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

by pete＠dunnington.u-net.com

On Apr 22, 1:12, Doc wrote: > On Mon, 22 Apr 2002, Chad Fernandez wrote: > > > By commercial grade I just meant that I wanted to avoid the home grade > > stuff that may not have features, or only a few connections. The type > > of thing that Best Buy, Staples, or another cunsumer oriented store may > > carry for your average Windows user. > > Amazingly, the home grade stuff that's on the shelves lately really is > plenty for a home net. The features it doesn't have are next to useless > on a network with fewer than 25 nodes. > Stay away from the firewall appliances though. They're notoriously > easy to get through. Agreed on both counts. > > What's the difference between managed and unmanaged? > > A serial port, a password, and several decimal points. That's about it :-) > Seriously, a managed switch allows you to define which nodes can "go" > where, force connection parameters - 10Mb or 100, full-duplex or half - > keep transfer statistics, etc. A really good one will cost over a > grand. Like I said, I have one, and I prefer my little $70 NetGear > 10/100 auto-sensing switch. Unless you're really into networks for their own sake, or have a big enough one that you need to monitor and manage it remotely, plug-in-and-go is better. -- Pete Peter Turnbull Network Manager University of York

24 years, 4 months

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suggestions on BBC Micro, voltage converter, PAL monitor (in US)?

by pete＠dunnington.u-net.com

On Apr 21, 22:05, Derek Peschel wrote: > It has been my mission for some time to bring a BBC Micro back from > England. I would need some way to adapt British plugs to US sockets > and convert the voltage, and I would also need a PAL monitor. (No, I > don't want black-and-white NTSC. Yes, I could bring a montior back from > England along with the computer. I'm not sure if I want to do that.) Some of the Beeb PSUs have a jumper to change from 220/240V to 110/120. You probably don't want a PAL monitor, but you probably do want an RGB one that can handle 625 lines (15.something kHz horizontal and 50Hz vertical). > Does anyone have experience with these things? I am hoping to save > money ($500 would be above the top of my price range) but I don't want > to fry anything either. > > Oh yes, and if anyone has an extra Beeb hanging around that would be > nice too. They're not uncommon here. I bet one of us Brits could find one cheaply for you, if we knew when you were coming over and where you'd be. -- Pete Peter Turnbull Network Manager University of York

24 years, 4 months

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Network Hub selection help needed

by pete＠dunnington.u-net.com

On Apr 22, 1:21, Chad Fernandez wrote: > By commercial grade I just meant that I wanted to avoid the home grade > stuff that may not have features, or only a few connections. The type > of thing that Best Buy, Staples, or another cunsumer oriented store may > carry for your average Windows user. Ah, well there aren't all that many features to distinguish a dumb hub (or switch) from another dumb hub (or switch). Number of ports, whether it supports autosensing 10/100, internal or external PSU, noise level (ones with internal PSUs often have a fan), colour of the box, and that's about it. Some low-end devices are more reliable than others, of course. > > If you see a decent modern 3Com hub or switch, that's fine but most of the > > second-hand stuff I've seen is 10baseT only. I wouldn't bother looking for > > IBM. Baystack, 3Com, HP, Cisco are the ones you're likely to see. And > > Netgear, which is almost entirely unmanaged kit, but quite good quality. > > > > What's the difference between managed and unmanaged? Unmanaged means a dumb device that has no configuration settings, provides no stats, and has no address of its own. A managed hub or switch will have it's own IP (and/or IPX address, rarely DECnet or Appletalk) and will usually support SNMP (the Simple Network Management Protocol) and/or some kind of web interface. That will allow remote configuration of things like IP address, spanning tree settings (if it's a switch), port settings (enabled or not, half/full/auto/duplex, 10/100/auto, etc), VLANs (if it's a modern switch), and monitoring and interrogation of internal data (byte/packet/collision/error counts on ports, port state, MAC address(es) last seen on each port). The management costs a lot extra. -- Pete Peter Turnbull Network Manager University of York

24 years, 4 months

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Micro$oft Biz'droid Lusers (was: OT email response format)

by mcguire＠neurotica.com

Oh, ok. It's late. :) -Dave On April 22, Richard Erlacher wrote: > That's my point, Dave! > > Dick > > ----- Original Message ----- > From: "Dave McGuire" <mcguire(a)neurotica.com> > To: <classiccmp(a)classiccmp.org> > Sent: Monday, April 22, 2002 12:03 AM > Subject: Re: Micro$oft Biz'droid Lusers (was: OT email response format) > > > > On April 21, Richard Erlacher wrote: > > > Friendlier OS' (e.g. Windows) have equivalent tools that are less onerous > in > > > the demands they place on the user. Just ask the typical programmer what > a > > > "regular expression" is. Better yet, give him a task requiring the use of > > > > Umm, a programmer that doesn't know what a regular expression is, is > > no programmer at all. > > > > Has Microsoft really steered us toward a future full of nontechnical > > computer programmers? > > > > -Dave > > > > -- > > Dave McGuire "Mmmm. Big." > > St. Petersburg, FL -Den > > > > > > -- Dave McGuire "Mmmm. Big." St. Petersburg, FL -Den

24 years, 4 months

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Micro$oft Biz'droid Lusers (was: OT email response format)

by mcguire＠neurotica.com

On April 21, Richard Erlacher wrote: > Those are "nice" but not necessary. I'm happy with the M$ stuff that Bill > sent me years back. I'm apparently not on "the list" any longer and haven't Knowing Bill Gates does *not* make you cool in this crowd. ;) > I'm really not complaining at all. It was he who cast the first stone. I > just made the observation that thinking of UNIX as appropriate for the era is > totally off-base and the market has surely vindicated that view. UNIX may be > fine for some things, but not for personal computing. Wow, I guess I'd better run out and buy a Windows box. I wonder if there are any stores open this late. I sure hope so, because all of my UNIX boxes are probably about to stop performing all of my personal computing, and I still have a lot of stuff to do tonight. > Workstations are overrate, if you ask me, though they may have had their day. > Hardware dedicated to UNIX concepts is just no longer what's wanted. Say what Not for suits, no. But suits seldom know what's best for even themselves. You strike me as an intelligent person, which is why I'm surprised at your viewpoints. I'd think you'd be interested in more modern technology. To each his own, more power to you. -Dave -- Dave McGuire "Mmmm. Big." St. Petersburg, FL -Den

24 years, 4 months

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Network Hub selection help needed

by pete＠dunnington.u-net.com

On Apr 21, 2:34, Chad Fernandez wrote: > I'm finally going to work on hooking up a home network, so I guess I > need a hub. What should I look for? I don't know much about networks > yet. I have potentially 7 computers that I'd like to have connected. > It'll need to be 10Base-T, but 100base-T may be involved too. I thought > I'd look for something on Ebay, hopefully, not too expensive. Maybe > something commercial grade, However. I thought about something from IBM > or 3Com, any suggestions?? What do you mean by "commercial grade"? The difference between upmarket devices and small SOHO devices is mostly that the ones used in larger commercial networks are managed devices. That means you can configure them remotely (with SNMP or a web interface), get statistics from them, etc. You really want a switch rather than a hub. Not many people are making hubs (repeaters) these days, even at the low end of the market. A switch will ultimately give better throughput, especially in a peer-to-peer network. Go for autosensing 10/100baseT. If you're going to spend any amount of money, you want to protect your investment by including 100baseT capability even if you don't need it right now. If you see a decent modern 3Com hub or switch, that's fine but most of the second-hand stuff I've seen is 10baseT only. I wouldn't bother looking for IBM. Baystack, 3Com, HP, Cisco are the ones you're likely to see. And Netgear, which is almost entirely unmanaged kit, but quite good quality. -- Pete Peter Turnbull Network Manager University of York

24 years, 4 months

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Micro$oft Biz'droid Lusers (was: OT email response format)

by mcguire＠neurotica.com

On April 22, Sean 'Captain Napalm' Conner wrote: > -spc (But I do want to say the PDP-8 was a 12 bit system for some reason ... ) For a very good reason...it *is*! ;) -Dave -- Dave McGuire "Mmmm. Big." St. Petersburg, FL -Den

24 years, 4 months

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Micro$oft Biz'droid Lusers (was: OT email response format)

by mcguire＠neurotica.com

On April 21, Richard Erlacher wrote: > BTW, when the NEXT boxes first came out, we had a few of them sitting around > for people to look at and play with. I personally was not impressed. They > were EXTREMELY low on gigaflops per picobuck and, aside from the OS, I don't Compared to what? > The problem with these machines, as borne out by the market, is that they > weren't what the home user wanted. They weren't what I wanted either. I That's it, I've finally figured it out. You work for Microsoft's marketing department. How nice. -Dave -- Dave McGuire "Mmmm. Big." St. Petersburg, FL -Den

24 years, 4 months

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classiccmp-digest V1 #927

by mythtech＠mac.com

>> Will a Dayna EtherPrint-T work for connecting, say, a LocalTalk Mac into an >> EtherTalk network, or does it only work for printers? In other words, is it >> a true LocalTalk-to-EtherTalk bridge? > >I don't think the Mac supports encoding/decoding TCP/IP packets via >localtalk. From what I understand Ethertalk (what mac compatible >printers talk on ethernet) is essentially localtalk wrapped with an >ethernet packet. :-/ TCP/ip is a different protocol on the same >computer and that is only supported through PPP(remote access) and ethernet. These are actually two different things. 1: Localtalk bridged to EtherTalk (appletalk over ethernet). That is what the Dayna box does. It is good only for AppleTalk uses (file sharing, printer sharing...). 2: TCP/IP over Appletalk. That is known as MacIP. AppleTalk does not natively carry TCP/IP, so a localtalk to ethertalk bridge will not pass TCP/IP simply because TCP/IP can't exist on localtalk (well, I won't say can't, but isn't done with any native Apple hardware). However, you CAN use MacIP, which is Apple's answer to TCP/IP over Appletalk. That is TCP/IP wrapped in an AppleTalk packet. That will be passed by a Localtalk to Ethertalk bridge, simply because the bridge won't know it is not Appletalk. The problem you get into with MacIP is you need something to unwrap it on the other end and pass it to the internet (or whatever TCP/IP application you are using it for). MacIP doesn't work as straight TCP/IP. If you are looking to do localtalk with TCP/IP, a much better solution is to find an old 030 or better box with ethernet (LC2 or 3 works great), and run Sustainable Softworks' IPNetRouter. They have a MacIP router built into it. Then, run Apple's LaserWriter Bridge if you ALSO want to route straight Appletalk using the mac based bridge (IPNetRouter will only examine the MacIP portion, so it won't pass a regular appletalk connection for things like Appleshare, file sharing, and printer sharing, as a result you need Apple's free LaserWriter bridge, which the newest version (2.??) IIRC will bridge for a full appletalk network and not just printers). I would also guess that older versions of AppleShare Server might have a MacIP router built in. Apple must have offered a solution for it, I can't believe they would provide all the client end tools and not have some way of unwrapping it other than depending on a 3rd party program (which is the only app I have seen that does it, but I am sure there must be others). -chris <http://www.mythtech.net>

24 years, 4 months

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Micro$oft Biz'droid Lusers (was: OT email response format)

by ajp166＠bellatlantic.net

From: Sean 'Captain Napalm' Conner <spc(a)conman.org> >> 8080/z80 and if it was DOS you could bet on 808x. Unix back then meant >> MIPS, VAX, PDP-11, SUN/sparc, 68000, Z8000, and a few dozen I likely missed. > > That doesn't make sense. UNIX you state as being easily ported, even >though as a kernel it has to hit the hardware pretty hard, yet you state >applications as not being portable at all, because of the underlying >hardware and processor (which the application shouldn't care about). If >anything, I would think the opposite would be true. You forget I guess. All cpus are from intel. At one time unix was on machines of different word size and instruction set. So an app while easily ported to a new platform, it was not without some problems. Like each version of unix was not always the same as another. Some of those were those little things like the apps programmer needed a target machine and OS to verify on. So "portable" is not the same as "ported to". > Now, speaking as a programmer who's done cross platform programs, I've >come to the conclusion that writing portable software isn't difficult and >with enough experience it becomes quite easy in fact. It's programmers that >make unwarrented assumptions about their code or platform that make for >unportable applications. I didn't say it wasn't possible only that saying the OS is unix meant it was not always a slam dunk and that compliation was often required. > Granted, on the 8-bit systems you often times had to code in Assembly, >both for speed and size reasons (and because compilers for such systems >weren't good enough) but when you get to UNIX the whole point was to avoid >assembly in the first place [1]. Therefore, you are writing in a higher >level, more portable language and then it becomes possible to write code >that will run across platforms. Heck, I've written a program that has >compiled across several different UNIX platforms (SGI, Linux on the x86, >Linux on the DEC Alpha, OpenBSD, FreeBSD) without problems [2] and you'll >notice that there is at least one 64-bit architecture listed there. The >same code was successfully compiled (with one line of code change, plus a >few other lines to get the correct header files loaded) under Microsoft >Windows. Okay, it may not have been optimum code under Windows, but it >still ran with minimum of changes or fuss. Thanks for the tutorial, I heard it back it 82 also. Experence however proved otherwise in practical terms. >[2] Okay, one problem---the DEC Alpha port crashed, but it was tracked > down to a bug in the C library call memchr(). In the past 1983-1988 that was far more commonplace to have incompatable compilers libraries. Allison

24 years, 4 months

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Micro$oft Biz'droid Lusers (was: OT email response format)

by mythtech＠mac.com

> Concerning my capacity to provide support, let me steal a quote from >the Jerry Springer Show. > > "Yew don't knoooow me! Yew don't know who Ah am!" ROFL!!! -chris <http://www.mythtech.net>

24 years, 4 months

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AS/400s in the Champaign area

by mcguire＠neurotica.com

On April 19, William Donzelli wrote: > > FWIW the AS/400 is essentially the follow-on to the System/36, to the > > point of having a highly-evolved software environment allowing S/36 > > applications to run un-modified on AS/400. Supposedly there is some > > dotted-line relationship to S/38 as well, but I don't have any real > > information about that. > > The other way round, architecturally. AS/400 gained most from S/38 and > FS. The whole AS/400 family was designed to replace S/32, S/34, S/36, and > S/38. The AS/400 grew primarily out of the S/36 architecture but incorporated many architectural features of the S/38. It has a good deal of application compatibility with both the S/36 and the S/38. The S/38 (which came out before the S/36) is otherwise a fairly different machine from the S/32, S/34, and S/36. The lineage: System/3, 1969 System/32, 1975 System/34, 1977 System/38, 1978 System/36, 1983 AS/400 family, 1988 The last model of the System/36 line, the 5363, was "enhanced" (though I don't know how) and renamed "AS/Entry"...it seems to me that they followed the numbering scheme, but loosely. I don't have any hard information about this, but I'm guessing this is how they got to where they are now. I've put the possible "steps" through the naming system in brackets below. ... System/36 AS/Entry [AdvancedSystem/36] Advanced36 [AdvancedSystem/40] [AS/40] AS/400 -Dave -- Dave McGuire "Mmmm. Big." St. Petersburg, FL -Den

24 years, 4 months

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[Fwd: HeathKit H11 Computer]

by bfranchuk＠jetnet.ab.ca

-------- Original Message -------- Subject: HeathKit H11 Computer Date: 22 Apr 2002 01:36:44 GMT From: jedchilds(a)aol.com (Jed Childs) Organization: AOL http://www.aol.com Newsgroups: alt.sys.pdp11 HeathKit H11 Computer Complete with manuals DecWriter I/O, paper tapes, punch, reader, cpu and extra cards. $500 come and get it. Or write here or email. Jed

24 years, 4 months

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Apple-1 Auction conclusion

by mythtech＠mac.com

>In case anyone is interested, the Apple-1 sold for $14,000, right at the >reserve price. So then that's a 'No' on my offer of $30 + shipping? :-) -chris <http://www.mythtech.net>

24 years, 4 months

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AS/400s in the Champaign area

by mcguire＠neurotica.com

On April 19, William Donzelli wrote: > > The do indeed classify the S/390 as a mainframe...because, well, > > that's what it is. :-) > > Not any more - they are all "servers". xSeries, iSeries, pSeries, and > zSeries (the z's being the S/390 followups). Umm, I have to disagree with you there...the machines in question are indeed of a mainframe architecture, and some IBMers were calling them "servers" many years before the zSeries was even an itch in IBM's pants. Regardless of what industry buzzwords the marketroids are trying to take advantage of...those machines implement the S/390 architecture, which is a mainframe architecture descended from mainframe architectures. -Dave -- Dave McGuire "Mmmm. Big." St. Petersburg, FL -Den

24 years, 4 months

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classiccmp-digest V1 #927

by foxnhare＠bigvalley.net

> Date: Sat, 20 Apr 2002 14:28:35 -0700 (PDT) > From: Cameron Kaiser <spectre(a)stockholm.ptloma.edu> > Subject: Dayna EtherPrint-T and AppleShare > > Will a Dayna EtherPrint-T work for connecting, say, a LocalTalk Mac into an > EtherTalk network, or does it only work for printers? In other words, is it > a true LocalTalk-to-EtherTalk bridge? I don't think the Mac supports encoding/decoding TCP/IP packets via localtalk. From what I understand Ethertalk (what mac compatible printers talk on ethernet) is essentially localtalk wrapped with an ethernet packet. :-/ TCP/ip is a different protocol on the same computer and that is only supported through PPP(remote access) and ethernet. Larry -- 01000011 01001111 01001101 01001101 01001111 01000100 01001111 01010010 01000101 Larry Anderson - Sysop of Silicon Realms BBS (209) 754-1363 300-14.4k bps Set your 8-bit C= rigs to sail for http://www.portcommodore.com/ 01000011 01001111 01001101 01010000 01010101 01010100 01000101 01010010 01010011

24 years, 4 months

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Apple-1 Auction conclusion

by mythtech＠mac.com

>I don't care whether these things sell for a million each. It still won't >make me want one. Good one less person to take one away from me :-) -chris <http://www.mythtech.net>

24 years, 4 months

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Apple-1 Auction conclusion

by mythtech＠mac.com

>Btw- Did the winner bid against himself? He had the winning bid of $14K, >but he had an earlier bid (the 2nd highest one) in the 12.5K which look >like should have won the auction. Probably because of the reserve price (I didn't watch the auction, but Sellam did make a quick mention of the $14k being right at the reserve) -chris <http://www.mythtech.net>

24 years, 4 months

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What a weekend!

by rachael_＠gmx.net

Hi I have just return home from a Good weekend, bringing the following parts with me home :) VaxStation 4000vlc Commodore Sx64 3x Commodore A2088 pc cards Commdore A2500 memory board for A2000A Commdore A2058 memory board GVP Gforce 040 acc. card for A2000 Supra scsi interface Kupke scsi interface 2x a1200 boards a cdtv mother board 3x Xircom parallel port ethernet adaptors a ASK lcd display for overhead projectors a HP Remote bridge RB 28674B ( have no idee what it is) 6 joysticks and some mouse/joystick auto switches Microsoft windows (c) 1987 Chameleon NFS Xvision X server for windows A isa tvcard a 8ports serial isa card a sbc 286 and a 586 pc and passiv backplate for them Xeno link bbs for amiga Lemmings tribes for amiga virtual carting2 for amiga a com21 cable modem We had only planed for the first two thing, but we found some extras. Atlast I have my first Vax, but now I have so many other new things that I wont have time to play with it the first couple of weeks. Regards Jacob Dahl Pind -- CBM, Amiga,Vintage hardware collector Email: Rachael_(a)gmx.net url: http://rachael.dyndns.org

24 years, 4 months

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Micro$oft Biz'droid Lusers (was: OT email response format)

by mcguire＠neurotica.com

On April 21, Sridhar the POWERful wrote: > > I've done it for twenty years. Most of the stuff I've written runs > > on 20+ different operating systems...it doesn't run under Windows, but > > that's irrelevant, because it's one proprietary, non-standards- > > compliant platform that most people in my industry don't use. (See > > comments about "our own worlds" above) > > I'll bet your software will compile and run fine under Windows using > Cygnus's stuff. This is likely...it's an impressive piece of work. Though I can't help but wonder...why not just use a real OS in the first place? It's treating the symptom, not the problem. -Dave -- Dave McGuire "Mmmm. Big." St. Petersburg, FL -Den

24 years, 4 months

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Micro$oft Biz'droid Lusers (was: OT email response format)

by mcguire＠neurotica.com

On April 21, Richard Erlacher wrote: > Well, when I want groceries, I go to the grocery store, and when I want > computer hardware I go to the computer store ... When I want software to do > what I want my computer to do, I have to go where they sell it. ...and if you take that route, you'll get what you're looking for. Commercial software. If you're fine with that, more power to you. > EMACS isn't particularly useful tool for everyday word-processing, either, > though it certainly can do it. I have a "friendlified" EMACS (really a > DOS-based EMACS-in-a-shell) that works pretty well for lots of things for > which one normally would have used EMACS for want of another capable tool. > Nowadays, I can do all that simple stuff in WORD, like hundreds of millions of > others. Of course Emacs isn't good at word processing, because it's a text editor. It's also not very good at schematic capture, for the same reason. ;) > I've gotten software gratis all my life. Even the Microsoft products I have > were all originally provided, gratis, from Microsoft. I've never been offered > a single bit of UNIX software, ever, by any Unix software vendor. They even > charge for providing stuff that they claim to give you for free, and then, > when it doesn't work as advertised, which it seldom does if it works at all, > they charge you to make it work, which often costs plenty and results in > nothing. You're missing the whole point. "UNIX software vendor". Mainstream software in the UNIX world is FREE. It's the commercial stuff that's the oddball in this world. > I'm not sure what you mean by "network server." I've used a PC I mean it in the most general of ways. > as a server right here in the house for over a decade. There's not You trust your data to a PC? Well, that's your risk, not mine. ;) > one non-PC machine in my ISP POP either. There's a mix of OS' in- > cluding LINUX and UNIX, but it's the most generally provisioned > "small" ISP in the area and has a reputation for fewer breakdowns > and fewer busy signals on dialups than any other ISP, including the > muti-billion-dollar guys like AOL, MSN, and Qwest. I'd say that's pretty unusual...and having been in the thick of the ISP industry from its beginning, I feel I can say that with some authority. More power to them, even if they do make...questionable choices. And before you take exception to that...if I were to describe to you a commercial construction firm that made nice buildings and had a good reputation, but they used Volkswagen Beetles to haul their lumber and cinderblocks and radio-controlled tanks to do their welding and riveting, wouldn't you have something to say about that? > The first thing I'd ask about "writing the software portably" would be, > "Who's going to do that, and whom are we serving by doing that?" > The few dozen folks in my market area, worldwide, who'd prefer to > use UNIX might like it, but would they send any dough our way? > Probably not ... Is your work THAT unusual? I'm now VERY curious to know what you do. EVERYONE I know personally who does electronic design work (save for maybe two) uses some UNIX variant to do it, except for FPGA stuff we discussed earlier. That constitutes about twenty people. I think this very clearly proves the point that we tend to see the stuff in "our own worlds" very clearly, but the stuff *outside* our own areas of experience seem very distant or even nonexistant. In my world, Winodws and PeeCee hardware is weird, overpriced, proprietary stuff that's difficult to find and not very widely used. Everyone...and I mean EVERYONE in my peer group runs UNIX of one sort or another. A few have these esoteric Windows boxes for playing video games, but not many. That said, I respect the fact that your experience differs from mine, and that you have a different point of view...and because of this, I read your comments with interest, and learn from them. > Secondly, I have serious doubts that there's a way to write software > that is both portable and fully functional in all cases. There are > limitations, I'm sure, and the devil's in the details. I've done it for twenty years. Most of the stuff I've written runs on 20+ different operating systems...it doesn't run under Windows, but that's irrelevant, because it's one proprietary, non-standards-compliant platform that most people in my industry don't use. (See comments about "our own worlds" above) > > Linux is a mess no matter how you slice it, mostly thrown together by > > script kiddies with no experience whatsoever...it's a bad idea to > > judge the entire UNIX world on the cleanliness (or lack thereof) of > > Linux, because as even the Linux people are fond of pointing out, > > Linux isn't UNIX. > > > That's probably true, but it's the only realistically inexpensive route > into the UNIX world for one starting out or starting over. NetBSD/FreeBSD/OpenBSD, or about twenty different packaged distributions ("distros" for the kiddies) of Linux. All free, most of mission-critical quality. > Last time I checked, the add-on required to extend the file system > for UNIXWARE (? maybe one of the others) to larger than 2GB cost > $2K per instance. ...and the people who buy UNIXWARE get what they deserve...screwed. Support for >2GB filesystems has been standard equipment in modern free operating systems for something like eight years. What is their excuse? > > I'm not trying to be argumentative with you, and I respect your > > experience...please understand that I'm trying to point out that the > > world of computers is very different from the world of Windows > > computers...things are, well, just done differently. > > Different, is certainly the case. Better, well, the market thinks otherwise. Do you honestly think software development for pure profit, where quality suffers to enhance margins, bugs rarely get fixed, and developments in technology are largely ignored, where programmers write the bare minimum to get their paychecks and leave by 5pm, is "better" just because the suits of the world buy anything that Microsoft tries to sell them? "Better" is paying through the nose for products versus getting better stuff for free? I'll tell you what...YOU pay attention to the "market" and do what the suits tell you to do...I have work to do, and I'm going to use the best tools available...regardless of what the "market" thinks I should use. If any computer on your home network has EVER crashed, lost data, munged something, or behaved unpredictably for anything other than an age- or ac-power-related hardware failure, then my point has already been made for me. And I really, truly hope I've misinterpreted you. -Dave -- Dave McGuire "Mmmm. Big." St. Petersburg, FL -Den

24 years, 4 months

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OT: Writing floppies on PC; Was Re: Guys take a look

by blacklord＠telstra.com

Hi Zane, > V1.3 to > V3.0, and one thing I always loved was how I could be formatting > both 3.5" > and 5.25" floppies while I was editing a document and dialed into > a BBS. I can still remember formatting 4 floppies at once on my Amiga 1000, slight slowdown, but not too bad :-) cheers, Lance ---------------- Powered by telstra.com

24 years, 4 months

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Micro$oft Biz'droid Lusers (was: OT email response format)

by mcguire＠neurotica.com

On April 21, Ben Franchuk wrote: > > There is a demo version of nearly every high-cost ($2000 isn't that high, btw, > > though the Windows environment has made it so.) Get a comparable product for > > UNIX, and you'll get no improvement, nor will you get source. All you'll get > > is a bigger bill. > > LINUX != UNIX. ( But you are right ) What does that have to do with it? -Dave -- Dave McGuire "Mmmm. Big." St. Petersburg, FL -Den

24 years, 4 months

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Network Hub selection help needed

by fernande＠internet1.net

I'm finally going to work on hooking up a home network, so I guess I need a hub. What should I look for? I don't know much about networks yet. I have potentially 7 computers that I'd like to have connected. It'll need to be 10Base-T, but 100base-T may be involved too. I thought I'd look for something on Ebay, hopefully, not too expensive. Maybe something commercial grade, However. I thought about something from IBM or 3Com, any suggestions?? Chad Fernandez Michigan, USA

24 years, 4 months

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Heath Zenith in a Faraday cage, was Secret Mac

by ken＠seefried.com

Yup...I've seen plenty of Zeniths (i386 & i486 models) in Faraday cages. For that matter, I've seen a bunch of MacIIfx decked out similarly. Tempest rated boxes. My first job was with a shop (SecureWare) that did high security versions of Unix for these things. SCO-based for the Zeniths & A/UX-based for the Macs. The Unix was refered to as CMW (Compartmented Mode Workstation), was validated as a B1-level system (in Orange Book speak), and featured a secure window manager based on X (windows have security labels, and you couldn't do things like cut and paste between windows with different security labels). Pretty kewl, if you are into that sort of thing. Ken

24 years, 4 months

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One-upsmanship (was: Secret Mac

by ajp166＠bellatlantic.net

From: Douglas H. Quebbeman <dquebbeman(a)acm.org> > >My computer dims the neighborhood's lights when I turn it on... > >My computer has fewer transistors than yours... > >My computer has no transistors, just tubes... > >My computer's valves burn out faster than yours... > >My computer's got more gears than yours... Then there is... My computers daddy is bigger than yours. Allison

24 years, 4 months

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Boeing 707 simulator up for auction

by dpeschel＠eskimo.com

This is probably old news for the flight-simulator crowd on the list, but I just came across the article in the newspaper. It won't be cheap, partly because it's serial number 0001 (one). http://www.707sim.com/

24 years, 4 months

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Almost on topic - Cassette I/O

by bfranchuk＠jetnet.ab.ca

I am building a FPGA ( Field programmable gate array ) computer in the style of the early computers that had a front panel and TTY for I/O. While I don't have have a front panel working the Hardware serial bootstrap does work on my prototype. Since I have a few LOGIC cells left in my FPGA to play with I was thinking adding a cassette interface. Does anybody know of schematics on the web that I can get ideas from. Ben Franchuk. -- Standard Disclaimer : 97% speculation 2% bad grammar 1% facts. "Pre-historic Cpu's" http://www.jetnet.ab.ca/users/bfranchuk Now with schematics.

24 years, 4 months

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The PERQ factor (was: One-upsmanship) (fwd)

by pcw＠mesanet.com

> > I think the most beautiful processor I've seen is CPU card of the > > Symbolics 3645. The wiring and chip layout are really nice. One thing that > > always impressed me about that machine is that the disk label is in ASCII > > text! Of course it has a 68000 with a decent amount of ROM space (the FEP) to > > boot from... > > What do you mean by "the disk label is in ASCII text"? Its been a long time (>10 years) but AFAICR I was able to add a new Saber drive by using the FEP, The disk label is just plain text in the first block that is interpreted... > > I've played with a Symbolics for maybe half an hour. It has a lot of cool > software, though it kept trying to connect to a ChaosNet server to download > all the docs, so there was a lot I couldn't find out. I haven't really > explored the essence of the software. 1/2 and hour with an incomplete system is not much of a demonstration... > > The design of both the software and the hardware strikes me as baroque > (typical MIT "just keep adding features" hacking). Also the system as a > whole is not necessarily "self-sustaining". A friend of mine is having > trouble with his Symbolics -- his disk has bad blocks in the LISP world -- > he doesn't have the "breath-of-life" tape that has to be created for each > individual disk -- there's no way for the FEP to change the bad block list > -- the software to create new "breath-of-life" tapes is not available. > If any of those problems were fixed things might be better, but in the > current situation there's no recourse (except to pay Symbolics). That's > what I mean by "not self-sustaining" I dont think that there was a whole lot there that was not needed. A tagged architecture 36 bit machine with paged virtual memory, ECC, capable of executing about 5 million Lisp instructions a second was not trivial to build in 1985... > > I've read the manuals for the Xerox environment but I've never used the > actual machine. The hardware/software is less baroque but still heavily > layered (three separate LISP environments running on top of PILOT on a > variety of machines with a variety of keyboard layouts). INTERLISP's > comment handling never seemed sensible to me and it has lots of cryptic > names and messages left over from the TTY days. The Xerox hardware is less "baroque" because is is not a "Lisp machine" it is a microcoded 16 bit processor with WCS. The magic is done with (very clever) microcode but it is _much_ slower than the 36xx > > > The Symbolics and the Xerox WS running Interlisp always seemed to be > > the most "alive" computers I've used, which I think has something to do with > > how much the command interpreter, shell, etc knows about things... > > And how interconnected they are. I would love to play wtih DEdit (or SEdit > which is the newer version) -- its generalization of "select, then act" > to multiple selections and its "one man's output is another man's input" > mentality would be fun. I don't know much about TEdit or the Grapher but > they seem to have cult followings. > > -- Derek > You can download a Interlisp/common lisp environment from PARC that will run under Linux (its actually an application (LFG)) but you can play with SEdit and Tedit) ... Peter Wallace Mesa Electronics

24 years, 4 months

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Bad Classic Operating Systems (was: Micro$oft Biz'droid Lusers)

by mcguire＠neurotica.com

On April 21, Ben Franchuk wrote: > > To bring this back on-topic: in the years prior to the existence of > > Micro$oft and it's viruses pretending to be operating systems, can > > anyone think of any vintage operating system(s) that was (were) known > > for being poorly designed, annoying to use, and dangerous to data, > > which was (were) regarded with the same disdain as Micro$oft windows, > > yet still had loyal lusers who apparently didn't know any better than > > not to use it (them)? > > Users never had a real say in the matter. Really? Interesting. Was there a law passed that I was unaware of? -Dave -- Dave McGuire "Mmmm. Big." St. Petersburg, FL -Den

24 years, 4 months

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Micro$oft Biz'droid Lusers (was: OT email response format)

by mcguire＠neurotica.com

Hmm...I sense some Microsoftism on the list... -Dave On April 20, Richard Erlacher wrote: > ... and if you're dumb enough to believe that, you'll get what you deserve. > > Dick > > ----- Original Message ----- > From: "R. D. Davis" <rdd(a)rddavis.org> > To: <classiccmp(a)classiccmp.org> > Sent: Saturday, April 20, 2002 7:53 PM > Subject: Re: Micro$oft Biz'droid Lusers (was: OT email response format) > > > > Quothe Christopher Smith, from writings of Tue, Apr 16, 2002 at > 01:04:18PM -0500: > > [biz'droids] > > > Indeed I would tell them if they would listen to me. As it is, I have > > > > Just talk louder and be more persistent; they'll reach a point where > > they'll either listen or fire you; it the later, no great loss since > > it doesn't sound like they're worth working for. > > > > > agreed to follow their rules, and will have to do that until they make > > > more sane rules. > > > > Why? > > > > > In other words, when I took their job, I gave them > > > my word. > > > > You gave them your word that you'd act like a good little obedient > > dimwit? Why would anyone promise to do that? I suggest that you > > run emacs and invoke doctor ("M-x doctor") to get some help. ;-) > > > > > I don't believe I can count on them to fix these problems > > > on my account. After all, they don't impair my work -- all of our > > > clients use this junk too. (Sad, but what can you do about it?) > > > > One can always refuse to work with that Micro$oft rubbish. Perhaps you > > could educate your employer's clients; tell them all about the big > > mistakes that they're making by wanting to use that Micro$oft > > virusware which is broken, and otherwise annoying, by design. Don't > > mince words, tell it like it is, and tell them that no reasonably > > intelligent computer hacker would work with that rubbish unless it was > > as part of a project to change over to a UNIX system, or VMS, or even > > CP/M... that is, changing over to a system that doesn't destroy data > > and do other peculiar things with files. Ask them why they like > > operating systems that molest data... someone needs to make an "Eddy > > Electron" like film, that's Monty Pythonish, called "Pfe$ter, the > > Micro $oft Mole$ter," showing him doing strange things with bits of > > data as they flow through the computer. > > > > -- > > Copyright (C) 2001 R. D. Davis The difference between humans & other > animals: > > All Rights Reserved an unnatural belief that we're above Nature & > > rdd(a)rddavis.org 410-744-4900 her other creatures, using dogma to justify > such > > http://www.rddavis.org beliefs and to justify much human cruelty. > > > > > > -- Dave McGuire "Mmmm. Big." St. Petersburg, FL -Den

24 years, 4 months

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Apple-1 Auction Action

by carlos_murillo＠epm.net.co

At 07:07 AM 4/20/02 -0400, Sridhar wrote: >On Fri, 19 Apr 2002, Sellam Ismail wrote: >> Try MSNBC. >I find their journalism a bit too yellow too. I tend to watch the BBC >world news. I find NPR to be the only sort of OK source of news in the U.S. They're every bit as imprecise as cnn and msnbc, but at least they try to be balanced. BBC's world service is much better. Deutsche Welle is good too. -------------------------------------------------------------- Carlos E. Murillo-Sanchez carlos_murillo(a)nospammers.ieee.org

24 years, 4 months

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Info wanted- North Valley Designs SPGM-100 Universal Programmer

by tractorb＠ihug.co.nz

Subject line sez all- still looking...... Dave Brown Christchurch NZ

24 years, 4 months

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Prime PT250 Terminal, NIB VT keyboards at Yahoo! Auctions

by whdawson＠localisps.net

Just happened to notice this: Prime PT250 Terminal, Use with UNIX systems, Keyboard Included Clean and Works Some Burn in.. No bids yet. Opening bid of $4.99, buy it price of $14.99 http://page.auctions.shopping.yahoo.com/auction/64250839?aucview=0x30 2 LK250-AA keyboard NIB: http://page.auctions.shopping.yahoo.com/auction/64903339?aucview=0x10 http://page.auctions.shopping.yahoo.com/auction/64234817?aucview=0x30 Appears to be some Apple IIgs's and Mac Pizza Boxes in this one, though the shipping's kind of steep. FCFS gets pick. http://page.auctions.shopping.yahoo.com/auction/63282847?aucview=0x30 Bill

24 years, 4 months

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OT: Toshiba Strata XXe Power Supply Help Needed

by bill_r＠inetnebr.com

We use a Strata XXe phone system in our house, and after working just fine for many months, it suddenly went completely dead. No phones, no lights, no power light - nothing. We have checked the power supply, and none of the 4 breakers or 5 glass fuses seem to be blown. There was a diode near a bank of large capacitors which appeared to be shorted - it or something near it had gotten hot enough to blacken the PC board a bit. Replaced said diode with no change in status. AC is present on the primary and secondary of the line transformer, but that's about it. Primary bridge rectifier is fine. Anyone (Sellam, maybe?) have a schematic for the HPSU-9120 power supply (or a cheap source for a replacement)? We purchased a downloadable PDF of the installer's manual some time ago, but it doesn't have schematics. It indicates that you should try swapping out power supplies and/or checking the output voltages of the supply and replace it if they are incorrect. So much for that... Suggestions? -Bill Richman (bill_r(a)inetnebr.com) Web Page: http://incolor.inetnebr.com/bill_r Home of the COSMAC Elf Microcomputer Simulator, Fun with Molten Metal, Orphaned Robots, and Technological Oddities.

24 years, 4 months

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Dayna EtherPrint-T and AppleShare

by mythtech＠mac.com

>Will a Dayna EtherPrint-T work for connecting, say, a LocalTalk Mac into an >EtherTalk network, or does it only work for printers? In other words, is it >a true LocalTalk-to-EtherTalk bridge? I think it will work as a true LocalTalk to Ethernet bridge. However, you may need to change a dip switch on it. IIRC, the Dayna has a couple of switches on the back that tell it what localtalk address range to look at, one direction is low addresses (CPUs) the other is high addresses (CPUs or Printers). If you check your AppleTalk control panel, you can see what your current AppleTalk address is (1-255, the break in the Dayna I think was at the 128 point, splitting the addresses in half). Many Macs auto assign into the lower range, so you might have to flip the switch to see it. Of course, I could be thinking either of an older version of the box, or of the wrong box, so you might want to double check (I think there is still tech info on Dayna products off Intel's web site. If you are looking to buy one, and want to know for sure, let me know... I have a Dayna box at work that I can hook up and test. I have had it sitting on a shelf since I got it, I have never used it since I have an Asante one that is half the size. (Don't know if it is the EtherPrint-T... actually, I think it is not, as I think it only has AUI and BNC connectors on it... but I am fairly sure it carries the EtherPrint name, so hopefully the only difference is the RJ-45 connector) -chris <http://www.mythtech.net>

24 years, 4 months

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Rainbows and NEC V20 upgrades.

by mtapley＠swri.edu

Rainbow owners, I did get a request for the mods to make a Rainbow run with an NEC V20. Info below is from a reprint from the Rainbow News; unfortunately I don't have the date or the original issue, only the reprint. The article does carry the notation, Copyright (c) 1986 by Carl Houseman, all rights reserved, which means I'm probably about to get myself into potential legal trouble here. Carl, contact me if you are listening, I'll try to work out something you are happy with. Paraphrased heavily, the reprint says there is a 5% speed improvement overall, with up to 33% improvement (max.) for routines using the "fast video" firmware options. GW-Basic has a problem with displaying characters in the medium resolution graphics screen, and a hard disk diagnostic (test #4, seek time) doesn't work. There is also a set of problems with booting, but these are supposed to be fixed by the below modifications to the boot EPROM (though the article includes the expected YMMV-and-your-machine-may-explode kind of disclaimers). The EPROM is, for a Rainbow 100B or 100+, a 27128 PROM. If you install a V20, that EPROM (located between the connectors for the hard disk option) should be duplicated with the following changes: Location Data -------- ---- 072F 64 08E6 E8 08E7 17 08E8 36 08E9 90 0B36 20 3F00 51 3F01 B9 3F02 04 3F03 00 3F04 D4 3F05 0A 3F06 E2 3F07 FC 3F08 59 3F09 C3 3FFE EC 3FFF B2 For a PC100A, the Hard disk problem is irrelevant, the EPROM is a 2764, and the change list is: Location Data -------- ---- 043F 64 067D 20 1FFE 2B 1FFF 70 Let me know if you try it; I have not. Good luck! - Mark

24 years, 4 months

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The Unit (was: One-upsmanship (was: Secret Mac))

by mcguire＠neurotica.com

On April 20, Sridhar the POWERful wrote: > > > > It does so! Just the basic unit of nature they picked was not a real > > > > basic unit - it was the earth! The meter was something like 1/10,000,000 > > > > the Earth's curumfrence going thru Paris and the North and South poles. > > > > The Kilogram's (derived from the meter ) volume was filled with water > > > > and thus you got a unit weight. > > > > > > <PEDANTIC> > > > Ahem. Kilograms don't measure weight. Newtons measure weight. > > > </PEDANTIC> > > > > Oh MAN. We could shove charcoal briquets up his butt and make > > diamonds. ;) > > Let's leave your homoerotic fantasies out of this, Dave. Freak. ;) -Dave -- Dave McGuire "Mmmm. Big." St. Petersburg, FL -Den

24 years, 4 months

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20mA serial cable connector

by pete＠dunnington.u-net.com

On Apr 19, 20:36, Don Maslin wrote: > On Sat, 20 Apr 2002, Tony Duell wrote: > > > > I've kludged together cables for a PDP-11/34 by using the pins > > > out of those 4-pin Molex connectors that are normally used on > > > disk and tape drives. We just stuck the pins in the appropriate > > > sockets and left it at that! Being careful not to pull on the > > > wire, of course. > > > > Couldn't you get a strip of plastic and drill some suitable (stepped) > > holes in it to hold the pins? OK, it wouldn't lock to the socket, and it > > would probably fit either way up, but at least the pins would be kept in > > the right sequence. > Another possibility, depending on the shape of the receptacle recess, > might be to encapsulate the pins(?) with RTV. Same caveats as Tony > cited above. Yet another revolutionary idea might be to buy a few of the correct housings :-) They're made by AMP, by the way, not Molex. They're readily avaialble from any AMP supplier, and very cheap. -- Pete Peter Turnbull Network Manager University of York

24 years, 4 months

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The Unit (was: One-upsmanship (was: Secret Mac))

by mcguire＠neurotica.com

On April 20, Sridhar the POWERful wrote: > > It does so! Just the basic unit of nature they picked was not a real > > basic unit - it was the earth! The meter was something like 1/10,000,000 > > the Earth's curumfrence going thru Paris and the North and South poles. > > The Kilogram's (derived from the meter ) volume was filled with water > > and thus you got a unit weight. > > <PEDANTIC> > Ahem. Kilograms don't measure weight. Newtons measure weight. > </PEDANTIC> Oh MAN. We could shove charcoal briquets up his butt and make diamonds. ;) -Dave -- Dave McGuire "Mmmm. Big." St. Petersburg, FL -Den

24 years, 4 months

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TRS-80 book identification

by jss＠subatomix.com

I would like to identify the book that was my first book on computers, with which I learned BASIC on a diskless TRS-80 Model II in the fifth grade. The book was small, about the same size as a TV Guide but maybe twice as thick. It had a blue cover, I think, with maybe a drawing of a TRS-80 on the front. Does this ring any bells? -- Jeffrey Sharp jss(a)subatomix.com

24 years, 4 months

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Guys take a look at this qbus cpu board on Ebay :-)

by healyzh＠aracnet.com

> > On April 18, Sridhar the POWERful wrote: > > > > Except that a real PDP-11 will probably be a good deal more stable than a > > > > PC. And how are PC's running windows at things like realtime data > > > > acquisition? > > > > > > My computer ( 600 Mhz ?? ) states not to use the seriel port faster than > > > 9600 because the internal modem uses the irq line. sigh! > > > > *shakes head* > > > > Pathetic. > > Pathetic indeed. The pdp-11/34a that I had when I was in high > school...I think I babbled about that machine at one point. I had a > DH11-AD mux in there (16 lines, modem control, DMA...a 9-slot > backplane full of boards), it had my terminal and another terminal in > the house, both running at 9600 baud, and a 1200 baud modem for > dialin...It would keep up with me and two friends using kermit to move > stuff back & forth, or hacking code (yay Swedish Pascal and DECUS C!) > with no problems at all...three sessions, two at 9600 baud and one at > 1200 baud...simultaneously. Without even feeling the bump. > > Why do people use PeeCees, again? Pathetic, indeed. In this case a better question might be, why is he using an Internal modem? OTOH, it sounds as if he might only have one Serial Port and an internal modem, now that's pathetic! Still, I use ethernet a lot more than I do serial ports, though I did toss a 8-port DHV-11 (I think that's the right model) in the PDP-11/23+ I put together last week, along with the ethernet adapter. Still PC's aren't all bad, I've got a 1Ghz Pentium III that makes a very nice PDP-10 and PDP-11, I've had TOPS-10, TOPS-20, RT-11, and RSTS/E all running on it at the same time. Zane

24 years, 4 months

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Dayna EtherPrint-T and AppleShare

by spectre＠stockholm.ptloma.edu

Will a Dayna EtherPrint-T work for connecting, say, a LocalTalk Mac into an EtherTalk network, or does it only work for printers? In other words, is it a true LocalTalk-to-EtherTalk bridge? -- ----------------------------- personal page: http://www.armory.com/~spectre/ -- Cameron Kaiser, Point Loma Nazarene University * ckaiser(a)stockholm.ptloma.edu -- Burglar alarms: For the man who has everything! ----------------------------

24 years, 4 months

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in search of Bay Networks...

by john_boffemmyer_iv＠boff-net.dhs.org

i'm now in search of anything pertaining to the Bay Networks 16/4 BayStack Token Ring Hub with Fiber MDA RO/RI, 24port RJ45. Documentation, manuals, software (it does seem to have a DB9 "console" port on the back)? it is currently working well on my little network of 3 token ring machines (one P-III 850, one Athlon 750 and one P-II 350), where i get link, 16M, FRM, Mgt, etc. steady Green. One thing that bothers me though: WTF is NNM and DCM and why are they flashing Green? also, is there a way to disable the MDA module and why is it showing Snpx lit steady Green? there is no connection to it currently. the hub does, however, link up nicely to the 3Com LinkBuilder FMS TR 12 that i also have through cascade port 1 on the Bay unit and the internetworking port on the back of the 3com unit. main goal: to make the P-350 my main linux netowrk server with my own web hosting at some point and email hosting with dual or possibly quad token ring going out to the network and having a singular ethernet AMD PC-Net II (IBM badged) PCI for Ethernet going out to the router and out to the broadband cable modem. i even went out and found the nifty yellow ethernet cables (CAT5) that have soft rubber strain relief boots on them (really nice and professional looking and obtained free). =) -John Note: next goal is to toss narrow SCSI into the linux box (it is still partially built) and maybe have dual 9 gb or quad 4.x gb drives in it. ---------------------------------------- Founder, Lead Writer, Tech Analyst and Web Designer Boff-Net Technologies http://boff-net.dhs.org/index.html ---------------------------------------

24 years, 4 months

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Apple-1 Auction Action

by vcf＠siconic.com

If interested, you may watch the Apple-1 auction action here: http://www.vintage.org/special/apple-1/status.php The auction starts at 8:00 AM PDT. -- Sellam Ismail Vintage Computer Festival ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ International Man of Intrigue and Danger http://www.vintage.org * Old computing resources for business and academia at www.VintageTech.com *

24 years, 4 months

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Guys take a look at this qbus cpu board on Ebay :-)

by mcguire＠neurotica.com

On April 19, John Allain wrote: > > Why do people use PeeCees, again? Pathetic, indeed. > > I encoded some family geneology into set of frame HTML > pages once. It turned out to be something line 600 small html > files, 300 KBytes or so. When I went to put it on a floppy, it > took over 30 Minutes to write! > > Pathetique! So everyone's complaining about PeeCees, but some people are still using them. THIS is what I don't understand. -Dave -- Dave McGuire "Mmmm. Big." St. Petersburg, FL -Den

24 years, 4 months

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AS/400s in the Champaign area

by mcguire＠neurotica.com

On April 20, Sridhar the POWERful wrote: > > My mistake...it was my impression that z/Architecture is very similar > > to that of ESA/390, more so than the other evolutionary steps in the > > S/360->S/390 family architectures. > > 64-bit addressing, twice as many instruction formats. That's a pretty big > change. The change from ESA/370 to ESA/390 wasn't that drastic. Ok, I must've been thinking of something else. The original point stands, however, that these are mainframe architectures. -Dave -- Dave McGuire "Mmmm. Big." St. Petersburg, FL -Den

24 years, 4 months

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OS/2 Warp 3 Connect from floppies??

by fernande＠internet1.net

Hello, I'm trying to install Warp 3 Connect on my 9577 from floppies. I made the floppies from the cd-rom, but when I try to install it, I don't get the network options to choose. It's as if I didn't even have a network card installed. I have a 3Com 3C529-TP Does it have to be installed by cd-rom to get network support? The manual doesn't seem to mention floppies, only the cd-rom. Help!!! Chad Fernandez Michigan, USA

24 years, 4 months

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AS/400s in the Champaign area

by mcguire＠neurotica.com

On April 20, Sridhar the POWERful wrote: > > Umm, I have to disagree with you there...the machines in question are > > indeed of a mainframe architecture, and some IBMers were calling them > > "servers" many years before the zSeries was even an itch in IBM's > > pants. > > That's a mighty big itch. Yes. > > Regardless of what industry buzzwords the marketroids are trying to > > take advantage of...those machines implement the S/390 architecture, > > which is a mainframe architecture descended from mainframe > > architectures. > > Actually, those machines don't implement ESA/390. They implement z/Arch. > But z/Arch definitely evolved from ESA/390 R4. My mistake...it was my impression that z/Architecture is very similar to that of ESA/390, more so than the other evolutionary steps in the S/360->S/390 family architectures. -Dave -- Dave McGuire "Mmmm. Big." St. Petersburg, FL -Den

24 years, 4 months

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Apple-1 Auction Action

by dquebbeman＠acm.org

> On Fri, 19 Apr 2002, Sellam Ismail wrote: > > > Try MSNBC. > > I find their journalism a bit too yellow too. I tend to > watch the BBC world news. I used to prefer ITN World News, with Daljit Daliwahl, but lately, it's not being carried locally. And I can't seem to find the streaming version on their web site... -dq

24 years, 4 months

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AS/400s in the Champaign area

by csmith＠amdocs.com

Hi everybody, I may have a line on a couple of (probably not yet on topic) coke machine sized AS/400s in the Champaign area. I don't think I have space for them, but I'd like not to see them get ruined. Please let me know if anyone would be interested in these things. I'd like to have some people I could point them to who'd be willing to take these either for some cost or not (depends on the guy who's got the systems...), and save them from being shredded. :) Don't know anything else at this point. Chris Christopher Smith, Perl Developer Amdocs - Champaign, IL /usr/bin/perl -e ' print((~"\x95\xc4\xe3"^"Just Another Perl Hacker.")."\x08!\n"); '

24 years, 4 months

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AS/400s in the Champaign area

by mcguire＠neurotica.com

On April 19, Russ Blakeman wrote: > HOT day here, musta been rambling, although I'm not sure they even classify > the 390 as a mainframe - most literature and such refers to it as a server. The do indeed classify the S/390 as a mainframe...because, well, that's what it is. :-) The 390 architecture is an evolution of, and is largely compatible with, the S/370 family and related architectures...which (as far as I know, I'm not a mainframe expert..yet!) started with the S/360 back in the 1960s. -Dave -- Dave McGuire "Mmmm. Big." St. Petersburg, FL -Den

24 years, 4 months

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OT: Myths Persist Forever

by dquebbeman＠acm.org

> On Fri, Apr 19, 2002 at 10:17:46AM -0500, Doc wrote: > > On Fri, 19 Apr 2002, John Allain wrote: > > > > > I encoded some family geneology into set of frame HTML > > > pages once. It turned out to be something line 600 small html > > > files, 300 KBytes or so. When I went to put it on a floppy, it > > > took over 30 Minutes to write! > > > > OK. This is completely off topic, but it has bugged me for years. > > You guys are more likely to know, and care, than any other forum I hang > > in. I use a Linux PC as my daily workstation, file server, DNS, MOP > > server, etc. Given hardware limitations, it's stable enough. > > > > I can start a lowlevel format on a floppy, go and surf the net, read > > my email, compile software, or play a game while (45-75 secs) that happens. > > Do that in Win<anyversion> on the same hardware, and I might as well > > go make coffee. Same comparison applies to printing large documents. > > WHAT is M$ doing that operating a floppy disk drive takes ALL of a > > 1.4GHz CPU and 512M of memory? I wanna know! > > I remember this behaviour from Windows 3.1 - format a floppy and you > might as well go grab a book. Enter OS/2: start formatting a floppy and > do something else on the machine until it is done (which didn't take > long). I suppose that: > - since Windows 3.1 couldn't do real (preemptive) multitasking (only > cooperative), it basically stopped everything else, > - this code was carried through to whatever flavour of Windows is sold > currently (hell, I had system error boxes with the Windows 3.1 widget > set pop up at me on some lusers Win9X machines), I can cut/copy text from any GIU program and paste into any text window. I can cut/copy text from any text windows into any GUI program. I can format floppies while running IE5.5, Outlook98, and OE5.5, with a Modula-2 programming environment running and a copy of the CDC 6000 emulator running the Chippewa Operating System. Under Windows 2000. On an 800MHz P-III w/256MB of RAM. Not a killer machine. Windows sucks for anough real reasons that it's really not necessary to perpetuate myths and half-truths.... Ok, My Milage May Vary... -dq

24 years, 4 months

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OT: Writing floppies on PC; Was Re: Guys take a look

by csmith＠amdocs.com

> -----Original Message----- > From: Zane H. Healy [mailto:healyzh@aracnet.com] > >when Warp came out. It was so cool to be able to play a > game while using > >Prodigy on my Hayes Smartmodem 2400 at the same time. > > > >Peace... Sridhar > I see I wasn't the only one doing that :^) I also liked > being able to cut Careful, or you'll be setting around in a storage locker, writing BASIC programs on your PC Junior before you know it ;) Chris Christopher Smith, Perl Developer Amdocs - Champaign, IL /usr/bin/perl -e ' print((~"\x95\xc4\xe3"^"Just Another Perl Hacker.")."\x08!\n"); '

24 years, 4 months

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Questing again

by vance＠ikickass.org

Hello. I am questing again, for the following parts: IBM RS/6000 7250 attachment adapter for MCA. This is the card that you hook a POWER GXT1000 graphics system into. IBM 6091-023 23" monitor. I actually want more than one, but one will do splendidly for the moment. Peace... Sridhar

24 years, 4 months

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Secret Mac

by csmith＠amdocs.com

> -----Original Message----- > From: Sridhar the POWERful [mailto:vance@ikickass.org] > Shred the disks. Take the even numbered and odd numbered > shreds and burn > them in separate incinerators, and bury the ash in two different > landfills. No, I've got it. Slag the disks, and then make the slag into 20 pieces of cursed jewelry. Three Platters for the Elven-kings under the sky Seven for the Dwarf-lords in their halls of stone Nine for Mortal Men doomed to die, One for the Dark Lord on his dark throne In the land of Mordor where the Shadows lie. One Platter to rule them all, One Platter to find them, One Platter to bring them all and in the darkness bind them, In the Land of Mordor where the Shadows lie. Chris Christopher Smith, Perl Developer Amdocs - Champaign, IL /usr/bin/perl -e ' print((~"\x95\xc4\xe3"^"Just Another Perl Hacker.")."\x08!\n"); '

24 years, 4 months

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AIM-65 displays

by dwightk.elvey＠amd.com

>From: blacklord <blacklord(a)telstra.com> > >Hi Dick, > >> I'll have a look to see whether I have any ROM listings. I >> thought I did, >> but, well ... they say the mind's the second thing to go ... can't >> rememberthe first ... >> > >The AIM is pretty similar to the KIM-1 no ? (I may be mistaken) The >KIM's ROM dissasembly is pretty freely available, I have a version that >was suppied with a text file on how to build your own using current >chips. > -----Snip------ Not even close! They both use 6502's. That is about where the similarities end. The KIM was a hex readout. The AIM is an alpha/numb readout. The AIM runs a printer in parallel with the display. The KIM has a small key pad, the AIM had a full keyboard. I could pull my chip and disassemble it but someone else could deal with putting comments on the code. I'll look at my AIM stuff tonight and see if they had any listing for the monitor. It seems like they only had entry points but that would be helpful in figuring it out. Dwight

24 years, 4 months

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OT: Writing floppies on PC; Was Re: Guys take a look

by mcguire＠neurotica.com

On April 19, Doc Shipley wrote: > > > WHAT is M$ doing that operating a floppy disk drive takes ALL of a > > > 1.4GHz CPU and 512M of memory? I wanna know! > > > > That was one of the things IBM bragged about in the OS/2 2.0 ads. That > > you could continue with your word processor while you formatted a floppy. > > Windows could not even come close at the time. > > I already knew that every other OS that runs on PC does it right. I'd > like to know how M$ got it so horribly wrong.... They're not exactly known for knowing what they're doing. To steal a phrase from my grandmother, those guys "couldn't pour piss out of a boot with the instructions written on the side". -Dave -- Dave McGuire "Mmmm. Big." St. Petersburg, FL -Den

24 years, 4 months

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Who needed the Compaq Deskpro 286 "softPaQ" link? Here it is...

by rhb57＠vol.com

Found this in my bookmarks from the last one I had to reload: http://www.compaq.com/support/files/obsolete_diagnostics.html

24 years, 4 months

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20mA serial cable connector

by uban＠ubanproductions.com

I'm looking for a supply of the uncommon DEC 20mA current loop male connector shells used to plug into DEC VT100s, Wyse 85s, and the like. It is also used to plug into the H744 (and other) power supplies. The DEC part number is 12-09340-00 which might also be a Mate-N-Lock 1-480460-0 I would like to find 12-24 of them. I am assuming that if I can find the shells, I can find a pin from either AMP or Molex which will work. --tom

24 years, 4 months

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ASR33 print head

by chd＠nktelco.net

Is there a source for new(er) ASR33 print heads? Mine has many of the characters worn/damaged. -chuck

24 years, 4 months

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No such thing as scrap (Was: Re: The Unit (was: One-upsmanship (was: Secret Mac))")

by dquebbeman＠acm.org

> "Douglas H. Quebbeman" wrote: > > > > > Hans Franke wrote: > > > > > > > Well, for stand alone machines i'd say yes. Alas you may > > > > include necersary perhipherals. Like operators desk and > > > > so on. But only necersary - a Zuse doesn't work without > > > > the operator desk, while a average unix box quite well > > > > boots without console terminal. > > > > > > > BTW: who cares about PC boxes ? > > > > > > My PC jumps up and bites you in the LEG. Down BOY Down DOWN! > > > > Clearly, your PC hasn't been smacked with an Etherkiller lately... > > > > Curb that dog, son! > > Generally the 28k baud serial cable keeps him under control. > There is still a lot of things that only run under windows, games for > example ( or Free FPGA software) that linux just does not have yet. > Anyway lets not forget that in 10 years err 1 year your new pc will be > outdated any how and heading to the dumpster soon. The last computer equipment I sent to the junkyard were pieces and parts of an IBM 711 Card Reader and 716 Line Printer that I could kick myself over. Before that, I stripped the switches and LEDS from a control panel from a System/36. Now one's on sale on E-Pay starting at about $40.... *NOTHING* gets trashed anymore. Not even those XT mobos I can't *currently* think of any use for... -dq

24 years, 4 months

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AS/400s in the Champaign area

by csmith＠amdocs.com

Ok guys, it seems I messed up in the last message. I've just found something that says that the "9406" on this machine -- "machine type" as they call it -- really doesn't tell you a thing about the CPU being RISC or CISC. So I give up, how _do_ you tell? :) Chris Christopher Smith, Perl Developer Amdocs - Champaign, IL /usr/bin/perl -e ' print((~"\x95\xc4\xe3"^"Just Another Perl Hacker.")."\x08!\n"); '

24 years, 4 months

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Tinnerman nuts

by DAW＠yalepress3.unipress.yale.edu

> From: Ethan Dicks > > --- David Woyciesjes <DAW(a)yalepress3.unipress.yale.edu> wrote: > > Carl --- > > That's close, but what I'm looking for clips around the rails, not > > into the hole, which is round. This looks almost exactly like it, at the > > bottom of the page... > > "Palnut Multi-Thread U-Nut" > > http://www.tt-ec.com/showcase/retaining/palunut.html > > ..that's it, I think... > > That doesn't exactly resemble the ones I'm used to seeing - as mentioned, > the difference appears to be "bolt" vs "screw" fastening. > > > > From: Carl Lowenstein > > > > > > You would be happier with the type of fastener that uses real machine > > > screws rather than the sheet-metal type screws that some racks have. > > > There is a nice picture of them on the Tinnerman Web site at > > > > > > < http://www.tt-ec.com/showcase/nutbolt/nutretcat.html > > > I've used plenty of these with modern racks, but since DEC racks have > round mounting holes, not square, the rack-mount nuts I have more > closely resemble these - > > http://www.tt-ec.com/showcase/nutbolt/utype.html > > ... but with a u-shaped cutout to snap into place in a round hole. > > -ethan > Not surprised that DEC used different fasteners. Here is a larger pic of what my fasteners looks like... http://www.tt-ec.com/graphics/showcase/retaining/palunutmt.gif ... and it uses Philips-head screws for the mounting. I'll try some of the auto/body shops around here, see if I can get a decent price, otherwise Graybar (down the street from my house) should have something... --- David A Woyciesjes --- C & IS Support Specialist --- Yale University Press --- mailto:david.woyciesjes@yale.edu --- (203) 432-0953 --- ICQ # - 905818 Mac OS X 10.1.2 - Darwin Kernel Version 5.2: Fri Dec 7 21:39:35 PST 2001 Running since 01/22/2002 without a crash

24 years, 4 months

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Guys take a look at this qbus cpu board on Ebay :-)

by mcguire＠neurotica.com

On April 18, Sridhar the POWERful wrote: > > > Except that a real PDP-11 will probably be a good deal more stable than a > > > PC. And how are PC's running windows at things like realtime data > > > acquisition? > > > > My computer ( 600 Mhz ?? ) states not to use the seriel port faster than > > 9600 because the internal modem uses the irq line. sigh! > > *shakes head* > > Pathetic. Pathetic indeed. The pdp-11/34a that I had when I was in high school...I think I babbled about that machine at one point. I had a DH11-AD mux in there (16 lines, modem control, DMA...a 9-slot backplane full of boards), it had my terminal and another terminal in the house, both running at 9600 baud, and a 1200 baud modem for dialin...It would keep up with me and two friends using kermit to move stuff back & forth, or hacking code (yay Swedish Pascal and DECUS C!) with no problems at all...three sessions, two at 9600 baud and one at 1200 baud...simultaneously. Without even feeling the bump. Why do people use PeeCees, again? Pathetic, indeed. -Dave -- Dave McGuire "Mmmm. Big." St. Petersburg, FL -Den

24 years, 4 months

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Office Max events

by Mzthompson＠aol.com

Event #1 I went to OM earlier today to take pick up a UPS that was on sale. Their ad from last Sunday's paper lists a unit at $20 off (and no friggin' rebates to mess with). The ad listed the unit as 500VA. When I get to the store, the clerk points it out to me and the unit is 350VA. I say whoa, it is listed in the ad as 500VA. Turns out they list the model number for a 350VA unit and spec it at 500VA. I asked to see the manager, who already knows me (more on that later). This time I got stuck with the assistant manager. She states that it must be a misprint and she can't be held responsible for printing errors. I don't mind saying that I am getting tired of employees who will not take responsibilty. So I read her my riot act mentioning that she is standing here as a representive of OM and in my eyes is responsible. I also point to Staples (across the street) and mention the fact that a young man over there was also not responsible and after my complaint to Staples on their web sight, he got lectures from the higher ups, not to mention the phone calls that I got from district and regional managers seeking to make sure I became a satisfied customer. Anyway, back to this gal at OM. I mentioned to her that listing the model number of the 350VA unit and the spec of the 500VA unit might be construed as "bait & switch". With that she looked up the price of the 500VA unit and said she would sell it to me for 40 bucks off. Event #2 A few weeks ago I want to OM to buy another sale item. They had a CD-R 100 pack listed for $40 with a $30 rebate. What caught my eye was that they were 650 mb. My CD Burner drive is an earlier model, and does not like these new-fangled 700 mb thingies. So I go into OM and can't find them. A clerk comes along and I show him the ad and tell him that is what I want. He leads me to the big display of 700 mb. I point to the ad and tell him I want what is advertised, not these. You ever noticed how these clerks become dumbfounded and clam up at this point. He suggests I talk to the manager. I did and here again I mention that trying to substitute 750 mb for the advertised 650 mb might be construed as "bait & switch". With that she took my name and phone number and said she would get back to me. She did, she called two days later and said she had 2 100 packs for me. I indicated I only want the one because of the rebate limit. She then explained that the 2nd one was complimentary for my trouble. Now if I just get the rebate, that's 200 CD-R blanks for $10. Event #3 Speaking of rebates. I bought some memory at OM and sent in the rebate. Three months later I had not received the money. So I took all the paperwork into the store. Lo and behold, they have a form for just that. I filled it out and they gave me the $50 rebate right there. Why don't they just do that in the first place? Why you ask am I still going into OM? In this town there just isn't much else and they seem to have better sales. I share all of this because you need to watch out if you are dealing with OM. If they try to pull a fast one, namely "bait & switch", then call them on it. Maybe they will learn to get their ads right, or at least you may get a deal. Mike

24 years, 4 months

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Secret Mac

by Antonio.Carlini＠riverstonenet.com

>1.) Run Norton WipeDisk pgm writing 1s & 0s three times. >2.) Low level format >3.) WipeDisk three more times. > >Trust me, when I was done, there wasn't anything recoverable there. If you did: 4) Smash disk into small pieces and heat until molten slag then you protected yourself against people armed with a scanning tunneling microscope (which are surprisingly cheap these days ...) Of course, that begs the question, why did you bother with steps 1-3?? Or maybe things were just not as secure as you thought? Antonio

24 years, 4 months

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Solid State Music MB-3 EPROM card question

by dwightk.elvey＠amd.com

> >"Erik S. Klein" <classiccmp(a)mail.vintage-computer.com> wrote: >> code. The board has two sets of four dip switches. One is >> labeled T1 to T4 and the other A12 to A15. A jumper on the >> board that allows settings between 2k and 4k is set to 4k >> (1702s vs 1701s?) Hi Both the 1702 and 1701 were the same size. There were originally 4 parts; 1601, 1602, 1701 and 1702. I forget which was which but I think it was that the 160x were syncronous bus and the 1x01's were open collector as compared to 1x02's that were 3state. If anyone cares, I can look it up in my doc's to get it right. By the time the 1702A's came out, I don't think anyone saw the others. Dwight

24 years, 4 months

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20mA serial cable connector

by pete＠dunnington.u-net.com

On Apr 19, 13:52, Tom Uban wrote: > >Peter Turnbull wrote: > >They're not Molex, they're AMP, and since they're the pins for that series > >of connector they'll work fine. > Yes, the connectors are AMP. Here is what I got back from Tyco/AMP when I > made an inquiry about them: > The item you are questioning was obsoleted in 1997 with no replacements. I > do not find anything similar to this item nor do we show any stock left in > inventory. I do not see where any distributor has any inventory either. We > would not be able to offer a solution unless you can change you design to > one of the other Commercial MNL products. Ms Hughes was referring to the housings of course; the pins that fit the housings are still a current standard product. AMP changed some of the part numbers some time ago, but they are still the same pins that fit the rest of the Commercial Mate-N-Lok range, which includes the ones used for drive power (not the little ones for 3.5" floppies, though -- those are 2.5mm AMP Economy Interconnect). The point being that if you can find some old connectors, you can replace the pins. The part numbers for the crimp contacts are: socket connector, 18-20AWG 163304-2 socket connector, 14-18AWG 163306-2 pin connector, 18-20AWG 163305-2 pin connector, 14-18AWG 163305-2 and you should be able to find them in the AMP catalogue or any of several dealer/distributor catalogues. -- Pete Peter Turnbull Network Manager University of York

24 years, 4 months

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OT: Writing floppies on PC; Was Re: Guys take a look

by healyzh＠aracnet.com

> > >when Warp came out. It was so cool to be able to play a > > game while using > > >Prodigy on my Hayes Smartmodem 2400 at the same time. > > > > > >Peace... Sridhar > > > I see I wasn't the only one doing that :^) I also liked > > being able to cut > > Careful, or you'll be setting around in a storage locker, writing > BASIC programs on your PC Junior before you know it ;) Not likely, I don't have electricity in my storage units, and the only receptical is a LONG ways away! Besides my wife wouldn't like me hiding out up there, she doesn't mind when I hid out in the computer room at home. Oh, and then there is the fact that if I'm going to be writing something in BASIC, it's going to be on a PDP-10, PDP-11 or a VMS box. Which brings up the question of how do you clear the screen on a VT100 using BASIC-PLUS-2? The following works on my Alpha using DEC BASIC, and looks like it should work using BASIC-PLUS-2. 1 declare string constant CLS = ESC + "[H" + ESC + "[J" 110 print CLS Zane

24 years, 4 months

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Specifications Sought for 7-Track Tape Heads

by pete＠dunnington.u-net.com

On Apr 19, 11:51, Douglas H. Quebbeman wrote: > The end-result of this project will probably involve > reading 7-track tapes in analog mode and digitizing > the analog data stream in order to use modern computing > power to reconstruct the data. Well, if you're going to go into digital signal processing, why not just use a 9-track head, and analyse the data from adjacent tracks to recombine into 7 tracks? ;-) I'll bet it's doable. My second-year second-term (10 weeks) assigned project was to build a barcode reader, using a common slotted optosensor with an active area whose diameter was about twice the width of the bars, and a Z80 with 2K EPROM and 8K RAM. It's amazing what you can do with a little circuitry and a little calculation. 9 tracks to 7 should be easier, since I expect the top, bottom, and middle tracks will line up nicely. The second track from the 9-track head would have a mixture of (mostly) 1st and (a little) 2nd tracks of the 7-track signal; the next channel would have a roughly equal mixture of data from tracks 2 and 3; the next channel would be almost all 3; and so on. -- Pete Peter Turnbull Network Manager University of York

24 years, 4 months

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Solid State Music MB-3 EPROM card question

by fmc＠reanimators.org

"Erik S. Klein" <classiccmp(a)mail.vintage-computer.com> wrote: > code. The board has two sets of four dip switches. One is > labeled T1 to T4 and the other A12 to A15. A jumper on the > board that allows settings between 2k and 4k is set to 4k > (1702s vs 1701s?) In the absence of documentation, one trick is to examine memory looking for plausible code for your processor. So you learn how to use the front panel to examine memory (and maybe how to deposit too, as that's one way to tell whether the address you're looking at might be read-only) and maybe learn something about the processor's instruction set too. A12 to A15 likely set the board's base memory address at a 4KB boundary with A15 being the most significant bit (and A14, A13, A12 being the next three bits down). A switch set to "on" or "closed" might be 0 or 1, so pick one and write the bits out in A15 through A12 order. Then invert it (1 becomes 0, 0 becomes 1) and write that group of bits out. Now you have two ways to set the high four address switches on the front panel, which cuts the amount of address space you have to explore by 1/8. A 1702 is, what, a 1Kbit device? That's 128 bytes. So start with the low seven address switches set to 0. You can probably assume that the ROMs are each based at a 128-byte boundary. This leaves you five switches in the middle, so 32 steps for each of the ways you can set the high four bits. -Frank McConnell

24 years, 4 months

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The Unit (was: One-upsmanship (was: Secret Mac))

by ajp166＠bellatlantic.net

From: Hans Franke <Hans.Franke(a)mch20.sbs.de> >> How about calling it a Babbage? An idea! >Well, I'd rather go for Zuse. Not only because he is >German(*), but rather because there is still no basic >or derivated SI unit starting with Z, so Z would give It's sufficiently obscure and I like it. Lessee a 400milliZuse system... Yep rolls on the tongue nicely and sounds oh so technical. >If this has to be successful we have to fit it into >the SI system :) Go with it and we also need a "standard". Now combine that with TCP/IP over morse and we have something. Allison

24 years, 4 months

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OT: Writing floppies on PC; Was Re: Guys take a look

by SUPRDAVE＠aol.com

In a message dated 4/19/2002 10:48:08 AM Central Daylight Time, bpope(a)wordstock.com writes: > And thusly Doc spake: > > > > On Fri, 19 Apr 2002, John Allain wrote: > > > > > I encoded some family geneology into set of frame HTML > > > pages once. It turned out to be something line 600 small html > > > files, 300 KBytes or so. When I went to put it on a floppy, it > > > took over 30 Minutes to write! > > > > OK. This is completely off topic, but it has bugged me for years. > > You guys are more likely to know, and care, than any other forum I hang > > in. I use a Linux PC as my daily workstation, file server, DNS, MOP > > server, etc. Given hardware limitations, it's stable enough. > > > > I can start a lowlevel format on a floppy, go and surf the net, read > > my email, compile software, or play a game while (45-75 secs) that > > happens. > > Do that in Win<anyversion> on the same hardware, and I might as well > > go make coffee. Same comparison applies to printing large documents. > > WHAT is M$ doing that operating a floppy disk drive takes ALL of a > > 1.4GHz CPU and 512M of memory? I wanna know! > > > > It's a Windows things... For some reason they just can't multitask > properly while doing a floppy disk format. Maybe they are still using DOS > type format routines. > > With OS/2, you can also do a full format of a floppy and do anything else > with > no slowdown. > That was a big bragging point for us OS/2 users.

24 years, 4 months

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20mA serial cable connector

by pete＠dunnington.u-net.com

On Apr 19, 13:05, John Honniball wrote: > Tom Uban wrote: > > I'm looking for a supply of the uncommon DEC 20mA current loop male connector > > shells used to plug into DEC VT100s, Wyse 85s, and the like. > ... > > I am assuming that if I can find the > > shells, I can find a pin from either AMP or Molex which will work. > > I've kludged together cables for a PDP-11/34 by using the pins > out of those 4-pin Molex connectors that are normally used on > disk and tape drives. They're not Molex, they're AMP, and since they're the pins for that series of connector they'll work fine. Both the connectors used for DEC PSUs and 20mA loop, and the connectors used for disk drive power, are (or "were" in the case of the wide flat ones :-)) are from the AMP Commercial Mate-N-Lok series. So are the 3-pin DEC power bus cables. -- Pete Peter Turnbull Network Manager University of York

24 years, 4 months

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AS/400s in the Champaign area

by csmith＠amdocs.com

> -----Original Message----- > From: Gene Buckle [mailto:geneb@deltasoft.com] > On Fri, 19 Apr 2002, Doc wrote: > > If it's "coke machine sized" and surplus, it's CISC. > Thanks Doc! I should also mention that I believe them to be relatively new. While there is no proof of this, they're supposed to come from a company that went out of business perhaps two years ago, and wasn't _in_ business for that long, AFAIK. Chris Christopher Smith, Perl Developer Amdocs - Champaign, IL /usr/bin/perl -e ' print((~"\x95\xc4\xe3"^"Just Another Perl Hacker.")."\x08!\n"); '

24 years, 4 months

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The Unit (was: One-upsmanship (was: Secret Mac))

by dquebbeman＠acm.org

> Hans Franke wrote: > > > Well, for stand alone machines i'd say yes. Alas you may > > include necersary perhipherals. Like operators desk and > > so on. But only necersary - a Zuse doesn't work without > > the operator desk, while a average unix box quite well > > boots without console terminal. > > > BTW: who cares about PC boxes ? > > My PC jumps up and bites you in the LEG. Down BOY Down DOWN! Clearly, your PC hasn't been smacked with an Etherkiller lately... Curb that dog, son! -dq

24 years, 4 months

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Secret Mac

by dan＠ekoan.com

Wow, a unique machine that Sellam *doesn't* have! http://www.wired.com/news/print/0,1294,51670,00.html

24 years, 4 months

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Secret Mac

by carlos_murillo＠epm.net.co

At 11:14 PM 4/18/02 -0500, you wrote: >Here in Houston, one place drills holes in them with a 1/2" drill. Another >place dumps box loads of them into an industrial chipping machine. I can >verify these...I've seen it, and it isn't a pretty sight :/ >-Toth I wonder if that sort of treatment might get some beryllium oxide dust airborne... carlos. -------------------------------------------------------------- Carlos E. Murillo-Sanchez carlos_murillo(a)nospammers.ieee.org

24 years, 4 months

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Solid State Music MB-3 EPROM card question

by classiccmp＠mail.vintage-computer.com

I recently received an Altair 8800 with an Altair disk drive (Pertec FD514 innards). In said machine is a Solid State Music 2/4k EPROM board with 2 proms: DBL and MBL. My understanding is that the DBL prom is the boot loader for paper tape and cassette and the MBL is the boot loader for the disk. Assuming the PROMS (1702s) still hold data, I need to figure out the address of the code. The board has two sets of four dip switches. One is labeled T1 to T4 and the other A12 to A15. A jumper on the board that allows settings between 2k and 4k is set to 4k (1702s vs 1701s?) Does anyone have a manual or a really good memory of how these relate to the address of the on-board PROMS? I?m also interested in finding out how the sockets are addressed. The two proms are in the lower right sockets (the board has 2 rows of 9) and I?d have thought from the markings that the upper left sockets were the first two to be addressed. I?m not yet that familiar with S-100/Altair type systems, but I assume if I know this address I can execute the code to boot the machine (assuming the drive still works and the disks aren?t bad. . . ) Thanks in advance for any help you can provide. Erik

24 years, 4 months

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AS/400s in the Champaign area

by csmith＠amdocs.com

> -----Original Message----- > From: Russ Blakeman [mailto:rhb57@vol.com] > Is this the black or beige series of AS/400? There should be > 170, 250, 730, 740, etc. I don't know a hell of a lot about > the older beige > units but I think they are for OS/390 instead of OS/400 anyway. Beige. Are you saying that you can run OS/390 on an AS/400? That sounds odd to me. Chris Christopher Smith, Perl Developer Amdocs - Champaign, IL /usr/bin/perl -e ' print((~"\x95\xc4\xe3"^"Just Another Perl Hacker.")."\x08!\n"); '

24 years, 4 months

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OT: boatanchor mailing lists and resources?

by tothwolf＠concentric.net

I know there are a few boatanchor fans here on the list, so I figured I'd check here before spending yet another hour arguing with Google... Basically, where are the good boatanchor related mailing lists and resources at? I'm looking for resources on restoration and building home brew tube based gear. I have a National NC-2-40-CS receiver that I was given back around 1995 or so, which needs its power transformer rebuilt/replaced, in addition to lots of other minor repairs. Unfortunately, the former/original owner of that receiver passed away before he could find the manuals for it that he had filed away. A couple of weeks ago, I was given an unfinished home brew 2 Meter Receiver that is about 50-60% assembled. It was built by a friend of mine who passed away about 2 years ago. Today, while cleaning out more old parts and gear from his former shop, I found the faded plans for it and a matching transmitter. Both appear to have been hand copied from the October 1957 issue of QST. I don't currently know when I'll have time to work on these projects, but I'd like to have the resources and information I'll need available when I find some free time. -Toth

24 years, 4 months

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Guys take a look at this qbus cpu board on Ebay :-)

by mcguire＠neurotica.com

On April 19, Zane H. Healy wrote: > There is no shortage of real PDP-11's around here, the biggest problem I Huh? Where are you? I think it's time for a road trip. -Dave -- Dave McGuire "Mmmm. Big." St. Petersburg, FL -Den

24 years, 4 months

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ASR33 print head

by dwightk.elvey＠amd.com

For those that want on line manuals, check: http://www.pdp8.net/index.shtml Near the end of the page, under other you'll find ASR 33 Teletype. Besides these he has a great site for PDP-8's I was thinking, it might be a good idea to make a mold of the print head I have. One could then make one in the future to replace it. I'm not sure, not having it right here, but I think the head is some kind of metal over plasic. It could be nickel or something that doesn't rust. It could also be low temperature type setters metal of some type. Dwight >From: "Russ Blakeman" <rhb57(a)vol.com> > >Here's something I found in the ClassicCmp archives, noting that there is a >person with a 3 volume set of manuals for the ASR33... >---------------------- >Re: Printers >From: Marvin (marvin(a)rain.org)

24 years, 4 months

1
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deskpro 286

by ciniar＠yahoo.com.ar

Hi I am from Argentina, and i have a complete deskpro 286 in perfect conditiions. I wonder where i can find the setup software for the bios setup. I looking in compq and they dont hav'nt any old software thanks!. ===== Augusto Marconcini colaborador de www.comsto.org Conectate a Internet GRATIS con Yahoo! Conexi?n: http://conexion.yahoo.com.ar

24 years, 4 months

2
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Secret Mac

by mythtech＠mac.com

> OK. I have a much better, more secure way to obliterate data from >IDE/SCSI drives. > Just > >1) Remove partitions >2) Donate drives anonymously to local Linux/*BSD User Group Install Windows, use Outlook, open Email. -chris <http://www.mythtech.net>

24 years, 4 months

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Secret Mac

by mythtech＠mac.com

>> Hard Drives are being reformatted with one of those secure wiping >> programs and then opened and smashed. > >Here in Houston, one place drills holes in them with a 1/2" drill. Another >place dumps box loads of them into an industrial chipping machine. I can >verify these...I've seen it, and it isn't a pretty sight :/ The thing I and the guy who told me about it were laughing at is how useless their "destruction" methods really were. They are using an off the shelf secure delete program (Norton?) and then opening the top of the HD and hitting it with a mallet to damage the platters. So what does this mean... well, I am sure one of those data recovery companies could still extract the info from the drive if someone was willing to pay the fee (which I would assume a rival company that really wanted the info, and was willing to bribe the trash hauler would be able to afford). The computers are (were? they may be done now) under guard and only accessable after the hauler has collected the contents of the dumpster and driven off property... I do know this first hand... I tried to make a midnight run to collect some of the PC remains since it was supposed to ONLY be the mobo and HD being trashed, that leaves lots of good parts for the picking... but I was stopped at the manned gate, where I could see the dumpster and a poor guard sitting by it reading a book... in the cold of winter... so he wasn't there for kicks... and no, the guard at the gate wouldn't look the other way for $100 which was all I could afford to offer (didn't try the garbage truck driver... too afraid it is a Soprano Special company). -chris <http://www.mythtech.net>

24 years, 4 months

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Specifications Sought for 7-Track Tape Heads

by dquebbeman＠acm.org

The subject says the first part... I'm seeking a source for the specifications for 7-track tape heads. I'm thinking what I really need is just the mechanical/ physical specifications... that leads me to the second part.. Has anyone here have any experience with disassembling a tape head and re-assembling it? I have in mind delaminating a 9-track head stack and rebuilding it as a 7-track. I can already see that a microscope with a precision mechanical stage will be a must-have for this work. The end-result of this project will probably involve reading 7-track tapes in analog mode and digitizing the analog data stream in order to use modern computing power to reconstruct the data. Yes, this is bascially what Tim Shoppa does now, but I'm not going into business, this would be a labor of love and once operational, would be used only to assist other hobbyists/preservationists in their conservation efforts. And of course, this is the last-ditch effort, as I continue to scan my purview for a working head or a working 7-track drive. Comments appreciated too, but especially pointers to the requested info if online, and maybe an offer of photocopies of not... Tia, -dq

24 years, 4 months

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AS/400s in the Champaign area

by csmith＠amdocs.com

> -----Original Message----- > From: Gene Buckle [mailto:geneb@deltasoft.com] > Chris, if you get the chance can you find out if they're CISC or RISC > machines? Sure -- here's what I know about them (it? We'll get to that) so far... The first cabinet is marked "Application Server/400 9406" If I'm not mistaken, that makes it a RISC model. It contains two EMC SCSI arrays, a tape library of some sort, made by Phillips, a <whatever that box with the power switch on it is...>, a QIC-1000, or similar tape drive, and at least one card cage which is mostly full. There is a second rack, but I'm not convinced that it's a separate system. It only says "Application Server 400" on the tag -- no model number, no "system cabinet" label in the back like the other one has. This second rack has (I think) some cards in the cage, and the unit in the middle of the rack with the power switch on it, but nothing else. There are a few other things floating around with these. Twinax cable, power cords, an (I wrote IBM 7206-002, but I can't find that model, and I see that 7206 is a 4mm drive, which this is not... so I think...) 7208-002 external tape drive. So does anyone know how to tell whether these are one system or two? They're actually a bit smaller than I had been told. Each rack is about the size of a relatively small refrigerator. I'm right around 6' tall, and these are shorter than I am. On another note, my fiancee has expressed some interest in it. I'll try to find out over the weekend whether she wants it or not. Personally I don't like AS/400s enough to have one this large ;) The last thing is that the guy who has it will probably want some money for it. As of now, I have no idea how much, nor does he, AFAIK. Anyway, John, if you're still interested, let me know, and I'll see about putting you in touch with the current owner -- assuming that the fiancee doesn't decide she really needs a very large AS/400. Chris Christopher Smith, Perl Developer Amdocs - Champaign, IL /usr/bin/perl -e ' print((~"\x95\xc4\xe3"^"Just Another Perl Hacker.")."\x08!\n"); '

24 years, 4 months

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Speaking of Zuse

by Hans.Franke＠mch20.sbs.de

Did I already mention that I will get a real (*1) Zuse machine next month ? The machine is a spare unit from the Leopard test facility and was used to collect data from a bunch of analog computers which where usedto measure various components of the finished tanks. ;) Gruss H. (*1) Well, it is a Siemens 404/3, but that's just a rebadged Zuse - Siemens bought Zuses company in 1967-69 -- VCF Europa 3.0 am 27./28. April 2002 in Muenchen http://www.vcfe.org/

24 years, 4 months

2
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One-upsmanship

by mranalog＠attbi.com

Ethan Dicks wrote: > cubic-foot-BTU/Hr-lb-amps per KByte-MIPS. > ........ > What's _your_ "best" machine? I like this! Since all analog computers have a KByte*MIPS equal to zero, I have few computers with an infinite zuse. --Doug ========================================= Doug Coward @ home in Poulsbo, WA Analog Computer Online Museum and History Center http://dcoward.best.vwh.net/analog Analogrechner, calculateur analogique, calcolatore analogico, analoogrekenaar, komputer analogowy, analog bilgisayar, kampiutere ghiyasi, analoge computer. =========================================

24 years, 4 months

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apple 1

by bfranchuk＠jetnet.ab.ca

Surfing the web for other stuff I came across this computer ad. http://www.applefritter.com/apple1/advert/advert.jpg The begining of the end for good old lights and switches. :) -- Ben Franchuk - Dawn * 12/24 bit cpu * www.jetnet.ab.ca/users/bfranchuk/index.html

24 years, 4 months

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The Unit (was: One-upsmanship (was: Secret Mac))

by dquebbeman＠acm.org

> On Fri, 19 Apr 2002, Hans Franke wrote: > > > > > German(*), but rather because there is still no basic > > > > or derivated SI unit starting with Z, so Z would give > > > > a prety good symbol. There is already the Bq (Bequerel), > > > > so Babbage wouldn't be so nicht - the same is true for > > > > Calcula (C -> Celsius) and Ambit (A -> Ampere). > > > > > Since when has 'Celsius' been an SI unit? And since when has the > > > abreviation for it been 'C'? C _is_ used for an SI unit -- the Coulomh. > > > > It is a derivated unit, as Coulomb, but you'r right, the > > name is Degree Celsius (C), and youre right, C is Coulomb. > > Coulombs aren't derived. Well, the 'erg' is derived... it's also sick... That is, it's a dyin' centimeter... And in what it pleases me to think of as my mind, that's a joule of a pun... ;)

24 years, 4 months

1
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fix for 33 teletype

by dwightk.elvey＠amd.com

Hi I was just trying to think of what I could use to replace the hammer of a model 33. Mine had turned to crumbs. I think one of the stick on rubber feet for projects boxes should work. Dwight

24 years, 4 months

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Guys take a look at this qbus cpu board on Ebay :-)

by fernande＠internet1.net

This isn't mine, but I wish it was :-) http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=2017593099 Chad Fernandez Michigan, USA

24 years, 4 months

7
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Secret Mac

by healyzh＠aracnet.com

> I saw that, and I have my doubts about its "uniqueness." Tempest versions of I'm pretty sure it's not unique, and wouldn't be surprised if Sellam has one. > originals. (GRiD did this for years.) And if this really was such a top > secret system, why did it end up at a salvage dealer? The disk drive used removable disk cartridges, as long as you didn't include the cartridge (which would have to be destroyed) the system can be used for unclassified work, or disposed of. Zane

24 years, 4 months

4
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AIM-65 displays

by RCini＠congressfinancial.com

That is very cool. Thanks a lot. ========================== Richard A. Cini, Jr. Congress Financial Corporation 1133 Avenue of the Americas 30th Floor New York, NY 10036 (212) 545-4402 (212) 840-6259 (facsimile) -----Original Message----- From: Don Maslin [mailto:donm@cts.com] Sent: Thursday, April 18, 2002 5:28 PM To: 'classiccmp(a)classiccmp.org' Subject: RE: AIM-65 displays On Thu, 18 Apr 2002, Cini, Richard wrote: > Dick: > > No, I don't have a machine-readable version of the listing. I > scanned the pages directly to PDF (using Acrobar Writer) but I never got > around to taking those scans and OCRing them to a text file (it was on the > RSN list). > > I did the PC BIOSes and the VIC Kernal ROM, The KIMs were done by > others. > > Rich > -----Original Message----- > From: Richard Erlacher [mailto:edick@idcomm.com] > Sent: Thursday, April 18, 2002 1:04 PM > To: classiccmp(a)classiccmp.org > Subject: Re: AIM-65 displays > > > You wouldn't happen to have a machine-readable (non-PDF) just text file of > the > monitor listing, whould you? > > Dick Adobe has been kind enough to solve this little problem for us. See following. - don The e-mail based PDF accessibility tools have been updated. You can now submit multiple URLs in a single e-mail message as well as submit PDF files to Adobe as MIME attachments. See below for more details. There are three e-mail options you can use to convert Adobe PDF documents to a format that is more accessible to screen reading software. The e-mail address you use depends on the conversion format you want, plain (ASCII) text or HTML, and whether the PDF is on the Internet or local media. Option 1 If the Adobe? PDF is on the Internet, you can mail the URL (Web address) of the PDF in the body of an e-mail message to pdf2txt(a)adobe.com (for plain text) or to pdf2html(a)adobe.com (for HTML). The convertor will mail back the translation of the PDF file. You can submit multiple URLs in a single e-mail.Tip: Some URLs are very long and cumbersome to type. Cutting and pasting the URL into the mail message will save you some keystrokes. Option 2 If the Adobe PDF is on local media, such as a hard drive, CD-ROM, or internal server, it can be submitted as a MIME attachment to an e-mail message. All converted Adobe PDF documents will be sent back to the sender as MIME attachments. For plain text, mail the attached PDF to pdf2txt(a)adobe.com. For HTML, mail the attached PDF to pdf2html(a)adobe.com. Option 3 A service hosted by Trace Research Center also allows you to convert Adobe PDF documents. You can either mail the URL of the Adobe PDF or attach the Adobe PDF document itself to your e-mail message and send it to pdf2txt(a)sun.trace.wisc.edu (for plain text) or to pdf2html(a)sun.trace.wisc.edu (for HTML). The convertor will mail back the translation of the PDF file.

24 years, 4 months

1
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More AIM Roms

by RCini＠congressfinancial.com

Hello, all: Last night I refreshed my Web site a bit, moving the Altair article and IBM PC BIOS listing to the main pages. I also posted two more AIM ROM sets, courtesy of Bill Dawson -- Forth and PL/65. Rich ========================== Richard A. Cini, Jr. Congress Financial Corporation 1133 Avenue of the Americas 30th Floor New York, NY 10036 (212) 545-4402 (212) 840-6259 (facsimile)

24 years, 4 months

1
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The Unit...

by ajp166＠bellatlantic.net

On further thought I added to the idea. From: blstuart(a)bellsouth.net <blstuart(a)bellsouth.net> >In message <Pine.LNX.4.33.0204180631001.27156-100000(a)siconic.com>, Sellam Ismai >l writes: >>How about calling it a Babbage? > >That was my thought as well, with possible runners up of >the Zuse, the Aiken, the Eckert or the Mauchley. > >Brian L. Stuart Why not use them all! A box is Cubic_volume=HeightxWidthxDepth, so why not computers measured in Zuse? Zuse = VonNeuman x Eckart x Aiken x Mauchley With the possible corrosponding dimensions in real terms of memory, speed, storage, wordsize or some such. Allison

24 years, 4 months

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The Unit (was: One-upsmanship (was: Secret Mac))

by uban＠ubanproductions.com

>Zuse gets my vote. Words like Gigazuse (GZ) sound really cool. Zuse works for me too... --tom

24 years, 4 months

7
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