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

For HP fans: HP 85 + HP 7970 + HP 2631 demo

by curiousmarc3＠gmail.com

In case you had not seen it already. I finally managed to control my big HP 7970E 9-track tape and my HP 2631G dot matrix from the little HP 85 that could. Hey, they all talk the same HP-IB after all (well, not really but close enough). Here is the resulting demo of this odd 1970's trio: https://youtu.be/YS9dGYUbNd0 Marc

10 years, 4 months

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Programming

by jnc＠mercury.lcs.mit.edu

> From: Ian S. King > so much for running that on my PDP-11/20 If you have an actual 11/20, you should be ecstatic! ;-) Noel

10 years, 4 months

8
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11/73 into 11/03 chassis?

by jnc＠mercury.lcs.mit.edu

> From: Jacob Ritorto > Can I tear apart my little BA23 .. and put the Micro/PDP-11 backplane > .. into the spot that my 11/03 backplane currently occupies and run it > via the (working) stock 11/03 power supply? > ... > Specifically, would I have to butcher power and clock lines to do this, > or is it all plug compatible? I'm not absolutely sure exactly what you have that's holding the '11/03 backplane'; if it's a standard BA11-M enclosure, the answer, sadly, is 'no'. The BA-23 uses the H9278-A backplane and H7864 power supply; the BA11-M uses the H9270-A and H780 backplane. The power connections between the first two are completely different from the latter pair; the first uses a long, single-width Molex-type connector, the latter uses bare wire ends to a terminal block on the backplane. Also, the H9270-A is a four-slot backplane, and the H9278-A (an eight-slot) almost certainly will not physically fit into the space for the former. If your '11/03 backplane' is a different kind of backplane, in some other kind of box (e.g. BA11-N or BA11-S), the answer, sadly, is still 'no', because they both also use terminal blocks for power. (Although if you have a BA11-S, you'd already be set, those are Q22 native.) Really, it's not that hard to upgrade an H9270-A (or the H9273-A in a BA11-N) to Q22 (I have done several of the latter); the transplant you speak of (were it possible) is on the same order of magnitude of work. Noel PS: In dragging my BA23 out to look at it, it dawned on me that I will probably never, ever use it - I now have several BA11-N/S boxes, and prefer them. (I don't need to run the later disks that need the BA23.) So if someone is interested in the either the BA23, or the spare H7864 I have for it, please let me know. I'll let either go for my original cost plus shipping.

10 years, 4 months

4
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Good memory board for Heath H-11?

by rich.cini＠verizon.net

All ? I picked-up a Heath H-11 machine the other day and it has a single 4kw memory board. From my prior experiences with DEC (an 11/34a many years ago; now at the RI Computer Museum), I know my way around the field guide?but I?m having trouble trying to identify the correct module number suitable for the LSI-11 CPU. Even though it?s a Heath machine, I assume it?s module compatible with DEC. Any help would be appreciated. Thanks! Rich -- Rich Cini Collector of Classic Computers Build Master and lead engineer, Altair32 Emulator http://www.classiccmp.org/cini http://www.classiccmp.org/altair32

10 years, 4 months

2
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11/73 into 11/03 chassis?

by COURYHOUSE＠aol.com

I have an 11/73 card in one of my video editing systems... does this mean I can give my H-11 more balls? In a message dated 2/9/2016 11:36:30 A.M. US Mountain Standard Time, jacob.ritorto at gmail.com writes: On Tue, Feb 9, 2016 at 11:27 AM, Noel Chiappa <jnc at mercury.lcs.mit.edu> wrote: > > > I'm not absolutely sure exactly what you have that's holding the '11/03 > backplane'; if it's a standard BA11-M enclosure, the answer, sadly, is > 'no'. > [...] > If your '11/03 backplane' is a different kind of backplane, in some other > kind > of box (e.g. BA11-N or BA11-S), the answer, sadly, is still 'no', because > they > both also use terminal blocks for power. (Although if you have a BA11-S, > you'd > already be set, those are Q22 native.) > > OK, now that I know what I'm looking for, my target options here are: Chassis: BA11-N and "OBA11-R" (an expansion box) Backplanes currently in these chassis are: H9273 and H9273-A Power supplies are all H786. > Really, it's not that hard to upgrade an H9270-A (or the H9273-A in a > BA11-N) > to Q22 (I have done several of the latter); the transplant you speak of > (were > it possible) is on the same order of magnitude of work. > > Noel > So, since grafting in the Micro backplane would involve butcher work, I'm now wholeheartedly convinced that I should be moving to your setup with the BA11-N/S boxes, Noel. And I'm sold on the Q-22 backplane conversion (despite failing the first time I tried it years ago). Going to study what prints I have, review previous advice and go for it. Thank you for all the tips and hand-holding! --jake

10 years, 4 months

1
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6502 CPUs

by allanh-cctalk3＠kallisti.com

On Mon, 08 Feb 2016 at 18:46:13 +0000, Adrian Graham wrote: > Having had another bit of CBM kit with a failed CPU I'm wondering where you > lovely US folk get your spares from since ebay seems a bit ridiculous for > replacements at ukp8 a pop being the lowest price. They're surely not THAT > valuable? The first place I always check for things like that is Anchor Electronics (anchor-electronics.com). I see that they don't list the 6502, but they do have the 6502B for $4.95. I have no idea whether they ship outside the US or not. The second place I check is Jameco, and someone else already posted that they have them. allan -- Allan N. Hessenflow allanh at kallisti.com

10 years, 4 months

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The PDP11/04 has landed..

by jnc＠mercury.lcs.mit.edu

> From: Henk Gooijen > you need some some components to generate the AC LO and DC LO signals. > The 11/04 needs them. You could also do what I did on an off-brand LSI-11 chassis I had, whose power supply was working (producing good +5V/+12V), but whose power control board (to generate AC/DC OK signals) wasn't working - and I didn't have a circuit diagram for it. So I was lazy, and cheated: I disconnected the control board connection to the backplane, and the pull-up termination resistors brought the AC/DC lines up to their 'OK' state! :-) I don't _recommend_ this, but it does work! If you do this, probably best to power on the machine with the HALT switch asserted, so it doesn't try to run while the power is still coming on! :-) Noel

10 years, 4 months

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The PDP11/04 has landed..

by jdr_use＠bluewin.ch

Yesterday I picked up the PDP11/04 that Jay mentioned a few days ago. Less than 15 miles from home ! The machine spend its early days as a processor in chemical analysis apparatus, and was subsequently bought by the employee using it. Before he could make use of it better, more powerful, easier to use machines came along and the -11 spend the next 30 years in a garage. The -04 is an entry level machine, and the cards inside match this : M7263 KD11 CPU 2 x M7264 16K DRAM cards M7856 DL11 SLU/RTC M7846 RX01 controller 2 x M7814 DZ11-F and of course the M9301, M9302 and M9202. Alas it has just the simple 2-switch frontpanel. The machine also had the battery backup option, and the lead/acid batteries will celebrate their 40th birthday next year ! Better not try to charge them.... Overall the machine is in very good condition, both CPU and RX01, and it is packed in a very nice half-height rack with the red PDP11 bezel at the top. Pictures next week when the machine is cleaned and reassembled, restoration is to start next winter, after a house move which will nearly double working area for the hobby. Many thanks to Roland for preserving the machine, and to Jay for acting as an interface ! Jos

10 years, 4 months

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2.9.1 BSD on 11/34 + sc21-bm + fujitsu m2333k

by jacob.ritorto＠gmail.com

Exciting stuff for a Friday night, right? Here's a visual aid in case you're needing further inspiration: https://www.instagram.com/p/_K-zHhHvLn78Qu5ijWqMf-HBem1LKMLaEdI1c0/ The M2333K is the smaller one on the left with the green and yellow lights on. I'm booting from rl0, which contains the tuhs 2.9.1 rl02 image I wrote with vtserver earlier. I want to use my nice, roomy smd disk so I can pull in all the sources and recompile stuff and I've managed to get this *so* close to working but I'm getting xp0a: hard error bn xxxx cs2=1100 <MXF, IR> er1=0 on every single block when I try to mkfs /dev/xp0a 4800 This disk was working fine years ago via MSCP attached to the 11/73 (before I lost the Micro/11 power supply). Anyway, I referred to http://bitsavers.trailing-edge.com/pdf/emulex/SC2151001-CC_SC21tech_Jan87.p… to set the emulation on the Emulex card for two rm03s and they're showing up in xxdp's zrmlb1 formatter, though they won't format there, screensful of errors. I think I set the m2333k to 32 sectors, per this manual: http://manx.classiccmp.org/collections/antonio/chrisq/B03P-4760-0101A_-_M23… Because XXDP is reputed to be really strict, I figured that was normal and then tried the Emulex on-board formatting procedure against both xp0 and xp4 and they formatted perfectly without error. Guess the Emulex on-board stuff doesn't bother verifying much? So I think that maybe I've misunderstood the hard sectoring / sector sizing thing. Does anyone remember the gist of it and would you be able to describe? Do you see any other mistakes? thx jake

10 years, 4 months

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6502 CPUs

by witchy＠binarydinosaurs.co.uk

2nd go, apologies if another version of this arrives but I sent it from a non-list address so it might not get through with the emergency moderation going on. Hi folks, Having had another bit of CBM kit with a failed CPU I'm wondering where you lovely US folk get your spares from since ebay seems a bit ridiculous for replacements at ukp8 a pop being the lowest price. They're surely not THAT valuable? I know Mouser have got the 're-released' WDC 65C02 which I may end up going for since for 10 they're as low as ukp4.37, but don't us collectors have bundles of spares? Funny when I think of the number of BBC Micros that have been tossed over the years.... -- Adrian/Witchy Binary Dinosaurs creator/curator Www.binarydinosaurs.co.uk - the UK's biggest private home computer collection?

10 years, 4 months

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AIX 4.1-capable box

by BHuntsman＠mail2.cu-portland.edu

Hi there! Does anyone on here do much with RS/6000 boxes? I'm looking for a 7009-C10, 7011-250, or (mostly) PCI-based 7012 system capable of running AIX 4.1. By any chance, anyone have such a system that they'd be willing to sell? Thanks much!! -Ben

10 years, 4 months

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PRM-85 board case?

by jwest＠classiccmp.org

Rumor has it that one or more people have designed and 3d-printed cases for their HP-85 PRM-85 boards. Anyone have any of those cases available? I'd like to get my PRM-85 a proper case :) Best, J

10 years, 4 months

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Free TK50 Tapes for Postage and Handling

by leec2124＠gmail.com

Five untested TK50 tapes available for postage and from 94025. Two have no labels, the remainder have the following: VMS 5.1-1 Maintenance Update OD/OT Drivers for VMS 4.x 20-MAR-89 CZTK1D0 MICRO-11 CUST TK50 Please reply off-list if you'd like. -- Lee Courtney

10 years, 4 months

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Solid state recommendations

by bryan＠bceassociates.com

Hi all I have the following gear in my stable: - Sun Blade 100 - SGI O2 - VAXstation 3100 - AlphaStation 500 - HP C3700 I would like to start eliminating spinning SCSI drives from these boxes for noise, heat and capacity reasons. Could you kind folks recommend a solution? I've seen SCSI to CF converters advertised but I didn't know if there was one kind over another that people have been successful with or if there is a totally different approach I should be considering. Thanks, Bryan

10 years, 4 months

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MEM11 update

by ggs＠shiresoft.com

Just wanted to let folks know where I am with respect to the MEM11 project. I had decided to take a break from writing J1 code and updating the simulator to actually work on the hardware. To make things easy for myself, I decided to use my FPGA eval board and build a daughter board with CPLDs and other parts (FRAMs, etc) so that I could have another vehicle for validating the J1 code. This should also be a fairly simple board to build and I could focus on functionality (and test points) rather than trying to make it fit into an SPC form factor. I wrote a lot of the Verilog code for the CPLDs and quickly found out that my partitioning wouldn?t fit in any reasonably sized CPLDs. Even with some additional re-partitioning, it was touchy as to if it would fit (changing a couple of lines of Verilog code caused the design to no longer fit). I went back and thought about the problem and decided that the easiest thing to do would be to create a non-SPC formfactor board that was SW & HW functionally correct. So, I?ve been working on writing all of the code to fit in an FPGA. One advantage is that I could re-use a lot of the code that I wrote for the CPLDs. Last night I managed to get a reasonably clean synthesis of the design. The only thing missing is the UNIBUS code (which I hadn?t written yet). It fits easily into the FPGA that I?ve chosen (a Xilinx Spartan 3-E 500). By going this route, I?ve discovered some incorrect assumptions that I?ve made in terms of how the HW will appear to the J1 code. So I have to update the simulator to match this and the relevant J1 code. So, things are moving forward. I also wanted to get folk's opinion on the need to actually produce an SBC form factor board. In other words (and sort of in line with how peripherals were done on the original 11/20) is it OK to have the MEM11 be outside of the 11/20 chassis and connect via BC11A (my replica) cables? I wanted to put that out, because it may require a fair amount of work to make everything fit into an SPC form factor. That?s assuming of course that the power requirements for the MEM11 can be fulfilled by a single SPC slot. One of the things that I can do with the ?prototype? is actually measure the incoming power. I?m hoping that it will but in the worst case, it may require splitting the MEM11 functionality across multiple boards. TTFN - Guy

10 years, 4 months

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MEM11 update

by jnc＠mercury.lcs.mit.edu

> From: Guy Sotomayor > I also wanted to get folk's opinion on the need to actually produce an > S[P]C form factor board. ... is it OK to have the MEM11 be outside of > the 11/20 chassis and connect via BC11A (my replica) cables? Well, that's going to up the cost; for some people, that might be an issue. Also, I dunno if there are people out there with table-top 11/15's-20's (they did exist BITD, I worked with a table-top one), but for them, an additional box might be a hassle too. > That's assuming of course that the power requirements for the MEM11 > can be fulfilled by a single SPC slot. ... in the worst case, it may > require splitting the MEM11 functionality across multiple boards. I guess I don't see the harm in making it two SPC (quad) boards? A flat cable or two to connect across (I dunno how extensive the interconnect requirements between the halves would be, and I have forgotten what the inter-slot interconnect capabilities of an SPC backplane are - ISTR that it has some bussing on the F section pins) would be easy and cheap. Noel

10 years, 4 months

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Programming

by c.murray.mccullough＠gmail.com

There is the software side to classic computing: Back in the early days we wrote/coded in BASIC-TinyBASIC running in 2K(talk about writing efficient code!); EASY and SmallFORTRAN. What apps/programs are written in today I don?t know. They certainly can?t run in 2 or 4 K but is the outcome the same ? make a computer or computer-like machine do what we want it to. On the lighter side: ?Computers can never completely replace humans. They may become capable of artificial intelligence(much in the news today), but they will never master real stupidity.? Happy computing all. Murray :)

10 years, 4 months

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386 upgrade board

by starbase89＠gmail.com

Greetings! I have a Televideo luggable that I have been playing with. Its a 10MHz 286 with a meg of RAM, 2 360k drives and four expansion slots. I've been trying to figure out how capable I can make this machine for the hell of it. Did anyone make an upgrade kit to go from a 286 to a 386? It would be interesting to get this thing going with that, a Hard Card and an ethernet card, somewhat capable of doing some modern tasks. Thanks! Joe <https://www.avast.com/sig-email> This email has been sent from a virus-free computer protected by Avast. www.avast.com <https://www.avast.com/sig-email> <#DDB4FAA8-2DD7-40BB-A1B8-4E2AA1F9FDF2>

10 years, 4 months

3
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NiCd battery replacement in vintage computers

by nf6x＠nf6x.net

Today I discovered that I hadn't replaced the NiCd battery in time in my Amiga 3000. Pictures: https://twitter.com/nf6x/status/696042894939979776 https://twitter.com/nf6x/status/696050264306921472 https://twitter.com/nf6x/status/696065578977472512 It's a fairly typical 3.6V 60mAH 3-cell NiCd pack, 16mm diameter x 18mm long, polarized with 2 pins on the positive end and 1 pin on the negative end. In the past I have usually replaced these sorts of batteries with new ones of the same type. This time, I'm thinking of at least installing a remote holder. Not only to prevent further PCB damage in the future, but also to make the battery easier to replace. Lots of screws need to come out to extract an A3000 motherboard: https://twitter.com/nf6x/status/696047816938946560 While I begin to figure out how I'd like to perform this repair, I'm curious about what others have decided to do in similar circumstances. Many options come to mind: * Solder in the same kind of NiCd pack to keep things original. * Solder in a supercap instead. * Reconfigure the circuit to use a non-rechargeable lithium coin cell in a holder instead. I don't think I've seen one of those leak before. * Yet some other remote battery option. -- Mark J. Blair, NF6X <nf6x at nf6x.net> http://www.nf6x.net/

10 years, 4 months

10
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6502 CPUs

by witchy＠binarydinosaurs.co.uk

Hi folks, Having had another bit of CBM kit with a failed CPU I'm wondering where you lovely US folk get your spares from since ebay seems a bit ridiculous for replacements at ukp8 a pop being the lowest price. They're surely not THAT valuable? I know Mouser have got the 're-released' WDC 65C02 which I may end up going for since for 10 they're as low as ukp4.37, but don't us collectors have bundles of spares? Funny when I think of the number of BBC Micros that have been tossed over the years.... -- Adrian/Witchy Binary Dinosaurs creator/curator Www.binarydinosaurs.co.uk - the UK's biggest private home computer collection?

10 years, 4 months

1
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Master index of ICL / 3R PERQ software?

by nw＠retrocomputingtasmania.com

Has anyone made a list of all the known software for the PERQ? I'm on the hunt for a rumoured port of VAX ML (written in Pascal) to the PERQ at Edinburgh. thanks.

10 years, 4 months

2
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Tired of EVERYTHING with a gear being called STEAMPUNK? Yikes I am...

by COURYHOUSE＠aol.com

Tired of EVERYTHING with a gear being called STEAMPUNK? Yikes I am... This fun and creative video pretty much sums things up! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TFCuE5rHbPA Enjoy - Ed#

10 years, 4 months

3
2
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Help with getting an original Altai running: 8080A clock circuitry and MITS88 2-SIO board

by robo58＠optonline.net

Hi Folks, I'm looking for some insights in getting an original Altair running again. My buddy asked for my help getting his Altair running again. He went through and replaced all the electrolytic caps, cleaned up everything and then tried to get the MITS 88 2-SIO board to run a simple echo program. It wouldn't work and now I have the Altair, I've been looking it over for about a week and I've noticed the following. 1). The 2Mhz base oscillator circuit will not reliably start up when it's hot. It's perfect when cool. 2). The original MITS 2-phase clock circuit was modified. The 74123 was replaced with a 74221 along with RC changes. 3). The MITS 2-SIO card has two Motorola 6850 ACIA's that don't seem to do what their data sheets say they should be doing. Some questions for you. (I've searched for insights on these topics and information is scarce). a). Was the Altair known for hot start issue(s) ? If so are their tried and true fixes? b). Going to a 74221 appears to be an excellent move. The RC changes were prompted by that move. There is no longer an RC delay circuit from phase 0 to phase 1, which appears to make sense. I don't see one-shots as a wise clocking design choice but my buddy wants to stay with it. Are their tried and true fixes here? c). I hand assembled some code to exercise the 6850. I know it has a software reset and then you set attributes. I tried my buddies echo program. It looks for a received character and then echo's it. I'm using a laptop and PuTTy along with an RS-232 breakout box. I can see characters going in but nothing coming out. The 6850 appears to drive the bus for a finite amount of time and then turn off its drivers. I don't have any experience with the part and I don't know if that's the way it's supposed to work or that the Altair has a bus timing issue. Any thoughts on what I'm seeing and suggestions/fixes ? Thanks Robo

10 years, 4 months

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Tired of EVERYTHING with a gear being called STEAMPUNK? Yikes I am...

by COURYHOUSE＠aol.com

I am very envious of the animators skills on those singing people in the still portraits.. Heh is there any easy way to do this? Ed# In a message dated 2/7/2016 1:13:03 P.M. US Mountain Standard Time, pete at dunnington.plus.com writes: On 07/02/2016 17:50, COURYHOUSE at aol.com wrote: > > Tired of EVERYTHING with a gear being called STEAMPUNK? Yikes I am... > This fun and creative video pretty much sums things up! > https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TFCuE5rHbPA Epic! -- Pete

10 years, 4 months

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Announcing TCP/IP for RSX-11M-PLUS

by bqt＠softjar.se

Well, about two weeks since my last announcement, but I figured I should do another one. I've cut a new release of TCP/IP for RSX, and I encourage everyone to update to this latest release. A short list of changes since my last release: Documentation: . I've worked some on the documentation, and filled out some parts that were previously TBD. TCP: . Performance improvements. In general, I've improved file transfer performance by about 20% by tuning when TCP ACK messages as well as window updates are sent. On links where packets are dropped from time to time, the performance improvements can be significantly higher. . Bugfix. Retry counter were incorrectly reset under some circumstances. . Bugfix. TCP did not resend an ACK if the same data was received twice. . Bugfix. TCP sockets could erronously be left in a closed state with no task. However, looking at the socket, it looked like a task was associated. FTP: . Size calculation for stream type files in RSX mode was done incorrectly. Applications: . I've included a precompiled version of PCL.TSK As usual, the distribution is available from: ftp://mim.update.uu.se/bqtcp.dsk ftp://mim.update.uu.se/bqtcp.tap ftp://ftp.update.uu.se/pub/pdp11/rsx/tcpip/tcpip.dsk The documentation is also available through ftp on Mim, or also at http://mim.update.uu.se/tcpipdoc Johnny -- Johnny Billquist || "I'm on a bus || on a psychedelic trip email: bqt at softjar.se || Reading murder books pdp is alive! || tryin' to stay hip" - B. Idol

10 years, 4 months

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Oddball floppies for trade - 8", HS (outer edge), weird cutout

by jwest＠classiccmp.org

I have two "flippy organizers" (that's around 20 floppies each) full of these oddball floppies. Picture at https://www.flickr.com/photos/131070638 at N02/22020178558/in/dateposted/ They are 8", hard sectored, and the sectors are on the outer edge rather than the hub, and there is an odd cutout on one edge that goes inside the drive. I know I don't have a machine that uses these, so they are available for trade. J

10 years, 4 months

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Calibration of 8" floppy drive?

by james＠attfield.co.uk

> Date: Sat, 6 Feb 2016 00:46:33 -0500 > From: Dan K <100dashsix at gmail.com> > To: "General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts" > <cctalk at classiccmp.org> > Subject: Re: Calibration of 8" floppy drive? > Message-ID: > <CAAQ+N0XNG=NnWGRnt8oxN4WeXTuoLCXPO9BQRn9oaSjZfVNW > 5A at mail.gmail.com> > Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8 > > Are there any good alternative solutions I can do to replace it? I'm > sure I don't want the plastic touching the disk media. > > -Dan Seems like eons since I learned to align PerSci 299B's with Dysan alignment disks and 'cat's eyes' on a 'scope :) I echo the other sentiments here - do NOT undo or unscrew anything relating to head positions especially involving allen (hex) screws unless you have a 'scope, an alignment disk, a very good quality set of hex screwdrivers (keys will normally NOT suffice) and a modicum of experience. Granted, lead screw single-headers are a little easier to do than voice-coil double-headers but if you don't have to get into it then don't - explore all other options first. I'm afraid my TM-848's are double headers so the top head provides the pressure but back when the drives were single headed felt pads did the job of the second head. The tension was provided by the spring, the pad just prevented scoring. I do NOT speak from experience BUT if I had to use anything the kind of small felt pads you can get from hardware stores (e.g. B&Q in the UK) seem remarkably similar in composition and would be worth a try especially if you have one original to compare. Cut to shape, most are self-adhesive too - bonus. HTH James

10 years, 4 months

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Farewell and thanks!

by snhirsch＠gmail.com

I've finally had my fill of the general grumpiness and bluntly worded interactions on this list. Over the years I have learned a lot and would like to particularly express my thanks to Tony Duell, Fred Cisin and Chuck Guzis for being unfailingly polite and very forthcoming with technical advice. --

10 years, 4 months

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Mosaic 4.0 for openVMS

by rlloken＠telus.net

Gentlemen, I stumbled across a reference to Mosaic 4.0 for VMS dated 2006. I ran Mosaic on my VMS workstation around 1994 and had abandoned it long ago first for Netscape 3.0.3 and later for Seamonkey. I did not know that there was any development on Mosaic in recent decades I found Seamonkey to be glacially slow on AlphaServer 4100 "desktop" and so I have not attempted to do much web browsing on VMS in recent years. So... Is Mosaic 4.0 useful in 2016? Is it more useful than Seamonkey? Netscape? AFAIR, HP had a port of Firefox to IA64 VMS but not to Alpha, has anybody been so burdened with spare time that they have attempted to port firefox to Alpha or VAX VMS? Or any other web browser? I hope to attempt a port of the heritage version of nroff/troff to VMS some time in the next couple years (I think groff would be much more difficult). But that is a differant subject. -- Richard Loken VE6BSV, Systems Programmer - VMS : "...underneath those Athabasca University : tuques we wear, our Athabasca, Alberta Canada : heads are naked!" ** rlloken at telus.net ** : - Arthur Black

10 years, 4 months

3
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Calibration of 8" floppy drive?

by 100dashsix＠gmail.com

I have two intermittently functional 8" floppy drives that I debugged to the best of my ability, and as far as I've been able to tell their problems must be limited to the circuitry that deals with the actual magnetic interface with the disk. The intercommunication seems normal and the head load solenoids fire, but after that the drive often aborts the process, presumably because it wasn't able to read data properly. I think the signal for reading the disk-rotation hole even fires correctly. The drives are Siemens FDD 100-8 drives used in an S-100 bus system, and controlled by a Jade "Double D" disk controller. The machine was in a functional state when stored, and I have known-good copies of disks that I've been able to boot from at least a few times. (Unless the drives somehow damaged them.) Can someone knowledgeable about 8" floppy drives share information about how these things were serviced and maintained, and what sort of procedures were required to test and calibrate them? Information I've picked up through osmosis leads me to believe that there's a floppy disk with a special pattern on it, and you use specialized test equipment to check the flux off the head and dial it into proper settings. I suspect there the drive has trim pots or similar that allow for this. So, how do you deal with your 8" drives, and what do you do when they don't work? Thanks, Dan

10 years, 4 months

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emergency moderation mode RE: Virtualizing AIX 1.3 - WAS::::Re: AIX for IBM PS/2

by jwest＠classiccmp.org

I had already turned on emergency moderation mode to try and stem the tide of this escalating further. I had also already emailed a few people off-list about this, which is primarily how it should be handled. Those who should have been corrected... were. Quietly. I'm rather tired of (a very few) people commenting "oh, this list is so much smaller than other forums" or "there's such a low SNRatio here" or "Everyone here is unfriendly (or things like that)". Screw all of that. I submit that while this list may be small, it has the best content and expertise, far better than others (I've looked). I submit that while the SNRatio gets off track once in a great while, I've seen that happen elsewhere, and at least as often if not more. Perhaps some should use their technical expertise to study the function of the "delete" key. Quite frankly I don't think it happens here all that often. Unfriendly? Perhaps there are a few that are brisque at times. On the one hand - Guess what... that's life. In any crowd there's always a few grumpy old men (of which I am one - especially at the moment), and socially well-adjusted people should learn how to deal with it and get along. On the other hand - That doesn't mean I don't correct those that need correcting (and I did) .. but I really don't need to hear the whining. It seems that there are one or two people that state they don't want to participate because of one or more of the above... yet they stay here solely to voice that opinion. Odd. J

10 years, 4 months

5
4
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IBM 5100 - APL Only Version on Ebay

by wayne.smith＠charter.net

There is an APL-only IBM 5100 up on Ebay. Had known that these were supposedly made, but have never seen one before. Looks a bit rough, but based on the pictures boots to the "CLEAR WS" screen. http://www.ebay.com/itm/Vintage-IBM-5100-Portable-Computer-Powers-On-/ 321999141713

10 years, 4 months

1
0
0 0

VCF West is BACK ... woohoo!

by barythrin＠gmail.com

Great to hear! EK2 should make it a successfully revival.? Sellam, you helping for fun too or happily still basking in the glory of making your goal of VCF X? Glad its back though. The more the merrier for all regions to enjoy. - John <div>-------- Original message --------</div><div>From: Evan Koblentz <cctalk at snarc.net> </div><div>Date:02/05/2016 4:21 PM (GMT-06:00) </div><div>To: "General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts" <cctalk at classiccmp.org> </div><div>Subject: VCF West is BACK ... woohoo! </div><div> </div>Mark your calendars: Vintage Computer Festival West is back! August 6-7 this year at the Computer History Museum (Mountain View, Calif., just like before). We * just * signed the contract today. I'll email again when we have the web site ready and stuff. Primary organizer out there will be Erik Klein.

10 years, 4 months

1
0
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VCF West is BACK ... woohoo!

by cctalk＠snarc.net

Mark your calendars: Vintage Computer Festival West is back! August 6-7 this year at the Computer History Museum (Mountain View, Calif., just like before). We * just * signed the contract today. I'll email again when we have the web site ready and stuff. Primary organizer out there will be Erik Klein.

10 years, 4 months

5
4
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New Scans: HP Micro-Computer Interest Group

by silent700＠gmail.com

Hello all - I have uploaded some new documents related to an employee club at Hewlett Packard that sought to explore these new "micro-computers" and, given the evidence at hand, design their own (apparently a Z80-based CPU card of their own design, an S-100 backplane and an HP case.) The story as I know it is incomplete and I'm sure more details will be filled in soon by those who were there. The documents were lent to me for scanning by the daughter of an HP employee. I'll be returning them to her soon; I believe she will be offering them to CHM as a donation. http://chiclassiccomp.org/docs/index.php?dir=%2Fcomputing%2FHP/HPMCIG The docs are divided into directories as follows: Micro Minutes: 30 issues of the newsletter of the Hewlett-Packard Micro-Computer Interest Group, various dates between 1979 and 1983. Some issues undated. Non-HP_Docs: Documents from other vendors that were likely used by the club. I'll place them in their own vendor directories also but I thought leaving copies here help give us an idea of what the club was working with or discussing at the time Club_Notes: Emails, memos, handwritten notes, receipts and other club-related ephemera I thought it spoke well of HP as a company at that time that they supported an employee hobbyist organization. Enjoy digging through a unique bit of early Silicon Valley history. -j -- silent700.blogspot.com Retrocomputing and collecting in the Chicago area: http://chiclassiccomp.org

10 years, 4 months

1
0
0 0

Looking for a file

by bryan＠bceassociates.com

Does anyone out there have access to an HP-UX 11.x system? I am looking for a ROM image file for the FX-e video card to help me write an OpenBSD frame buffer driver for this platform. Thanks, Bryan

10 years, 4 months

1
0
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Looking for Heathkit H11 manuals

by rich.cini＠verizon.net

All ? Does anyone know of an on-line archive of Heathkit manuals pertaining to the H11 (LSI-11) Heathkit computer? I haven?t been able to produce much that?s useful from Googling, so I thought I?d ask. Let me know. Thanks! Rich -- Rich Cini Collector of Classic Computers Build Master and lead engineer, Altair32 Emulator http://www.classiccmp.org/cini http://www.classiccmp.org/altair32

10 years, 4 months

4
7
0 0

Bull DPX/2 and B.O.S. help wanted.

by pontus＠Update.UU.SE

Hi I'm trying to boot a Bull DPX/2 and got stuck waiting for NFS to do something, at least that is what I believe. Is there anyone on the list with B.O.S experience that could help me bring the sytem up under some kind of single user environment without network. I have a OS install kit with bootable floppies and I managed to get a prompt using the "boot_unix" floppy and following the manuals that I have. However, not even "ls" would work from this prompt, only "cat". (You are supposed to enter "os_install", but I don't want to mess up the existing installtion. /P

10 years, 4 months

6
8
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Virtualizing AIX 1.3 - WAS::::Re: AIX for IBM PS/2

by cruff＠ruffspot.net

>> https://sites.google.com/site/rhdisk0/unix/aix/aixps2 <https://sites.google.com/site/rhdisk0/unix/aix/aixps2> > > Is anyone else having issues with that URL? I get a quick flash of a > legitimate web page before the browser fills up with ASCII garbage. No, it loaded fine on my browser.

10 years, 4 months

1
0
0 0

Mystery system

by mloewen＠cpumagic.scol.pa.us

I'm trying to identify a system which appeared in "The Killer Elite" (1975), with a room full of tape drives and a couple of terminals: http://q7.neurotica.com/killer-1.png http://q7.neurotica.com/killer-2.png http://q7.neurotica.com/killer-6.png http://q7.neurotica.com/killer-9.png The drives appear to be IBM 3420s, but with an additional box on top, labeled "SMS". The system itself doesn't appear in any of the shots. Some sort of IBM 370, perhaps? Mike Loewen mloewen at cpumagic.scol.pa.us Old Technology http://q7.neurotica.com/Oldtech/

10 years, 4 months

8
13
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pdp 11/04 and dual pdp 11/73

by jwest＠classiccmp.org

The "PDP-11/04 and floppy disk" I posted already was claimed by a listmember. But after the fact, the owner sent me a picture. The listmember who is getting it is getting a pretty nice system. One of the dec mid-height cabinets that has the sloped front at the top. RX02 at the top, 11/04 under that, and dec filler panels. Nice DEC magenta insignia on the slope at the top front. Very nice. Also - the dual 11/73 rack system has been claimed by another list member. Best, J

10 years, 4 months

1
0
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DEC Dual 1173 cpu with rack available

by jwest＠classiccmp.org

I received the following this morning.... ------ I recently acquired a pdp11/73 with dual CPUs and am looking to sell it. Would you know anyone interested. I would like this to survive and wish to find it a good home. I live In Massachusetts. ------ The person also gave me a picture, which I posted (temporarily) at http://www.ezwind.net/pdp1173/ This particular machine is too new for my tastes, but the dual cpu (and status panel) is rather unusual. If anyone is interested, please email me off-list and I'll forward the contact details. Best, J

10 years, 4 months

4
3
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StackExchange retrocomputing forum

by lproven＠gmail.com

This now has enough followers to move on to the next stage of the approvals process -- gathering enough example questions... http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/94441/ -- Liam Proven ? Profile: http://lproven.livejournal.com/profile Email: lproven at cix.co.uk ? GMail/G+/Twitter/Flickr/Facebook: lproven MSN: lproven at hotmail.com ? Skype/AIM/Yahoo/LinkedIn: liamproven Cell/Mobiles: +44 7939-087884 (UK) ? +420 702 829 053 (?R)

10 years, 4 months

1
0
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HP 9815

by pdaguytom＠gmail.com

I recently picked up an HP 9815s ( was originally an 'a' model but was upgraded with an 's' cpu board and the option 002 i/o long before me), that displays the "---------------" when turned on. I've scrounged through Google and learned that this particular display is generated by the display board when it has nothing else better to do to direct its attention. After checking that the power supply was putting out the recommended voltages and chasing the +5v around the cpu board and puzzling that for a bit, I've checked for activity at the cpu and found no voltage at all being applied at Vcc the cpu. I've been studying Tony Duell's schematic for the 9815(thank you Mr. Duell), but have not found a reason why this voltage might not be present. Is Vcc switched somewhere? I done some meager sleuthing of the traces around the 6800 and think I chased Vcc to a transistor close by, but need to investigate further this weekend. Anyone chased this type of failure on the 9815 or traced out wether this Vcc is applied at power on or switched by some logic at the power supply board? Puzzled, but determined, Tom

10 years, 4 months

2
2
0 0

Can Windows 98SE run on an Intel I7 with SATA hard drives?

by radiotest＠juno.com

At 09:25 AM 2/4/2016, Liam Proven wrote: >A fair point, but then, one is not going to use MS-DOS to browse the Web in 2016, right? In my world it is impossible for any one computer to do everything that I need to do with a computer, thus my five active PCs and many spares, plus old stuff like my CP/M machines in my personal museum. I don't use an MS-DOS machine to browse, and I don't use an NT-series-OS machine to run MS-DOS programs that need UART register access that NT does not allow. Dale H. Cook, Roanoke/Lynchburg, VA Osborne 1 / Kaypro 4-84 / Kaypro 1 / Amstrad PPC-640 http://plymouthcolony.net/starcity/radios/index.html

10 years, 4 months

2
1
0 0

.IMD diskette image file recovery

by james.h.simpson＠gmail.com

Is there a utility that will read .IMD diskette archive files and recover the data? I've found a wealth of BigBoard & BigBoard II data (and lots of other stuff too) on many different sites, all saved in .IMD format. Is it possible to read these files and recover the data instead of writing a floppy disk with DiskImage? Thanks, Jim Simpson

10 years, 4 months

7
8
0 0

Fw: new important message

by julian＠twinax.org

Hello! New message, please read <http://haruncetin.com/there.php?qcgav> julian at twinax.org

10 years, 4 months

3
2
0 0

NeXTstation booting, NetInfo, and NTP

by pete＠dunnington.plus.com

Yesterday I dug out my NexTstation (68040 25MHz slab with 32MB of 100ns SIMMs) which has OpenStep 4.2 for Mach installed. The lithium battery was flat and it wouldn't boot so I've ordered a replacement and temporarily kludged a pair of alkaline AAs to get it going. So far, so good, though it thinks today is September 6 2001 :-) Then I used SimpleNetworkStarter, set to "Use the network, but don't share administrative data". I've also edited /etc/hostconfig and reslv.conf to sensible values (eg TIME=-NO-) so it now boots quite quickly. Is there a way to disable NetInfo completely, and if so will things like DNS lookups still work? Is there an easy way to make it get its time/date settings from my NTP server? During startup it does claim to start netinfo, lookupd, ntpd (see below), then inetd, I have an SGI running IRIX which is my DHCP, DNS, and NTP server, and I plan to set up the NexT to use DHCP to get its IP address etc (it's static ATM). -- Pete

10 years, 4 months

2
1
0 0

that pdp-11/04 with floppy disks...

by jwest＠classiccmp.org

Delayed response, work has been busy. That deal was passed off to the first responder so it has likely been claimed. If that deal doesn't work out, I'll email the next person on the list :) But do not fret... I just see another user sent me an email today about wanting to get rid of a machine... will post that one shortly ;) J

10 years, 4 months

1
0
0 0

OS help needed please

by trash80＠internode.on.net

Seems Windows 98 has got a few mentions on the list of late - must have just come into the "classic era". A while ago a good friend approached me as he wanted to get an old game up and running that he really likes - Recoil (might ring a bell with a few list folk) - wants the real experience, not the VM experience. I'd be happy to help him out anyway but he has thrown a few old machines at me from time to time rather than see them go to the tip so he definitely gets help. The game is quite particular and will only run on Win 98. I've resurrected a HP e-Vectra that I have (very nice little machine by the way) that has a serial on it for Win 98 SE but I really need the "actual" HP Recovery media for it as I'm having some dramas getting the right video and sound drivers for it. I've struck out at HP and have tried a few vendors that still list parts for this machine but no joy. Be most grateful if someone can help me out or point me somewhere please. Thank you!!! ++++++++++ Kevin Parker ++++++++++

10 years, 4 months

4
4
0 0

.IMD diskette image file recovery

by tony.nicholson＠computer.org

[Please excuse the lack of threading - I read cctalk in digest form.] On Wed, 3 Feb 2016, Jim Simpson wrote: > Is there a utility that will read .IMD diskette archive files and recover > the data? I've found a wealth of BigBoard & BigBoard II data (and lots of > other stuff too) on many different sites, all saved in .IMD format. Is it > possible to read these files and recover the data instead of writing a > floppy disk with DiskImage? Jim (and other cctalkers), Grab a copy of the SIMH Altairz80 simulator from http://schorn.ch/altair.html and the zip file of my cpmplus for the CompuPro Disk1 controller from the Other Operating systems link at http://schorn.ch/altair_5.php This supports IMD disks in BB II 1.4Mb (1024byte x 9 sector) format. You can attach the IMD file and use the "W" command to extract files to the host operating system - mini:cpmplus tony$ altairz80 cpm3bk Altair 8800 (Z80) simulator V4.0-0 Beta git commit id: 4ff1e317 LDRBIOS for SIMH System - V3.2-Y2K 01-AUG-2008 DISK1 8" boot floppy CPMLDR3 - CP/M V3.0 Loader Copyright (C) 1982, Digital Research BNKBIOS3 SPR FA00 0600 BNKBIOS3 SPR C600 1A00 RESBDOS3 SPR F400 0600 BNKBDOS3 SPR 9800 2E00 61K TPA CP/M Plus for SIMH System - V3.2-Y2K 06-AUG-2008 Banked memory CCP loads from A: and reloads from bank 0 DISK2 dual 20Mb M20 winchesters (A-F) DISK1 8" (I-L) [BB-II] floppies A>SETDEF * A: [ORDER=(COM,SUB) DISPLAY UK] Drive Search Path: 1st Drive - Default 2nd Drive - A: Search Order - COM, SUB Program Name Display - On Date format used - UK A> <CTRL-E> Simulation stopped, PC: 0FE8F (AND 02h) sim> att disk1a3 ../s100/BB2-011.IMD sim> go A>l: %FDDISK1 unit 3 is type BigBoard-II 1024x9 Read-Only L>dir L: BULLETIN : BYE COM : CALL-JAN PQN : COMMANDS HLP : DIR COM L: ELAPSED COM : HELP COM : HELP HLP : INFO : MAGAZINE HLP L: MBOOT ASM : NEWS : PAMSFEB1 0Q6 : PASSWORD COM : RBBS COM L: TYPE COM : USERDISK CQT : WHATSNEW HLP : XYAM COM : XYAMHELP T SYSTEM FILE(S) EXIST L>w A:W COM WRITE V-1.17 (01-Mar-08) SIMH Interface V004 Usage: WRITE <file name> [B|T] Copy <file name> to host environment. Default is text, B for binary, T for Text Examples WRITE BDOS.MAC copy BDOS.MAC as text file WRITE PIP.COM B copy PIP.COM as binary file WRITE PIP.COM copy PIP.COM as binary file [.COM .REL .DAT imply B] WRITE TEST.DAT T copy TEST.DAT as text file WRITE *.COM copy all files matching *.COM as binary files WRITE SRC/BDOS.MAC copy BDOS.MAC to directory SRC as a text file WRITE COM/*.COM B copy *.COM to directory COM as binary files L>w type.com b A:W COM WRITE V-1.17 (01-Mar-08) SIMH Interface V004 Write "TYPE.COM" to "TYPE.COM". 3.5kB written (Binary). If you need to support other CP/M disk formats, the BIOS source files and submit files to put them together are in the A1: directory on the hard disk image. There's also CP/M program to make IMD disk images natively under CP/M-Plus in A3: (it will span the IMD file across multiple floppies if the image file is too large). I used this to copy all my 8" floppies (including BB II ones) to IMD images. Tony -- Tony Nicholson <tony.nicholson at computer.org>

10 years, 4 months

1
0
0 0

Can Windows 98SE run on an Intel I7 with SATA hard drives?

by COURYHOUSE＠aol.com

just for grins I took on of the SMECC e-machines out of back room and fired it up... yea Win 98 SE running just great! last time I used this particular old office system was '07! heh it has a 4 gig hardrive Ed# _www.smecc.org_ (http://www.smecc.org) In a message dated 2/4/2016 11:53:40 A.M. US Mountain Standard Time, radiotest at juno.com writes: At 11:08 AM 2/4/2016, Ethan O'Toole wrote: >If you're trying to bitbang the RS232 port to decode POCSAG or something perhaps. Not quite - this is not an asynchronous protocol, this is single-purpose software written decades ago to communicate with highly specialized hardware that is still in use. >If you're trying to use old Windows software in more modern versions of Windows ... Nope, these are MS-DOS apps that require access to the UART registers. Anyone who thinks that MS-DOS is dead and buried doesn't have to work with some of the vintage (but still in use) technology that I sometimes deal with at work. I am certain that there are many on this list whose vocations involve decades-old hardware that is still in use. Dale H. Cook, Roanoke/Lynchburg, VA Osborne 1 / Kaypro 4-84 / Kaypro 1 / Amstrad PPC-640 http://plymouthcolony.net/starcity/radios/index.html

10 years, 4 months

1
0
0 0

Mentec manuals

by Paul_Koning＠Dell.com

I was looking back at the discussion on what Mentec actually owned, back when it existed. The discussion on the list suggested that Mentec had a license but did not actually own the IP. It seems an odd arrangement that doesn't say much for the business skills of those making it, but I suppose it's posssible. I found that there are some RSTS manuals at www.computinghistory.co.uk with Mentec cover pages. Among other things, a free for the download RSTS 10.1 internals manual, over 600 pages of good stuff. The cover has a Mentec logo but no other ownership clues. I was hoping to see the copyright page to find out whose name appears there. Unfortunately, the scan omits the copyright page. Does anyone have any manuals from Mentec? If yes, does it say "Copyright ... Mentec"? Or "Copyright ... someone else"? paul

10 years, 4 months

5
4
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Can Windows 98SE run on an Intel I7 with SATA hard drives?

by radiotest＠juno.com

At 08:08 AM 2/4/2016, Liam Proven wrote: >But NT is a better OS in every important or material way. It is unusable in one important way. This thread began as a discussion of running serial port terminal emulators on a PC. At work I still use some MS-DOS programs (admittedly not terminal emulators) over serial ports. For my purposes (setting up a variety of vintage specialized hardware over RS-232) NT-based operating systems are sometimes unusable because they present the application program with a virtual serial port, and MS-DOS programs running under those operating systems cannot read from or write to the UART registers. Some of the setup programs for that vintage hardware were written before the mid-1990s and access the UART registers, so I have to run those under Win98 or earlier. I have a portable MS-DOS 3.3 machine that I use to set up that vintage hardware. Dale H. Cook, Roanoke/Lynchburg, VA Osborne 1 / Kaypro 4-84 / Kaypro 1 / Amstrad PPC-640 http://plymouthcolony.net/starcity/radios/index.html

10 years, 4 months

3
3
0 0

Can Windows 98SE run on an Intel I7 with SATA hard drives?

by jnc＠mercury.lcs.mit.edu

> From: CuriousMarc > Needless to say, you'd only boot to this Windows 98 for retro-computing > purposes. BTW, are you indicating that Win 98SE _in general_ should only be used for retro-computing, or only Win 98SE _in the particular configration you described_ should only be used that way? Because, if the latter, I happily use Win 98SE on most of my machines, for the vast majority of my work! Of course, I don't need to run the latest and greatest uSloth bloatware^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H applications, so they fact that they probably won't run on the older Windows (What a shock! You don't think they would by any chance want to encourage people to pay them a large pile of dineros for the latest and 'greatest' version of their OS, do you?) is not a problem for me. The biggest issue, actually, for me, is that the latest Adobe Reader which will run under Win 98SE is 6.0, and that doesn't support some of the latest PDF's (in particular, encrypted ones). Noel

10 years, 4 months

8
11
0 0

BC11A Cable ends

by jnc＠mercury.lcs.mit.edu

> From: Guy Sotomayor > When I have some time .. I'll fire up my 11/40 .. and then re-cable it > using cables with a pair of BC11A-T ends and some ribbon cable. I'll > run memory diagnostics on it for a while (I have 128KW of memory on it > split between two racks, so this should be a good test) and see how it > does Might be interesting to throw a 'scope on a line on each end of the cable, and see how things look after making it through the cable. Noel

10 years, 4 months

2
1
0 0

ISO: VAX-11/750

by derschjo＠gmail.com

So, I figure it's unlikely, but I've been jonesing for a "larger" VAX and I'd like to track down an 11/750 (or an 11/730). If anyone out there has one for sale trade (in any condition apart from "pile of slag"), let me know. I have DEC and various other gear for trade. Thanks as always! - Josh

10 years, 4 months

5
5
0 0

ISO: VAX-11/750

by jim＠deitygraveyard.com

On Feb 4, 2016 01:30, "Mark J. Blair" <nf6x at nf6x.net> wrote: > > > > On Feb 3, 2016, at 20:37, Lee Courtney <leec2124 at gmail.com> wrote: > > > > Date on the 730 notice is Aug 2009 - I suspect it is long gone by now. :-( > > Where do you see that? The listing states: > > "Status: Open 2/1/16 - 02/07/16 23:59:00" > Lee must have quickly glanced at the message and seen the join date of the author and thought it was the date of the message. I've done that a few times on vintage-computer.com. Jim

10 years, 4 months

1
0
0 0

BC11A Cable ends

by ggs＠shiresoft.com

I just received the BC11A-T variant boards (the ribbon cables come out the ?top??yea not imaginative naming) this afternoon. I inserted a couple of the ribbon cable connectors on the board and everything looks great! When I have some time (probably in a couple of weeks) I?ll fire up my 11/40 (to make sure it?s still working after all of this time) and then re-cable it using cables with a pair of BC11A-T ends and some ribbon cable. I?ll run memory diagnostics on it for a while (I have 128KW of memory on it split between two racks, so this should be a good test) and see how it does vs with the ?standard? BC11A cables. TTFN - Guy

10 years, 4 months

1
0
0 0

AIX for IBM system 370

by lyokoboy0＠gmail.com

I have been messing with the Hercules emulator, and have really been wanting to take a look at ibm AIX, and get a working install on an emulated system 370. I have found no mention of install media or disk images of a working system for download online. Is there a good place to get the install media?

10 years, 4 months

13
23
0 0

Tymnet Node processor

by COURYHOUSE＠aol.com

McDonnell Douglas dec 10 SPACELAB list? In a message dated 2/2/2016 10:47:44 P.M. US Mountain Standard Time, jws at jwsss.com writes: I was talking to a former co-worker who worked for McDonnell Douglas Network Systems Company who owned Tymshare at one point, and he had a picture of a 1mb memory from one of the nodes. He passed along this link to the manual for the node processor. http://bitsavers.trailing-edge.com/pdf/tymshare/tymnet/NPD-604_Engine_Family _Maintainence_Print_Manual_Apr85.pdf Wondering if any survive and are working. It was a 64 bit microword, 32 bit data path TTL logic type machine, similar to one of the ones I worked on pre-bitslice days. Also wonder if the microcode survived. Date on the drawings was 1978 though this manual set is coded as April 1985. thanks Jim

10 years, 4 months

1
0
0 0

Tymnet Node processor

by jws＠jwsss.com

I was talking to a former co-worker who worked for McDonnell Douglas Network Systems Company who owned Tymshare at one point, and he had a picture of a 1mb memory from one of the nodes. He passed along this link to the manual for the node processor. http://bitsavers.trailing-edge.com/pdf/tymshare/tymnet/NPD-604_Engine_Famil… Wondering if any survive and are working. It was a 64 bit microword, 32 bit data path TTL logic type machine, similar to one of the ones I worked on pre-bitslice days. Also wonder if the microcode survived. Date on the drawings was 1978 though this manual set is coded as April 1985. thanks Jim

10 years, 4 months

1
0
0 0

PDP-8 chase the lights

by cctalk＠snarc.net

Our group here in NJ + surroundings now has monthly-ish repair workshops (vs. a few times per year before). At the workshop this past weekend, David Gesswein continued restoring our PDP-8. David summarized: "I fixed the known fault of accumulator bit going to zero when it was rotated left. This was a bad diode on one of the accumulator boards. I also replaced two bad bulbs and a third that died during the repair. Since one that died was one I previously replaced I'm going to use the not quite matching bulbs with heavier wires for future repairs. The wires are just too thinn on the 1762 bulbs and now that they have aged they break too easy. I then found that the teletype interface wasn't working and replaced a diode on a R220 to fix output. Input is not working properly. I have traced it to a particular flip flop on a R220 where when the data changes it feeds through to the output without the clock active. I ran out of time to identify the component that needs replacing." Here's a little video of the computer chasing its lights. :) http://www.vcfed.org/evan/pdp8lights.mp4

10 years, 4 months

2
2
0 0

Lot of 34 Transputers sold on ebay

by toby＠telegraphics.com.au

http://www.ebay.com/itm/151966095000 Did anyone we know buy them? Would be good to know they went to a good home. --Toby

10 years, 4 months

1
0
0 0

PDP-11/84 (KDJ11-B) and Error 61

by jhfinedp3k＠compsys.to

>Ulrich Tagge wrote:Hi Glen, > [Snip] > > List/change parameters in the Setup table > > A - ANSI Video terminal (1) 0=No, 1=Yes = 1 > B - Power up 0=Dialog, (1)=Automatic, 2=ODT, 3=24 = 1 > C - Restart 0=Dialog, (1)=Automatic, 2=ODT, 3=24 = 1 > D - Ignore battery 0=No, 1=Yes = 0 > E - PMG 0-(7) 1=.4us, 2=.8, 3=1.6, 4=3.2,...7=25.6 = 7 > F - Disable clock CSR 0=No, 1=Yes = 0 > G - Force clock interrupts 0=No, 1=Yes = 0 > H - Clock 0=Power supply, 1=50Hz, 2=60Hz, 3=800Hz = 1 Does anyone have an idea as to how the choice of the 800Hz option was made? I could understand 1000Hz or perhaps 1200Hz which allows division by both 50 and 60. But 800Hz seems like such an unlikely value. On the other hand, on the PRO350, the clock rate was 64Hz and every 16 ticks, I assume that one tick was discarded so as to support the appearance of a 60 Hz clock. Jerome Fine

10 years, 4 months

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Pascal Microengine software images

by aek＠bitsavers.org

I successfully imaged OS revs E0, F0, F1, G0 and H0 of the Pascal Microengine from the original distribution media this morning with the application of cyclomethicone as Chuck suggested. I was worried since they were 79'ish vintage BASF media, but the lubrication did the trick and they read without errors. http://bitsavers.org/bits/WesternDigital/microengine_distributions_E0-H0.zip

10 years, 4 months

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PDP-8 chase the lights

by COURYHOUSE＠aol.com

THAT IS WHAT WE USED TO CALL THE CYLON EYE PROGRAM! eD# _WWW.SMECC.ORG_ (http://www.SMECC.ORG) In a message dated 2/2/2016 1:27:02 P.M. US Mountain Standard Time, cctalk at snarc.net writes: Our group here in NJ + surroundings now has monthly-ish repair workshops (vs. a few times per year before). At the workshop this past weekend, David Gesswein continued restoring our PDP-8. David summarized: "I fixed the known fault of accumulator bit going to zero when it was rotated left. This was a bad diode on one of the accumulator boards. I also replaced two bad bulbs and a third that died during the repair. Since one that died was one I previously replaced I'm going to use the not quite matching bulbs with heavier wires for future repairs. The wires are just too thinn on the 1762 bulbs and now that they have aged they break too easy. I then found that the teletype interface wasn't working and replaced a diode on a R220 to fix output. Input is not working properly. I have traced it to a particular flip flop on a R220 where when the data changes it feeds through to the output without the clock active. I ran out of time to identify the component that needs replacing." Here's a little video of the computer chasing its lights. :) http://www.vcfed.org/evan/pdp8lights.mp4

10 years, 4 months

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PDP-11/84 (KDJ11-B) and Error 61

by u.tagge＠gmx.de

Hi List, I have a working 11/84, and I have decidec, to test some of my spare cards, starting with: KDJ11-B. I see the following error, when powering up the system, which points me to the Clock. >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> Error 61 M8190 clock Error See troubleshooting documentation Command Description 1 Rerun test 2 Loop on test Type a command then press the RETURN key: >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> Any hints, what the problem could be? Is the clock in this new PDP's still generated out of the line frequency? Could it by, that the KDJ11-B is configured to a wrong HZ value? Many Greetings Ulrich

10 years, 4 months

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ISIS-II disks with PLM80 and ICE80 software.

by mattislind＠gmail.com

While browsing various 8 inch floppies I have found a couple of disks that seems to contain ISIS-II stuff. I discovered a document specifying the format of the disk and managed to extract the contents: Disk1: arbetsrumsdatorn:ISIS mattis_lind$ ls UNKN2 ATTRIB DSPERR ICE80.OV1 ISIS.LAB PLM80.OV0 PLMCOD.CSD COPY EDIT ICE80.OV2 ISIS.MAP PLM80.OV1 PLMNOC.CSD DELETE FORMAT ISIS.BIN ISIS.T0 PLM80.OV2 RENAME DIR ICE80 ISIS.CLI PLM80 PLM80.OV3 SUBMIT DSP ICE80.OV0 ISIS.DIR PLM80.LIB PLM80.OV4 SYSTEM.LIB Disk2: arbetsrumsdatorn:ISIS mattis_lind$ ls DISK2 ALIAS DEBUG EXEC LINK RELEAS TTY ALLOC DELETE FORMAT MDUP REMAP TXT ANALYZ DGEN FRAPP MEMDMP RENAME TXW ASM DIR HEXBIN MOVE RESCUE XREF ASSIGN DIRPAC INIT MYLOAD SEDIT ATTRIB DROP ISIS.DIR O SYS DCONVA DRSTC ISIS.ERR PAGE SYSTEM DCOPY EDIT ISIS.LAB PROM T2 DDUMC ETX ISIS.MAP RASM TPGEN If someone is interested in these I put them here: http://www.datormuseum.se/documentation-software/isis-ii-floppy-disks There were also a DSDD format on some disks which seemed a little bit different. The ISIS.DIR used 32 byte entries rather than 16 byte entries and the directory linkage block structure seemed to be different. I didn't spend any time other than recognize the difference. Is there any documentation that specify the various ISIS disk formats there is? /Mattis

10 years, 4 months

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Win98SE Update/Patches WAS: Can Windows 98SE run on an Intel I7 with SATA hard drives?

by jnc＠mercury.lcs.mit.edu

> From: Dale H. Cook > I have spare IDE drives for my 98SE laptops. Might want to drag them out once a year and run them, to prevent anything sticking over time. (I should take my own advice, here.... :-) Noel

10 years, 4 months

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USPS: Re: PDP-11/03, LSI-11 KEV11-C CIS option

by seefriek＠gmail.com

On Sun, 31 Jan 2016, Pete Lancashire wrote: >> On Sun, Jan 31, 2016 at 1:24 AM, Henk Gooijen <henk.gooijen at hotmail.com> wrote: >> >> Spend the extra few dollars (or what your currency is) and pack it in a >> very strong box. I've actually had EPROMs show up cracked in half > >Seconded. The machines the USPS uses for automated sorting of mail are not >gentle on parcels. > I'd rather strongly suggest you not us the USPS period. In the last 6 months or so they've flat out lost 4 items either destined to or shipped by me, and one item apparently (according to the tracking web site) sat in a sorting facility in Utah for nearly a month before magically showing up. Glad it wasn't perishable. KJ

10 years, 4 months

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HP Manuals - where's your sense of humor?

by Martin.Hepperle＠MH-AeroTools.de

While I was reading through the HP 200/300 BASIC Manual I came across some interesting points I hadn't considered in the past. I thought HP manuals were dry and hard to read, but I was wrong. See for yourself... Installing, Using, and Maintaining the BASIC 5.0 System ============================================= Loading BASIC, page 1-16 ------------------------------- If You See Nothing on the Monitor Screen Here are some possible explanations: - The monitor's brightness is not turned all the way up. - The monitor is not plugged in. - The computer is not plugged in. - Your eyes are not pointed in the right direction, or are obscured by your eyelids. Other Maintenance Tasks, page 17-1 -------------------------------------------- The following list mentions some things users take for granted or tend to forget. ... - ... - ... - Rotate your tires and otherwise examine your system to see that it is performing nicely. Maybe the author had a good friend in final quality control of the manuals. Martin

10 years, 4 months

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Last call: free machines in Sweden

by pontus＠Update.UU.SE

Hi My employer is moving house and need to clear out some old stuff. We have ported to many, many Unix systems over the years and have kept some of the machines. Available is: 1x IBM RS/6000 big and beige 1x Bull DPX/2 1x Concurrent Computer Corporation in rack 1x Sperry unix machine 1x NCR (same as above, other label) Possibly 1 VAX 4000 and possibly one Alphaserver 2000. Pickup only. We will remove hard drives since they contain source code. In a few weeks, this will be gone. A few pictures here: http://www.update.uu.se/~pontus/slask/jobb_vind/ Items are in Uppsala, Sweden. /P

10 years, 4 months

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Still wanted: Symbolics Gear

by lists＠loomcom.com

Hi folks, This is as always a tremendous long shot, but I figured I would put it out there anyway. I am still eagerly looking for any and all Symbolics systems. I know very well how rare these things are, and how much money they are worth. If you have any systems you would be willing to let go of, let's talk. I'm happy to entertain trades if that's something you're interested in, but I'm also happy just to pay fair market prices. For reference, I am located near Seattle, WA. Best Wishes, -Seth P.S.: I also know how difficult they are to care for and keep running! I'm all too familiar with dying ESDI drives and bad power supplies.

10 years, 4 months

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OT: Come watch me install Linux on the IBM z890 Mainframe!

by connork＠connorsdomain.com

Come one come all! Its the day of reckoning. I finally have some storage on loan from a company called Funsoft! Hopefully by the end of the night I will have Linux installed and a portal to the internet to which people can connect and play on it! http://www.twitch.tv/conmega -Connor Krukosky

10 years, 4 months

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Equipment Available, DEC

by jwest＠classiccmp.org

Just received an email from someone who has a PDP-11/04 with "Floppy Disk" looking for a good home. The machine is located in Switzerland. Please email me off-list if interested. J

10 years, 4 months

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Circuit Design Aids / Unix Circuit Design System

by mark.kahrs＠gmail.com

In the original Unix BSTJ of 1978 Sandy Fraser described a system he called "Circuit Design Aids". Schematic capture was done on a 4014 and conversion went all the way to wire wrap. CDA was rehabbed and rewritten by many people over the years. It became known as the Unix Circuit Design System (UCDS) and it was available from Bell Labs under a separate license as I recall. UCDS was used to design many projects including the 5620, Belle and others. When Plan9 arrived, UCDS was converted to Plan9 (not too hard...) and renamed back to CDA. The code was released in the first Plan9 CDROM. So. It occurred to me that I could back port it to Linux. I did so with help from H. Trickey and the Plan9 compatibility library. I put all of this code on https://github.com/kahrs/cda. The interested and curious can find it there. I make no promises about full functionality, however, it is available for those who want to tinker.

10 years, 4 months

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BA23 fan noise

by Mark＠Misty.com

Hi, I've been messing around with my PDP11/83 and a Microvax, both in BA23 boxes here. These fans make too much noise for my home office area, and I cannot possibly need the original airflow. Even with the internal jumper set for 10V to power the 12V rated fan motor, these are still noisy. It's not even just the noise of the air moving, but largely a whine from the fan motors. One box is worse than the other with the wine. I've unplugged the front fan, since instead of spinning drives I have solid state CF cards and SCSI converters -- no heat in the front of the box at all. I have some 24V fans in my junk box that fit and make almost no sound at 12V, but at half voltage might not move enough air to keep the power supply, CPU, memory, SCSI, and ethernet boards happy. My guess is so long as there is some air movement over the boards, the biggest issue of concern is cooling the power supply. Does anyone have any suggestions for figuring out how much airflow I actually need, and achieving it with either stock fans at further reduced voltage, or some kind of replacements? I don't need an accurate solution, or something with complicated compensation for varying temperature, just something quieter, moving less air, but still enough air. Mark -- Mark G. Thomas (Mark at Misty.com), KC3DRE

10 years, 4 months

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Vintage Computer Collectors - TV Special Inquiry (fwd)

by sellam＠vintagetech.com

Does anyone want to have their children exploited for profit and entertainment? "I'm currently Producing a show for TLC that features children who have a passion for collecting. I was wondering if you know any kids who have a sizable collection of vintage computers? If you can think of anyone who would be interested in appearing on our show, I would greatly appreciate it if you could connect me with their parents to discuss the show further." If anyone is interested e-mail me privately and I'll give you all the contact details for this producer. -- Sellam Abraham VintageTech ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ International Man of Intrigue and Danger http://www.vintagetech.com Whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap. The truth is always simple. * * * NOTICE * * * Due to the insecure nature of the medium over which this message has been transmitted, no statement made in this writing may be considered reliable for any purpose either express or implied. The contents of this message are appropriate for entertainment and/or informational purposes only. The right of the people to be secure in their papers against unreasonable searches and seizures shall not be violated.

10 years, 4 months

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PDP-11/03, LSI-11 KEV11-C CIS option

by spacewar＠gmail.com

Does anyone have a PDP-11/03 or LSI-11 with the KEV11-C CIS (Commercial Instruction Set) option? It may have also been known as DIS (Dibol Instruction Set). It apparently consists of two microcode ROM chips (MICROMs), 23-004B5 and 23-005B5. Last month I posted here about building a circuit to dump the contents of MICROMs: https://www.flickr.com/photos/22368471 at N04/albums/72157662054690240 I've dumped the base LSI-11 instruction set chips and the EIS/FIS chip. I've partially disassembled the former: https://github.com/brouhaha/lsi11uc and verified that the latter matches the EIS/FIS microcode source code provided with the KUV11 writable control store support software. I'd like to dump the CIS microcode ROMs as well. The resulting dump would be usable by anyone with a KUV11. I'm contemplating developing a MICROM replacement board, which would be useful for those without a KUV11. I've made more progress with the WD9000 Pascal Microengine microcode than the LSI-11 microcode because someone provided a photomicrograph of the CP2161 control chip and I was able to dump the PLAs. I should be getting a photomicrograph of the CP1621 control chip of the LSI-11 soon, and will be able to do the same for it.

10 years, 4 months

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Looking for Solaris 8 patches

by nf6x＠nf6x.net

I'm looking for a bunch of OS patches necessary to get Firefox 2 running under Solaris 8 on my Sun Ultra 60. The patch mirror I used previously appears to have dumped the Sun patches in 2014, and the only up to date references I've seen to Sun patches now appear to be locked behind an Oracle cu$tomer $upport login. Perhaps Oracle bludgeoned any open mirrors to death with stacks of C&D letters? Are there any open mirrors of old Solaris patches lurking out there? Or maybe somebody has a private stash of patches? The ones I need are these ones (or later versions): 108434-17 108435-17 108652-79 108773-18 109704-03 111721-04 114542-01 I have older versions of all but the last one already, which I fetched a few years ago. But the older versions won't allow Firefox 2 (which is the latest browser I've found for Solaris 8 so far) to run. I have Netscape 4.76 on the machine, which is too old to deal well with the modern web. I'm not sure how much better Firefox 2 will be, but I'd like to find out! -- Mark J. Blair, NF6X <nf6x at nf6x.net> http://www.nf6x.net/

10 years, 4 months

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Non-baking cure for sticky shed?

by mattislind＠gmail.com

I was trying to archive a bunch of 8 inch floppy disks. Everything was well until I tried an Inmac brand disk. It had severe sticky shed problems. Since it was a non-important disk it wasn't that bad. Baking might solve the problem so before continuing with the rest of the Inmac branded disks with more valuable content I searched internet for knowhow on baking. Then I found this article https://www.questia.com/library/journal/1G1-359998950/the-new-non-baking-cu… on a cure for the sticky shed without baking the tape. I haven't read the article in ARSC since I am not a member. But maybe someone knows what this is about? /Mattis

10 years, 4 months

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PDP-11/03, LSI-11 KEV11-C CIS option

by spacewar＠gmail.com

On Sun, Jan 31, 2016 at 12:51 PM, Brian L. Stuart <blstuart at bellsouth.net> wrote: > I'll be glad to loan them to you for the good of the community and history. That would be great, thanks! I'll email you my contact information. Could you please post the markings of the other 40-pin chips as well, and/or a photograph? Best regards, Eric

10 years, 4 months

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PDP-11/03, LSI-11 KEV11-C CIS option

by blstuart＠bellsouth.net

On Sat, 1/30/16, Eric Smith <spacewar at gmail.com> wrote: > Does anyone have a PDP-11/03 or LSI-11 with the KEV11-C CIS > (Commercial Instruction Set) option? It may have also been known as > DIS (Dibol Instruction Set).? It apparently consists of two microcode > ROM chips (MICROMs), 23-004B5 and 23-005B5. Eric, It turns out my quad height LSI-11 card has the 23-004B5 and 23-005B5 chips on it. The full markings are: DEC 3025D 23-004B5 8030 B and DEC 3026 D (or maybe B) 23-005B5 8015 C I'll be glad to loan them to you for the good of the community and history. BLS

10 years, 4 months

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Can Windows 98SE run on an Intel I7 with SATA hard drives?

by mark＠markesystems.com

From: jnc at mercury.lcs.mit.edu (Noel Chiappa) > > Win-98 SE ... it would have been nice if it recognized USB storage > > devices natively. > > There is that package you can add (my copy is in a self-extracting > archive, > called "nusb23e.exe") that recognizes USB drives, etc. I run a number of > USB > devices (memory sticks, mice, etc) on my 98SE's and they all work fine. Thanks for the tip - I wish I'd known about that 15 years ago! From: "Jerome H. Fine" <jhfinedp3k at compsys.to> >> >mark at markesystems.com wrote: >> >>> QUESTION: Is it even possible to run Win98SE on a current >>> Intel I7 CPU with SATA hard disk drives? I realize that it might >> >> Almost certainly not, at least practically. Even if you can get it to >> boot and install, it will have no idea how to handle any of the modern > > Then I am really confused. I have two older systems that > are able to run 64-bit Windows 7, an E8400 and a Q9550. > Both take SATA drives which are still available. The mother > > I can also still boot from both system using an old DOS 3.5" > floppy media and run Ghost 7.0 with these old SATA drives, > but as far as I can understand, using the device drivers on the > floppy drive. I believe that Win98 tries to use its own drivers for disk, but if it can't find any that work it just uses the ones built into the BIOS. Performance suffers, because all disk I/O becomes blocking, but it still works. With a modern disk with built-in cache, one probably wouldn't even notice the difference (except for the floppy). > Is it likely that either of these two systems be able to run > Win98SE with the SATA hard drives, in one case 500 GB > each and the other system has 1 TB drives. In that case, it I would expect that you could successfully boot and install Win98, although you couldn't use all the drive in one volume (FAT32 is good for a little over 100 gig); I've never tried partitioning up a terabyte drive and running Win98 on a appropriately-sized partition, but it seems like it might work OK. As above, the BIOS will take care of the fact that Win98 never heard of SATA, and also abstract the USB keyboard and I think the mouse to look like AT-type devices. As I mentioned, though, it won't know about the video adapter, so that will run in VGA 640x480 16-color mode; the sound card won't be available either, nor the network interface. VirtualBox simulates all nice period-style hardware for those things. > As I mentioned, the only two applications I would run would > be the DOS variant of Ersatz-11 and Netscape 7.2 for e-mail > and newsgroups. I suspect that both of those would run on Windows XP, and VirtualBox handles that extremely well. From: Chuck Guzis <cclist at sydex.com> > I didn't mention that I've got 98SE running on an 820 chipset > (RIMM/RDRAM is silly cheap now) with a Tuallie 1.4GHz in a Powerleap > slocket. It doesn't much agree with the Crystal CS4622 audio, but > perhaps that's just a matter of finding the right driver. As I predicted... :-) >> Windows 98 was supposed to support a maximum of 2GB of memory, however >> it has a bug in the Vcache driver which causes problems unless you limit > Exactly what I've done with 440GX system. Using a different XMS driver, > I keep a 1GB RAMdisk there. But it runs quite nicely in just 64 or 128 meg, which was much more typical of a machine of that period. > On faster, more modern systems, I use VirtualBox. Just not worth the > extra trouble finding drivers--but I suspect 98SE will run on P4 systems Yup, that's what seems to work best for me. From: "js at cimmeri.com" <js at cimmeri.com> > The one thing I'm not seeing mentioned > in re VirtualBox is that what if you > have a legacy Win 98SE system with > hardware in it, like a GPIB card or > sound card? Or if you have software > that talks to hardware via serial or > parallel ports eg. eprom burners, Zector > ZVG vector graphic driver for MAME, etc. Yup, that's true. VirtualBox will provide one or two com ports (optionally mapped to the real host ports, or just pipes to other virtual machines), but it doesn't support the parallel port. And as you've pointed out, any specialized hardware won't work at all (because the backplane doesn't really exist). > The other hassle is having to > essentially rebuild an Win98 (or any > other) machine from scratch in order to > try to replicate an existing setup. I Also true... From: Josh Dersch <derschjo at gmail.com> > everything else, you're SOL. I could see it being possible to modify > VirtualBox to support parallel port forwarding or other exotic hardware Wow! I guess it is open source, but that would be quite a bit of work, I expect. If you do it, let me know - I've got an old Needham's PROM programmer that would be nice to have working again. From: John Foust <jfoust at threedee.com> > No one has mentioned the Windows Virtual PC, a Microsoft product, > that lets you run Windows XP apps in a virtual environment under > Windows 7 Pro, letting XP apps run in their natural window on > the 7 desktop, or you can run the virtual XP machine desktop > in its own window. I used an earlier version of Virtual PC on XP, and found that it worked fairly well, although it was very resource intensive. So many applications failed to run correctly on Win7 that Microsoft felt compelled to make a very tightly integrated version for that operating system (Pro or greater only); it was pretty neat how tightly integrated it was. That's how I ran QuickBooks and a couple of other recalcitrant programs, but it wasn't a panacea. In particular, applications that had several programs running simultaneously, especially if they communicated via DDE (DDEML) were still broken, and the tight integration was always a little scary to me. (If I fired up a "stand-alone" XP machine, it would always want to log off or shut down the one that had been running some other application, and because of the Draconian security, I was never sure that I'd be able to get it back...) > It will also run Windows 98, with a few gotchas: This is what I did with the earlier Virtual PC on top of XP, and it worked fairly well. Like VirtualBox, it's free, but I find that VirtualBox tries to do less integration "magic", and therefore feels like a more stable and clearly delineated product. I've seen no mention of Virtual PC on Win8 / 8.1 / 10 - does it still exist, and is that "XP-mode" feature still available? ~~ Mark Moulding

10 years, 4 months

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Preferred way of substituting TFT for CRT Monitor?

by Martin.Hepperle＠dlr.de

I have got a HP 9000/217 machine with a standard video card. This card has a monochrome composite output (resolution is as low as about 512x400, but I might replace it with a higher resolution card). A small 9" HP monitor that I used for testing only shows me 2 or 3 bands of the image and cannot capture the signal properly. All I have are modern TFT monitors which usually have VGA and/or DVI inputs, no separate R-G-B or monochrome jacks. What is the preferred way to connect "old" composite video signals to a modern TFT monitor without losing too much sharpness? I understand that interpolation is an unavoidable problem. Searching the internet did not give me a clear answer. Do you have any recommendations? Thank you, Martin

10 years, 4 months

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Any hope for CBM VIC-1525 Printers & ribbons?

by drlegendre＠gmail.com

Has anyone found a source for replacement ribbons, or even re-inking supplies, for the Commodore VIC-1525 printer? This printer was manufactured in Japan by Seikosha for CBM, and was also sold in the USA by Radio Shack, re-badged under the Tandy / TRS-80 brand. For reference - The VIC-1525 employs an odd two-cassette ribbon system, that uses a continuous-loop ribbon only about 24" in total length. One cassette contains a spring tensioner mechanism, with the second cassette holding the inking roller and (friction?) gear. The ribbon loop is strung side-to-side between the two cartridges, with the front strand passing in front of the print head, and the rear strand passing through the ribbon advance clutch. Google turns up nothing, except for some homebrew recipes for making new ink.. and one site offering exorbitantly priced NOS ribbons that are just as likely dried up. Thanks for any & all input..

10 years, 4 months

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Substituting DSHD for DSDD disks (or DS2D if you prefer)

by echristopherson＠gmail.com

I know Chuck Guzis has written about this, but I don't see that he's done so publicly in the last few years, so I thought I'd ask here about his and others' views on the perennial question of whether (some) 3.5" DSHD disks can be reliably used in DSDD-only drives. The oft-repeated claim is that writing can appear to work just fine, but that even a few months later read errors will occur. On <http://www.retrotechnology.com/herbs_stuff/guzis.html> Chuck was quoted as (actually, correct me if I'm wrong -- it's a little hard to be sure this was Chuck's words) as saying "Usually, they're just fine, with the error rate approximately the same, whether or not 2D or HD media was used." Just before that, he said "I think that the overall quality of DSHD 3.5" media isn't what it used to be, so that might contribute to the general impression that 3.5" HD diskettes used as 2D aren't reliable. I have problems enough finding reliable 3.5" DSHD floppies used as such." Chuck et al., what's your feeling now, both on the overall reliability of HD disks in DD drives, and on whether it depends on how recently the disks were produced? Elsewhere on the page (I don't recall now if it was Herb or Chuck that said it) it was conjectured that HD disks that have never been formatted as HD, -OR- disks that have gone through a good degaussing, will have better luck retaining data. What does everyone think about this? And would an electromagnetic library security system (the kind that's like a tube through which checked-out materials are put; often with a caution not to put tapes or floppies through it) be a suitable degausser? -- Eric Christopherson

10 years, 4 months

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Big-Board II & Micro Cornucopia User Group Disks?

by james.h.simpson＠gmail.com

I'm a retired software engineer. My first home computer was a Z80 CP/M system built on the Big-Board II back in the mid '80s. I bought a bare board kit and went from there. It took me several months to collect all the parts before I had a running system. After discovering some very old M80 assembler listings while rummaging in my basement, I've been bit by the "nostalgia bug" so I dug out my old system and powered it on. It still runs after all of these years. The problem is that I've lost most of my old 5.25 media and therefore the system utilities . I'm looking for any Big-Board II system disk images/files I can find. I'm also trying to recover all of the Micro Cornucopia UG diskette data. Ultimately I want to put all of that old data on optical media for safe keeping. I'm looking for any BB-II stuff or Micro-C user group disk stuff. Help here will be much appreciated! Thanks, Jim Simpson

10 years, 4 months

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Can Windows 98SE run on an Intel I7 with SATA hard drives?

by jnc＠mercury.lcs.mit.edu

> From: CuriousMarc > I could run Explorer 5.5, but never 6.0. ?? 6.0 runs fine on all my 98SE machines. If you need to get to a later Web site (many don't work with older IE's now), there is a version of Opera (9.80, Version/10.63) which works under 98SE and makes most sites accessible. There are only a _very_ few where I have to use another browser running under a later Windows. Noel

10 years, 4 months

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What to Do with a PS/2?

by nf6x＠nf6x.net

To my surprise, I found something just barely old enough to interest me on the e-waste pile at work: An IBM PS/2 85 from around 1993 or so. The hard drive is long gone and it didn't include a keyboard, but it did come with a model 8516 touch screen display and original mouse. I already had a nice Model M to plug into it, plus some scsi2sd adapters sitting around waiting for projects like this one. I'm new to the PS/2 line, but after some poking around I found images of the reference and diagnostic disks necessary to set this machine up. I also found the ADF file needed for the Cabletron ethernet card in it. The machine has 12M of parity RAM, with one SIMM slot pair still open. It has a 2.88M 3.5" floppy and a 1.2M 5.25" floppy. The 5.25" floppy is a motor-eject style which I haven't encountered before. This model has a 486SX 33MHz CPU, and the math coprocessor socket is empty. Aside from a bunch of dust that I cleaned out, it's in pretty nice cosmetic shape. This particular model was intended for duty as a server. I've been posting pictures of the machine on Twitter over the last few days, starting on 1/21/2016: https://twitter.com/nf6x/media I replaced the CMOS battery (conveniently, a CR2032 coin cell, available at the local supermarket), reconfigured the CMOS settings, set up a scsi2sd as four emulated 512M SCSI hard drives, milled a pair of generic PC hard drive mounting rails to length for use in a PS/2, and installed MS-DOS 6.22 on it. OS/2 2.0 would probably be more appropriate for this machine, but I don't have it. I see original OS/2 2.0 boxes in the shrink wrap on eBay, but eBay and I are seeing other people at this time. Well, I seem to have it fully working aside from not having suitable software installed to test out the touch screen and networking card. The monitor sometimes makes a bit of high-pitch whine which by some miracle I can still hear. Younger folks might find it objectionable. I wonder if it would be effective as a child repellant? :) Thankfully, it doesn't seem to set my dogs to howling. And now that it is cleaned up and working, I have no clue about what to do with it! I just didn't want to see it go to the landfill or end up as toxic dust in some poor guy's lungs in India, so I got permission and then carted it home. I am not normally interested in PC-family machines, but actual IBM ones interest me a bit. And the countless ways IBM found to make the PS/2 line incompatible with regular PC lines give me things to bitch about, and that in turn gives my life purpose. :) So, would any of y'all like to help me brainstorm about interesting applications for this vintage heap, or maybe point me towards non-eBay sources of software that it would like to run? -- Mark J. Blair, NF6X <nf6x at nf6x.net> http://www.nf6x.net/

10 years, 4 months

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IBM 3101-12 ASCII terminal - need fuse holder

by seefriek＠gmail.com

Wow...that fired some old brain cells. I saved one of these around 86-87 and had it hooked to a VAX/BSD4 system for a while. All I really remember about it was that it was pretty well made but after wasting too much time mucking about I could never finesse a termcap entry for it that didn't have some more or less annoying corner-case breakage. I suspected that even though it had a serial port and "VT compatibility", IBM didn't much want to encourage anyone hooking one up to a non-IBM system. KJ

10 years, 4 months

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Can Windows 98SE run on an Intel I7 with SATA hard drives?

by jhfinedp3k＠compsys.to

I run Windows 98SE on a 14 year old Pentium III. I have replaced the power supply twice and all three hard disk drives. It is a really good system to run the Ersatz-11 emulator for the PDP-11, specifically RT-11. Since Ersatz-11 has built-in VT100 emulation, I don't need a separate terminal emulator. I also run Netscape 7.2 for e-mail and newsgroups. And that is all - no surfing the internet or google of any sort. Incidentally, I use Ghost 7.0 for backups to DVDs. Aside from the daylight savings time changing 3 weeks too late in the spring and a week early in the fall, I really like the system and I would like to use it for another 20 years. Since I am 77 years old now, I figure that will be just about satisfactory. The Pentium III hardware is more than a bit of a concern. I would be very pleased to upgrade to 64-bit Windows 10, but the DOS variant of Ersatz-11 is not supported and I really would prefer to keep using Netscape 7.2 since I have over 100,000 e-mails and posts to newsgroups that it is important to be able to keep. QUESTION: Is it even possible to run Win98SE on a current Intel I7 CPU with SATA hard disk drives? I realize that it might be possible under a virtual machine, but I really want all of the advantages that Win98SE provides. One problem, of course, is that there must be a patch to Win98SE when more than 1 GB of actual physical RAM is present. But I can't seem to find out anything else. What leads me to believe that there is a reasonable chance is that the IDENTICAL 3.5" floppy media is able to boot DOS >from drive A: and run on both the Pentium III (with a 3.5" HD floppy drive, of course) AND on a Q9550 Core 2 quad CPU which also has a 3.5" HD floppy drive which currently runs 64-bit Windows 7 from the C: drive, of course, using three SATA hard drives where the C: drive has an NTFS file structure and all the other partitions on all of the SATA drives have a FAT32 file structure. So without really understanding the details of the device drivers and the BIOS, it would seem that the SATA drive hardware and software is compatible. Ghost 7.0 is a file on the F: drive of the Q9550 CPU (first extended partition of the 1st physical SATA hard drive). Ghost is able to take a file produced as a backup image on the Pentium III system (and copied over the router connecting the Pentium III and the Q9500 systems - that also provides internet access for both systems) and re-create the same files on a specified partition on the Q9550 via the Ghost 7.0 program while the Q9550 is booted from the 3.5" floppy media. Since the SATA hard drives on the Q9550 system don't seem to have a problem with DOS on the floppy, then I have some hope that Win98SE could manage them as well. Has anyone experience or knowledge about being able to run Win98SE using an Intel I7 CPU with SATA hard drives all of them using a FAT32 file structure? Alternatively, does it seem reasonable to attempt to keep a system with a Pentium III CPU and associated hardware running for another 20 years? Jerome Fine

10 years, 4 months

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VCF East exhibit registration is open

by evan＠snarc.net

VCF East is April 15-17; the exhibit halls are open April 16-17 (April 15 is all tech repair classes -- to be announced soon). Click here to register an exhibit: http://tinyurl.com/htlfsmh

10 years, 4 months

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CDC Sabre 8" SMD blues

by ian.finder＠gmail.com

Hi folks, I recently picked up a Symbolics system built around an 8" Control Data Corp. Sabre hard drive. Some files read when I show the FEP directory listing but many show as "Error reading file header, wrong pkid read" which I assume is some sort of FEP FS integrity check. In short, the drive becomes ready and much of the data appears still there, but I have some brand of consistent read errors that preclude the machine from booting. It's not a software issue as the machine was deinstalled in a working condition. Anyone familiar with these terrible drives? Am I totally up the creek? I tried a couple different orientations. Thanks, - Ian Sent from Outlook Mobile

10 years, 4 months

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What to Do with a PS/2?

by john.h.blake＠gmail.com

Vetusware is highly unreliable and tries to charge for accounts, which isn't worth it at all because most of the things I've gotten from there haven't worked. Try: https://winworldpc.com/library Their images are tested, I've used the OS/2 Warp 4 images to install on an old thinkpad 760. I'd also suggest you try some other OSes, Nextstep 3.3 should work (and may have network drivers), as well as Unixware, GEM (on top of DOS), and possibly even AT&T SVR4 or one of the later Xenix variants. If you do decide to go with OS/2, you should also be able to find native applications and development tools there too. --- This email has been checked for viruses by Avast antivirus software. https://www.avast.com/antivirus

10 years, 4 months

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Decimal Adjust Accumulator on the 4004

by kylevowen＠gmail.com

I'm currently writing a bit of code for the 4004 at the moment, and playing with it in the online Javascript emulator found here: http://e4004.szyc.org/emu/ According to http://e4004.szyc.org/iset.html (which I believe is copied straight from the MCS-4 Users Manual), the DAA instruction should increment the accumulator by 6 if carry is set or if the accumulator is greater than 9. Carry should be set following the instruction if the resulting addition generated a carry; otherwise it's unaffected. Let's say the accumulator is currently 9, carry is not set. I add another 9. Accumulator is now 2 with a carry. Running DAA should turn this into 8 with carry set, indicating that 9+9=(1)8. Am I thinking through this correctly? I ask, because according to the simulator's source code, DAA won't do that, if I'm following it correctly: function opDAA() { //DAA Decimal Adjust Accumulator if(A_reg > 9) A_reg += 6; C_flag=0; if (A_reg & 0xf0) {A_reg&=0xf; C_flag=1;} incPC(); } It says that it'll only add 6 if the accumulator is greater than 9, not if a carry is already set. It will then reset carry and set it if and only if there was a carry. Have I found a bug in the simulator? Am I misreading the MCS-4 Users Manual? In any event, this is my proposed fix to better match what the instruction description says: function opDAA() { //DAA Decimal Adjust Accumulator if((A_reg > 9) | (C_flag)) A_reg += 6; if (A_reg & 0xf0) {A_reg&=0xf; C_flag=1;} incPC(); } Seems to work as I would expect it to. Thanks, Kyle

10 years, 4 months

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Can Windows 98SE run on an Intel I7 with SATA gard drives?

by jhfinedp3k＠compsys.to

>mark at markesystems.com wrote: >> Date: Thu, 28 Jan 2016 11:44:44 -0500 >> From: "Jerome H. Fine" <jhfinedp3k at compsys.to> >> Subject: Can Windows 98SE run on an Intel I7 with SATA gard drives? >> >> I run Windows 98SE on a 14 year old Pentium III. I have >> replaced the power supply twice and all three hard disk drives. > >> QUESTION: Is it even possible to run Win98SE on a current >> Intel I7 CPU with SATA hard disk drives? I realize that it might >> be possible under a virtual machine, but I really want all of the >> advantages that Win98SE provides. One problem, of course, > > > Almost certainly not, at least practically. Even if you can get it to > boot and install, it will have no idea how to handle any of the modern > peripherals, and drivers certainly won't be available. So sound won't > work, the screen will be limited to VGA-16, and I'm not sure about the > keyboard and mouse (there's a reasonable chance that the BIOS will > emulate the legacy PS-2 devices, just as it's abstracting the details > of the SATA disks). Then I am really confused. I have two older systems that are able to run 64-bit Windows 7, an E8400 and a Q9550. Both take SATA drives which are still available. The mother boards are ASUS5B. I would guess they are both about 7 years old and I would hope that some of that old hardware might be a bit easier to find. I can also still boot from both system using an old DOS 3.5" floppy media and run Ghost 7.0 with these old SATA drives, but as far as I can understand, using the device drivers on the floppy drive. Is it likely that either of these two systems be able to run Win98SE with the SATA hard drives, in one case 500 GB each and the other system has 1 TB drives. In that case, it would still be possible to use current SATA drives, but the 1 GB limit on physical memory for Win98SE would need to be patched. By the way, the Pentium III that is 12 years old has 768 MB of memory, so it is possible to run Win98SE with more than 500 MB of physical memory. As I mentioned, the only two applications I would run would be the DOS variant of Ersatz-11 and Netscape 7.2 for e-mail and newsgroups. Jerome Fine

10 years, 4 months

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[SPAM key] - Re: Can Windows 98SE run on an Intel I7 with SATA gard drives?

by jhfinedp3k＠compsys.to

>mark at markesystems.com wrote: >> Date: Thu, 28 Jan 2016 11:44:44 -0500 >> From: "Jerome H. Fine" <jhfinedp3k at compsys.to> >> Subject: Can Windows 98SE run on an Intel I7 with SATA gard drives? >> >> I run Windows 98SE on a 14 year old Pentium III. I have >> replaced the power supply twice and all three hard disk drives. > >> QUESTION: Is it even possible to run Win98SE on a current >> Intel I7 CPU with SATA hard disk drives? I realize that it might >> be possible under a virtual machine, but I really want all of the >> advantages that Win98SE provides. One problem, of course, > > Almost certainly not, at least practically. Even if you can get it to > boot and install, it will have no idea how to handle any of the modern > peripherals, and drivers certainly won't be available. So sound won't > work, the screen will be limited to VGA-16, and I'm not sure about the > keyboard and mouse (there's a reasonable chance that the BIOS will > emulate the legacy PS-2 devices, just as it's abstracting the details > of the SATA disks). Then I am really confused. I have two older systems that are able to run 64-bit Windows 7, an E8400 and a Q9550. Both take SATA drives which are still available. The mother boards are ASUS5B. I would guess they are both about 7 years old and I would hope that some of that old hardware might be a bit easier to find. I can also still boot from both system using an old DOS 3.5" floppy media and run Ghost 7.0 with these old SATA drives, but as far as I can understand, using the device drivers on the floppy drive. Is it likely that either of these two systems be able to run Win98SE with the SATA hard drives, in one case 500 GB each and the other system has 1 TB drives. In that case, it would still be possible to use current SATA drives, but the 1 GB limit on physical memory for Win98SE would need to be patched. By the way, the Pentium III that is 12 years old has 768 MB of memory, so it is possible to run Win98SE with more than 500 MB of physical memory. As I mentioned, the only two applications I would run would be the DOS variant of Ersatz-11 and Netscape 7.2 for e-mail and newsgroups. Jerome Fine

10 years, 4 months

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Front Panels

by rodsmallwood52＠btinternet.com

Hi Guys What a week! First I had to reject a batch of panels because some text was not centered right. Then whilst the matt black on the front gave a really nice finish I felt the resistance to abrasion could be better. So I've switched to a silk textured surface base material. It mimics the diffuse layer on the front side of the original board really well. But of course it resists abrasion better (because its the surface of the actual material and not just a coating) and also it provides a better key for the inks to adhere to. It gives the same effect of there being a front matt black layer as did the original. It looked good on the sample. It still leaves me the option to put black on the front if needed. I took the opportunity to add rounded corners and have them drill the big hole for the key lock Next the great US snow storm stopped shipments to the US (they are still not caught up) and then my email stated acting up. Some emails came through and some didn't. Any way it looks like I am just about back on track.: The first batch of predrilled silk textured front panel blanks are due now and the silk screen shop will run them when they arrive. The new packaging has arrived. The shippers will start to accept new parcels for the US on Monday or Tuesday. Finally they fixed my email late yesterday and its still OK. Rod

10 years, 4 months

1
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