punched the send by error.... continued. > >Subject: RE: 8" floppy system needed to recover old game data > From: Allison <ajp166 at bellatlantic.net> > Date: Thu, 06 Oct 2005 09:30:01 -0400 > To: cctalk at classiccmp.org > >> >>Subject: RE: 8" floppy system needed to recover old game data >> From: "Kieron Wilkinson" <Kieron.Wilkinson at paretopartners.com> >> Date: Thu, 06 Oct 2005 13:59:35 +0100 >> To: "General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts" <cctalk at classiccmp.org> >> >> >>My reasons for suggesting doing a track dump is so we can leave figuring >>out the filesystem later... Which from my experience of other systems >>means it is less likely we would get it wrong "on the day". It is bad >>enough getting this done once, twice would not be too fun either. ;) >> >>But of course, CP/M is not exactly part of my previous experiences. > >CP/M file system is fairly easy to understand. It was fairly standardized >depite media variations. A dump of any form would be reconstructable >if there are no lost sectors. > >For 8" systems they fell onto two major groups: > >Hard sector: Altair and a Zilog used those. However _most_ > hard sector 8" systems rarely carried CP/M. > >Soft sector: Most common and there was a standard interchange format > for CP/M. That was 8" single sided single density (8"SSSD). > Other formats that existed were CP/M on Intel (M2FM) and > Odd sector sizes or double density. Likely formats in > the 8" realm were fortunatly fairly few (likely one of 5). > The two most common after SSSD was SSDD (single side > Double density) and DSDD (double sided double density). > The latter two SSDD was often seen and had a fairly similar > layout compared to SSSD. The DSDD was far less common and > there were a few different ideas how data should be laid down. > FYI: the M2FM (intel MDS) used conventional 8" drives but the FDC was really a custom board designed by intel to do double density when there were no chips that did it. The format must and can only be read on intel. >The 5.25 worlds was chaotic as drive were developing and people needed to >push those minifloppies from the base of only 80k to a more useable 360 >or even 780k. Where the base 8"SSSD was 256k from day one. Even then many of the 5.25 based systems were not locked one format and could at least read a few others. Again if it was hard sector then all bets were off (Heath, Northstar, and a few others were hard sector). To read base 8"sssd disks there are a lot of people that have working systems (myself included) that have zero problem doing this. It's also possible to do it using a compaticard or even a hacked PC FDC with the right cable to a working drive. If the media was 8"SSSD then reading them to the file content level is best. IF the media is unknown and and different then it really helps to know what the origin system was as then the format is known. If all is unknown the reading the media at the sector level will likely get it done. That is a slower interative process that being determine sector size, read sectors sequentially saving them on other media, decode disk layout and reconstruct files. Again most 8" media is real old and there were a few brands of media that aged poorly [worse if mishandled] with media shedding being a really big problem. Allison

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8" floppy system needed to recover old game data

by ajp166＠bellatlantic.net

> >Subject: RE: 8" floppy system needed to recover old game data > From: "Kieron Wilkinson" <Kieron.Wilkinson at paretopartners.com> > Date: Thu, 06 Oct 2005 13:59:35 +0100 > To: "General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts" <cctalk at classiccmp.org> > > >My reasons for suggesting doing a track dump is so we can leave figuring >out the filesystem later... Which from my experience of other systems >means it is less likely we would get it wrong "on the day". It is bad >enough getting this done once, twice would not be too fun either. ;) > >But of course, CP/M is not exactly part of my previous experiences. CP/M file system is fairly easy to understand. It was fairly standardized depite media variations. A dump of any form would be reconstructable if there are no lost sectors. For 8" systems they fell onto two major groups: Hard sector: Altair and a Zilog used those. However _most_ hard sector 8" systems rarely carried CP/M. Soft sector: Most common and there was a standard interchange format for CP/M. That was 8" single sided single density (8"SSSD). Other formats that existed were CP/M on Intel (M2FM) and Odd sector sizes or double density. Likely formats in the 8" realm were fortunatly fairly few (likely one of 5). The two most common after SSSD was SSDD (single side Double density) and DSDD (double sided double density). The latter two SSDD was often seen and had a fairly similar layout compared to SSSD. The DSDD was far less common and there were a few different ideas how data should be laid down. FYI: the M2FM (intel MDS) used conventional 8" drives but the FDC was really The 5.25 worlds was chaotic as drive were developing and people needed to push those minifloppies from the base of only 80k to a more useable 360 or even 780k. Where the base 8"SSSD was 256k from day one. > >> A "photocopy" of a disk is possible using (MS)DOS, if you can >> find a MicroSolutions Compaticard IV (I have one, and no, I >> dont want to part with it). >> This card works very well; I once generated a bootable MS-DOS >> 3.1 (or 3.20?) 8" >> floppy. > >Nice. > >> The only (in my opinion) good solution, is software reading >> the CP/M (or >> whatever) disk, and decode the filestructure etc., so you can >> write a nice, continuous file. > >Absolutely, my only concern was getting that wrong. But perhaps it is >far simpler operation to work out the file system with CP/M than getting >a track dump the disk, in which case this method is probably more >appropriate. > >Of course one reason (off topic!) to dump the whole disk (down to the >flux-transition level) is to ensure you get absolutely everything on the >disk. But of course, this is only really useful for retail software that >might have applied copy protection - not really applicable for a >developers old development system! :) > >Thanks! >Kieron > >============================ >Pareto Investment Management Limited is a Mellon Financial Company. Pareto Investment Management Limited is authorised and regulated by the Financial Services Authority (Firm Ref. No. 416024), and registered in England and Wales with Number 03169281. Registered Office: Mellon Financial Centre, 160 Queen Victoria Street, London EC4V 4LA, United Kingdom. Pareto is the registered trademark of Pareto Investment Management Limited. This message may contain confidential and privileged information and is intended solely for the use of the named addressee. Access, copying or re-use of the e-mail or any information contained therein by any other person is not authorised. If you are not the intended recipient please notify us immediately by returning the e-mail to the originator and then immediately delete this message. >

20 years, 11 months

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8" floppy system needed to recover old game data

by Kieron.Wilkinson＠paretopartners.com

> -----Original Message----- > From: Dave Dunfield > > CP/M itself is independant of any particular disk format. It > can work with hard-sector systems, soft-sector systems, 8" > 5.25", 3.5" drives, ROM disks and RAM disks. The only real > requirement is that there be block addressable storage. Nice! At least, it probably was at the time. ;) > Most 8" systems use IBM soft-sector format, and a lot of them > use the WD series of FDC controllers. Most of these can be > read with a 765 type controller, but there are a number that > cannot. There really is a lot of variation. Okay. > Getting data from 8" drives will require some work. Chances > are that it can be recovered on a PC with ImageDisk or > TeleDisk, however to do so they would have to make an adapter > to connect the drive, connect it to the PC floppy controller, > power the drive, configure the software etc/, and you run the > risk that after all that effort, it may not be a disk format > compatible with the PC floppy controller (we could tell this > in advance if you can find out the exact type of CP/M system it is). > This sounds like it is more work they they are willing to do. Ouch. Yes, exactly. > If the original CP/M system is still running, then the > content of the disks can be pulled off with a serial > connection to a PC - but this will require getting the > connection established, getting a bit of software running on > both the CP/M system and the PC. No, only the media is available unfortunately. Hence the problem. > Failing either of the two above, then you need someone local > who can do one of the above, or have them send the disks to > someone further away who can do it. I'll contact Sellam Ismail, he is certainly looking to be my best bet so far. > I have the ability image 8" disks directly to a PC, and I > also have a multi-format copying station that I have not yet > "gotten around" to setting up (but I could do that). I also > know someone relatively close to me who does have a > multi-format copying station up and running. You could have > them send the disks to me (Ontario > Canada) which would be a bit closer than going "across the pond". Lets see what we can do on location, and if that fails, we will have to campaign to get them to send somebody the disks. :) > I've been fairly actively involved in preservation of disk > images from classic systems in the past couple of years - if Ah really? That is very interesting! Check your mail. ;) > it would help, the game developer can contact me directly to > discuss ways to recover the data. Thanks for the offer! I'll keep it in mind if things pan out that way. Kieron ============================ Pareto Investment Management Limited is a Mellon Financial Company. Pareto Investment Management Limited is authorised and regulated by the Financial Services Authority (Firm Ref. No. 416024), and registered in England and Wales with Number 03169281. Registered Office: Mellon Financial Centre, 160 Queen Victoria Street, London EC4V 4LA, United Kingdom. Pareto is the registered trademark of Pareto Investment Management Limited. This message may contain confidential and privileged information and is intended solely for the use of the named addressee. Access, copying or re-use of the e-mail or any information contained therein by any other person is not authorised. If you are not the intended recipient please notify us immediately by returning the e-mail to the originator and then immediately delete this message.

20 years, 11 months

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