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

by Saquinn624＠aol.com

Free to good home: HP MDP module, P/N 5062-3054 - Can't test it since I don't have a 9000/K type Dell Pentium cache module (big DIMM type card) Also, I have a friend who has a HP 9000 Series 800 H50 server box (it's been unracked, but fits nicely under the desk (he gave me the one from another rack- runs HP/UX 11i just fine) Somewhere between 512 and 768 MB RAM, single 96 MHz processor, several HP-PB cards it's sitting in my garage, and he's given me permission to see if anyone wants it. He does audio recording, so if anyone has something to trade for it in that field that would be good, or we could do a 3-way trade (I'm interested in classic computers, I can get him what he needs, we're all happy...) Heavy beast (~70 lbs) so pickup would be easier than shipping, but shipping could be arranged. If no-one wants to trade, I'd try to talk him into giving it away. I'd rather it get used than sit in a garage. Reply off-list, etc.

21 years, 6 months

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Good news, bad news....

by zmerch＠30below.com

The good news: I found my Tandy 200 and repaired it. (All it needed was a new internal NiCd battery, but by the time I found the battery, my wife lost the computer! :-O ) Upgraded it to 72K RAM as well, so I'm really stylin' -- ready to rock with it. It's 20 years old this month! More good news: I found my 200 packed under my STacy 2, which I need to repair. It's got a boatload of dodgy solder joints in it... and now that I finally have a very good soldering station, I can work on repairing that as well! I can repair it... but sadly, I cannot *reassemble* it as the baggie with all the screws for it (mostly case screws, but some board screws as well) was *not* packed with it; and so their location is still unknown. Anyone know the size/thread pitch of the screws in a STacy? Thankz, Roger "Merch" Merchberger -- Roger "Merch" Merchberger | "Profile, don't speculate." SysAdmin, Iceberg Computers | Daniel J. Bernstein zmerch at 30below.com |

21 years, 6 months

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Age

by witchy＠binarydinosaurs.co.uk

On Sat, Feb 26, 2005 at 10:29:24AM -0800, O. Sharp wrote: > ...What do you suppose demand for our older machines will be like > after we're gone? I can't help but think a lot of ours are being > preserved because they're nostalgic to us, "the machines we grew up > on"; and a generation from now, the interest is going to be on > machines _that_ generation grew up on. Surely the machines _that_ generation all grew up on are going to be identical wintel boxen and the like? cheers w

21 years, 6 months

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Age

by mhstein＠canada.com

On 26 Feb 2005, at 09:37, Nico de Jong wrote: > It could be interesting to know the age"spread" of thist list > contributors, Well, FWIW: About to hit the big 6 0 (hi Nico!) Started in '62 sorting & collating cards in an IBM unit record service bureau. Programmed my share of plugboards, claim to fame was programming a 402 to multiply (Can't be done? HA!). Moved up to running the Statistical department (What percentage prefer Colgate to Pepsodent) on an IBM 101 and was finally involved in moving operations to the first Burroughs computer installed in Canada AFAIK (a B200). Dropped out for 10 years or so to run a motorcycle shop, got back in as a contract programmer for Burroughs. In '82 took on support for a professional investment management package running on Cromemco systems; still supporting one, albeit on PC's these days (just fired one up on a Cromemco; forgot just how slow they were...) Designed, sold & supported a factory data collection system based on AIM65s and a Cromemco (later moved to PCs). Consultant on several TV series about personal computers in mid-70s; still have copies somewhere. Personal computers: one of the first PET2001s, later moved up to an 8032 (designed & sold custom accounting packages for 8032). VIC20 & 64 of course (wrote some educational C64 stuff for a local school board). A few TRS-80s, an original IBM PC, XT & numerous clones since. And Cromemcos of course. Trying to clear out basement & apartment filled with 40 years worth of accumulating junk before my executors have to deal with it... mike

21 years, 6 months

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Age

by dlormand＠aztecfreenet.org

Age is 43, started trying to build 6502 machines after being exposed to a KIM-1 in college. Then tried to build 1802 machines. Actually got one to sort of work! Then I talked my dad into a TI-99/4A for "writing school reports" (which it did, plus a whole lot more) and have stuck to it. Now have several full-up 4A rigs plus a Geneve. Also played with Atari STs and Falcons, and dabbled with an 800 briefly. Now (in addition to the 4As) have several 386es and 486es running a variety of FreeDOS and linux, and a Slackware main system next to the Geneve and the 4Mb 520STfm. I learned programming in FORTRAN using punch-cards on an IBM mainframe at school, where I met a fellow who had built an 8080 machine in a file cabinet in his dorm room, and programmed it using punch-cards from the Computer Center. I have played with several VAXes over the years at work, including an intimate experience with VMS 4 on a MicroVAX II that was running the TI cross assembler for our TOW missile launcher software development (based on the SBP9989, a close relative to the 4A's TMS9900 and Geneve's TMS9995). Played peripherally with a TI 990 mainframe and programmed a real-time hardware-in- the-loop simulation on a 68000 ExorMACS. All in all, it's been a blast, and I wouldn't change a thing!

21 years, 6 months

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Age, was Re: IBM mainframe goes for 99 cents

by brad＠heeltoe.com

"David V. Corbin" wrote: > >Born 1959 [45 year old], started programming PDP-8's in the fall of '72. I could swear I used a 8/I running TSS/8 in '70. Might have been '71. But might wrong about that. Anyone have any idea when the first 8/I's got shipped? (this one had 4 8/L's strapped to it with those nifty green storage scopes and a funky joystick. we had a lot of fun playing a 'snowball' game written in a focal varient called COLPAC) -brad

21 years, 6 months

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server maintenance

by jwest＠classiccmp.org

Got all the websites moved. If any of you have trouble with your website on the classiccmp server please email me directly. Now I'm working on the last bit... going through the archives and rebuilding them. A bit more of a pain than I'd normally think, because the mailman archive rebuild program doesn't handle large files which of course the mbox files are. So I'm having to break them up by date ranges and import individually. There doesn't seem to be much in the way of programs to manipulate and break up mbox files, so I'm writing ditty's to do it. Once I'm done, the archives should be back up, and searchable with HtDig!!! Jay West

21 years, 6 months

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DG Nova 4/x software hacking

by tomj＠wps.com

Well I seem to be heading towards a usable computer. Sat down with the manual and re-learned nspeed. First task was to write a script to create links in the working directory to all the utilities on DP0. Used the BUILD command (builds 'command tail file lists' in unixese), and wrote an iterative macro to hash it up. (There's no "path" to find executables (.SV); it must be in the current directory or directory specified. Directories in RDOS aren't heirarchical like they are in unix-derived paradigms; they're like little partitions, you more or less "mount" them with the DIR command (mounts the directory and makes it default directory) or INIT them ("mounts" them so you can copy to them, for instance.) You specify how many directories you can have mounted at the same time at SYSGEN time.) Build makes: ASM.SV,MAC.SV,FDUMP.SV,FOO.SV,BAR.SV, [and so on] I needed: LINK ASM.SV DP0:ASM.SV LINK MAC.SV DP0:MAC.SV ... The nspeed command is: 32<1BTABSAJ#C $ $BS0ILINK ^BA DP0:^BA $-1LT1L> Here's one of those maddening things that I'll figure out someday, and has some dubious reason. The command: S $-1D (Search for a CR) S $ (Delete 1 char before pointer) -1D Works fine maually. It doesn't work when iteration < and > is used! That's why I change all occurrences of CR to space in buffer A: #C $ $ That works. ^BA means 'insert the contents of buffer A' -1LT1L minus one line; type out line; plus one line, so it prints the results of edits as it goes. The leading 32< ... > Means 'iterate 32 times' because I didn't feel like coming up with a test for 'end of buffer'. Eh. Now to write a HELLO WORLD program!

21 years, 6 months

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More New Toys!

by rigdonj＠cfl.rr.com

At 10:35 PM 2/25/05 -0500, you wrote: >basically to get the constant voltage output even when the AC supply goes >from 90 to 120. A normal transformer will "follow" the line voltage. The >power supply board uses schottky diodes and the transformer puts out just >enough voltage to be regulated to five volts with minimal power loss (there >are a couple of other secondary windings for + and - 12 for RS232). With a >normal transformer, the power supply design would have to been different to >deal with the higher wattage that it would have had to dissipate. I understand all that but AC power is cheap and so is a fan to dissapate the excess heat. It's surprising to see a company spent money for features like this unless there is a very real requirement for them. Even HP doesn't go to this length with their power supplies. The >transformer was custom wound for AMC. And expensive I'll bet! > >By the way, the EM189 was a 6809 emulator... Oops. I guess it was late and I was tired. I had it setting right in front of me and I still got it wrong. I should have said EM-180B. I'd sure like to find a pod for it but it doesn't look likely. BTW I'm assuming that the transformers for the various models all put out the same voltage. Is that true? Joe > > >the resonant tran >At 10:09 PM 02/25/2005, you wrote: >> Thanks for the info Steve. I have a EM-189 (Z-80) that's missing the pod >>so I guess I can rob the x-former out of it. >> >> I'm curious, why did they use a resonant transformer? >> >> Joe > > >

21 years, 6 months

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Age and Computing History

by list＠saracom.com

Well, Well born in 1963. I had always been interested in electronics and such. My first computer experiences were in high school. The school had a TRS80 Model 1 and accounts on the university's PDP11/45. I had bought a CoCo 1 with 4K! This was in my senior year. I go to the same university. It was Western Kentucky University (WKU). They still used the PDP11/45 with RSTE. Additionally, they had access to UK's IBM 360 via a smaller PDP11 with a card reader. So I got started with card readers and terninals. We ran a pirate exchange with the microcomputer lab etc. Fun times. I ended up buying the PDP11/45. Unfortunately a unplnanned move ocurred and I could not find anyone to take it. So sadly it went to the scrappers. This was before the Internet. I did keep the console panel. Max

21 years, 6 months

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(List) Communication Options...

by dvcorbin＠optonline.net

>>> >>> Seriously, what do you reckon would be a "proper forum" >>> for international discussion of classic computing? >>> At the risk of being labeled a "Heretic" or worse. And with an upfront statement, that this in no way reflects on the fabulous work being done by Jay..... Now this *might* lead to something interesting.... A few thoughts (in no particular order) 1) Given the nature of the list, compatability with a _reasonable_ selection of classic computing enviroments needs to be maintained. This should not preclude the usage of _newer_ technologies where appropriate. 2) "Conversations" should be easy to follow, with minimal requirements on the behaviour of the user. For example if there are 100 consecutive messages on a topic (each one in direct response to the immediate previous one), and someone replies to message #68, then it sould be easily identifable as such. 3) Bandwidth (client and host) as well as storage requirements need to be considered. 4) Digest, "Immediate Message" and On-Line Access would all be useful user interfaces. 5) Searchability [by members and services such as Google] is important if this is to be used as a reference site. 6) Organization (above the distinction between ccTalk and ccTech) would be beneficial. Being able to filter messages for a specific computer vendor or other simiular trait would be helpful. 7) Maintenance/Management issues should be kept minimal since there is no paid sponsorship for the list [to the best of my knowledge]. 8) Elimination of redundant information (i.e. duplicated from post to post to post) while still retaining context. That is just a start from my "wish list" view of communications. There are many issues with making any changes to the method of communication that would need to be addressed, and members feelings would be among the top. <<<< now to go down and look for the C User Journal CD I promised a list member....

21 years, 6 months

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Top Posting (from a digest subscribers P.O.V.)

by jfoust＠threedee.com

At 02:50 AM 2/26/2005, Eric Smith wrote: >Sellam wrote about telephone etiquette: >> I answer with, "What the hell do you want?", > >I used to have a line that was only for modem use. If I noticed it >ringing, I'd answer with either that, or "Wrong number, may I help you?" >Either way, the telemarketers were startled. Which reminds me of how my 80s modem-only line was listed in the phone book: as "Barn". (I was in the city at the time.) The phone company wouldn't let me call it "modem". I recall they had a list of approved descriptions for a line, and "modem" wasn't on it. So I picked "barn" instead. - John

21 years, 6 months

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Age, was Re: IBM mainframe goes for 99 cents

by cblackburn36＠softhome.net

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 - -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 On 26 Feb 2005, at 09:37, Nico de Jong wrote: > It could be interesting to know the age"spread" of thist list > contributors, I am a young 'un born in 1986. I have always been interested in computers right from playing my dads PC1640 and Commodore 64 right the way up to (trying to) build a SPARC based POV-Ray cluster. I am a UNIX nerd at heart and hate anything with a Micro$oft logo on it. I have volunteered at the Bletchley Park computer museum since June 2003 and I have loved every minute of it and every week I learn something new :). - - -- Chris Blackburn E-Mail: cblackburn36NOSPAM at softhome.net E-Mail: cblackburn36 at NOSPAMgmail.com PGP Public Key: http://makeashorterlink.com/?C2AF31929 - -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.2.4 (Darwin) iD8DBQFCIgZwxsNEmi5WofsRAl4jAKCTr1dRXXq+X90uGQevFesRO9xD5wCfX7l8 9LRdQ+UO6usSo6aFviDyJng= =oTnw - -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- - -- Chris Blackburn E-Mail: cblackburn36NOSPAM at softhome.net E-Mail: cblackburn36 at NOSPAMgmail.com PGP Public Key: http://makeashorterlink.com/?C2AF31929 -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.2.4 (Darwin) iD8DBQFCIga/xsNEmi5WofsRApcCAKDcQ3djp2plXMAqRAc2iJUItvNmNgCgxdI4 UdOTMFB8HeVVNPrUcRHISmM= =BWKd -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

21 years, 6 months

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Age, was Re: IBM mainframe goes for 99 cents

by mouse＠Rodents.Montreal.QC.CA

>> Born 1966 (age 39). > Most people start at zero ;-) ...yeah, and? Anyone born 1966-01-01 through 1966-02-25 (and part/all of 02-26 and 02-27, depending on timezone) is now born 1966 and age 39. /~\ The ASCII der Mouse \ / Ribbon Campaign X Against HTML mouse at rodents.montreal.qc.ca / \ Email! 7D C8 61 52 5D E7 2D 39 4E F1 31 3E E8 B3 27 4B

21 years, 6 months

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Top-posting shenanigans

by chenmel＠earthlink.net

On Fri, 25 Feb 2005 15:00:13 -0800 (PST) Vintage Computer Festival <vcf at siconic.com> wrote: > On Fri, 25 Feb 2005, Michael Sokolov wrote: > > > Tom Jennings <tomj at wps.com> wrote: > > > > > Pine > > > Is > > > Not > > > Elm > > > > What the hell is all this talk about pine and elm? I only use > > Mail(1)! > > Wimp! On days when I'm sick I communicate directly with the SMTP > port. Otherwise, I normally whistle bits down the ether!! This > message took me 3 hours to submit. > Back when I was a kid and couldn't afford a real computer, sometimes I would call the dialup number to the timesharing system (1) and whistle into it. If you whistled the right way, you could get the other end warbling and it wouldn't hang up until you ran out of breath from whistling. (1) we didn't have any _real_ computers at school, either, just several ASR33's, a CRT Terminal, a Silent 700, and 'acoustic couplers' to connect through. -Scott

21 years, 6 months

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IBM mainframe goes for 99 cents

by ard＠p850ug1.demon.co.uk

> Even better is when you get so well known locally that people bring stuff > you! Someone gave brought me a big box of stuff pulled out of an old My father came home one day (before he retired) and said 'Is a DEC PRO350 of any interest'. Of course I replied in the affirmative to which he said 'OK, there's one in the back of the car for you'. I then received a _loaded_ PRO 350 (it even has an ethernet card in it...), a VR241 monitor, keyboard and the proper desk for it with the motorised column for the monitor..... -tony

21 years, 6 months

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cctalk Digest, Vol 18, Issue 97

by unibus＠gmail.com

> > That's fine, because if you play your cards right you'll most likely end > > up out-living most of us here and then you can piss on all our graves. > > > It could be interesting to know the age"spread" of thist list contributors, > and how long we've had the computer virus under our skin. > I myself turn 60 next time, and have been in this business sinc 1967 or so, > where I got a Cobol course as an "education by mail" (dont know the correct > english term for that one > > Nico ~52. Started as a radio apprentice in 1969 and the course included digital (tube) logic, etc. ~1976 Paid for a short course in EduBasic on a PDP8, then opened a commercial account at Control Data to get access to processor time (Kronos and Scope). In those days you were taken into the store room and you walked out with whatever manual took your fancy. Best investment I ever made, didn't cost to open the account, just paid for usage. Played with BASIC, COBOL, FORTRAN, Athena, etc. Won't bore you with the rest Regards, Garry

21 years, 6 months

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Age

by dave04a＠dunfield.com

> It could be interesting to know the age"spread" of this list contributors, > and how long we've had the computer virus under our skin. 1960; Been keenly interested in electronic and technical things for as far back as I can recall ... As a child I spent all my time "building things", but didn't really get exposed to computers until the mid-70s when I fell in love with an IBM 370 (See below)... First computer of my own was a homebuilt 8080, followed closely by an Altair 8800 (which I still have). Long and highly varied list of machines follow, including several more homebuilts. Never an "appliance operator", I always used the machines as a creative outlet. Always been interested in low-level and systems type aspects, designed my own interfaces, wrote my own operating systems and development tools - still use mostly my own software, although I have a couple systems configured with winblows for "when I really have to". Pretty much the same story professionally, worked for various high-tech companies, got caught up in it for a while - did a few "salvage jobs" where I was came in to "rescue" a project after "the team" had spent all the money and had little to show for it, eventually became a director at one of the major telecom players ... at which point I realized I was rapidly leaving the relm of "hands on", so I stepped off the ladder. Turned my hobby into a business, and I've been hawking my embedded systems software development tools and contract services for the past 15+ years... (and being much happier for it). Regards, Dave ---- (below) ---- For those who didn't experience IBM mainframes - IBM was not always just another player in the "me to" Wintel market - in the 70's, they were one of the major forces in the computing industry, and to our university computer center which was built around the IBM mainframe, at times they seemed like denizens of Mount Olympus. Here are a couple of my "favorite IBM moments" from that era: ---- At the University of New Brunswick, we had mostly serial TTY terminals, however at one point they brought in five IBM 3270s which were set up at one end of the user access area. The idea of being able to "instantly" write an entire screen page was really cool, and in short order I wrote a "tank game" where multiple people could enter a virtual maze and shoot at one another, which pretty much realtime updates of the visible maze and other players. It was very popular, but due to a bug somewhere in the system, it had the undesired effect of crashing the entire mainframe. (They had a "traffic light" in the access room, which would show Green when the system was up and running, Red when it was down, and Yellow if it was scheduled to be taken down shortly. Invariably, a short while after a couple of people started up my game, all the TTYs in the area would stop responding and shortly after that the light would switch to red). My "favorite moment" came one Sunday morning, when the computing center announced that the system would be unavailable for the day (a very rare occurance) - I came in to see what they were up to, and found the access room empty except for 5 guys >from IBM, complete with suits, ties and briefcases - sitting at the 3270 cluster. Four of them were playing my game (and making some favorable comments), while the fifth guy was madly running diagnostics, scrolling through dumps and generally trying to figure out what going wrong - they did find it, and after that my game no longer crashed the system (although it still cost a small fortune in processor time to play it!). ---- Fairly early in my career, I worked on developemnt software for a 6809 based test system at Mitel - this had a CPU/RAM card, and various interface cards. One of the hardware engineers had designed a floppy disk controller for it, however software support consisted of a monitor program with commands to read and write tracks/memory. On my own time, I wrote a decent multitasking operating system and disk file system for it, and when I demonstrated it, the company formed a new devision to develop this "advanced test system" - I was in charge of the operating system, languages and development software ... We ended up selling quite a few of these to IBM, and having been launched on my path by my experiences with IBM MVS, I took great pleasure in the thought that they had bought and used *my* operating system (yeah, I know - to them it was just a piece of test equipment... but at the time it was a "favorite moment"). -- dave04a (at) Dave Dunfield dunfield (dot) Firmware development services & tools: www.dunfield.com com Collector of vintage computing equipment: http://www.parse.com/~ddunfield/museum/index.html

21 years, 6 months

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Age, was Re: IBM mainframe goes for 99 cents

by gordon＠gjcp.net

Nico de Jong wrote: > It could be interesting to know the age"spread" of thist list contributors, > and how long we've had the computer virus under our skin. I'm 31, born in 1973, and I've been into electronics since I was about 6 or 7, and computers not long after. First computer was a ZX81, then a 48k Spectrum, then a string of relatively unusual kit bought by my Dad's boss for various datalogging projects and subsequently discarded. AIM65, Epson HX-20, stuff like that. Among one pile of bits was a manual for a Sinclair MK14 - attempted to write an emulator on the Speccy in machine code, but didn't get very far. Subsequently wrote one in Turbo Pascal on an Amstrad PCW8256 - very slow, but it worked! Currently I've got various PCs and Macs, an Altos 386, IBM Workpad Z50 (not strictly speaking a classic but unusual enough to be nearly on-topic), various Psions, a Sanyo MBC-4050 (the one mentioned on this list, picked up from a guy literally 2 minutes up the road from me!), oh - and the PDP11 that has been the source of so many of my postings recently! Gordon.

21 years, 6 months

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Server problems

by randy＠randy482.com

Jay, I think there is a problem, at least with the list. I had problems with my email server (randy at s100-manuals.com), I changed it to cctalk at randy482.com. I just started sending back to my s100-manuals.com account. I canceled my subscription again (for randy at s100-manuals.com). I also subscribed to cctech with my randy482.com. If that fixes it I'll let you know. Randy

21 years, 6 months

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Top Posting (from a digest subscribers P.O.V.)

by ard＠p850ug1.demon.co.uk

> > There is a certain etiquette in place when talking on the telephone, right? > > Most of us say "Hello" at the beginning, "ByeBye" and the end, and engage > > Do we? I answer with, "What the hell do you want?", or if I'm feeling > nice, "This had better be good." However, I always end with, "Don't ever > call here again, you freak!" Please remind me not to bother calling you when I find a pile of Apple 1's 'Free to a good home' .... -tony

21 years, 6 months

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Age spread stuff.

by netsurfer_x1＠fastmailbox.net

I myself am 23 (I'm probably one of the youngest members here), born 1981. I guess you could say that I'm a second generation classic computer user. Anyhow, I cut my teeth on an Osborne 1 that my dad owned (that he hooked up on old Amdek B&W monochrome monitor to), as well as the Apple //e & //e platinums at primary/elementary school. After that it was primarily PCs from there on (what can I say, I was the generation that got corrupted at an early age!). It remained that way until 1998 when I was given a Commodore 64C (which I still have and has been heavily expanded since then), and now, well, have a look at my collection now! ;) David M. Vohs Digital Archaeologist & Computer Historian Computer Collection: "Triumph": Commodore 64, 1802, 1541, Indus GT, FDD-1, GeoRAM 512, MPS-801. "Leela": Original Apple Macintosh, Imagewriter II. "Delorean": TI-99/4A, TI Speech Synthesizer. "Spectrum": Tandy Color Computer III. "Monolith": Apple Macintosh Portable. "Boombox": Sharp PC-7000. "Butterfly": Tandy 200, PDD-2. "Shapeshifter": Epson QX-10, Comrex HDD, Titan graphics/MS-DOS board. "Scout": Otrona Attache. (prospective) "Pioneer": Apple LISA II. "TMA-1": Atari Portfolio, Memory Expander + "Centaur": Commodore Amiga 2000. "Neon": Zenith Minisport.

21 years, 6 months

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Age

by wacarder＠usit.net

> It could be interesting to know the age"spread" of thist list > contributors, > and how long we've had the computer virus under our skin. I'll be 47 in a couple months. I never saw a computer until I went to college in 1976 and met a PDP-11/40 running RSTS/E. I lived on the computer for the next 3 years until it interfered with my grades and I had to spend time on classes instead. I got a programming job in 1981 in RPG on an IBM S/34 immediately after college and have been doing software development ever since, on IBM mainframes (COBOL, CICS, Assembler, ADS/O, etc), PCs (Basic, C, MASM, OS/2 PM, Visual Basic, IIS based web development), primarily Microsoft platforms, taking occasional breaks from programming to dabble in the management side of things and fly around the country doing requirements studies, marketing, training, etc. I always tire of corporate management and politics after a few years and get back into the programming side of things until they twist my arm and talk me back into management stuff again. I've been in this cycle of management/ technical flip/flop since about 1986. For the past 20 years I've been involved in development of software for the insurance industry. Ashley

21 years, 6 months

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AIX and AMIX questions

by doc＠mdrconsult.com

What a mix, right? First the AIX stuff. v2.2.1, definitely on-topic. My RT has been laid up with a failing IDE disk for a while. The E70s that it came with were serious junk, and near death. I now have a couple of Maxtor ESDI disks to play with, and I also found a 1.2GB Medalist that should work in it with the IDE/floppy controller that's presently in it. For power/BTU reasons I'll go with IDE if possible. The problem is that the AIX floppy images are no longer on the dementia.org FTP site, and I've stupidly lost my archive of them. Does anybody happen to have them stashed away? Floppy images are nice, or I have the sort-of-SCSI 1/4" tape streamer and adapter too. For whatever it's worth, my company is an AIX software and services partner. That means I can legally have any version of AIX needed to do or to properly research my work. :) While I'm at it, does anybody have an RT mouse they don't want, or a Matrox graphics adapter? On to Amiga UNIX. The little information I can find about installation (see rant below) says that the original v2.x requires a Commodore 3070 tape drive, which is an Archive Viper-150 in an external enclosure. I don't have an Archive drive, but I do have an IBM-firmwared Tandberg TDC 3600 an a Sun-firmwared TDC 4220, both of which are QIC-150 compatible. The first question is whether AMIX looks for Commodore firmware on the tape drive, or will any 150MB quarter-inch drive work? The second question is whether install media for AMIX v1.x exists in downloadable form? <rant> Somebody mentioned "more appropriate fora for discussion" the other day. Well, the only active AMIX forum seems to be a freakin' MSN Group. Since I don't have and don't EVER want an MSN .Net Passport, I don't get to play there. Do they think all the world is already owned by MSN? </rant> Doc

21 years, 6 months

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Age

by ron.hudson＠sbcglobal.net

Born 5/16/48 Computing History: Monroe programmable calculator (H.S. Math/programming class) punch-card input/ impact printer out HP2100 batch system (H.S. field trip to local university Engineering department) Nova?? based Basic Timeshare (H.S. Field Trip to university Business department) Poly88 Kit built owned HP41C (traded for poly, was a better fit for my US navy life) Ohio Scientific board - never finished (left it on the ship on leaving navy - oops) Commodore 64. Macintosh VAX 11/780 at work VMS 3.x same Macintosh upgraded to fat mac IBM PC/AT clone (televideo color 10mb) Ran BBS on above after replacing it with newer PC. Macintosh SE Mac Powerbook 170 Various IBM clones running win31, Win95 and Win98 Current: Macintosh iBook OSx Windows98 Laptop (toshiba) Linux redhat 7.3 laptop (IBM)

21 years, 6 months

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Age

by philpem＠dsl.pipex.com

Well, first off, I was born in 1986, so I'm 18. A bit young, but there you go :) Let's see.. where to start.. Well, the first computer I actually used was an Acorn BBC Micro (Master 128 if I remember correctly) in primary school (age 8 or so). I talked to the IT teacher and she let me borrow the manual and some BBC BASIC guides. At the parent's evening that year she spoke to my mother and apparently said "Get this kid a computer!". I got a Spectrum +2A fpr ,y birthday, again with a load of programming books. Wrote a few games, then hit the limits of the hardware. A year or so later I had a fairly high end 486SX/25 with 4MB of RAM and a 160MB Conner hard drive, MS DOS 6 and Windows 3.1. I learned QBASIC, then Visual Basic, then didn't really do much programming until '96, when my uncle let me borrow his copy of Delphi 1.0 for the weekend (including the manuals). I learned ObjectPascal from that :) In '98 or '99 I managed to scrape together enough cash for a 56k modem, then got an account on Freenet UK - my first internet connection, on a K6-II/450. All of 56kbits a second. IIRC, I joined classiccmp in 2000 (might have been a bit later), then joined the MIT PICLIST a few months later. Getting ADSL in '03 really made the mail downloads go quicker - I've had my own fileserver running since mid-'02, late-'03, running Linux. As far as programming skills go - I know C, some C++, x86 assembler, PICmicro assembler (12, 14 and 16-bit varieties -- PIC12, PIC16 and PIC18 devices), QBASIC, Visual BASIC (DOS and Windows versions), Pascal and BBC BASIC. Other hobbies: Well, electronics is the main one. I'm entering the Parallax (www.parallax.com) SX Design Contest - all being well, I should be able to get the firmware for my entry stabilised within the next few hours. It's gonna be a long night! :) I'm a real tech nut - I won't go anywhere without my Minidisc recorder (Sony MZ-N710) and my mobile phone (Nokia 6210 or Samsung V200, depending on which one's charged at the time). Oh, and I've got a bit of a reputation for destroying hard drives when they fail. Usually with big drills and hammers. I'd love to see a thermite reaction melting a defunct IDE hard drive down at some point though :) Gee, I've just written most of my life story.. maybe I'll put this post on my website at some point :) Later. -- 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 ... I believe I will take this opportunity to remove my ears.

21 years, 6 months

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Top Posting (from a digest subscribers P.O.V.)

by ard＠p850ug1.demon.co.uk

> At the Keeble & Suchat(sp) camera store near Stanford there is > a guy upstairs (Pro cameras) named Richard. He answered > the phone: "Professional. Dick speaking." My mother woked for a time with a certain 'Frank A. Sweet'. He used to answer the 'phone 'Sweet FA here'. Seriously... -tony

21 years, 6 months

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lk201 question

by msokolov＠ivan.Harhan.ORG

Mike <kenziem at sympatico.ca> wrote: > How many variations of LK201 were produced? > Are they interchangeable? All LK201s are mechanically, electrically and functionally identical. The only difference is in keycap engravings. Yours doesn't work because there is something wrong with the keyboard or the terminal, not because it's different. MS

21 years, 6 months

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Age, was Re: IBM mainframe goes for 99 cents

by ard＠p850ug1.demon.co.uk

> It could be interesting to know the age"spread" of thist list contributors, > and how long we've had the computer virus under our skin. > I myself turn 60 next time, and have been in this business sinc 1967 or so, > where I got a Cobol course as an "education by mail" (dont know the correct > english term for that one OK, I'm 37. I've been interested in electronics for as long as I can remember, I built my first transsitor radio about 32 years ago. I've never really been interested in programming/software, I'm very much the hardware type. The fact that computers are interesting pieces of heardware is why I collect, restore, etc them. This might explain why I like to keep the hardware of my machines as original as possible, even for things like power supplies. The power supply _was_ part of the original design, it should be preserved (and if you think all SMPSUs are the same, then, boy, have I got news for you...) My first computer (not suprisingly) was a Sinclair -- in my case an MK14. That put me how his designs for life. I've used some of the others, I've never found one I consider to be even moderately well-designed. I then got a TRS-80 Model 1, used Beebs and RML380Zs at school and fooled around with some other micros. Then I went to university and picked up the Philips P850. Chatting to a friend about it that night (this was some 19 years ago), we realiased that unless something was done -- and fast -- a lot of computer history was going to be lost for ever. At the time, museums were not bothering to preserve common micros and minis. So we did something about it. We (I suspect particularly me) started collecting everything we could get our grubby little hands on. The rest, as they say, is history... -tony

21 years, 6 months

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server maintenance progress

by jwest＠classiccmp.org

So far the list looks ok, and I'm going through all the classiccmp related websites and getting them up now. I have noticed that the new server seems to be very slow in delivering posts compared to the old server. This doesn't make a lot of sense, given the old server was a 1.2 P3 and the new server is a 2.0 P4. Go figure. However, since it seems to be working, I'm going to continue with the website migration and complete that. Then I'll turn back to the mailing list and find out why it's running slow, and, then finally start the work on the archives. Regards, Jay West

21 years, 6 months

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4 mainframe face panels for sale

by tosteve＠yahoo.com

[quote] Looking to possibly sell - will send pictures. - I have a very unusual collection of 4 mainframe face panels (1410 - 360/40 - 370/145 - 370/158) and 14 control unit boxes that have nothing inside of them, I am thinking of selling them. I was in the computer service arena for 30 years. Thank You for your assistance- Dennis Correll correll at mwt.net [unquote] __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Mail - now with 250MB free storage. Learn more. http://info.mail.yahoo.com/mail_250

21 years, 6 months

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"HTML" Posting Tags, was Top-posting shenanigans

by ard＠p850ug1.demon.co.uk

> > I have to wonder if any mini or microcomputer family was ever NOT involved > with running a model railroad. I've never heard of a PERQ or a Philips P800 series being used for that. Perhaps I should remedy it :-) -tony

21 years, 6 months

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Why are transistors called "Q"?

by ard＠p850ug1.demon.co.uk

> After French took over the RCA, they started putting weird location > marks: It goes like this: LL005 for fly, TL00x for transistor in > horizontal, TV00x for video transistor amps. So on. Totally That second character 'L' might well stand for 'line' which is the conventioal name for the hoprizontal deflection system over here. We talk abvout the 'line output trnasistor' where you'd say 'HOT'. Were the transistors in the vertical stages called 'TF00x'? 'F' being 'frame' or 'field' depending on how old you are. -tony

21 years, 6 months

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"HTML" Posting Tags, was Top-posting shenanigans

by ard＠p850ug1.demon.co.uk

> > Tony (and others), > > I wonder people (including members on this list) who use the justification, > that because they (generally) choose to use old hardware that it is a valid FWOW. I don't 'choose to use old hardware' I use what I consider to be the best solution I can get (and afford). That does not mean the latest, it doesn't necessarily mean the oldest. I do however refuse to use anything I can't fully understand and/or maintain. This does, alas, rule out much modern computer hardware... > reason for not making use of features that are available on even mildly > modern hardware. > > Should movie producers ONLY produce black and white movies because some > people only have B/W sets? _VERY_ bad example. All the colour TV stardards were designed to be 'both ways compatible' That is, a colour TV had to be able to correctly display a B&W signal (this was the easy way, since the set could be designed to detect the lack of colour information (the 'colour killer' circuit) and respond accordingly). And also an unmodified B&W TV had to be able to produce a good (albeit B&W) picture from a colour signal. People with B&W TVs did not lose out when colour TV signals came along. THey could still watch them, and get pictures like they'd always got. > Should newspapers and magazines only use one color, one font, etc because Interestingly, I stoppd reading one magazine when they started prinitng in colour. The schematic diagrams printed over 'interesting' coloured backgrounds gave me a headache. I think others felt likewise, the magazine stoped being published not long afterwarrds... Of the magazines I read, the one that could most benefit from colour would be 'Clocks' (a magazine for people interested in real, mechanical timepieces). And amazingly it's the one with the fewest colour pages per issue... > Just because my PDP-8 can't video conference or interact with my whiteboard, > doesn't mean I shouldn't use them. It would have been quite convient if I > there had been someone here on the list I could have interactively done > video with while I was tring to repair my ASR-33's [my mechanical skills are > limited = klutz]. Ever try to exactly explain what you are seeing when the > lever jam between the typing unit and the underside of the keycboard in > plain ascii? Yes!. You get the partsbook -- I get it off the bookshelf, you download it from bitsavers (I think) and print it. You then say something like 'Lever 12345 under the carriage is not moving forwards when...' And I say something like 'Check spring 45321 on the same diagram'. -tony

21 years, 6 months

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"HTML" Posting Tags, was Top-posting shenanigans

by ard＠p850ug1.demon.co.uk

> > >If you can get any colour other than green (and black, I guess) out of an > >unmodified IBM 5151 monitor, I will eat a classic computer! > > If you connect it to a high voltage source, maybe you will get a brief > flash of yellow orange, red (and maybe blue) out of the back... followed > by some puffs of grey out the top. Maybe... If you apply the HV to the mains connector, I suspect the only thing that would fail would be the fuse (the 5151 has a linear PSU with a nice fat mains transformer at the input). If you apply it to the signal cable, well, it'll probably take out the input buffer chip (a '04 IIRC, I can't be bothered to go and get the schematics). Maybe some smoke. I doubt you'd get many interesting effects though. In any case, the monitor is not unchanged at the end, so I would class that as a modification :-) -tony

21 years, 6 months

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Top-posting shenanigans (was: Re: ASR33 $1000+ And Counting...)

by ard＠p850ug1.demon.co.uk

> > On Fri, 25 Feb 2005, Vintage Computer Festival wrote: > > > In Outlook, yes, it's a righteous pain. In PINE, as you might know, > > CTRL-J fixes most messed up quoted paragraphs. > > Eh?! Oh, you mean the pico editor! Too many brain cells pre-wired for > vi here. The mental case who picked ^J for that needs to be LARTed. Problem is, ^J is linefeed and if you happen to hit return on entering pico before it sets the terminal driver to raw mode, it'll justify the first paragraph of your file for you. If it happens to be a mail message you're replying to, then the '>' characters at the start of each line will mean the entire file is taken as one paragraph (no blank lines to mark the end of the paragraph) so you get a total mess. Yes, I understand 'J' for 'justify', but.... -tony

21 years, 6 months

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long term computers

by bfranchuk＠jetnet.ab.ca

Mike wrote: >On Saturday 26 February 2005 11:53, woodelf wrote: > > >>Ronald Wayne wrote: >> >> >>>TTL going the way of the dodo?! Does this mean that I have to learn >>>about electronics now or I'm going to be stuck figuring out those many... >>> >>> >>They've mutated now - hundreds of pins sucking up your power and hogging >>all the ground. >> >> > >http://d116.com/spud/ > > That's a potato BUG ... not a real computer. :D

21 years, 6 months

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long term computers

by appleto＠gmail.com

On Sat, 26 Feb 2005 12:49:19 -0500, Mike <kenziem at sympatico.ca> wrote: > http://d116.com/spud/ > this one was referened on the theregister recently Ah yes, somebody was showing me rfPICs last year. Just imagine a wireless webserver the size of a match head. :) I remember thinking at the time, 'how does this thing compare to an Apple II?' Of course the guy showing it to me didn't have the slightest idea because he didn't know what a 6502 was. So perhaps I should ask here: how would your typical 2005 vintage PIC compare to a early-1980's vintage 8-bit microprocessor? From what little I could gather the interface with the outside world is terribly limited (something like four lines on the chip I was looking at, one of which was special purpose) but that is slightly negated by the thing having an, albeit miniscule, amount of memory on chip.

21 years, 6 months

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[OT]Homebrew PCB fabrication

by jdboyd＠jdboyd.net

On Sun, Feb 20, 2005 at 05:13:07PM -0700, woodelf wrote: > PS the homebrew computer using CPLD's is going to need a far bigger > board than demo PCB software gives. Why CPLDs over FPGAs? -- Joshua D. Boyd jdboyd at jdboyd.net http://www.jdboyd.net/ http://www.joshuaboyd.org/

21 years, 6 months

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Age

by pat＠computer-refuge.org

Doc Shipley declared on Saturday 26 February 2005 02:29 pm: > Doc Shipley wrote: > > O. Sharp wrote: > >> Nico de Jong wrote, in part: > >>> It could be interesting to know the age"spread" of thist list > >>> contributors, > >>> and how long we've had the computer virus under our skin. 23 years old, born in 1981. Interested in "big computers" ever since I got a 1970s computers textbook from the local library's used book sale. Sadly, I don't have the book anymore (my parents threw it out ):, but I still have the interest. I've been on the list since before I could (legally) consume alcohol. ;) Pat -- Purdue University ITAP/RCS --- http://www.itap.purdue.edu/rcs/ The Computer Refuge --- http://computer-refuge.org

21 years, 6 months

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Age

by tpeters＠mixcom.com

On the BoatAnchor net (ham radio stuff) they live by this: REAL radios GLOW IN THE DARK. (And keep the shack warm.) At 02:17 PM 2/26/2005 -0500, you wrote: > > >I am now self-employed and hoping I don't put myself out of business ;-) > > > > > > > > Well you can allways go back to TUBE audio ... as hobby :) Now is a > > good time for I think > > to go back to tube amps if you build your own hardware and you don't > > already have a system. > > Ben alias Woodelf. > >I suppose I could. I wouldn't hate it. There seems to be a resurgence in >glass audio. Some claim it sounds better (I always thought it did). Not >to brag, but I was talking to <really famous rock-star> who lives in the >next town over. He was saying he wants to get some old tube guitar amps >fixed. I didn't think of it at the time, but maybe I could get my foot >in the door of the rock tech support field. Hmmmm... multi-hundred watt >amplifiers and hot women. A geek's dream. [Commentary] War talk by men who have been in a war is always interesting, whereas moon talk by a poet who has not been in the moon is likely to be dull. --Twain --... ...-- -.. . -. ----. --.- --.- -... tpeters at nospam.mixcom.com (remove "nospam") N9QQB (amateur radio) "HEY YOU" (loud shouting) WEB ADDRESS http//www.mixweb.com/tpeters 43? 7' 17.2" N by 88? 6' 28.9" W, Elevation 815', Grid Square EN53wc WAN/LAN/Telcom Analyst, Tech Writer, MCP, Cisco Certified CCNA

21 years, 6 months

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IBM mainframe goes for 99 cents

by pat＠computer-refuge.org

JimD declared on Thursday 24 February 2005 10:58 pm: > Patrick Finnegan wrote: > >On Thu, 24 Feb 2005, Computer Collector Newsletter wrote: > >>Who else on this list owns a mainframe? What the heck do you DO > >>with it? > > > ><SNIP> > > Talk about a mainframe, well actually a real big farm, take a look at > this. > http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&category=64031&item=5754 >425731&rd=1 Still listed in the top 500 supers. Battell surplus. zero > bids, $12,500 starting bid. > Jim Davis. > I would get it, if I had free power. Despite what the seller claims, it's definately too slow to be on the top500 list. When I looked into it, I found out it was last on the list in June of 2002, and wasn't very high up (low 300s). The machine is (or was, with all of the frames, which the seller doesn't seem to have in the auction listing) only 512 processors of 120/135MHz processors. They're not horribly slow, but definately not computationally worthwhile. The ~900 processors of IBM SP (375MHz POWER3) we have at work (well, we've got 320 now, soon to add another 576) won't even make it onto the TOP500 list this next time around I'm pretty sure. As far as memory and disk space go, you'll probably be using up a good chunk of the disk space per node for OS and software; and the memory is evenly distributed between all the nodes. Having a large amount of contiguous memory and disk (like what you can with an IBM p690) is much more interesting from an HPC standpoint. :) One rack of the SP system would be sort of cool to have, but having that many frames just doesn't make any sense no matter how I try to look at it. Pat -- Purdue University ITAP/RCS --- http://www.itap.purdue.edu/rcs/ The Computer Refuge --- http://computer-refuge.org

21 years, 6 months

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server maintenance

by jwest＠classiccmp.org

Looks like I have the mailing list running on the new server. Please send any problems to me offlist at jwest at classiccmp.org Of course, to do this, I had to pick if I moved web or list services first. I chose list services. Any classiccmp websites I host gratis - if they have their own domain they should be ok, otherwise (they are tied to the classiccmp.org domain), they are down till I get them moved. This will likely be a longish process. I apologize for the inconvenience. I'll email again when all seems to be done. Jay

21 years, 6 months

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Many things

by msokolov＠ivan.Harhan.ORG

vp(a)cs.drexel.edu (Vassilis Prevelakis) wrote: > Since this was running Unix V7 (or smth close), I am > sure you can get a postscript viewer running on it (or a tiff viewer > for that matter), while you'd have no chance in hell of getting > Acrobat Reader for it. This is very close to my original point. > Which gives me a nice excuse to repeat my favorite line: I use open > source software not because it is free, but because I get to keep the > code (so I do not depend on the code author to port the software to > newer/different/stranger platforms). I'm getting a feeling that der Mouse is about to remind us again that one can use GhostScript instead of Acrobat Reader... The problem with GhostScript is that porting it to a Very Vintage platform will likely be more difficult than rewriting it from scratch. I once thought about building it under 4.3BSD-Quasijarus (so I won't have to log into a Linux machine on the other side of the planet to convert PDF to PS), but one cursory look at the code was enough for me to scrap the idea. Open source is of no help when it's unusable. I have pretty much given up on using any software not written from scratch by me. It's almost always easier to write the program I need than to port an existing one. MS

21 years, 6 months

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More info Re: Digital Data Syatems / SETASI memory card for PDP11

by jim＠g1jbg.co.uk

>in my PDP11/45, the originla core and bipolar memory has been replaced by a Hex height Digital Data Systems inc. / >SETASI memory card (placed in the 1st SU - the original Fastbus memory slots are now unused). I know the system ran >like this, as it is documented in the local handbook. > >Does anyone have any information on these cards? Especially the settings of the jumper and the DIP switches! After looking at the paperwork a bit more, it seems the module may have the designation UFUM Jim.

21 years, 6 months

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Age

by jrice54＠vzavenue.net

Born in 1954. Got the computer bug in the late 1970's. My first machine was a no-name 8080 based SBC that I purchased as a kit. Of course I didn't know their idea of a kit was was bare board and a big bag of parts. But it worked and I was on my way. -- www.blackcube.org The Texas State Home for Wayward and Orphaned Computers

21 years, 6 months

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Age, was Re: IBM mainframe goes for 99 cents

by trixter＠oldskool.org

Nico de Jong wrote: >>Sellam wrote : >> >>That's fine, because if you play your cards right you'll most likely end >>up out-living most of us here and then you can piss on all our graves. >> > > It could be interesting to know the age"spread" of thist list contributors, > and how long we've had the computer virus under our skin. > I myself turn 60 next time, and have been in this business sinc 1967 or so, I am not nearly old enough to really be a member of this list. :-) My father was a tech writer with teletype and he would bring home various toys, like a vt100 line/signal analyzer (hope I'm remembering that properly) and various computer-like things. In 1980, I played Adventure on an Osborne luggable; in 1983 I connected to BBSes and Compuserve using a (rich) friend's IBM PC Model 5150; also did much (MUCH) Apple II stuff in school from 1980-1985. In 1985 I got my very own PC clone and, being an antisocial nerd, I went crazy with it. Maybe a better way to understand myself and my background is to look at my collection, which is mostly 1980-era personal computers, including stuff like: 2 5150s 1 5160 clone 1 XT/286 (NOT AT, the XT/286, can't remember exact model number) 2 C64s (NTSC) 1 Timex Sinclair 1000 with various tapes and expansions 1 Mac 512 1 Mac SE 6 Amigas (2 A500s, 1 A1200, 2 A4000s, 1 A3000) I also tend to like wacko x86 hardware: 2 PS/2 Model 25s 2 Panasonic Sr. Partners (luggables with built-in thermal printers) 1 AT&T PC 6300 (my first clone, still works, upgraded in crazy ways) 2 PCjrs with various sidecars, ROM carts, add-ons Various Tandys (Tandy 1000, 1000HD, TL/2, maybe others) I still program for x86 and last year I won a competition for programming a stock IBM 5150 (4.77Mhz, 8088, 640K RAM, Sound Blaster Pro, CGA, 10MB MFM) to display 30 frame-per-second full-screen video sync'd with 22Khz sound. This same program is up for an award in March at Breakpoint 2005 for Best Original Production. I am still developing the technology (up to 60fps now and 44KHz audio) and hopefully will have something even more impressive for next year. -- Jim Leonard (trixter at oldskool.org) http://www.oldskool.org/ Want to help an ambitious games project? http://www.mobygames.com/ Or check out some trippy MindCandy at http://www.mindcandydvd.com/

21 years, 6 months

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test

by anon2048＠hotmail.com

another test

21 years, 6 months

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NTSC test pattern generator on VCD?

by cb＠mythtech.net

BTW: I just found this http://www.synthetic-ap.com/products/tpm/index.html If you have a mac, it will generate the patterns for you (single still images) -chris <http://www.mythtech.net>

21 years, 6 months

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Age, was Re: IBM mainframe goes for 99 cents

by aw288＠osfn.org

> Most people start at zero ;-) Unless yoy worked at Univac. William Donzelli aw288 at osfn.org

21 years, 6 months

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Reading 8" disks on a PC (was Re: Need NEC APC manuals)

by brad＠heeltoe.com

"Eric Smith" wrote: > >Yes. And Linux software of my own devising: > http://dmklib.brouhaha.com/ very cool. thanks! -brad

21 years, 6 months

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test

by jwest＠dewey.classiccmp.org

This is a test post. Jay

21 years, 6 months

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Many things

by msokolov＠ivan.Harhan.ORG

Computer Collector Newsletter <news(a)computercollector.com> wrote: > Do you mean you use a classic computer as your ** primary ** machine, or just > that you happen to use it ** once in a while ** for your current work? The former. I do not own any non-Classic computers and never will. I do not use any non-Classic operating systems and never will. > RE: people who use classic computers as their primary machine, not including > those of you on the list who work for computer museums -- I'm very curious how > many of you exist. I think, therefore I exist. Cogito ergo sum. > And, do you use classic computers by 1.) choice, 2.) lack > of budget, or 3.) technological need (that is, legacy connectivity)...? 1. > But in day-to-day > 'real life', I can't fathom using anything other than a modern system running > some equally modern version of Unix or Windows. The fact that you can't fathom it signifies nothing but a limitation of your imagination. It is possible and I am the living proof. I believe our Prof. Tony Duell is the same way. > but how do you handle it in the real world Define "real world". My reality is different from yours. > where people may tell you "Sorry, our company only does business in > Microsoft"...? I don't do any business with companies other than to shoot them. I'm a Marxist-Leninist Communist revolutionary. MS

21 years, 6 months

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Apple //gs RamFAST/SCSI with CD-ROM troubles

by vcf＠siconic.com

On Sat, 26 Feb 2005, Ronald Wayne wrote: > Which version of the OS are you using? 6.0.1 > System 6.0.1 for the Apple IIgs is available as a free download from > Apple (check here: > http://www.info.apple.com/support/oldersoftwarelist.html). It does > include support for HFS if you chose to install it. Can you just grab > the file from the floppy and drop it on the hard drive's system > folder? I would imagine so, but I never tried it. Using the > installer is slightly easier (albeit slower). I copied the file directly into the FSTS directory. Should I have used the installer? -- 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, 6 months

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Fwd: RE: Computer Rescue in Massachusetts

by jfoust＠threedee.com

>From: "Marie Proverb" <marigoldp(a)comcast.net> >At 09:41 PM 1/25/2005, you wrote: >>Hello, >> >>We are attempting to find homes for an ancient: >> >>"Commodore 64" ...the keyboard (pcu) was not communicating with the >monitor....some software...probably the manuals...I read that there are >persons who repair and collect these. >> >>Apple II GS; Packard Bell with their respective monitors, keyboards, >printers, manuals and software. >> >>Any suggestions would be appreciated. >> >>Sincerely, >> >>Marie P.

21 years, 7 months

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does anybody remember who was building generic front panels.

by bfranchuk＠jetnet.ab.ca

topic says all. I seem to have lost the web link.

21 years, 7 months

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machine room organization

by Saquinn624＠aol.com

Does anyone on the list have any good tips for keeping a tidy machine room? I'm sick of tripping over CPUs and dealing with cable Gorgons when switching machines (I don't have near enough space for 1 monitor/keyboard/mouse per workstation). A/B/[C/D/E] switches work great for serial consoles, but not workstations. -Scott

21 years, 7 months

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Many things

by msokolov＠ivan.Harhan.ORG

Computer Collector Newsletter <news(a)computercollector.com> wrote: > In his defense... so the guy has a corporate .sig, who doesn't these days? I don't. > You just ignore the lawyers and go on with life. No, don't ignore them, shoot them. AK47 does wonders against lawyers. I have yet to meet a lawyer with any combat skills whatsoever. Lawyers are cowards hiding their sorry asses behind pigs (cops). But there are more of us than there are pigs! If every freedom-loving civilian took a gun and shot the first cop he met, we can get rid of pigs in no time, since there are so many more of us than there are of them, and take our planet back! > Now, as for why he's doing classiccmp stuff from his corporate email account, > that is what I want to know. Ram: get back to work. :) No, Ram doing ClassicCmp'ing on company time is not a sin, it's a very commendable act. Stealing corporate time and giving it to Worthy Causes For The People is noble and valiant. The problem is why is Ram using the corporate mail account?? Ram, install 4.3BSD-Quasijarus on your VAX (you have a VAX, don't you?), get a 56K leased line for it, and E-mail from that! MS

21 years, 7 months

7
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Reading RX01/02 disks on a PC

by vcf＠siconic.com

So I'm in the process of pulling a bunch of files off of some RX02 disks to get them onto a PC. So far (thanks to help from Howard Harte) I've got an 11/44 with an RX02 drive running RSTS that has the DD module loaded. I'm running the serial tape drive simulator on a PC (I forget what it's called or who wrote it). So I can do: COPY DY1:*.* DD0: Which then copies all the files off of the disk into an image file on my PC. Works very nicely, albeit slowly (only 9600bps transfer rate). Is there a better way to do this? I've seen various postings of people getting RX02 drives connected to Linux boxen. How so? Has anyone done this? I also found this: http://www.chd.dyndns.org/rx02/ This is very cool. It's an RX02 simluator (hardware/software) that makes your PDP11 think your PC is an RX02 drive. It would be great if I could read the files from a real RX02 and then dump them into the emulated RX02. Can a PDP11 have two sets of RX02 drives installed at once? If so, do the second set of drives become DY2: and DY3:? -- 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, 7 months

6
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extracting H/V sync from sync-on-green video signal?

by julesrichardsonuk＠yahoo.co.uk

does anyone happen to have a schematic for a simple circuit to extract sync information from a sync-on-green video signal? I've got a screen here I'd like to hook up to the Tek (I left the normal monitor I use with the Tek at Bletchley), but it needs either seperate H and V sync lines hooked up, or composite sync - it won't do sync on green (which is all that the Tek provides). I keep on finding sync combining circuits that'll do seperate sync to sync on green everywhere, but nothing to do the reverse! cheers Jules

21 years, 7 months

8
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Intellec MDS questions

by william.layer＠comcast.net

Hey all, Thanks for all the background and help on the Altair project. I'll be taking some pics of the pile for a 'before and after' set. Hopefully there will be an after worth mentioning ;-) Now on to Intel / Intellec MDS systems. I've got one that is alternately described as an MDS225 or and MDS800. IIRC, the dual-disk unit is marked MDS800, (blue in color) and the main chassis is marked MDS225 (white in color, has a monitor, kb, and a series of pushbuttons with LED indicators). Information on these units is pretty sparse on the web; multiple google searches have yielded little more than years of manufacture, and some price info. One question that should amuse the more veteran members of classiccmp is this: What exactly is meant by "Microcomputer Development System"? It's like that old joke about "Repairing Robots".. Are they referring to the process of repairing a robot, or to robots that perform repairs? Is the MDS a system for developing microcomputers, or is it a microcomputer that is used for other forms of hardware / software development, or a little of both? I'm getting the feeling that the latter might be the case. Secondly, what kind of operating system, applications, etc can one of the MDS units run? I'm told that it is an ISIS based system, but I really don't know much about ISIS. I assume it's a disk operating system, but beyond that I'm clueless. I'd like to think that there is some general-purpose OS I could run on it, play some wumpus, trek or life, amortize my mortgage, or maybe fire up a terminal emulator and get into the BBS scene. I'm clearly no expert in this old stuff, but I'm at least wise enough to realize what I *don't* know. Can someone fill in a few of the gaps? My MDS has an 8080A CPU card in it, some kind of memory card, and a disk controller. Also, a card that connects to a large ICE pod "Intel ICE-51", if that helps. TIA, Bill

21 years, 7 months

8
12
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manual file types

by Saquinn624＠aol.com

Sounds like the most useful file types for scans of manuals would be one of: TIFF file (big) OCRed ASCII text (ugly) compressed PostScript of OCRed text (depending on OCR, could be nice). Is this right? -Scott Quinn

21 years, 7 months

2
1
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ISA bus hack

by frustum＠pacbell.net

Mentioning my old employer, Calera Recognition Systems, reminded me of this ISA bus "hack." The OCR accelerator cards that Calera sold were able to find a free space in the memory map of the ISA bus and could even support multiple cards on one bus. No flash, jumpers, or dipswitches were involved, and this was before any Plug and Play. How it worked was this. The cards had a 68020 on them, along with a couple megabytes of memory and a few ASICs that accelerated key parts of the OCR algorithm. The 68020 would wake up from reset and "spin" -- meaning it would program a control register to indicate what address it was located at. It would park there for a while waiting to get written to by the host x86. If it didn't receive a write, it would move to the next address range, etc, and go around again and again util it was told to stay put. Complicating all of this was that the card very well might map to an address where some other card or memory already lived. The OCR card, in this mode, did not drive any signals, and was able to handle to 0 wait state writes. If the x86 was writing to or reading from RAM where the card was also located, the 68020 would see these and ignore them unless they followed a very complicated asymptotically approaching 0 probability sequence such that a card, seeing the sequence, was certain that it was the x86 trying to talk to it. Once a card received the sequence and was told to become visible, it would then turn on any handshake logic and could respond to reads and writes. The next layer of the onion was that multiple cards could be in the system at the same time. You don't want two cards to "wake up" at the same address in memory and then have a tristate catfight. Instead, part of the wake up sequence involved a one bit at a time arbitrartion process based on the card's unique serial numbers. Finally, the memory system attached to the 68020 wasn't fast enough to receive the reads and writes with zero wait state performance. However, the reset and interrupt request logic was, so that is what was used to signal to the 68020. The magic sequence of writes was seen on the 68020 as a sequence of interrupts and resets that followed a certain pattern (the logic could tell apart a hard reset from a soft reset; we were worried that the 68020's internal state wouldn't persist through soft reset, so we used a register that was inside one of the ASICs that was known to not get reset to hold the required tracking state). Parts of the implementation were overly complicated due to the fact that none of it was designed up front. It was implemented after we realized that we really didn't need to use the dip switches. Although it was all stochastic, all of the shenanigans would typically take less than a second so that nobody really noticed, and not having dip switches made the card a snap to install.

21 years, 7 months

2
1
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extracting H/V sync from sync-on-green video signal?

by pete＠dunnington.u-net.com

On Jan 30 2005, 21:08, der Mouse wrote: > > I keep on finding sync combining circuits that'll do seperate sync to > > sync on green everywhere, but nothing to do the reverse! > > I thought the right thing there was to simply connect the green output > to both the green video input and the sync input. > > However, that's coming from someone who has never tried it (at least > not knowingly - I may have used adapters designed to do just that) and > who does not really understand the signals involved.... Hmm, now that you mention it, I remember trying something like that several years ago, when we had to have an SGI (RGB, SOG) drive a video projector (RGB, CSYNC). We had a 13W3-to-3xBNC cable and put a BNC T-piece on the green, with a short coax to the CSYNC BNC on the projector. It worked well enough, even though the T-piece and cable were 50-ohm cheapernet parts. -- Pete Peter Turnbull Network Manager University of York

21 years, 7 months

1
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Help to ID Emulex board

by ddl-cctech＠danlan.com

On Jan 29 2005, 10:05, Vintage Computer Festival wrote: | | What is this board? | | Made by Emulex. Has ASSY# SU0210401. ROM on board says |"SC0210201-AXC W/ | Boot Strap". | | Has on top two 26-pin connectors and one 60-pin. Note that this board uses a 10MHz SMD interface so it will not support the Saber drives or even the Eagles. (An SC03 would handle the latter but not the former.) Dan Lanciani ddl(a)danlan.*com

21 years, 7 months

1
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11/34 stuff response

by jwest＠classiccmp.org

Wow. I think the entire list responded with interest on this. It sounds like several people are very interested in bidding on this - and I'm certainly not going to stand in the way. My primary interest is one RK05, an RK11D set, and some of the memory boards which could be used in my 11/45 restoration. Since so many people have already said they will bid on it, perhaps the best thing I can do is stand back and let everyone fight it out. However, bear in mind that I'm in St. Louis, 20 minutes from the guy. So I'd be willing to help out locally if the winning bidder wants, and would like to deal on the above mentioned stuff. Jay

21 years, 7 months

1
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DG NOVA4/X runs

by tomj＠wps.com

Well I just put a cord on it, plugged it in and powered on. No smoke escaped. The CPU passes self-test (no idea what it really checks, but it alleges to be thorough) after I seated the memory board (I forgot just how tough to seat the 15 in square DG boards are). I can poke memory, registers, etc just fine. Took a bit to get the console wired right (to minicom on a laptop, 9600/8/n/1) as the sample cable (from the orig. install) was misleading. The tape drive probably has a bad vacuum sensor; I'll look at it Tuesday again. Might be cable fell off. It otherwise loads the tape and one vac col does the right thing. Other functions seem to work. I have a 2nd tape drive, not yet tested. The disk (10 fixed, 10 removable) is not behaving right. Problem with load/ready. Looks mechanically OK but I will do one more test before the covers come off and the scope and DVM come out. Tom Jennings <tomj(a)wps.com>

21 years, 7 months

1
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Many things

by dwight.elvey＠amd.com

>From: "Ashley Carder" <wacarder(a)usit.net> > >I, too, like my vintage systems as much as the next guy, but lately I've >been finding >myself using the HyperTerminal app on my modern Win2K PC as the console >when I'm doing things on my 1973 PDP-11/40. I can toggle over to the web >browser while I'm copying RK05 disk packs, cut and paste the output of the >PDP-11/40 RT11 DIR command into an email on Outlook, and use simh to >test and run the RL01 disk image that I just sent from the 11/40 to my PC ---snip--- Hi Ashley I use my laptop as a replacement for papertape as well as a terminal. Dwight

21 years, 7 months

1
0
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VMS 5.5-2?

by dholland＠woh.rr.com

I'm getting back around to seeing if I can get the data off that Vax 4000/300 I've got, and thought I'd be a good idea to have OS media handy. So, anyone have VAX VMS 5.5-2 (and TCP/IP) handy, that I can beg/borrow/mooch? (ISO images are perfectly good). (AFAICT, 5.5-2 is not available through the Hobbyist program.) Thanks, David

21 years, 7 months

2
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VAXStation 100

by aek＠spies.com

Is a graphics display system that interfaced to a 780 through a unibus card and fibre optic link. An ACM article on it his here, if you have an account portal.acm.org/ft_gateway.cfm?id=357336&type=pdf It was the display that the original version of the X Window System was developed on.

21 years, 7 months

1
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Data I/O manual sought

by jwest＠classiccmp.org

Someone wrote... >Which adapter(s) do you need the manuals for? LogicPak 303A-V04, part number 950-1942-008 351B-086, part number 715-0004-001 351B-103, not sure of the part number 303A-011A CMOS/BiPolar-PLD PTA, part number 716-0045-007 303A-012 PTA, part number 716-0047-003 303A-009 PTA, not sure of the part number These are items I recently got, and have no manuals for. Also, I'm looking for a "recent" version of firmware for my 29B. Can anyone copy theirs for me? I'll gladly pay for the parts & shipping & your time! Jay

21 years, 7 months

2
1
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Many things

by msokolov＠ivan.Harhan.ORG

Randy McLaughlin <randy(a)s100-manuals.com> wrote: > - Run the result through tiff2ps(1) > - and finaly generate a PDF with ps2pdf(1). Could you perhaps be a little more friendly to people like me and Tony Duell who actually _USE_ our classic computers for our day-to-day work, including viewing classic computer documentation, and make the PostScript available as well, i.e., with the last step omitted? PostScript is infinitely more friendly to Classic Computers than PDF. A PostScript document can be easily handled by someone who has no computing technology younger than 1985, that's almost 20 y old, not just 10. No graphical operating system required (how the heck is one supposed to run Adobe Acrobat on a vintage command-line OS with a VT100 terminal??), just use your favourite Classic command-line OS, be it ancient UNIX, VMS, RSX, or whatever, to send the PostScript file (with a command line) to your |d|i|g|i|t|a|l| PrintServer 40 (one of the original PS printers, same time as LaserWriter), and you are done. Can't do that with PDF. And the original PostScript prior to PDF conversion is always infinitely better than PostScript produced by turning PDF back into PS (which is what I do with all PDFs that come my way, because converting back to PS with a command line tool is the only thing I can do with a PDF file). One of the first laws I will pass after my revolution is that anyone who publishes or sends to another person a PDF file produced by conversion from PostScript but withholds the PostScript source shall be dragged into the public square and flogged till he can't stand. The recipient of the PDF file would simply need to call NKVD/KGB with the complaint. MS

21 years, 7 months

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two 11/34's, 11/03, six RK05's, etc

by jwest＠classiccmp.org

Ebay item # 5159917411 two 11/34's, an 11/03, six RK05's, over 100 RK05 packs, loads of docs & software, etc. etc. The guy doesn't want to ship any of it. Interestingly, he's about 20 minutes >from my house. Since he doesn't want to ship he may have a hard time selling it. I don't want much of this, perhaps a couple of the RK05's. Someone willing to take a lot of this and go in with me? I just don't want to see it go to a landfill if no one buys it, and it's very close. Jay

21 years, 7 months

4
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Many things

by msokolov＠ivan.Harhan.ORG

Vintage Computer Festival <vcf(a)siconic.com> wrote: > Sorry to burst your bubble, but your experiment has been tried already. > It was called the Soviet Union. It crumbled in a most mighty fashion > after about 50 years. Simply stated, Communism doesn't work. I'm stating here on the record that I most totally disagree with you on every single point, most importantly that the Soviet Union *never* failed or crumbled, but was rather decimated by an ET race of dragons, and I have enlisted in the Galactic Federation Armed Forces to fight and reverse that defeat. Communism DOES work, it is the most wonderful system in the Universe, and I *WILL* prove it to you, though unfortunately I'm afraid the proof will have to be in the form of a bullet to the head for all you greedy capitalist pigs. If it were up to me, I would like to flame you to death here on this list, but per Jay's request I'll refrain >from doing so and this will be my final word on the subject. MS

21 years, 7 months

6
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Oops! Figured it out, re: Portfolio screen contrast

by news＠computercollector.com

LOL, I just noticed the function key labeled (duh) "contrast"... ===== Tell your friends about the Computer Collector Newsletter! -- It's free and we'll never send spam or share your email address -- Publishing every Monday(-ish), ask about writing for us -- Mainframes to videogames, hardware and software, we cover it all -- W: http://news.computercollector.com E: news(a)computercollector.com -- 665 readers and counting!

21 years, 7 months

1
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Atari Portfolio screen contract?

by news＠computercollector.com

Hey, does anyone know how to adjust the display on a Portfolio? I read something about peeling off the screen protector, but that sounds risky. ===== Tell your friends about the Computer Collector Newsletter! -- It's free and we'll never send spam or share your email address -- Publishing every Monday(-ish), ask about writing for us -- Mainframes to videogames, hardware and software, we cover it all -- W: http://news.computercollector.com E: news(a)computercollector.com -- 665 readers and counting!

21 years, 7 months

1
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HP 7900 related on ebay

by jwest＠classiccmp.org

Item # 3870527239 is a 13215 power supply. This is the rackmount power supply designed to go with an HP 7900A disc drive. If you have a drive, get the power supply :) Jay

21 years, 7 months

1
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Fwd: compaq's portable computer

by qovpatlh＠hotmail.com

Joe - Re: http://www.classiccmp.org/pipermail/cctech/2004-May/029003.html Do you have a Portable III setup disk? Can you image/zip it and send it to me? I have a friend that uses one of these regularly as a MIDI device - works great, now he wants to get his spare up and running. Thanks, Mark

21 years, 7 months

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Intellec MDS questions

by Innfogra＠aol.com

I will try with some of this. I am sure there is more in the list archives. The MDS 800 was the first development system It was a Multibus 1 backplane and usually had a CPU card, memory card, a two disk floppy drive controller, a HD controller (SMD most likely) and a emulation card set. The dual 8 inch disk drive unit you have is originally off one of these, that is why it is labeled MDS 800. The MDS 225 is either a System 2 or 3 in the development system line. Usually the white ones were System 3s but not always. MDS 225 is the System 2 part number. There is also a funny looking System 4 which uses 5 1/4 inch floppys and HD. In development work they usually were plugged into an ICE or In Circuit Emulator. You have a ICE-51 which is used in developing circuits using the Intel 8051 or 8751 CPU chips. The ICE is usually plugged into the CPU socket in the circuit it is emulating. So they really are a computer system used for developing microcomputer systems. There is CPM available for the system 2 & 3s. They have been used for writing documentation but this was not their main job. Paxton Astoria, OR

21 years, 7 months

2
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Replacing 8" drive with 3.5" drive on CP/M systems

by randy＠randy482.com

I have tried to get a quorum on comp.os.cpm but there are only a few with any opinions. We all agree that 3.5" drives are a viable way to go. Many prefer to never change from 8" drives. I have a variety of CP/M systems with a variety of storage mediums. The point is for those of us that use 3.5" HD drives should try and come to a consensus for a "standardized" format. Questions such as sector size and numbering come to mind. With more PC's dropping 3.5" drives does that mean there will be a limit to new drives all together? Are USB drives a reasonable option. I've been using Flash ROM cards and I am hoping to come up with a scheme for sharing data with PC's. I like Flash cards since digital cameras should help support continue on PC's. I'm also looking into IDE based CD/DVD drives but they are a one way road since I do not believe CP/M systems will ever write them. I am trying to build a quorum of technically minded CP/M users to try and develop a semi-standard and other ideas. Randy

21 years, 7 months

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MAJOR OT - Re: Many things

by marvin＠rain.org

I had my eyes opened last year when I stayed at a home in Hungary and had the chance to talk with the owner. Somehow the conversation turned to the Communist takeover of Hungary back in 1956. She mentioned how all the services went downhill from what they had been. BUT she also mentioned some of the pluses such as zero unemployment. I have since heard this from others, and I had never thought that Communism had ANY pluses except for the people running the government. Also more importantly to the comments below, I think you will find that Communism and Socialism are not the same. > On Fri, 28 Jan 2005, Michael Sokolov wrote: > > > That is why we need a socialist government that would eliminate > > unemployment with a massive public works program that would hire > > millions of people to do the re-ASCII-fication work. > > Michael, > > On Sun, 30 Jan 2005, Sellam Ismail wrote: > > Sorry to burst your bubble, but your experiment has been tried already. > It was called the Soviet Union. It crumbled in a most mighty fashion > after about 50 years. Simply stated, Communism doesn't work. >

21 years, 7 months

2
1
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Reading RX01/02 disks on a PC

by aek＠spies.com

> Works very nicely Assuming there are no bad blocks on the floppy A Catweazel board in a PC will read DEC double density discs as well although I've not been very impressed with abilities of the data separator code on double-density data. I've had the best results recovering RX02 data using dual-wide QBus floppy controllers that have a 50 pin interface (Sigma Designs et. al.) and a Qume DT-8 drive. I run RT11 on a ZIP drive, read a bunch of images, and sneakernet the ZIP cart over to a system with E11 to dump the images.

21 years, 7 months

3
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Surplus Items (cleaning out my compuer room)

by Saquinn624＠aol.com

Expanded list: This is kind of a mixup, things are listed as I got to them. If you want to trade for them, great, if not e-mail me and I might give it to you FFS. I'm in Western Wash., and I will ship stuff. Sun 4-drive lunchbox (most parts were removed) Sun Ultra-1 case (PS bad) I'm probably going to toss these, but if anyone needs them, they're FFS. Wyse-150 terminal -- works but NVRAM battery dead (BR-type lithium)(hit space on powerup to clear batt error) RS/6000 3CT parts. processor card, planar, S4.5 memory card, floppy, P/S, SCSI cable, processor power card, case, Medeco lock&key, Ethernet interface card (AUI & thin), probably some other stuff. Novell NetWare 2.2 serialized 5 user & manuals, for 286, 386, 486 Microsoft InPort bus mouse (8-bit ISA). Okidata Microline 24 pin printhead, carriage, narrow-format gear rack, RS-232 interface & tractor Compaq ProLiant drive tray for SCA drives, wide-ultra compatible [may be taken] Sun SPUD-2 sled Power Macintosh 7200/75 Logic board HP PA-8000 processor fan/heatsink assembly, from C180 Macintosh 1.44 MB diskette drive (new type-with door) Mac (DB-15) to VGA (HD-15) video cable Texas Microsystems SVC-70 SBus Versatec interface Sun SPARCstation 5/110, 128MB/2GB with SunOS 4.1.3_U1 or Solaris 2.6, includes Type 5c keyboard/mouse Indigo2 feet (in IMPACT purple) IBM P-200 20" 13W3 Trinitron monitor with 13W3 cable. IRIS Indigo drive sled IBM RS/6000 keyboard (clicky IBM with integrated speaker) IRIS Indigo2 IMPACT R4400/250 (Solid IMPACT) Indigo2 IMPACT R4400/250 Dual Head (Solid/Extreme) Indy R5000SC/150, XL8 (IRIX backups with above if wanted) Power Macintosh 7200 (Upgraded to Tsunami/180MHz)(can downgrade to orig. if wanted) IBM MCA GTX-150M graphics for RS/6000 IBM CATIA/CADAM Version 4 Release 2 software for AIX IBM AIX version 4.3.3 documentation IBM buttons and dials, model 6094-010 & 6094-020 Sun type 5c keyboard Dell Latitude CP PCMCIA card slot module Dell Latitude CP keyboard Dell Latitude CP 233 MHz Pentium-M processor module Dell Latitude CP touchpad& palm rest Dell Latitude CP bottom case with latches. Things I'm looking for: Motorola 88k (e.g. AViiON) , DEC stuff, SGI Indigo/IRIS 68k, small Control Data/Data General, and other "interesting" hardware, also Mac stuff, MMJ->console (DB-25m) cable, scope probes (for Tek 555? scope), SCSI cables, Sun Ultra1 RAM, and so on. S/W: IRIX, 4.0.5 (All platforms/IDE) Domain/OS 10.4.1 (tapes or installation tools and Authorized Area copy), DG/UX for AViiON 88k, NeXTstep/OpenStep (Intel/Sun), fun IRIX/SunOS/Solaris/Domain/HP-UX stuff, things like that. parallel keyboard for CP/M system, Apollo documentation (425e/SR10.4.1) or-make me an offer. -Scott Quinn

21 years, 7 months

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2
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RL02 disk packs

by williams.dan＠gmail.com

There are 10 of these on ebay for ?15 each. Postage is quite high for just one. But they end tomorrow. I have no connection with seller, just thought someone would be interested. Dan

21 years, 7 months

1
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The definition of On Topic

by msokolov＠ivan.Harhan.ORG

Jay, thank you for your definition of classicness, I have saved your message and will use it as a reference. It perfectly agrees with my own thoughts on what is classic and what isn't, and I'm glad that you were able to put it in writing eloquently so I didn't have to. :-) MS

21 years, 7 months

1
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Blast from the Past

by marvin＠rain.org

In going though the archived ClassicCmp messages I'm getting ready to send to Jay, I ran across several that were quite interesting. This one by Doug Salot was a discussion about the "first" personal computer. ************* Hi, ClassicCmp. I haven't re-subscribed yet, but I hope to as soon as my life reaches a quiescent state (I'm done breaking eggs, and I'm now working on the omelette). I check Kevan's web archive once in a while, so I got a chance to catch the "first pc" thread. Of course, my idea of crowning a machine with the title "the first pc" was intended to be a catalyst for discussion, and to help dispel the popular myth that the Altair was the first pc, or that it started the hobbyist movement, or any such nonsense. However, I think Simon is the best candidate for that title. Yes, there were other simple machines built before Simon, such as Stibitz's relay calculator, the first version of which was built on his kitchen table. But I don't consider such one-offs to be viable contenders. Simon was built in 1950 by Edmund Berkeley for the express purpose of educating the masses and with the express hopes of fostering a computer hobbyist movement. So, who was this Berkeley guy? He was one of the lesser known players in the start of the computer revolution. He was a mathematician who worked on the Harvard Mark II, he worked with Eckert and Mauchly to help define the Univac, he founded the ACM, he started the first computer magazine, etc. How did Simon differ from other simple relay machines, like the first Stibitiz calculators? It was more general purpose, it was portable, and it was popularized in the press. 13 articles on Simon appeared in Radio-Electronics in 1950 and 1951. It was the subject of a cover story in Scientific American. It was covered in two of Berkeley's books. It was given television coverage and appeared in such mainstream magazines as Life. Berkeley was the first computer evangelist -- the first to articulate the idea of a personal computer, and the first to build one. Of course, there were others, such as Vanevar Bush, who described futuristic visions, but Berkeley dedicated a good part of his life to making computers accessible to mere mortals. I haven't stumbled upon a machine yet more deserving of "the first pc" title than Simon, and given the depth of Berkeley's work, I don't expect to. But Simon was just the first milestone towards the goal of accessible personal computers, and it doesn't diminish the importance of the PDP-8, the Mark-8, or even the lowly IBM PC. OK, I'll crawl back under my rock now. -- Doug -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Blinkenlights Archaeological Institute Featuring... http://www.blinkenlights.com/ Nearly Forgotten Personal Computers

21 years, 7 months

2
1
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Fwd: compaq's portable computer

by redodd＠comcast.net

Subject: Fwd: compaq's portable computer >Joe - >Re: http://www.classiccmp.org/pipermail/cctech/2004-May/029003.html >Do you have a Portable III setup disk? Can you image/zip it and send it to me? I have a friend that >uses one of these regularly as a MIDI device - works great, now he wants to get his spare up and >running. >Thanks, >Mark Here it is. http://h18000.www1.hp.com/support/files/obsolete_diagnostics.html Ralph

21 years, 7 months

1
0
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Using an IBM PCjr wireless keyboard

by rcini＠optonline.net

All: I'm working on another side project, a Mini-ITX conversion of a non-working PCjr system. I don't have a keyboard for it, but I can choose >from wired or wireless PCjr or standard keyboards. For the wireless PCjr keyboard, I don't have the thingey that would connect to the PC. Has anyone ever tried to use the PCjr wireless keyboard on a modern system? Any recommentations? Thanks. Rich Rich Cini Collector of classic computers Build Master for the Altair32 Emulation Project Web site: http://highgate.comm.sfu.ca/~rcini/classiccmp/ /************************************************************/

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Altair8800 'kit' - can you identify this stuff?

by herbjohnson＠comcast.net

From: "William Layer" <william.layer(a)comcast.net> >> Thanks for the info so far.. here are the ugly details on the 'kit'.. [details on the SD System S-100 card set in an Altair 8800 chassis, with assorted other cards] "Randy McLaughlin" posted: Herb Johnson has some great stuff on your disk controller you need to get: http://retrotechnology.com/herbs_stuff/s100.html ----------------------- Thanks for the referral, Randy. In fact I have manuals on most of the cards that William mentioned, and I've emailed William accordingly. As Randy posted, it looks to me like there is not much left of the Altair, in the Altair! The SD System stuff probably ran the CP/M or SDOS system on those disks with that system. It would be reasonable, in fact, to get *another* S-100 box and put those SD System cards in THAT; and to see about rebuilding the remaining, actual MITS cards and the MITS chassis seperately. The MITS might need a very old memory card to work with that 8080 processor and front panel, due to some bus differences. But it's all in what the new owner wants to do and what resources he obtains to do so. Herb JOhnson Herbert R. Johnson, voice 609-771-1503, New Jersey USA <a href="http://retrotechnology.com/herbs_stuff"> web site</a> <a href="http://retrotechnology.net/herbs_stuff"> domain mirror</a> **MY "njcc.com" site & email is EXPIRED ** my email address: herbjohnson ATT comcast DOTT net if no reply, wait & try: hjohnson AAT retrotechnology DOTT com "Herb's Stuff": old Mac, SGI, 8-inch floppy drives S-100 IMSAI Altair computers, docs, by "Dr. S-100" -- Herbert R. Johnson, voice 609-771-1503, New Jersey USA <a href="http://retrotechnology.com/herbs_stuff"> web site</a> <a href="http://retrotechnology.net/herbs_stuff"> domain mirror</a> **MY "njcc.com" site & email is EXPIRED ** my email address: herbjohnson ATT comcast DOTT net if no reply, wait & try: hjohnson AAT retrotechnology DOTT com "Herb's Stuff": old Mac, SGI, 8-inch floppy drives S-100 IMSAI Altair computers, docs, by "Dr. S-100"

21 years, 7 months

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Using an IBM PCjr wireless keyboard

by mhstein＠canada.com

----------Original Message----------- ....Has anyone ever tried to use the PCjr wireless keyboard on a modern system? Any recommendations? Thanks. Rich --------------------------------------------- There is a Serial Port IR receiver on the mini-ITX hardware page; looks like the LIRC without the regulator. BTW: if you or anyone else (except Cameron - I know what he'd do with it!) needs or wants one, I've got a PCjr keyboard (the one with "real" keys), NOS/IB; $10+S mike mhstein at canada dot com

21 years, 7 months

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Help to ID Emulex board

by vcf＠siconic.com

What is this board? Made by Emulex. Has ASSY# SU0210401. ROM on board says "SC0210201-AXC W/ Boot Strap". Has on top two 26-pin connectors and one 60-pin. "Ditronics-I" silk-screened on board in tiny letters. Ideas? -- 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, 7 months

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HP terminal wanted

by rygifts＠cox.net

Did you find a terminal? My father has just put on an HP-2648A Terminal on eBay. Just look up HP-2648A and it will pop up if you are still interested in one, or know someone who needs one. We also have other HP items up for bid. If there is any other older calculator or computer parts you need, my father might have it. thanks, Becky

21 years, 7 months

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NTSC test pattern generator on VCD?

by cb＠mythtech.net

> Dang, your ears are *much* better than mine.... hell even dogs stop at >about 30Khtz or so... LOL... yes, I was thinking wrong. I remembered it as being 1000 Hz tone, and for some reason I decided that was 1 MHz, not 1 KHz. My bad (and that is exactly why I said I would have to look it up to be sure) But hey, my doctor always did say I had the best range of hearing of any patient he ever had :-) -chris <http://www.mythtech.net>

21 years, 7 months

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Many things

by msokolov＠ivan.Harhan.ORG

Just for the record I want to say that I agree with every single point made by Tony in this thread, without exceptions. It looks like we are the only two TRUE ClassicCmp'ers in the world. MS

21 years, 7 months

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Many things

by msokolov＠ivan.Harhan.ORG

Randy McLaughlin <randy(a)s100-manuals.com> wrote: > You snipped all of my comments but only left my name, My apologies, I've hit 'r' on the wrong message, I was really replying to the post you replied to. (I failed to notice it, though, because you didn't use '> ' or other indent quotation.) > More than that you missed the biggest point, PostScript is useless in this > case since the documents are stored as graphical images and cannot be used > on the classic computers. While of course a re-ASCII-fied document would be infinitely better, a PostScript page description that uses nothing but the image operator is still not totally useless to Classic computers, since it can still be printed on a Classic PostScript printer, and the act of printing can be performed from a Classic command line OS. > I scan many documents and I can tell you that OCR'ing them and formatting > them so classic computers can handle them takes a huge amount of time. I > have better things to do with my time, including scanning more documents. That is why we need a socialist government that would eliminate unemployment with a massive public works program that would hire millions of people to do the re-ASCII-fication work. MS

21 years, 7 months

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Using an IBM PCjr wireless keyboard

by list＠saracom.com

At 07:37 AM 1/30/2005 -0600, you wrote: > >For the wireless PCjr > >keyboard, I don't have the thingey that would connect to the PC. > > > > Has anyone ever tried to use the PCjr wireless keyboard on a modern > >system? Any recommentations? > >It has been a while since I've looked at my PCjr, but IIRC, the IR >receiver is built into the chassis of the PCjr. Thus, there is nothing to >"connect" to the PC, and thus, it would be improbable that you could use >the PCjr keyboard wirelessly with a modern PC. > >-chris Actually I think its a small PCB with an IR receiver and a IC chip of some sort which stands off from the main board. I am not sure it would much help for him anyway. max

21 years, 7 months

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Using an IBM PCjr wireless keyboard

by list＠saracom.com

At 12:01 PM 1/29/2005 -0600, you wrote: >All: > > I'm working on another side project, a Mini-ITX conversion of a >non-working PCjr system. I don't have a keyboard for it, but I can choose >from wired or wireless PCjr or standard keyboards. For the wireless PCjr >keyboard, I don't have the thingey that would connect to the PC. > > Has anyone ever tried to use the PCjr wireless keyboard on a modern >system? Any recommentations? > > Thanks. > >Rich Rich, I would like to see pics of the final project. I have considered doing this with a dead PCjr for a while. Have you been to the mini-itx.com site? Max

21 years, 7 months

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Vintage databooks on eBay

by rcini＠optonline.net

For your consideration: http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&category=378&item=4523753903&r d=1 Due to the size, might be a good thing for someone on the West Coast to bid on. Just posting the link...I have no connection to the auction at all. There are some nice databooks in this lot... Rich Rich Cini Collector of classic computers Build Master for the Altair32 Emulation Project Web site: http://highgate.comm.sfu.ca/~rcini/classiccmp/ /************************************************************/

21 years, 7 months

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Using 3.5" HD drives on CP/M systems

by pete＠dunnington.u-net.com

On Jan 29 2005, 18:26, Glen Slick wrote: > The software involved in doing data transfers to a USB floppy or flash > memory device would not be trivial to implement, and might require a > dedicated microprocessor instead of trying to run it on the S-100 host > processor. Hmm, maybe; maybe not. A Beeb enthusiast named John Kortink has produced an MMC interface for a BBC Micro. It's called GoMMC and it allows you to store files using a normal BBC filing system on a MultiMedia Card. Actually the card stores disk images, but makes them available to the normal filing systems. The card can also be read/written on an IBM PC (so you can move it and back it up). Take a look at http://web.inter.nl.net/users/J.Kortink/home/hardware/gommc/index.htm if you're interested. -- Pete Peter Turnbull Network Manager University of York

21 years, 7 months

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eMate 300 hardware questions

by ethan.dicks＠gmail.com

Apologies if this is too new to be officially on-topic, but as a slightly newer expression of Newton hardware, I hope an eMate question won't be completely inappropriate... I have these two eMates here... I got them at 'parts' prices because they were listed 'as-is' with "ribbon cable problems"... both fire up, show stuff on the screen, and neither one seems to have a working digitizer ("tablet"). One also has some dropped pixel rows on the left half of the screen - looks like a bad driver or bad line on the video RAM, but there's enough of the screen legible to see what's going on... I have taken the one with the video voids apart completely, and an trying to figure out where the problem might lie. After completely removing the video ribbon cable, I tried a white eraser on the contacts (vinyl, not abrasive like a pink pearl), and hooked up the display to the screen with the boards on the table... no change in behavior. The keyboard and CPU seem to work fine, and I'm getting reasonable behavior at an OS level, but no apparent perception of the stylus on the screen. So... are there any Newt experts that might be able to shed any light? I've been grubbing up FAQs left and right, but they don't go to this level of detail... at best, I have the Apple eMate service manual which _does_ describe in sufficient detail how to dismantle the beast, but it only references a PCMCIA card with pre-loaded diagnostics on it, nothing embedded in the ROM. :-( There don't appear to be any crimps or tears in the ribbon. I can't easily inspect the connectors on the motherboard or display, but there are no obvious external mechanical problems (i.e., the latches all seem to be good, no tool marks, etc.) Thanks for any pointers -ethan

21 years, 7 months

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