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

Microdata Reality

by aek＠bitsavers.org

> Was it here where I was mentioning it? It was to me Jay and Jim will be interested, I'm sure.

21 years, 3 months

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Microdata Reality

by vcf＠siconic.com

I found the manual for the Microdata machine I acquired a couple months ago. Was it here where I was mentioning it? I forget. At any rate, it's a Microdata Reality. -- 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 ]

21 years, 3 months

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Fluke 9010A revisions/upgrades

by leeedavison＠yahoo.co.uk

> Two good links: > <URL: http://tech.quarterarcade.com/tech/Fluke/9010A/ > > and <URL: http://www.gamearchive.com/General/Test_Equipment/ > That last one was very usefull. Now if only there were binary images of the programmable parts somewhere. 8^)= Lee. . ___________________________________________________________ How much free photo storage do you get? Store your holiday snaps for FREE with Yahoo! Photos http://uk.photos.yahoo.com

21 years, 3 months

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another ebay weirdness

by James＠jdfogg.com

> Hi folks, > > one simple question: > > What is that card for? > > Please don't laugh - I am a bit too young to know everything > about strange vintage computing stuff.... It passes the bus grant signal along to the next card on the bus. Empty slots between cards need one.

21 years, 3 months

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Fluke 9010A revisions/upgrades

by aek＠bitsavers.org

Does anyone have a list of differences between the various versions, and what it takes to upgrade a unit? -- you may want to ask on rec.games.video.arcade.collecting there were a bunch of people using/collecting 9010 stuff there.

21 years, 3 months

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IBM PC original power supply problem (long)

by swtpc6800＠comcast.net

Here is a story about the original IBM PC (5150) power supply. There was a defect that showed up a few days before it was to go on sale. The design team flew around the country adding fish paper insulation to the 1700 machines that had shipped to stores. This is from Blue Magic by James Chposky and Ted Leonsis.(1988) ISBN 0-8160-13910-8 The book has a few technical errors, they mix-up 8080 and 8086 chips number in one chapter. The refer to the modem guy as Dennis Glayes (Hayes). In this chapter they refer to a 65 volt power supply (should be watt). The flow of the book tells how the project was kicked off in August 1980 and you could buy one in the store in August 1981. Michael Holley Chapter 18 - The Emergency Brigade Initial shipments of the new PC were made to Computerland outlets and Sears Business Centers less than a week before the machine was scheduled to be unveiled in New York City on Wednesday, August 12, 1981. The shipments were delayed till the last possible minute to avoid leaks to the press. Preferably, the packing boxes with the PCs inside would not even be opened until the afternoon on the day of the official announcement. Then, on August 10, a potentially devastating discovery threatened to cancel the scheduled introduction that so many people had worked so hard and so long to maintain. At about 2:30 in the afternoon, Joe Sarubbi and his staff were running final potentiometer tests to determine if there were any high-voltage leakage on some of the new PCs. Time and again, two of the machines tested positive, which meant that there was a possible dangerous voltage leak. The engineers quickly found that the 65-volt power supplies on the two machines had too close a tolerance between an electrical raw circuit board and the frame of the power supply. This in turn caused too close a spacing that could possibly lead to a short-circuit between the electrical current and the metal frame. The problem was brought to Wilkie's immediate attention. Then a quick call went out to convene the inner circle, along with Howie Davidson, the site general manager at Boca Raton. Sarubbi explained that the power supplies shipped to date had been tested and were shown to be safe. But the fan in the power supply could accumulate enough dust to create a `bridge' to the metal edge of the machine and cause a short-circuit. In addition, a look at worst-case tolerances between the printed circuit card and the frame revealed a tolerance that was unacceptably close, and a relay out of the circuit board had to be added to achieve a permanent fix for the problem. There was only a random chance that this could happen again, but that was still more of a chance than Wilkie and Sarubbi wanted to take. One power supply failure was one failure too many. Meanwhile, more than 1,700 machines-all with short-circuit potentials-were sitting innocently in storage at Computerlands and Sears Business Centers around the country. The IBM PC was intended to be the product to put the Sears Business Centers on the map. Accordingly, IBM had made elaborate arrangements for a full-scale demonstration of the machine to the retailer's senior management committee at the Sears Tower in Chicago on the morning of Tuesday, August 11. Now, here in Boca Raton, less than 18 hours before the big demonstration was set to begin 1,500 miles away, there was concern that the machines at Sears Tower would not only amaze, but could quite actually shock anyone who so much as laid a finger on their casings. Four pairs of eyes turned on Sarubbi. Estridge was the first to speak. "Okay, Joe, what do we do?" Sarubbi said, "We'll have to put a piece of insulation in every machine between the printed circuit board and the power supply cover. Fish paper, which is a non-conductive cardboard bridge, should be sufficient, but this is something we really have to do ourselves." Dan Wilkie suggested the formation of a quick task force. "We can call them 'The Power Supply Brigade,' and fly them out to Sears in Chicago and elsewhere to put in the insulation. But we have to do it now-today. Commercial flights won't get us there in time. We'll have to charter a private jet. When they're finished at Sears, they can go back to the Chicago airport and fly on to the next destination. Frankly, I don't see any other goddam way we can get this done if we still plan to show the machine to Sears tomorrow." Estridge winced. He turned back to Sarubbi and said, "Joe, the decision to go or not to go is yours." What Estridge really meant was, Should we stop the announcement or send out the Brigade? Sarubbi reasoned that not to send the Brigade would mean the PC announcement might be delayed for at least another 30 days. "That would put egg on our face in the industry and throughout the company," he later recalled. "But there was also no way that we could overlook the safety of the unit." Never before in his 30-odd years with the company had Joe Sarubbi been so overwhelmingly grateful that he worked for IBM with its vast resources and capital. He looked back at the frantic, frustrating and yet thoroughly exhilarating year gone by and remembered all the times he gazed across the ocean and said to himself, "Why in the hell did I ever get into this?" Then he pictured the other people on the project and concluded, "They're just like me. We're all of a kind. We're wild ducks within IBM and we're doing what wild ducks do and that's why I have to stay. " Then his thoughts returned to the present. "Uh, Joe," Estridge said. And Sarubbi instinctively knew what a wild duck would do at a time like this, and so he said, "Send the Brigade. And keep the introduction just as it is." "Well, son-of-a-bitch! All right, let's go!" Wilkie shouted as he turned with a big grin and smacked his right fist into his ample left palm. Estridge had to shut his eyes for a moment to pretend he hadn't heard Wilkie, then came the famous grin. Sydnes and Davidson were also smiling, and for that moment, Joe Sarubbi, the old pro, the veteran IBMer, the self-professed beach bum-he was the king of the hill, at the top of the heap. -2- It so happened that Wilkie had a cadre of some 30 devoted admirers on his manufacturing staff. They were a gung-ho crowd who liked to hang around with Dan because he had a tough side with a tender edge and he was eminently fair. And they were loyal to Wilkie, because most of them had never worked for anyone else anywhere else at IBM. Infants all, they thought life at IBM was just like Project Chess, which, of course, made this a very good company to work for. As Wilkie would later reflect, "The team's strength lay in the fact that most of them had never really worked under the strictures of conventional IBM standards." Wilkie walked out of the meeting and gathered his staffers. Eagerly, expectantly, they circled around their leader as he explained what had happened and what had to be done. He said, "I want you guys to go home and get your toothbrushes and a change of clothes and then come right back here and standby to leave for Chicago tonight. You'll be going by private jet out of Boca Raton airport at midnight. We don't know how long you'll be gone, so he packed for at least three days." They all but tore the doors off to get home, grab their gear and get back to the office to be among the first in line to stand by for that emergency flight to Chicago. As soon as the last car squealed out of the IBM parking lot, Sarubbi's office became a war room. From this jerry-built command post, the senior staff on the PC group arranged for a private jet to be ready to leave at midnight for Chicago. The plane landed at 3:00 AM on Tuesday in Chicago. Black limousines were already waiting to whisk the Brigade through the dark streets and to the main entrance of the world's tallest building. Earlier, back at the war room, Sparky Sparks completed special arrangements to admit the Brigade to the Sears Tower at that late hour. The Brigade deployed to the demonstration room like commandos. Within three hours, their assignment was finished; the fish paper was secured in each PC and the machines were tested again for high-voltage leaks. The demonstration for the Sears management could go on as planned and no one had to know what happened in the Sears Tower the night before. Back at Boca Raton a phone call came at about 7:00 AM from somewhere in Chicago: "Mission accomplished!" the Brigade leader said. Sarubbi gave Wilkie the thumbs-up sign. Wilkie went back to his own office and took his spare shaving kit out of a desk drawer. Still not fully awake, he stumbled into the men's room and tried to remember the last time he'd had breakfast at home, followed by an uneventful working day. -3- During the next day and a half, the Power Supply Brigade, with ample supplies of fish paper, flew to Computerland stores in Texas and California. Once again, their missions were accomplished before the debut of the PC. But the power supply episode was still causing upset at Boca Raton. Wilkie recalled, "We were really paranoid about what happened. We said, `My God, what if the world finds out that we had this quality problem?' "In time, the world did find out, but the reaction was the exact opposite of what we thought it would be. People everywhere were saying, `What a class act this company has.' Sears and Computerland told us, `Now we know the kind of treatment we can demand from all the other companies we do business with.' And so," Wilkie said, "instead of this having a negative impact, it became a real plus for the project and an unforgettable experience for those men who flew around the country and worked around the clock to guarantee that the introduction of the PC would stay on schedule." -4- The IBM PC introduced in New York that week had one disk drive, 16 kilobytes of random access memory (RAM) and a $1,595 price tag. (Within four years, other manufacturers would have a "clone" of the basic PC with two disk drives, 256 kilobytes of RAM and it would be available for about $1,000.) By now, despite the company's security precautions and its refusal to give any details of the "new product introduction," enough information had leaked out of IBM to make the purpose of the August 12 announcement well known throughout the industry and on Wall Street. These reports were especially significant to Martin A. Alpert in Cleveland, Ohio. Alpert, a doctor and engineer, was president of a small company called Tecmar, a sort of anagram for "Marty's technology. Tecmar got its start with a computer-based machine used to diagnose lung problems. But the company had the technology in place to build add-on products for the basic IBM PC. Predicting that there would be an enormous market for such add-ons, Alpert put his staff to work designing products for a machine they had never seen. Then he made careful plans to buy an IBM PC when it became available. As it turned out, Tecmar bought the first IBM PC to be sold anywhere.

21 years, 3 months

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data stored in moving rust, was Re: Remembering RAMAC

by aek＠bitsavers.org

> From HIGH SPEED COMPUTING DEVICES, ERA Inc, 1950: > The whole book actually reeks of vapor. Um... ERA were the people who built the "Project 13" machines during WW II. The 1101 used a drum, and built the follow on 11xx machines in the Twin Cites. ref "A Few Good Men From Univac" "From Dits To Bits", etc. WISC was designed around he same time, and used a drum.

21 years, 3 months

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Rack 'L' bracket kits on eBay

by aek＠bitsavers.org

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=5776257783 These are REALLY handy if you have J random piece of gear to put in a rack (like a DEC H960 with front and back rails) and it wasn't built for rack slides. The price is for two pair.

21 years, 3 months

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Bristol spline sets

by aek＠bitsavers.org

http://www.mgs4u.com/Bristol-spline-L-keys.htm is the first of hundreds of Google hits.

21 years, 3 months

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"Task 13"

by aek＠bitsavers.org

So much for my memory.. Um... ERA were the people who built the "Project 13" machines during WW II. The 1101 used a drum, and built the follow on 11xx machines in the Twin Cites. ref "A Few Good Men From Univac" "From Dits To Bits", etc. should be (from the URL about the ERA Book): In the fall of 1946, ERA received its first major contract from the Office of Naval Research to compile a report on ?High Speed Computing Devices?. This report, which became the definitive study of the infant state of computing, was later published in book form by McGraw Hill. During this project, ERA personnel was given access to classified government reports and worked with computer pioneers John Mauchly and J. Presper Eckert, inventors of the ENIAC, and John von Neumann, of Princeton University's Institute for Advanced Study. ERA was dependent on government funded cost-plus--fixed-fee contracts. In August 1947, it began work for the Navy on Task 13 - a project to design a general all-purpose stored-program computer. During this project ERA developed the first magnetic storage drum; the technology upon which the next two generations of computers was based. In October, 1950, ERA completed work on the Atlas computer - America's first electronic stored-program computer. The Atlas with its 2,700 vacuum tubes was capable of running twenty-four hours a day with only 10% of the time allotted for maintenance. -- The commercial verison of "Atlas" is the 1101

21 years, 3 months

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"High Speed Computing Devices"

by aek＠bitsavers.org

here is a description of the origins of the book: http://www.hagley.lib.de.us/2015.htm

21 years, 3 months

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system 36 on eBay

by aek＠bitsavers.org

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&category=64029&item=5777993013 looks pretty complete shipping is excessive, though.

21 years, 3 months

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WTD: 5.25" DSDD drive & Acorn Master128 keystrip scan/schematic

by philpem＠dsl.pipex.com

Hi folks, I'm after a 5.25" 80-track (preferably 40/80 switchable) DSDD drive, jumperable for DS0 and 300RPM rotation, suitable for an Acorn Master 128. I'm also after a decent-quality scan of the keystrip that came with the Master 128. A copy of the Master 128 schematic and/or service manuals would also be rather nice :) Thanks. -- Phil. | Acorn Risc PC600 Mk3, SA202, 64MB, 6GB, philpem at philpem.me.uk | ViewFinder, 10BaseT Ethernet, 2-slice, http://www.philpem.me.uk/ | 48xCD, ARCINv6c IDE, SCSI ... How much sin can I get away with and still go to heaven?

21 years, 3 months

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AN1127 application note

by aek＠bitsavers.org

I did a little digging, and every pointer on the web went to sps-moto.com (now dead) and freescale appears to have deleted that app note. Hopefully someone wgot the whole appnote tree (unfortunately I didn't..)

21 years, 3 months

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WTD: 5.25' DSDD drive & Acorn Master128 keystrip scan/schematic

by leeedavison＠yahoo.co.uk

>> was to format it on the 48 tpi drive and then re-write it on the >> 96 tpi drive. > What good does that do? Against reason it used to work. > You'd be better off bulk-erasing the disk (with an AC-enegized > electromagnet, not a disk drive!), formatting it on the 80 cylinder > drive, writing it there, and the reading it on the 40 cylinder one. That wasn't an option, the degausser available couldn't reliably erase a disk. The eventual solution was to replace the few remaining 40 track drives. Lee. . ___________________________________________________________ Yahoo! Messenger - NEW crystal clear PC to PC calling worldwide with voicemail http://uk.messenger.yahoo.com

21 years, 3 months

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TurboROM Kaypro Update

by ajp166＠bellatlantic.net

> >Subject: TurboROM Kaypro Update > From: Doc Shipley <doc at mdrconsult.com> > Date: Sun, 29 May 2005 01:53:41 -0500 > To: General at mdrconsult.com, "Discussion at mdrconsult.com":On-Topic and Off-Topic > Posts <cctalk at classiccmp.org> > > Allison offered to provide a system disk made on a Kaypro 4/84 w/ >turborom, but has a time-critical prior project that prevents restoring >5.25" disks to the 4/84 right now. > > I had also asked on the CP/M newsgroup, and somebody there sent me a >set of teledisk images that might help. The Support and Developer SSDD >disks for a turborom'ed K-II, which are unfortunately not bootable, and >the DSDD Software Support Disk that came with the TurboROM purchased for >his own K10. > > I have a Mitsubishi MF501A-352U DSDD drive (with full-height black >face-plate, no less), so I have it temporarily replacing the Kaypro's >Tandon TM100-1A. Those are very nice drives. > And the K10 Software Support disk finally got me to an A0> prompt! >It looks like the turborom is fairly model- and version-agnostic. Yeehaa! turbo rom is fairly complient and also good to have. > The hard drive formatter (K10FMT.COM) works, as do TURBOGEN.COM and >MOVTURBO.COM, so I can now boot from the hard disk. :) > > I'm not CP/M-savvy at all, but it looks like I have enough here to >make this a functional system. > > Allison, I appreciate the encouragement and the info. I'd like to >stick a pair of 3.5" drives in, so if you do run across the DIP switch >settings for the floppy personality module, I'd like to have that. And >a system disk would still be interesting when your other work slows down. I have them here. Each switch pair corosponds to one drive of the possible four. pairs are 1/2, 3/4, 5/6, 7/8. The settings are: off/off no drive installed (odd number switch being on, drive exists) off/on no drive installed (even numbered switch selects 48/96tpi) on/off 48tpi drive on/on 96tpi drive For a 3.5" floppy you need to select 96pi and format with the advent formatter (not a dos formatted disk!). Also the floppy must have a drive select header/switch that allows for 4 drive non-twist cable select. It's possible to use newer 3.5" drives but plan on modding the drive select right at the edge connector. Disk notes: Two sided 96tpi 3.5 or 5.25 gets you either 720k or 781k formatter dependant. Also 3.5" drive are being used as 720k (one hole media) so they must be able to function as such. The 48tpi drive get you half that. Oh, the last drive is the one (and only!) to have terminating resistor installed/enabled. My 4/84 has two 3.5" embedded inside (drives D: and E:) as if it were a hard disk and one on the console front (A:) the second drive is a usually 48tpi(teac FD55BV) for compatable ops. Having the drives inside the case seems useless but they have media in them and are fully loaded as a useful 1.4mb library. In the CP/M world that's a considerable amount of space. > And finally, a question - does the Kaypro support a serial console at >all? The VDT is OK, but it's tiny. :\ Yes it can. I believe the IObyte needs to point con: and key: to serial port. This is very bios dependent. Hope this helps. Allison

21 years, 3 months

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WTD: 5.25' DSDD drive & Acorn Master128 keystrip scan/schematic

by leeedavison＠yahoo.co.uk

>> I'm after a 5.25" 80-track (preferably 40/80 switchable) DSDD drive, > Never heard of that, and I can't seen any way it could possibly work. > If you need to be able to write 40-track and 80-track diskettes, you > need two drives. It was common practice to use 96 tpi drives for both 40 and 80 track disks on BBC micro systems. If someone only had a 48 tpi drive and couldn't read the disk written on the 96 tpi drive the usual solution was to format it on the 48 tpi drive and then re-write it on the 96 tpi drive. Cumana dual 40/80 disk units seem to use Mitsubishi M4853 drives. Lee. . ___________________________________________________________ How much free photo storage do you get? Store your holiday snaps for FREE with Yahoo! Photos http://uk.photos.yahoo.com

21 years, 3 months

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Need Digital VT102 and Hewlett-Packard A1099B Keyboards

by bqt＠Update.UU.SE

On Sun, 29 May 2005 shoppa_classiccmp at trailing-edge.com wrote: > > I need a VT102 keyboard (the original DEC one) > > Didn't all the VT1xx use the same keyboard, the one with the stereo > phone plug on the end? > > That makes it easier, you just need any VT100-type keybaord. Not exactly, but enough to be substitutable. The VT100 keyboard have four used controlled LEDs, called L1 to L4. The VT102 keyboard only have one user controllable LED, called L1. The other three LEDs are used by something else, but I cannot exactly remember what right now, and all those keyboards are about 80km from where I am, so I cannot check. 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

21 years, 3 months

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WTD: 5.25' DSDD drive & Acorn Master128 keystrip scan/schematic

by leeedavison＠yahoo.co.uk

> so that leaves an 80 track still to find Any of these should work .. Micropolis 115V Mitsubishi M4853 Shugart SA465 Tandon TM55-4 Tandon TM100-4 Teac FD-55F Y.E. Data YD580 Cheers, Lee. . ___________________________________________________________ How much free photo storage do you get? Store your holiday snaps for FREE with Yahoo! Photos http://uk.photos.yahoo.com

21 years, 3 months

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Early IBM Computers, history info

by chenmel＠earthlink.net

Because somebody mentioned RAMAC in a thread, I dug out something my father gave me awhile back, the 25th Anniverary Edition of the 'IBM Journal of Research and Development' a thich issue published in September 1981. It is mostly made up of historical articles. In particular there is a 'survey' article 'The Architecture of IBM's Early Computers' which is a technical comparison of all IBM Computers from 1949 to 1964. It discusses the 701, 702, 650, 1401 series, and RAMAC and Stretch. It's not a long article (13 pages) but is rich in technical descriptions. Is this article already available somewhere online? The copyright notice says 'Copying is permitted without payment of royalty provided that (1) each reproduction is done without alteration and (2) the Journal reference and IBM copyright notice are included on the first page' Should I scan this article? Where should it be made available? (i.e. where should I upload it?) ----- Really, paging through the whole journal (it's very thick), it should ALL be made available somewhere, if it isn't already. There is TONS of fairly rich historical info in it. Main sections include: System Architecture and Development Software Technology Component Development and Manufacturing Technology Magnetic Recording Technology Printing Technology IBM Scientific Contributions There are articles covering the history of the development of Magnetic Tape Storage, the disk drive, programming languages, the typewriter, etc. It's about 500 pages in all. Is anybody interested in carefully scanning the whole thing? I could be persuaded to loan it to somebody active on the list (where 'peer credibility' would guarantee it's return to me) who wants to scan it to share, and who would return it intact.

21 years, 3 months

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Free stuff, please take them. (UK)

by classiccmp.org＠irrelevant.fsnet.co.uk

Hi.. ok, I have the following items that I have to get rid off SOON to make some space. somebody please take them away before they hit a skip.. IBM XT 5160 (unchecked) 2 off 8 pack floppy changers. (unchecked, came with the XT but may be unrelated, only one cartridge) IBM 8513002 13" VGA colour monitor (OK) Wyse 550 VGA mono monitor (OK) Three or more serial terminals, at least 2 of which are Wyse. A couple of epson wide carriage dot matrix printers At least three complete working clone 486 machines PeeCees with CD-Rom & network cards (they were actually set up to run as Windows terminal-server terminals) Several clone Pentium 1 PeeCees of various specifications. A fair selection of PC keyboards & serial mice. Various otherwise unremarkable monitors. Desk-height, PC server cabinet, on casters, AT form factor) Non-computer stuff: I've also got a couple of TVs (one sort-of working, and one occasionally-working) and a metal framed high bed to shift ... All of the above is FREE to anybody who can collect it from Salford/Manchester. I will consider posting items if absolutely nobody else will collect.. (probably about ?10 an item, anywhere in UK, via carrier.) I will even consider delivering, but will have to charge based on time & distance. Preference definitely goes to anybody willing to take all or most of it! Cheers, Rob.

21 years, 3 months

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TurboROM Kaypro Update

by doc＠mdrconsult.com

I had asked last week or so about a system disk for a Kaypro II equipped with a WD hard disk controller and Rodime drive, Advent TurboROM v3.0, an Advent .5MB RAM drive, and an Advent floppy personality module. Allison offered to provide a system disk made on a Kaypro 4/84 w/ turborom, but has a time-critical prior project that prevents restoring 5.25" disks to the 4/84 right now. I had also asked on the CP/M newsgroup, and somebody there sent me a set of teledisk images that might help. The Support and Developer SSDD disks for a turborom'ed K-II, which are unfortunately not bootable, and the DSDD Software Support Disk that came with the TurboROM purchased for his own K10. I have a Mitsubishi MF501A-352U DSDD drive (with full-height black face-plate, no less), so I have it temporarily replacing the Kaypro's Tandon TM100-1A. And the K10 Software Support disk finally got me to an A0> prompt! It looks like the turborom is fairly model- and version-agnostic. The hard drive formatter (K10FMT.COM) works, as do TURBOGEN.COM and MOVTURBO.COM, so I can now boot from the hard disk. :) I'm not CP/M-savvy at all, but it looks like I have enough here to make this a functional system. Allison, I appreciate the encouragement and the info. I'd like to stick a pair of 3.5" drives in, so if you do run across the DIP switch settings for the floppy personality module, I'd like to have that. And a system disk would still be interesting when your other work slows down. Randy, Teledisk images will be forthcoming, now that I know my PeeCee reads and writes valid images and disks. And finally, a question - does the Kaypro support a serial console at all? The VDT is OK, but it's tiny. :\ Doc

21 years, 3 months

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Available: HP-2020 / DEC TU20 7-track drive

by Tim＠rikers.org

Installed January 1970. needs repair. missing pieces. http://rikers.org/gallery/hardware-hp2020 This drive was salvaged with the HP-2116A system I'm restoring. From what I can tell it was made by Datamec for HP. I think Datamec called it a D-2020. Looks like Datamec also made the TU20 for DEC that was available with the PDP-9. I also see references to a DEC-545 7-track drive. They appear to be the same transport. It sounds like MIT used to have a bunch of these. I read that the heads tend to wear out. The heads on this unit look fine visually. This unit is missing the front cover for the drive. It's also missing the cover over the I/O cards. One of the 7 "dual density write" boards is missing, but could be duplicated from one of the 6 existing boards. There are cables that don't hook up anywhere, so I would guess something else is missing, or that I'm just overlooking something obvious. The drive is located in Dallas. I'm planning to move soon. I don't think I'll ever get around to restoring this drive. I have no 7-track media. =/ It's free to whoever asks for it first. I'd prefer someone picks it up. It would be possible to ship it, but it's HEAVY and fragile. Not a good combination. Looks like these folks have 2 TU20's: http://www.aconit.org/collection/restauration_pdp9/a_restpdp9_2.php Someone give this baby a good home? ;-) This and other stuff I'm clearing out is listed here: http://rikers.org/wiki/FreeHardware -- Tim Riker - http://rikers.org/ - TimR at Debian.org Embedded Linux Technologist BZFlag maintainer - http://BZFlag.org/ - for fun!

21 years, 3 months

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Remembering RAMAC

by dwight.elvey＠amd.com

>From: "Vintage Computer Festival" <vcf at siconic.com> > ---snip--- > >I was thinking more in terms of space. A disk is much more efficient in >this regard. You can stack N times the number of disks in the same space >that a drum takes up. > The problem with disk, of course, is the variable BPI. Today, with the electronics so cheap, the CD-ROM is made with a spiral track and it runs at a constant BPI by changing the rotation speed as it reads the disk. Dwight

21 years, 3 months

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Fluke 9010A revisions/upgrades

by jcwren＠jcwren.com

I have two 9010As, one with revision 2C, and the other with 3A. I've seen units on eBay with 3C, also. Does anyone have a list of differences between the various versions, and what it takes to upgrade a unit? I've had both my units disassembled, but not at the same time, so I'm unsure if there are any hardware changes between revisions. --jc

21 years, 3 months

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Need specs for IBM PC Convertible power supply

by vcf＠siconic.com

Dag nerbit. I have an IBM PC Convertible and the manual, but I am lacking the power supply and the manual does not contain specifications (at least I couldn't find any). Does anyone know the specs on the power supply for this? Shanks! -- 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 ]

21 years, 3 months

4
8
0 0

HP keyboard

by aek＠bitsavers.org

will this work? http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&category=1504&item=7518967488

21 years, 3 months

1
0
0 0

Need Digital VT102 and Hewlett-Packard A1099B Keyboards

by david_comley＠yahoo.com

Ah - thanks for catching that. I didn't know they were different beasts. --- Eric Smith <eric at brouhaha.com> wrote: > You need > an HP-HIL keyboard. HP-IL and HP-HIL are entirely > different > interfaces. __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Mail - Helps protect you from nasty viruses. http://promotions.yahoo.com/new_mail

21 years, 3 months

1
0
0 0

Need Digital VT102 and Hewlett-Packard A1099B Keyboards

by david_comley＠yahoo.com

OK - that would improve my chances of finding one. Of course the chances of finding either one are probably still slim but it never hurts to ask. --- Ethan Dicks <ethan.dicks at gmail.com> wrote: > On 5/28/05, shoppa_classiccmp at trailing-edge.com > <shoppa_classiccmp at trailing-edge.com> wrote: > > > I need a VT102 keyboard (the original DEC one) > > > > Didn't all the VT1xx use the same keyboard, the > one with the stereo > > phone plug on the end? > > > > That makes it easier, you just need any VT100-type > keybaord. > > Yes... the only real variations were the keycaps > (plain, WPS...) The > protocol and plug are the same for all VT1xx > terminals (and > VT278/DECmate I, VT180/Robin, VT103/LSI-11...) > > -ethan > > __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around http://mail.yahoo.com

21 years, 3 months

1
0
0 0

cctech Digest, Vol 21, Issue 45

by hatfield＠bellsouth.net

> Message: 4 > Date: Fri, 27 May 2005 01:27:53 +0100 (BST) > From: ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk (Tony Duell) > Subject: Re: Neon logic > To: cctalk at classiccmp.org > Message-ID: <m1DbShh-000Iy3C at p850ug1> > Content-Type: text/plain > >> >> Reading would actually be the easy part- drop a phototransistor in >> (optical) >> line with the NE - pricy but doesn't affect the stored data. > > I believe somebody made a neon matrix ROM -- have an electically > rectangular array of neons with some present, others not. By applying > suitable voltages to the X and Y wires, a particular location is > addressed and the neon there fires (if there is a neon at that location), > but none of the others do. > > There was a photomultiplier aimed at the neons to detect the light flash. > I seem to rememebr there was the well-known problem that neons in the > dark don't fire reliably, which was got round by firing another neon just > before addressing a location (this neon could have a high enough voltage > applied to it to make sure it always fired reliably) and then ignoring > the extra pulse from the PM tube. > > Of course this did not use the memory property of the neons themselves -- > the data was stored by which neons were fitted. > > I wish I could remember which machine used this. Maybe something like > EDSAC 2? > > -tony In 1958, I joined the Western Electric group developing electronic switching systems to replace electromechanical devices currently in use. There had been two previous complete office designs that were discarded, one of which used a matrix of neon bulbs as a switching matrix. The method was evidently using an X and Y "mark" that caused a random bulb to fire. I saw movies of the display but never the real thing since the design had preceded me for quite some time. There was an uncomfortable moment when a cameraman focused on a unique bulb in the matrix and asked a technician to make that particular one "fire". Being random, there was no way to direct such an action. Fred.

21 years, 3 months

1
0
0 0

DECmate II -> VR201 cable?

by waisun.chia＠gmail.com

A quick one: What is the cable that connects the DECmate II to a VR201? TIA.

21 years, 3 months

6
13
0 0

BBS documentary

by jfoust＠threedee.com

It was mentioned on Slashdot yesterday because it's now available: http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/05/25/0023230&tid=97&tid=162&tid=1 although I don't know if that's new news, and it was mentioned in Evan's newsletter, but perhaps list members would enjoy seeing other well-known list members in the photo album: http://bbsdocumentary.dreamhost.com/photos/interviews.html Boy, those guys are getting old! :-) - John

21 years, 3 months

5
5
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Intel databooks needed ($$$)

by vcf＠siconic.com

New bounty! I need the following databooks: 1. 386SL Microprocessor SuperSet System Design Guide (1990) 2. 386SL Microprocessor SuperSet Programmer's Reference Manual (#240815) 3. 386SL Microprocessor SuperSet Data Sheet (#240814). Would prefer to buy but would also consider a loan arrangment. Please contact me directly if you have these. Thanks! -- 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 ]

21 years, 3 months

1
0
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FOR SALE: PDP-11

by john＠guntersville.net

I received this from a friend this evening and figured that sombody on the list may be interested. Contact the owner directly for info. FOR SALE: PDP-11 Over the years 1979-1985 this began as a PDP-11/03, evolved to a /23 and then to a /73. It went to sleep in 1986 when I got my 1st PC and has been asleep since. That is an 80Mbyte RM-03 multi-platter disk drive beside it. The OS I used was RSX-11M+ I would not plug this thing in on a dare!! I'm not sure what boards are still in it. The /73 CPU was sold years ago but I think there are still some /23 boards here. (Maybe) I'll sell to high offer by Labor Day evening -- 6:00 PM See this awesome machine at 103 Nolen Circle.... Just outside Monte Sano Park, Huntsville, AL. Or call (256) 533-6337

21 years, 3 months

1
0
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OT: Couple of google groups questions

by aek＠bitsavers.org

> Nobody uses Usenet any more (much to my own personal chagrin as I found it > very useful for many things, as I'm sure others did/do). As someone who has maintained the spies.com newsfeed for 10+ years, we've lost two big news feeds in the past year (SGI and Apple). Apple dropped news connectivity at the end of last year because they were no longer willing to pay for the connectivity cost, and there were less than 100 people reading news in the whole company. SGI just disappeared one day, never did hear why. This is a drag... I prefer being able to quickly scan 20+ USENET groups over N+ web URLs.

21 years, 3 months

1
0
0 0

Remembering RAMAC

by ajp166＠bellatlantic.net

> >Subject: Re: Remembering RAMAC > From: "Dwight K. Elvey" <dwight.elvey at amd.com> > Date: Fri, 27 May 2005 09:44:38 -0700 (PDT) > To: cctalk at classiccmp.org > >>From: "Vintage Computer Festival" <vcf at siconic.com> >> >---snip--- >> >>I was thinking more in terms of space. A disk is much more efficient in >>this regard. You can stack N times the number of disks in the same space >>that a drum takes up. >> > > The problem with disk, of course, is the variable BPI. >Today, with the electronics so cheap, the CD-ROM is made >with a spiral track and it runs at a constant BPI by >changing the rotation speed as it reads the disk. >Dwight > The big advantage and values of drums was high inerta plus parallel heads. Some designs were 16bits wide (maybe there were wider) plus timing tracks. So while small ( I remember the 128kw swapping drum on the KA10s) they were extremely fast. Of course late in the game was the 32kW RS08 disk for the PDP8 systems. Small but very fast word wide storage. Every so often I get the itch to find a small drum and get it working. Allison

21 years, 3 months

4
4
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Trying to resurrect old Apple ][ cassette program

by vcf＠siconic.com

I'm having trouble trying to get running an old Apple ][ cassette program. I managed to successfully load the program into the Apple's memory, but it won't run. Here are the details: The program is 3-D Docking by Programma International circa 1978. The program's load address is $200 (hex) and it ranges to $2000 (the load command is 200.2000R). It somewhat cleverly is auto-running in that it loads directly into the Apple ][ keyboard buffer (which resides at $200), and at the exact spot where the load command "200.2000R" would normally end in the keyboard buffer, the command "220G" is "inserted" (overlaid really) by the load into the keyboard buffer. So when the ROM is done reading the program, it finds the next command in the keyboard buffer is "220G", so it will jump to the code at $220. This is where it is presumably supposed to initialize some stuff and then presumably run the game. This code first calls a routine in the BASIC ROM and then sets some zero page addresses, and then jumps into the BASIC ROM. However, it crashes with an "OVERFLOW ERROR" at the JSR to $F000 at $220. Here's the "init" code at $220: 0220- JSR $F000 0223- LDA #$AF 0225- STA $4A 0227- LDA #$0C 0229- STA $4B 022B- LDA #$00 022D- STA $4C 022F- LDA #$20 0231- STA $4D 0233- LDA #$9C 0235- STA $CA 0237- LDA #$11 0239- STA $CB 023B- LDA #$8F 023D- STA $CC 023F- LDA #$0D 0241- STA $CD 0243- JSR $FC58 0246- JMP $EFEC I have no idea what this is supposed to do. I've tried skipping the first JSR but that doesn't fix things. The actual code starts at $800. Starting at $800 sets graphics mode and clears hi-res page 1, but that's it. I so far haven't been able to find any other start address. And I so far haven't been able to figure out how it gets from $220 to the actual game code. I've tried this on an enhanced Apple //e as well as a stock Apple ][+ but get the same results. I also tried it in an emulator (AppleWin) under both //e and ][+ emulation and get the same results. If anyone wants to play with this, I put it up for download here: http://www.siconic.com/download/images/3DDOCK.DSK So if you're counting, that's: Cassette -> Apple //e -serial-> PC -network-> PC Server -internet-> Web server -> You! ;) Mount this volume into your emulator and boot from it. Then BLOAD the program THREE-D DOCKING ($200). The binary loads at $6000 (for obvious reasons, if you're an Apple nerd) so you must move it to its expected location: 200<6000.7E00M You can then examine the code at $220 and $800-$1FFF. If anyone figures out how to get this to run, please let me know ;) -- 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 ]

21 years, 3 months

2
2
0 0

MPF-IP items needed

by jrkeys＠concentric.net

I got an email from someone looking for scans/copies of the three manuals that come with the MPF-IP does anyone have either of these that I can point this person to? For myself I'm looking for the thermo printer model PRT-MPF-IP to hookup to the computer that I have. Anyone have a source or extra one? Thanks John

21 years, 3 months

1
0
0 0

Remembering RAMAC

by ajp166＠bellatlantic.net

> >Subject: Re: Remembering RAMAC > From: Paul Koning <pkoning at equallogic.com> > Date: Fri, 27 May 2005 14:59:11 -0400 > To: cctalk at classiccmp.org > > Allison> Of course late in the game was the 32kW RS08 disk for the > Allison> PDP8 systems. Small but very fast word wide storage. > >Not fast at all, because that one is NOT parallel -- the RS08 (and its >PDP11 successor RS64, as well as the RF11/RS11) are all serial fixed >head drives. The doc says the RS08 takes 32 microseconds per (12 bit) >word; the RF11 was slightly faster at 15 microseconds per (16 bit) >word. > > paul Yep, but to a PDP8 that was fairly fast. ;) I did see a parallel head drum hooked to an 8 once, no idea of the details but it was for time sharing system and was very fast. Allison

21 years, 3 months

1
0
0 0

Apple's first scanner (available in Tuscon, Arizona)

by vcf＠siconic.com

If anyone is interested in this, please reply to the original sender (see below). Reply-to: gmt at CS.Arizona.EDU ---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Mon, 23 May 2005 17:04:41 -0700 From: Gregg Townsend <gmt at CS.Arizona.EDU> Subject: Apple's first scanner Would you be interested in this? It seems a shame to recycle it. 1987 Apple Scanner, model A9M0337, s/n 0030253. This is not the more common OneScanner, but instead its rarer 4-bit predecessor, which was marketed simply as the Apple Scanner. This is a legal-size flatbed scanner, 300 dpi, 4-bit grayscale. It has two SCSI connectors and ADB connector, and has two SCSI cables, a terminator, and a power cord. The scanner is in excellent condition; it was functioning perfectly when disconnected about five years ago. From above, it looks like new. Underneath, three rubber feet are missing, and there is a security plate attached by adhesive. You're welcome to have it if you think it's worth the shipping costs >from Tucson. Gregg Townsend gmt at cs.arizona.edu -- 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 ]

21 years, 3 months

1
0
0 0

Inventory for handling scanned documents (was: Better indexing on bitsavers)

by aek＠bitsavers.org

We've now named quite a lot of applications and concepts about how to handle scanned documents. I'd like to get the big picture: -- here is the current workflow that I'm using Ricoh IS520 30page/minute duplex B&W scanner that can handle up to 11 x 17 with crappy Windows scan app (under vmware) generates even / odd pages into two separate directories. Since it turned out that scanning wide-edge first results in straighter scans, I need to postprocess front and back separately since the backs are flipped 180 deg. The tiffs are on a shared file system with my Mac. I do all of the cleanup on there with Graphic Converter. I have a bunch of scripts I run over the files to produce a single directory with the pages brought to size and the boarders cleaned up. I then cull the dups/bad scans, check that I didn't miss any pages then save the files with the page number as the file name. Then I squirt the dir back over to the linux box (since tumble is little-endian only) and say: tumble -b %F * ../file.pdf Copy it back over to the Mac, add it to the postprocessed scans and put the whole thing in a 'to be archived' dir where it is saved to DVD-R If there are pages that can't be scanned on the Ricoh, I do those separately on a Mustek 11x17 flatbed. Then, ftp the pdf to bitsavers, and update the index files.

21 years, 3 months

4
3
0 0

look ing for Mag Tape Hinges pertec

by g-wright＠worldnet.att.net

I have few different Mag tapes that don't have the Rack Hinges that they hang on. I would guess they are different from model to model ??? The one is a Pertec T8X60A T8000 series pn 103338-01 Any one know of a Source or have a stash. - Jerry

21 years, 3 months

4
4
0 0

300mb disc drives

by aek＠bitsavers.org

> I can't remember any hard disks greater then 50MB being available even > into the late 1980's. CDC 9766's (300mb also sold as DEC RM05s) came out in 1979 Similar size drives were being made by IBM and Burroughs Sperry, Memorex, etc.

21 years, 3 months

5
5
0 0

Neon logic

by Saquinn624＠aol.com

Reading would actually be the easy part- drop a phototransistor in (optical) line with the NE - pricy but doesn't affect the stored data. Scott Quinn

21 years, 3 months

4
3
0 0

Cycle Computer Corporation Sun clone board...

by julesrichardsonuk＠yahoo.co.uk

Just picked one of these up, lurking in a SPARCStation 1 case. I gether it's a SPARC 5 clone board. It seems to have 30 pin SIMM memory, but also a couple of 72 pin sockets (both of these and all 16 30 pin sockets are filled). Anyone able to tell me if there's anything special about the 72 pin sockets? I'm assuming both types of socket are used as main memory and this was just done for flexibility, but it'd be nice to know (just in case the 72 pin ones are for disk cache or something equally strange) It seems Tadpole bought Cycle a number of years back, so I'll give them a poke just on the offchance they have a manual kicking around (their European base is only just down the road from me) cheers Jules

21 years, 3 months

7
11
0 0

The Don Maslin Software Archive - 2

by vern4wright＠yahoo.com

Since I posted my last message regarding Don Maslin's Software Archive on 5-14, I have followed the discussion here without contributing. I mailed a copy of that last message to Winnie Maslin on 5-16 with a pleasant cover letter. I have heard nothing from her. I have however heard through another source that she has asked a lawyer friend of Don's to "do something" - that something is undefined, though it is said that this man (whom I knew slightly some years ago) feels he can locate the software archive without difficulty. I hope that he can and will do so; obviously, I will not be involved. I don't know whether or when this will happen, or that it will. So I'm going to address some of the issues brought up in the discussion, give my take, and retire to my usual indolence. 1. Tom Jennings brought up the packrat v. collector issue - I don't know why, but it did bring about interesting exchanges. I considered writing to explain why collectors are almost always also packrats or accumulators, and how accumulators often become collectors, from my view as a life-long book collector. But I decided that essay would be non-productive. However, here in San Diego we did have a man who accumulated tens of thousands of books and stored them in his room in a hotel; the accumulation did fall on him and if memory serves, kill him. 2. Several suggested that I talk to others in the family - as though I hadn't thought of that. There was only one person available, and he had no influence. Felt he had been told by Winnie to butt out, that she would deal only with me directly. 3. The Computer Museum was suggested. David Weil was one of the first people I talked to about the situation back in September, after I had posted that initial message. The Museum is undergoing the agony of having to move (ah, how well I know that feeling!), as Coleman College (where it is now housed) is going to sell their building. David is looking for a new venue. Anyone with access to big bucks is encouraged to contact him. 4. Barry Watzman stated that Winnie had made no 'agreement' with me. While the agreement that we had (which was memorialized in a letter I wrote her directly after the September posting and never, in letter or in word, disavowed) may not stand the legal scrutiny of the elements of offer, acceptance, consideration, and the rest that go into a contract - it's been a long time since I took Kingsfield's course in Contracts :) - it was an agreement that she did not keep. REGARDLESS - understand, all I wanted to do was - TO CLEAN UP A MESS A FRIEND LEFT - AND SAVE A PRICELESS RESOURCE FOR THOSE OF US WHO CARE FOR OLD COMPUTERS I don't give a hoot for the old computers that Don left - they're probably worth about ten thousand _in toto_, and that might cover the cost of disposing of all the many things (monitors, etc.) which cost big bucks to dispose of in California. 5. Why didn't Don make a backup? For that, you have to understand something about Don. HE HATED WINDOZE - passionately. He tried OS/2 and gave up on it. He watched me install Linux from scratch (back in the early days of Linux, before the modern "stick a disc in and let it do its thing" times), and I think it scarred him for life. (It did me!) He used PC-DOS, not Microsoft (I'll not go into his remarks about that company). So he kept his backups on tape. Somewhere, about 2001 or so, he got a burner; I recall, because I spent an afternoon showing him how to burn discs. He was going to go home and hold his nose and boot Win98 and burn a copy of his archive. I don't know whether he did. At some point one has to stand back and let a friend do what he pleases. Yes, I wanted him to make copies. But twist his arm I would not. When his ISP finally took away shell accounts, and Don HAD to log on through Windoze, we suggested he put a little PuTTY between himself and Win98. He did. 6. Where do we go from here? Well, the informal consensus, judging from the messages until a week ago (I haven't read the last week), was that the archive should be replaced _de novo_. And then the discussion devolved into the deficiencies of Teledisk, what ought to be the format of a new archive, etc. >From something Don said some years ago, Teledisk is now in the public domain. He kept up a desultory correspondence with the author of the *disk programs, who has moved into another field, and then asked me if I would make some additions to Teledisk. I looked at the problem and concluded that what he wanted wasn't plausible in the existing program. I would suggest that the group take the list of OS's that is on gaby's site, and see if it can be duplicated. And THEN DUPLICATE that list, find every OS on that list, and put them on ClassicCmp's website - in WHATEVER FORMAT IS POSSIBLE. As time passes, perhaps a fairly general storage/ transfer format may be found. I don't believe that there ever will be a fully general format, but that's not the issue. Doc Shipley wants a Kaypro boot disk! We don't know whether Don's archive ever will be found, or made available, or .... If we are serious lovers of these machines and want them to do more than sit in our workshops, it behooves us to assume the worst and act accordingly. We can always hope for the best. Vern Wright vern4wright at yahoo.com __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around http://mail.yahoo.com

21 years, 3 months

1
0
0 0

Neon bulb logic elements link?

by dwight.elvey＠amd.com

>From: "Eric Smith" <eric at brouhaha.com> > >I wrote: >> You turn on a particular tube by dropping the X line to 0V and raising >> the Y line to +105V. The selected tube sees 105V, while the other tubes >> in the same row and column see 97.5V. > >Tom wrote: >> I think your idea is generally right, but this detail seems wrong: >> when X goes from +7.5V to 0V, the entire line will see 105V, >> striking the entire line. > >Nope. > > 7.5V 0V > > X0 X1 > | | > | | > 97.5V Y0 --------90V-----------97.5V > | | > | | >105.0V Y1 --------97.5V----------105V > > >Locations (0,0), (1,0), and (1,0) are all still below the strike >voltage. > Hi When building neon logic, it might be better to consider using capacitive coupling to connect up your logic. Otherwise you may find that you'll have a significant level shifting problem. Just a thought Dwight

21 years, 3 months

4
4
0 0

zip (was: Re: Disk archival techniques)

by dwight.elvey＠amd.com

>From: "Jim Leonard" <trixter at oldskool.org> ---snip--- > For years I've used RAR (WinRAR for windows, RAR and RAR32 for ---snip--- Hi It seems that may of you are missing the point. The archives are intended to be useable in say 500 years ( moved to future media ). Any proprietary application like WinRAR is useless for this purpose. I use ZIP files all the time but I would not use any of this stuff for the purpose of archiving. I surely wouldn't even consider a window application for archiving. Even things like error correction need to have their descriptions in the archive file. Do you expect to package a X86 simulator and WinRAR into a HTML like format with each of these compressed files? Back to reality folks! Dwight

21 years, 3 months

22
60
0 0

300mb disc drives

by aek＠bitsavers.org

I still have one of the disks, or I should say set of three, down in the garage and have been thinking about making a clock out of it. -- What sort of system did it come from? I'd hate to see some obscure operating system wiped out to make a clock.

21 years, 3 months

2
1
0 0

Neon Logic

by aek＠bitsavers.org

>from http://www.computerhistory.org/events/lectures/johnniac_09151998/johnniac_x… Well, that bell rang frequently. Finally, we had to convince Harriet -- by the way, this lady worked graveyard shift, midnight to eight in the morning -- to stay over a little extra, and we would meet with her, and find out what was going on. We asked Harriet to please go through, in gory detail, exactly what had happened when the payroll failed. By the way, she couldn?t give me the data, or anybody else, because Harriet Pierson, besides top management, was the only [person] allowed to look at payroll data, so -- it was worse than top secret. It was compartmented like you don?t want to know. Anyway, Harriet stayed over, and came in, and went through this exercise, and for the exercise she had created dummy data, just in case we might look at it. Well, nothing failed, and she couldn?t believe it. So we said, "Tell us exactly what you did." So we backed up, and she went through the whole thing, and I said, "Just go back out into the machine room like you normally would, after you loaded the machine." And she did. The first thing she did is, she walked by the door, is turn the lights off. But the drapes were open, and there was lots of light in the room, and so it didn?t have any effect as far as we could tell. But, when we sat down and thought about all this, we said, "Gee, maybe you?d better simulate the whole situation." So we closed the drapes, and ran the payroll program. And sure enough, after about 15 or 20 cards, we got an echo check error. The damn machine was afraid of the dark. Open the drapes [laughter], turn the lights on, and the machine ran fine! [Laughter] Makes no sense. Until Dick Stahl, one of the technicians on the machine, remembered that the neons were an active part of the circuit, and apparently by running a little test he determined that without any sunlight coming through in the windows, or fluorescent light from the overheads, which provided just enough ionization to keep them active, they deionized to the point where they would no longer conduct. [Laughter] Now, the question was, how do we fix this? There were something like two hundred and some odd -- how many neons were there? Well over 200. And nobody wanted to get in there and unsolder and resolder 200 -- the machine would have been down for a week at that point. Then somebody had a brilliant idea. Down here, where the air ducts for the return air from the air conditioner were, they put a bank of fluorescent lights on each side of the machine. If the filaments were on, they were on, the machine never had to run in the dark again. It never did. [Laughter] It never was afraid of the dark again.

21 years, 3 months

2
1
0 0

Neon bulb logic elements link?

by leeedavison＠yahoo.co.uk

>> called SBS (silicon bilateral switch) commonly used to drive >> Triacs. > Is this what is also called a Diac (at least in the UK)? Yes. Lee. . ___________________________________________________________ Yahoo! Messenger - NEW crystal clear PC to PC calling worldwide with voicemail http://uk.messenger.yahoo.com

21 years, 3 months

1
0
0 0

300mb disc drives

by wmaddox＠pacbell.net

Around 1982 or so, an RP-20 showed up at CMU. As I recall, it stored an entire gigabyte on a pair of HDAs in a single cabinet. --Bill

21 years, 3 months

4
3
0 0

Neon bulb logic elements link?

by ajp166＠bellatlantic.net

> >Subject: Re: Neon bulb logic elements link? > From: Scott Stevens <chenmel at earthlink.net> > Date: Wed, 25 May 2005 18:54:11 -0500 > To: "General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts" <cctalk at classiccmp.org> > >On Tue, 24 May 2005 22:30:34 +0100 (BST) >Pete Turnbull <pete at dunnington.u-net.com> wrote: > >> On May 24 2005, 17:11, James Fogg wrote: >> >> > I seem to recall that neon's behave as diodes. I might be wrong. >> >> No, neons happily pass AC. You must be thinking of something else. >> > >Neons act like 'zener diodes' in a sense, perhaps that is where he got >the notion. Neon lamps fire at a constant voltage and can be used as >relatively stable voltage references, similar to a zener diode. But >other than 'voltage reference' use they are completely unlike diodes. Yes, they are bilateral. There is ssilicon device to mimic the neon called SBS (silicon bilateral switch) commonly used to drive Triacs. Allison

21 years, 3 months

2
1
0 0

neon tube memories

by ajp166＠bellatlantic.net

> >Subject: Re: neon tube memories > From: ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk (Tony Duell) > Date: Thu, 26 May 2005 00:38:52 +0100 (BST) > To: cctalk at classiccmp.org > >> Unless someone has som ehard data on them being used "digitally" >> I'd assume the HP counter use was simply as generic, non-switching >> circuit elements. > >The HP5245 counter certainly used neons as memory elements -- I have the >instrument and the service manual which has a section on the operation of >the counter module. > >Each counter module contains 8 transistors wired as 4 bistables. Diode >steering is added to make it count either in 1242 BCD code or 1248 (the >latter being one of the options available for the instrument). > >The collectors of the transistors go to the neons via resistor (and >diode?) networks. By varying the voltage on one of the lines you can >transfer the state of the counter to the 8 neons and latch it there. > >The neons are mounted in a plastic block with a thick-film circuit on >top. The thich film elements are CdS photoresistors arranged in a decoder >tree which directly drives a nizie tube. > >Quite a hack to get a counter, latch and display driver in just 8 >transistors! Only takes 4bits to count to 10. Though it could be a switch tail ring counter. >> A write-only neon memory would still make a nice addressable >> display! > >Somewhere I have a neon display which seems to be a dot-matix unit (7 dots >high by perhaps 100 long) with transfer electrodes like a Dekatron tube. >You apply 7 'bits' to the right hand column, then toggle the transfer >electrodes appropriately and all the dots move left one column. Repeat to >built up the pattern you want in the display. > >-tony Boroughs Panaplex, I have a 32char version that I power up and it works. I've designed using the 40 char version pretty cool. Even got to visit the facility in NJ back in '73 where they were made along with the other gas tubes (nixe and the like.). Allison

21 years, 3 months

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look for DG nova 4 info ??? or site

by aek＠bitsavers.org

> Is there any site that covers these. ??? Bruce Ray (bkr at wildharecomputers.com) http://www.novasareforever.com/

21 years, 3 months

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look for DG nova 4 info ??? or site

by g-wright＠worldnet.att.net

Hi, I have a Data General Nova 4 8394k I t has no console wiring. I see the pins on the back plane mark console but don't know much more that. The manual I have, does not really cover this and the Baud Jumpers don't match up with the CPU board I have. The CPU board has a bunch of numbers so here they are. All on the Front edge. D 0782 P A 005 12066 R04 A005 13542 R 05 T 005 12785 R0 ECO N0 9889 - 10855 - 10388 10595 10758 10199 11013 on a different sticker 1788#4151 on The Board Is there any site that covers these. ??? - Thanks, Jerry

21 years, 3 months

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If not IBM then Who was First

by jrkeys＠concentric.net

Most people give IBM credit for the Sept 1956 creation of the RAMAC as the first hard drive but is that true?

21 years, 3 months

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another ebay weirdness

by quapla＠xs4all.nl

Uhhmmm.... http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&category=1247&item=5201935487 (not afiliated btw)

21 years, 3 months

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cleaning my storage in boston, dec & sun workstation gear avail.

by akb+lists.cctech＠imap1.mirror.to

OK, I'm cleaning out and downsizing my storage space. It's just north of Boston, Massachusetts. Stuff I know I have way too much of, free to good home: 10? Vaxstation 3100 model 30 10? DECstation 2100 10? DEC VR262 19" mono fixed freq monitors 8? Sun Sparcstation 10 and 20, also probably sparcstation 1 & 2's 2 Sun Sparcstation ELC 2 Sun 3/110 2 Sun color monitors with 13W3, about 17-19", I forget model number 1 Fuji Supereagle 1 JDL 850 printer/plotter 1 Sun 4/260 VME system, various extra VME boards 1 19" fixed freq color monitor, rasterops I think 1 HP 9000/400, FSF surplus Most machines have a small working scsi drive and I have a fair number of keyboards, mice, scsi shoeboxes, umbilicals, etc. which I can pass on to people who take CPUs. The dec boxes mostly don't have an OS on them, I'm not sure about the suns. The suns may also have cd drives and/or floppies, the decs don't. Stuff I probably also want to get rid of, but am not as likely to dumpster in the next few weeks: 2 DECsystem 5300's (MIPSfair) 1 uVAX II in BA123 1 Sun/Hitachi 19" fixed freq monitor 1 Cut Sheet Feeder for Epson LQ-800. Also the LQ-800 itself. :) 1 or 2 Vaxstation 2000 or uVax 2000's. several cases of 8.5*11 plain white tractor feed paper Where else should I post this besides here and a.f.c and craiglist? Write to me at google at mirror.to if interested... --akb

21 years, 3 months

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Remembering RAMAC

by news＠computercollector.com

Nice article about the (first?) hard disk in today's Mercury News: http://www.siliconvalley.com/mld/siliconvalley/11743962.htm ----------------------------------------- Evan Koblentz's personal homepage: http://www.snarc.net Also see http://groups.yahoo.com/group/midatlanticretro/ *** Tell your friends about the (free!) Computer Collector Newsletter - 725 readers and no spam / Publishes every Monday / Write for us! - Mainframes to videogames, hardware and software, we cover it all - W: http://news.computercollector.com E: news at computercollector.com

21 years, 3 months

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Neon bulb logic elements link?

by James＠jdfogg.com

> > The site that had some scanned pages from a book, about using neon > > bulbs as logic elements. I planned to read it later, and then lost > > it. Anyone seen that site? > > You mean the stuff in this zip file? > http://computer-refuge.org/classiccmp/neon_lamp_logic/lamp.zip I seem to recall that neon's behave as diodes. I might be wrong. ---- There are only 10 types of people in the world, those who understand binary and those who don't.

21 years, 3 months

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zip now Archival quality printing

by mamcfadden＠cmh.edu

One of my thoughts was to take an archival quality black pen and insert it into a pen plotter and use archival quality alkaline paper. Write out information, kind of an automated "monk" except they don't have to take time off for prayers, sleep and food. I think you need contact of the writing instrument against the paper. The pressure of the pen against the paper helps define the lettering. The paper fibers hold the ink. I have heard about using inkjets with "archival quality" inks. When using an inkjet you have to work about clogging jets, drying time, bleeding of the ink, and fading. There are existing examples of "old" books that have survived nearly intact and I think the idea is to keep it simple. Keep the pen and paper paradigm. Once I was able to hold and read a book that was over 400 years old it made me feel a connection with the person who expended the effort to create it. They did a lot of work and I was able to read it 400 years later. Mike

21 years, 3 months

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Neon bulb logic elements link?

by ajp166＠bellatlantic.net

> >Subject: Re: Neon bulb logic elements link? > From: "Eric Smith" <eric at brouhaha.com> > Date: Wed, 25 May 2005 14:18:31 -0700 (PDT) > To: "General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts" <cctalk at classiccmp.org> > >Tom Jennings wrote: >> For neon, from flawed memory, strike-over is around 100V, and >> sustain around 80V. [...] You could probably make a coincident-voltage >> memory from them... but they'd be slow I think, but pretty. > >Sounds like a fun project! > >Lessee... If the numbers are 80V and 100V... > >You have an X-Y matrix. Steady state, you apply +7.5V to each X line, >and +97.5V to each Y line, so each tube has 90V across it. > >You turn on a particular tube by dropping the X line to 0V and raising >the Y line to +105V. The selected tube sees 105V, while the other tubes >in the same row and column see 97.5V. > >I'm guessing that if you measure the current in those lines, you can >tell when it strikes, or maybe you just wait long enough before dropping >the lines back to the steady state. > >To turn off a particular tube, you raise the X line to 15V and drop >the Y line to 90V. Now there's only 75V across the selected tube, >while other tubes in the same row and column will still have 75V. >Again, there should be a current drop when the selected tube turns >off. > >And you read a tube either by trying to turn it on, or trying to turn >it off. If the current doesn't change enough, it hasn't flipped. > >The voltages will need to be controlled fairly well, since the >margins are narrow. > >Will neon bulbs have reduced lifetime if you run them on DC? > >Eric The numbers for the common NE2 were more like 65 and 90V and are also sensitive to light! Neons for logic were burned in for consistant threshold and extinguish voltages. Oh, and they are relatively slow. Other uses for Neons is they behave above the stike voltage like a zener diode so it's not uncommon to tsee them used as a 90V offset or reference. Allison

21 years, 3 months

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Neon bulb logic elements link?

by pete＠dunnington.u-net.com

On May 25 2005, 9:01, Stan Barr wrote: > Hi, > > Pete Turnbul said: > > > On May 24 2005, 17:11, James Fogg wrote: > > > > > I seem to recall that neon's behave as diodes. I might be wrong. > > > > No, neons happily pass AC. You must be thinking of something else. > > They have hysteresis. The striking voltage is higher than the > maintaining voltage which allows you to use them as switches and > oscillators. I know. The first oscillator I ever built was a relaxation oscillator using a neon lamp. -- Pete Peter Turnbull Network Manager University of York

21 years, 3 months

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Neon bulb logic elements link?

by herby1620＠yahoo.com

Still more stories about Neon lamps: Experimenting as a kid (35 years ago or so), I hooked one (an NE-2) directly across a telephone line as an indicator for the ring signal. It worked "kinda". Turns out that the AC voltage of the ring caused the bulb to strike, and since I didn't have a resistor in series, the current of the strike was enough to signal "answer". Then the central office returned the supply voltage to the normal 48 volts, and since this was below the keep voltage, the bulb went out and with no current, the C.O. thought the phone was hung up. The other extension phones had a short ring. The caller heard little. You had to run to the phone and answer it if you wanted to talk. It makes for a very annoying trick! The solution to this is to add a resistor (about 51k as I remember it) in series. The current drawn when ringing thru the resistor isn't enough to make the C.O. trip answer. Now fast forward a bunch of years, and I work for a company that uses neon-CdS "optical isolators" to detect ring. They DID put the reisitor in series. The problem then happened that they forgot to put a capicator in series as well. Normally this doesn't make any difference, but in some areas (mostly rural) the voltage is raised to make up for long line loss. Sometimes it is raised to over 90 volts. In some of these situations the indicator would always indicate "ring". It wasn't too good. Now days we use optical isolators and a series R-C combination. It works pretty well. You need a reverse diode across the optical isolator (an LED works well, and makes a good indicator) so the cap won't take on a DC bias. p.s. 4 layer diodes work like neon lights (different strike/hold voltages) but a lower voltages. An X-Y matrix similar to the neon ones discussed would work, but with no visual readout. These were proposed, but IC's came into being, and the hassel wasn't worth it. Oh, well. __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around http://mail.yahoo.com

21 years, 3 months

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AT&T Safari laptop

by aw288＠osfn.org

I was given an old Safari laptop, but no power supply. Does antone know what kind of voltage this thing wants? William DOnzelli aw288 at osfn.org

21 years, 3 months

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Neon bulb logic elements link?

by ajp166＠bellatlantic.net

> >Subject: Re: Neon bulb logic elements link? > From: "Dwight K. Elvey" <dwight.elvey at amd.com> > Date: Wed, 25 May 2005 16:05:54 -0700 (PDT) > To: cctalk at classiccmp.org > >>From: "Eric Smith" <eric at brouhaha.com> >> >>I wrote: >>> You turn on a particular tube by dropping the X line to 0V and raising >>> the Y line to +105V. The selected tube sees 105V, while the other tubes >>> in the same row and column see 97.5V. >> >>Tom wrote: >>> I think your idea is generally right, but this detail seems wrong: >>> when X goes from +7.5V to 0V, the entire line will see 105V, >>> striking the entire line. >> >>Nope. >> >> 7.5V 0V >> >> X0 X1 >> | | >> | | >> 97.5V Y0 --------90V-----------97.5V >> | | >> | | >>105.0V Y1 --------97.5V----------105V >> >> >>Locations (0,0), (1,0), and (1,0) are all still below the strike >>voltage. >> > >Hi > When building neon logic, it might be better to consider >using capacitive coupling to connect up your logic. >Otherwise you may find that you'll have a significant >level shifting problem. > Just a thought >Dwight > The general design rules were pulse logic based so capacitive coupling was the norm and diodes were not uncommon. I've done simple binary counters and shift registers with NE2s and it's fun and fairly tolerent. Somewhere I've seen a complete schematic for a 3T (Tic Tac Toe) player that used Neon lamps and 2D21 thyratrons. Allison

21 years, 3 months

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Neon bulb logic elements link?

by pete＠dunnington.u-net.com

On May 24 2005, 17:11, James Fogg wrote: > I seem to recall that neon's behave as diodes. I might be wrong. No, neons happily pass AC. You must be thinking of something else. -- Pete Peter Turnbull Network Manager University of York

21 years, 3 months

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Neon bulb logic elements link?

by palazzol＠comcast.net

Hello, There was a link posted on this list in the last month that I can't find now. The site that had some scanned pages from a book, about using neon bulbs as logic elements. I planned to read it later, and then lost it. Anyone seen that site? Thanks, -Frank

21 years, 3 months

5
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zip

by dwight.elvey＠amd.com

>From: "Vintage Computer Festival" <vcf at siconic.com> > >On Wed, 25 May 2005, Kevin Handy wrote: > ---snip--- > >> The archive should be for our own use, not some theoretical idiot 2000 >> years from now trying to boot a Kaypro. He's probably going to have a >> whole different set of problems with an archive than we could conceive; >> like locating the "any" key. > >Right, so don't make the archives more complex than they need to be. > >-- > >Sellam Ismail Vintage Computer Festival Hi Kevin I'm sure if you needed an archived image zipped before you could use it and you requested it that way, Sellam could provide it in that format for you ;) That doesn't mean he must store it that way. Why it is only useable in zipped form I don't really understand but if that is what you NEED for your "own use", that is what you can get. It doesn't restrict how Sellam stores the image. It is hard to say what piece of information will be of interest to someone 2000 years from now. It may be a Kaypro that is being researched or it might just be that they wanted to know what the typical storage media size was. If the information was zipped first, they'd need to first recognize that it was zipped. They'd then need to create a working unzipper before they could answer either question. Finding an unzipped source might be just as hard. I use zipped files for my personal archive but then I know who is going to look at it. I'd even expect to send an image to Sellam as a zipped file. For the purpose he has in mind, I'm sure he'd unzip it. Dwight

21 years, 3 months

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Is it just me...

by aek＠bitsavers.org

its really driving up the price of stuff unnecessarily. -- This (dkdkk, ed sharpe, sassyscottie, et al.) has started to really impact what I can get to scan. I have to carefully consider if this is the only copy of a document I know of, or if there are other sources that I might have access to in the future. It makes me feel really great to be giving this stuff away too, after having paid through the nose for it (the latest example being the IBM 1410 CE manual).

21 years, 3 months

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neon tube memories

by tomj＠wps.com

http://wps.com/archives/Burroughs/images/N101-5.jpg OUCH! OK, assuming Nixies are more or less the same as other Ne devices, they will make lousy memories. * Ionization time is approxmately 50mS. Longer in the dark! With keepalive currents etc "as low as 10 microseconds". OK they're slow. * electrode deterioration is via sputtering, not impurities. Varies approx. as the 3rd-power of current. Clearly, neons in HP counters are probably the traditional constant bias generators. They were typically used in DC-coupled amplifiers to provide plate-to-next-grid drop. Neons also got used with CdS cells and the like to make 60Hz photo choppers. Unless someone has som ehard data on them being used "digitally" I'd assume the HP counter use was simply as generic, non-switching circuit elements. A write-only neon memory would still make a nice addressable display!

21 years, 3 months

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Neon bulb logic elements link?

by dwight.elvey＠amd.com

>From: "Tom Jennings" <tomj at wps.com> > >On Wed, 25 May 2005, Eric Smith wrote: > >>> sustain around 80V. [...] You could probably make a coincident-voltage >>> memory from them... but they'd be slow I think, but pretty. >> >> Sounds like a fun project! >> >> Lessee... If the numbers are 80V and 100V... > >Actually, it might be easy enough to be fun. There aren't many >storage method that are direct-readout of all cells! (It would >make a display too). > Hi Hp made a counter tube using several electrodes. The idea was that there was only enough current to keep one electrode at a time lit. It might be more practical to make a storage element with multiple electrodes instead of depending on matching several NE-2's. Dwight

21 years, 3 months

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Is it just me ...

by wmaddox＠pacbell.net

--- Barry Watzman <Watzman at neo.rr.com> wrote: > You don't understand how E-Bay works. If you bid $5 > and I bid $100, I win > the item .... for $6. And the fact that I had bid > $100 is never even seen, > by anyone. I understand it quite well. I believe that both you and Eric missed the point of my remark, which was simply that there was in each case another individual who was willing to pay essentially the same price at which the auction closed, therefore there was a market, however small, in which the exhorbitant closing prices of those G-15 document auctions was in fact the "correct" market price. You cannot blame an individual willing to pay that price as driving up prices -- it takes at least two bidders willing to pay "above market" prices to do this. His only alternative would have been to bid less, and lost. The situation is different in an ordinary sale, where the price will rise to whatever a single individual is willing to pay, as long as the seller is willing to hold out for a higher price. --Bill

21 years, 3 months

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zip (was: Re: Disk archival techniques)

by dwight.elvey＠amd.com

---snip--- > >However popular a machine is now, there will come a time when there are >none still running (and I suspect this will be true of modern PCs long >before it's true of things like PDP11s, but I digress). I feel it's very >unlikely that our archive of boot disks will survive and no copies of a >now-common archive program specification will remain, though. > >-tony > Hi Tony It is more that we can not predict what pieces of the puzzle will be missing. If I'd have known when I was a kid that Mickey Mouse watches were going to have value, I'd have bought several. As you know, from personal correspondence, I'm working on a machine that wasn't all that uncommon in Europe. Some things for it just don't seem to exist ( programs and manuals ). They were out there but they are gone now. I can't predict what will be lost and what will survive. I can't predict why one obscure piece of information continues to be available despite its limited application while other bits of information the were more popular are gone. The Idea of an archive is to try to minimize the interdependencies. The archive should include the zip, rar and tar information. That doesn't mean that the archive should depend on them. Dwight

21 years, 3 months

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this weeks salvage stuff

by Tim＠rikers.org

a salvage area I visit weekly has some some stuff that may or may not be of interest. IBM-3900 printer (LARGE!) 3 IBM-3179 G terminals sun stuff (normal) pc, racks, etc. Dallas TX I don't want any of it. I can bid on it in complete sets often 3 pallets full of stuff. Any interest? email me directly with how much you'd like me to bid, as well as how, and how soon, you will get it out of dallas. http://rikers.org/gallery/hardware-20050525 I need to place any bids by tomorrow 10am CDT -- Tim Riker - http://Rikers.org/ - TimR at Debian.org Embedded Linux Technologist - http://eLinux.org/ BZFlag maintainer - http://BZFlag.org/ - for fun!

21 years, 3 months

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BBS documentary

by James＠jdfogg.com

> although I don't know if that's new news, and it was > mentioned in Evan's newsletter, but perhaps list members > would enjoy seeing other well-known list members in the photo album: > > http://bbsdocumentary.dreamhost.com/photos/interviews.html > > Boy, those guys are getting old! :-) I met Jason when he worked for Digital Island (or Digex or one of those players). The facility was going to close and he was trying to find a home for a Sun SC2000E. We got to talking and found our common BBS roots. I agreed to interview, but it never happened because of events on my end. Considering the level of material he eventually collected I'm sure I'd have ended up in the digital dustbin. The SC2000E never happened either :-( ---- There are only 10 types of people in the world, those who understand binary and those who don't.

21 years, 3 months

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Neon bulb logic elements link?

by palazzol＠comcast.net

Pat said... >You mean the stuff in this zip file? >http://computer-refuge.org/classiccmp/neon_lamp_logic/lamp.zip > >Judging by the date on the file, it was 2 years ago, not last month, that >we were talking about it... Thanks - that was it. Now I remember, I was looking at the VCF Midwest info when I stumbled on it by accident. Thanks also for the other comments/links! More to read... -Frank

21 years, 3 months

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MicroVAX Help?

by dwhit＠dwhittaker.com

I am purchasing a MicroVAX Model 655QS-B2. Can anyone point me to a good source of documentation? I am new to all this and have no idea how to even get it running. I am told that the only thing about it is there is no power cord. I don?t even know what kind of power cord it uses? Anyone able to help? Please email starmaster(at)gmail.com Thanks -- No virus found in this outgoing message. Checked by AVG Anti-Virus. Version: 7.0.322 / Virus Database: 266.11.14 - Release Date: 5/20/2005

21 years, 3 months

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MFM, RLL etc to USB

by aek＠bitsavers.org

Anybody know if there exist adapters for old disk drives (e.g.- MFM, RLL etc.) to USB? Preferably USB 2.0. I may need to read the contents of a bunch of old hard drives. I can probably cobble together some old ISA systems with the right controllers if I really must, but maybe someone's created a simple solution. Chris -- This same subject came up a month or so ago. You have to use the same controller as the drive was formatted with, since there is no way to tell what the actual on-disk sector format was for a random MFM or RLL disk. Adaptec, for example, used their own ECC scheme on the sector. There is (currently) nothing available like the Catweazel for capturing bit level data for hard drives.

21 years, 3 months

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Is it just me ...

by kai＠werxltd.com

Ah, but you could try to find out just how high the other person is bidding by small increments. eBay used to (and might still) tell you if you are tied with the current winner's highest bid. This is a technique merchants use (or used to) to drive up prices. -Wes -----Original Message----- From: cctalk-bounces at classiccmp.org [mailto:cctalk-bounces at classiccmp.org] On Behalf Of Barry Watzman Sent: Wednesday, May 25, 2005 12:00 PM To: cctech at classiccmp.org Subject: Re: Is it just me ... > In all fairness, the prices he pays are only > marginally more than the runner-up bidder You don't understand how E-Bay works. If you bid $5 and I bid $100, I win the item .... for $6. And the fact that I had bid $100 is never even seen, by anyone. If you are going to play the E-Bay game, it is very important to understand the intricate details of the bidding system completely.

21 years, 3 months

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Rescue opp: IBM System 36 / 5362 in Iowa

by news＠computercollector.com

Says it weights about 150 pounds and it shippable. - Evan > -----Original Message----- > From: KJones at acsltd.com [mailto:KJones at acsltd.com] > > Tan, 2 drawer file cabinet size, now serving as door stop, > Will ask client to donate if you want it > > Works as far as I know, I will fire it up > > Thank you, Keith Jones > Senior iSeries Consultant > > Associated Computer Systems, Ltd. > 11201 Aurora Avenue > Des Moines, IA 50322 USA > > Tel: 515-223-0078 Fax: 515-223-7219 > An IBM Premier Business Partner > > Visit ACS at http://www.acsltd.com for all your iSeries > (AS/400), PC Network and Telephony needs. > ----------------------------------------- Evan Koblentz's personal homepage: http://www.snarc.net Also see http://groups.yahoo.com/group/midatlanticretro/ *** Tell your friends about the (free!) Computer Collector Newsletter - 725 readers and no spam / Publishes every Monday / Write for us! - Mainframes to videogames, hardware and software, we cover it all - W: http://news.computercollector.com E: news at computercollector.com

21 years, 3 months

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MFM, RLL etc to USB

by chris.muller＠mullermedia.com

Anybody know if there exist adapters for old disk drives (e.g.- MFM, RLL etc.) to USB? Preferably USB 2.0. I may need to read the contents of a bunch of old hard drives. I can probably cobble together some old ISA systems with the right controllers if I really must, but maybe someone's created a simple solution. Chris

21 years, 3 months

2
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Is it just me ...

by Watzman＠neo.rr.com

> In all fairness, the prices he pays are only > marginally more than the runner-up bidder You don't understand how E-Bay works. If you bid $5 and I bid $100, I win the item .... for $6. And the fact that I had bid $100 is never even seen, by anyone. If you are going to play the E-Bay game, it is very important to understand the intricate details of the bidding system completely.

21 years, 3 months

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Classic DEC picture from "American Used Computer"

by aek＠bitsavers.org

> wasn't the guy's name Lou something? Sonny Monosson here's his obit http://www.boston.com/news/globe/obituaries/articles/2003/10/07/adolf_monos… Lot of what is rare stuff in that pic (like the RF08 on his left..)

21 years, 3 months

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IBM 5155 analogue display fault

by fireflyst＠earthlink.net

Haha, it does that when the cable gets disconnected from the CGA card, try hooking it back up :D > -----Original Message----- > From: cctalk-bounces at classiccmp.org > [mailto:cctalk-bounces at classiccmp.org] On Behalf Of Jules Richardson > Sent: Wednesday, May 25, 2005 8:57 AM > To: General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts > Subject: IBM 5155 analogue display fault > > > Just picked up an IBM 5155 luggable which was working up > until the point the chap switched it on to show me it > working, when it promptly broke :-) > > On switch on it gives a narrow horizontal band of amber about > 1.5" high; after a couple of seconds the whole screen changes > to flickering amber with brighter zig-zag flyback lines visible. > > Just thought I'd quickly ask in case there's component foo > that's a common failure in these machines (I haven't even > pulled the case to look for an obvious failure yet, let alone > do anything else) > > ta > > Jules >

21 years, 3 months

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ProPort 656 audio / DSP box and Sun interface board...

by julesrichardsonuk＠yahoo.co.uk

Another find (along with a SPARCBook, ooh!). Interesting thing about this external box is that the manual says it was designed primarily for NeXT compatibility. It's a dual input / dual output audio processor with a DSP interface for connecting to a wide variety of machines. This one came with an S-32C SBUS interface card for a Sun, but the unfortunate thing is that the hard disk that the owner had with all the interface code on is a little unwell, so it remains to be seen if I can drag anything off it. In the meantime though, anyone else have one of these critters, preferably hooked up to a Sun with some example code they can send me? I've got the manual for the ProPort box itself, which goes into some detail about programming, but it seems that the user was left pretty much on their own to write whatever custom app they needed to actually make use of it. I gather that Ariel who made it (and the I/F card) used to run a BBS with example code on, but of course that's long gone... cheers Jules

21 years, 3 months

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Sig-Micro CP/M software 8 inch disks available

by SUPRDAVE＠aol.com

I came across a 8 inch disk file box that's labeled SIG-MICRO CP/M SOFTWARE VOLUMES 1-246. There's around 200 disks in there with handwritten labels listing the disk numbers. I have no way of reading these disks. Anyone familiar with these? Are they worth archiving?

21 years, 3 months

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[Semi-OT] MacOS X Terminal.app keymappings

by mcesari＠comcast.net

On Feb 19, 2005, at 9:30 PM, Zane H. Healy wrote: > I've got a semi-ontopic problem since I'm using it to connect to > OpenVMS and PDP-11's. > > Does anyone know of a way to get the keycodes and add mappings for > additional keys than are listed in the com.apple.Terminal.plist > file? Apple's handling of the keypad is pathetic, so much for > "strict" emulation, but as it's still about the best out there > (besides my hacked Xmodmap for using a xterm) I'd really like to > get the problems fixed. > > Zane > Try GLterm. You can get it at: http://www.pollet.net/GLterm/ 10 bucks shareware. It does VT102 emulation and has proper keypad functionality -- toggle between app and numeric keypad modes by cmd-numlock as numlock is *really* the PF1 key :) The only downside is that you have to use F1 - F4 for PF1 - PF4 in numeric keypad mode. Double wide and double high characters are rendered properly. Characters are fuzzy under some conditions such as 132 column mode in a too narrow window and the double sized characters are somewhat fuzzy. This is due to the way he uses OpenGL to draw the characters. (See the Q&A) The graphics and line drawing characters (char. set 0) are there, too. It does a good job dealing with vttest (better than either xterm or Terminal.app), but no VT52 emulation. EDT and SED keypad works in TOPS-20. Not associated with the author, just pleased with the result. Mike

21 years, 3 months

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The Order of St. Leibowitz (terribly OT) was: RE: ZIP

by Saquinn624＠aol.com

So what archive format should we use for the blessed saint's shopping lists? Scott Quinn

21 years, 3 months

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SGIs and 64-bittiness

by Saquinn624＠aol.com

positive about IP28 (R10k), uname says IRIX64, all docs indicate R8k is 64 as well.

21 years, 3 months

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I'm in Dayton - where's everyone else? ;-)

by zmerch＠30below.com

I'm in dayton(ish) at the Holiday Inn in Fairborn just off I-675. I can't easily check my main email account, as I only have webmail here and I get nearly 500 msgs per day on that account, for which I have a bajillion Eudora filters at work at home, but not the laptop. I can be reached at my secondary account (z at 30below dot com) or also at my ham radio account (which I rarely use, but I'll check a couple times a day over the weekend) at ab8kk at 30below dot com. I have OnStar in my truck if my cellphones outta range, but of course, that'll only work whilst I'm in the truck.. ;-) If you see a dark red Chevy Avalanche with a Michigan National Guard Plate (with an Apple initialism embedded in it, no less!) dollars to donuts it's mine. It'll be locked, but you can leave a note on the windshield... ;-) My cell number is AC 906 rest 440 6909, I should have it on all evening and tomorrow -- my plan doesn't cover OH, so keep 'er short... ;-) [[ The *best* plan I can get offers MI and WI; that's it. :-( ]] Is the plan still Friday nite around 5:30 or 6:00 pm? M$ MapPoint doesn't have a "Porky's" in a 6 mile radius of Hara, but there is a restaurant called "The Rib Spot." Is that it? I'm gonna be at the hamfest prolly all day tomorrow, cell phone on... If we're gonna get together, email/call me, eh? See ya laterz (Hopefully!), "Merch"

21 years, 3 months

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Neon bulb logic elements link?

by dwight.elvey＠amd.com

>From: "James Fogg" <James at jdfogg.com> > >> > The site that had some scanned pages from a book, about using neon >> > bulbs as logic elements. I planned to read it later, and then lost >> > it. Anyone seen that site? >> >> You mean the stuff in this zip file? >> http://computer-refuge.org/classiccmp/neon_lamp_logic/lamp.zip > > >I seem to recall that neon's behave as diodes. I might be wrong. > Hi As tunnel diodes maybe but not your general purpose diode. They used the negative resistance characteristics of the neon lamps to create a 2 state circuit. The difficulty was that not only did this region drift with aging but it was also effected by the occasional radioactive particle. The negative resistance region is small as well, making it difficult to make circuits that worked. For logic functions, diodes in general lack the ability to invert. This is critical for any computing of reasonable complexity. Dwight

21 years, 3 months

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Anyone know this guy!?

by news＠computercollector.com

And if so, can you explain what he's smoking? http://www.clelsplace.com/eli/ The press release attached to this link is dated May 21, 2005. Oddly, it appears he did the same thing in 2002: http://yahoo.pcworld.com/yahoo/article/0,aid,104772,00.asp ----------------------------------------- Evan Koblentz's personal homepage: http://www.snarc.net Also see http://groups.yahoo.com/group/midatlanticretro/ *** Tell your friends about the (free!) Computer Collector Newsletter - 725 readers and no spam / Publishes every Monday / Write for us! - Mainframes to videogames, hardware and software, we cover it all - W: http://news.computercollector.com E: news at computercollector.com

21 years, 3 months

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Is it just me...

by wmaddox＠pacbell.net

--- Vintage Computer Festival <vcf at siconic.com> wrote: > I'm not sure who dkdkk (the buyer) is but he/she's > probably here either > actively or lurking. At any rate, he/she buys a lot > of stuff through > eBay, and it is consistently what I would consider > "stupid money". I'm > sure they're happy with their purchases, especially > if money is no > object to them, but its really driving up the price > of stuff > unnecessarily. In all fairness, the prices he pays are only marginally more than the runner-up bidder, so he's not the only one driving up the prices. An acquaintance of mine knows 'dkdkk' through his involvment with the old Computer Museum in Boston. It's a reasonable conjecture that he might have an interest in historical preservation and scholarship. I wonder if someone like Al might want to contact him and see if something might be arranged to get his material scanned into the archives. A guy with pockets that deep snapping up so much good material would be an asset to the community if he could be brought on board. --Bill >

21 years, 3 months

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PDP 11/45 light chaser

by GOOI＠oce.nl

The drawback of the light chaser program that uses the RESET instruction is that the heads load and unload of the RX02 drive in my PDP-11/40. That clunck-clunck sound is not pretty for a longer while ... - Henk, PA8PDP. > -----Original Message----- > From: cctalk-bounces at classiccmp.org > [mailto:cctalk-bounces at classiccmp.org]On Behalf Of Paul Koning > Sent: dinsdag 24 mei 2005 15:40 > To: cctalk at classiccmp.org > Subject: Re: PDP 11/45 light chaser > > > >>>>> "Tony" == Tony Duell <ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk> writes: > > >> I'm not much of a Unibus expert but I seem to remember there's > >> something odd about what's displayed in the lights, and how you > >> get it to change. > > Tony> THe easiest way on an 11/45 (or an 11/70?) is to store the > Tony> value at the address used for the switch register (777570 IIRC) > Tony> and set the rotary knob to the right of the data lights > Tony> appropriately. > > Definitely, if you have a machine with a display register (which is > how the write-only register at 777570 is referred to). > > The "data paths" setting roughly matches what you get on an 11/40, > which doesn't have that switch. In that case, the lights display the > contents of R0 during a WAIT (and apparently also during a RESET). > The fact that this happens for WAIT is the basis of the "spinning > lights" idle code used in various operating systems (RSTS for one, > though not RT11 which uses the display register instead). > > paul

21 years, 3 months

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New AIM-65!

by dwight.elvey＠amd.com

>From: "Joe R." <rigdonj at cfl.rr.com> > > Found this today. I opened the case and immediately recognized the >AIM-65 even though it was under the panel. Bought it, brought home, opened >it up and sure enough it IS an AIM-65. It powers up and appears to work. >BTW the machine appears to be a magnetic card encoder/reader. Paperwork >with it indicates that it came from a nuclear weapons plant that's operated >by GE and located here in Florida. > > <http://www.classiccmp.org/hp/AIM-65/>. No text or links but the picture >titles should clearly indicate what each picture is. > > Joe Hi Joe Two of the ROMs look like Rockwell code while the others look like custom ROMs. Also, are the wheels on the card reader driven or just to hold tension to the heads? Does it take a standard credit card or a cut down version? It does look like fun although missing the printer :( Dwight

21 years, 3 months

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Disk archival techniques

by dm561＠torfree.net

---------------Original Message: Date: Wed, 18 May 2005 14:21:03 -0500 From: "Randy McLaughlin" <cctalk at randy482.com> Subject: Re: Disk archival techniques <snip> Using one manufacturer as an example - Cromemco used bipolar PROMs and made their own numbers - 749XX. This makes it confusing but easy to spot when seen. They would use the chips on multiple boards keeping the same programming by chipnumber i.e. 74901 could be used on a floppy controller or memory card and still be interchangeable (I just made up an example but I've seen common 749XX across different types of cards). Randy www.s100-manuals.com -------------Reply: As a matter of fact, I just dumped several Cromemco PROMs a while ago for archival use; what's the recommendation for 4 bit PROMs? 8 bits with hex F's in the upper nibble, or? And are we going to be able to find blank bipolar PROMS or PALs in 10 or 20 years? mike

21 years, 3 months

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Disk archival techniques

by thomas.seidel＠gmail.com

Hello, May I point you to http://www.langzeitarchivierung.de/index.php?newlang=eng, a German project how to preserve digital resources for the next centuries... As I know from the project guys, keeping the data stored is easy (you can move them from disk to disk, from image to image), but how to use the data in the future is really a big problem... Just my 10cc --Thomas P.S. I'm new on this list. It's common to introduce oneself?

21 years, 3 months

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Is it just me...

by wmaddox＠pacbell.net

> "Dick Dick"? What sort of alias is that? I know a gentleman who has met the guy (Dennis) and tells me his initials are "DK" Strings like dkdkk are also the sort of thing you get when you mindlessly twiddle a few keys -- type "dkdkk" into Google and see how many hits of this sort you get. I think his eBay name is actually a little bit clever and amusing. --Bill

21 years, 3 months

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