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

Heathkit H8 and other items on Minneapolis craigslist

by spam＠hell.org

Hey, all. I was browsing various craigslist places around the US and found someone selling off a substantial collection of classic micros outside Minneapolis His ad is here: https://minneapolis.craigslist.org/csw/sys/d/silver-lake-vintage-computer-c… Through our email chats I've determined that he has these components of an old Heathkit system of unknown workingness: H8 H17-3 floppy drive H17-2 drive chassis Zenith data systems ZVM-131 monitor Also, he has a terminal made by Data-100, for which I can't find much info but I suspect will be a 3270-compatible terminal of some sort. He also has a variety of micros, particularly some Atari 8-bit, Apple II , CoCos, and other things. The photos in the ad only show a fraction of what he has. He's not terribly knowledgeable - he came into this stuff as part of an estate cleanout and had 4 pickup truck loads of this stuff, so who knows what has been lost. I let him know that I would be posting here, so feel free to reach out to him directly. Anyway, I figured I'd post this here given that someone in the Minneapolis area might be interested in checking some of this stuff out, in a covid-compliant manner, of course... -mike

6 years, 1 month

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Was looking for old suns

by silvercreekvalley＠yahoo.com

Hi Thanks for the replies with the Suns, hopefully I will be able to get one up and running :) As I should probably clear a bit of space in the ?office? - I have several bits of kit available. I?m in the UK. HP Visualise 86000 - complete system with keyboard/mouse - nice condition Several QBUS 11/53 machines with HD (5M I think), two pedestal, the rest ?rack mount? units. DEC alpha - not sure on model number but functional VAX 3000 - boots but needs restoration case is in poor condition. PM me if any of the above is of interest. I could probably ship some of the items. Thanks Ian

6 years, 1 month

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Pdp cpus

by 821＠128.ca

Interesting stuff https://github.com/1801BM1/cpu11

6 years, 1 month

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Fwd: Hopefully on topic

by crockett.martin＠gmail.com

Hi all, I now have just acquired a VT-100 and am in the process of checking it out. I noticed there is a capacitor that has vaporized, but I cant determine what value it is. I have the DEC VT-100 maintenance guide but it is very blurry in the relevant area. I cant even read the board designation. This is the area of the circuit, I can trace the 2 Zener diodes on the -23V rail, to one end of the cap, the other end seems to go to ground. The obvious culprit is C6, but that doesn't match the mud map of the board, as in C1x. https://imgur.com/a/tm8mn8b This is the capacitor in question. It looks like C1x where x is undetermined. I think it was a ceramic monolithic capacitor, it seems to be different to any other caps on the board, i.e. slightly larger and a different colour blue. When I look at this hires photos on Google images, it is the blue capacitor circled below Does anyone have a VT-100 and mind checking what the value of this capacitor is please? Ideally value and voltage or even just the nomenclature written on it, I can work out the value and voltage from that. Many thanks and Cheers, Martin...

6 years, 1 month

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Looking for old Suns

by silvercreekvalley＠yahoo.com

Hi Kevin/Stefan/Salik Thanks for the replies much appreciated. Looks like there might be a few of these systems around, so will see if I can pick one up. Willing to pay a reasonable fee for a system of course. Thanks Ian

6 years, 1 month

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Looking for old Suns

by salikmrafiq＠gmail.com

Have a chat with Peter Stokes peter at ashlyn.co.uk he has a number of older machines and some older SPARC station Salik

6 years, 1 month

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At&T Unix PC, Tape drive

by emu＠e-bbes.com

Hi, during my move, I think I lost my tape drive, which was attached to my at&t unix pc (68000 based). Anybody knows of the top of their head, if I could read the tapes on any other machine? Was it anything "standard", or did they do their own at at&t? Cheers & thanks!

6 years, 1 month

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Guy on vcfed offering old IBM lamps

by cclist＠sydex.com

He says "free for shipping". http://www.vcfed.org/forum/showthread.php?74590-FS-new-(OEM)-IBM-computer-5… I couldn[t get him to post a photo. He says he also has a bunch of old transistors from the Endicott plant. FWIW, Chuck

6 years, 1 month

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DIY Paper Tape Punch - Mechanism diagram?

by anders.k.nelson＠gmail.com

Hi all, I've had a paper tape reader for a while but never had a punch to make new tapes, and the ones i've found are not only very large but also very expensive. So I'm toying with the idea of making an open-source punch, but I can't find any detailed diagrams of how the mechanism works. I'm assuming (without any data to back it up) that there is a cam, an array of spring-levered pins, and horizontal spacers controlled by solenoids that bridge the gap between the cam and each punch pin when called for. Does anyone have insight into how reliable/fast paper tape punches work? -- Anders Nelson +1 (517) 775-6129 www.erogear.com

6 years, 1 month

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"scsi bus continuously busy"

by aperry＠snowmoose.com

Courtesy of a Raspberry Pi serving as the ND server, I am now able to load SunOS 3.5 over the network onto my 3/260 and it is now coming up into the OS. I am now seeing this error: >sc0 at vme24d16 200000 vec 0x40 >sd0 at sc0 slave 0 >si0: sc_cmd: scsi bus continuously busy >sc0: resetting scsi bus >sd1 at sc0 slave 1 >si0: sc_cmd: scsi bus continuously busy >sc0: resetting scsi bus The SCSI controller is the "Sun 2" SCSI card. I saw some corrosion-ish crap on the board and cleaned it off. It is SCSI, so, of course, I played with termination. No change in behavior. Is this likely to be a controller board problem or a device problem? Are these boards picky about SCSI devices? Any other suggestions? alan

6 years, 1 month

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DIY Paper Tape Punch - Mechanism diagram?

by jfoust＠threedee.com

At 07:18 AM 5/1/2020, Hugh Pyle via cctalk wrote: >I've cut Mylar tape with a Glowforge laser. It cuts very nicely but the >alignment is a major hassle, plus you can only cut ~15" of tape which >doesn't go very far. Not worth the effort. If you were to build a custom >linear drive it might work. But also very slow. Hmm. You could have N fixed lasers at the spots of potential holes, and then a mechanism to move the whole assembly of them in the shape of a single hole, drawing them all at once. You could have one laser on that moved precisely along the hole row, and use the same sort of mechanical motion to draw a hole. How much laser do you need to cut paper, how much to cut mylar? Were there any paper tape devices that did not use the sprocket holes to move the tape? - John

6 years, 1 month

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tape baking

by aek＠bitsavers.org

https://www.morressier.com/article/towards-understanding-thermal-remediatio…

6 years, 1 month

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Lear Sieglar Terminal

by sales＠elecplus.com

I have in my shop a small blue old Lear Sieglar terminal. I does power on, but it gets a screen full of garbage. It is missing numerous keycaps. There are several cracks in the case around the keyboard. Asking $200; local pickup only. Pictures on request. Cindy Croxton Electronics Plus 1613 Water Street Kerrville, TX 78028 830-370-3239 cell sales at elecplus.com -- This email has been checked for viruses by Avast antivirus software. https://www.avast.com/antivirus

6 years, 1 month

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In search of Three Rivers PERQ 1 Keyboard

by ian.finder＠gmail.com

Title says it. It saddens me that in this day and age I have to call this out but: ? This is for use with an actual real PERQ 1, not a Raspberry Pi running an emulator, nor something I?m looking for because I like to collect only the steering wheels off vintage Porsches because they ?feel nice? or ?look cool? or will ?make me a better programmer.? Actually perhaps a better analogy involves elephants and ivory... but I?m now off topic. Anyway- cruelty free, no-poach, free-range use intended. Thanks in advance for any leads or on-topic discussion of the keyboard protocol to tide me over in the meantime... With all the time on my hands from the shutdown it?d be great to make this system whole and start down the long path toward restoration.

6 years, 1 month

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Imlac/Hazeltine Dynagraphic terminals?

by derschjo＠gmail.com

Anyone have any idea if any Imlac/Hazeltine Dynagraphic terminals are still around? I've never heard tell of one beyond marketing information. These were late vector-graphics terminals made by Imlac Corporation after they got bought out by Hazeltine in the late 1970s. Any technical docs (programming, architecture) would be interesting to look at. And if anyone knows of one hiding in a basement somewhere... - Josh

6 years, 1 month

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Game Of Life, John H. Conway

by emu＠e-bbes.com

Not really on Classic Hardware, but we lost John Conway to corona :( And I think, most of us tried it on a terminal before ;-) Enjoyu in full HD: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KaBm4etcYFQ&feature=emb_logo RIP!

6 years, 1 month

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Wanted: Amiga 600 motherboard, NTSC

by ethan＠757.org

Looking for a working Amiga 600 NTSC motherboard. Would be interested in a was-working-before-cap-damage donor one as well. - Ethan

6 years, 1 month

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Re: ODD I DID NOT SEND THIS? Blog: RetroRetrospective – Fun today with yesterday's gear…

by couryhouse＠aol.com

In a message dated 4/26/2020 3:37:46 PM US Mountain Standard Time, Michael at jongleur.co.uk writes: On Mon, 27 Apr 2020 at 8:32 am, ED SHARPE via cctalk <cctalk at classiccmp.org> wrote:-- Blog: RetroRetrospective ? Fun today with yesterday's gear??..Podcast:?Retro Computing Roundtable?(Co-Host)

6 years, 1 month

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CRT from IBM terminal available

by p.gebhardt＠ymail.com

Hello list, I was contacted regarding the availability of a CRT from the terminal shown in this picture: http://www.robotrontechnik.de/bilder/Galerien/Computersammlung/Computersamm… Location is Germany. Please contact me offlist and I will establish the contact to the owner with you in case of interest. Best regards, Pierre ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- http://www.digitalheritage.de

6 years, 1 month

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Did anybody ever came across the DEC CI750 User Guide?

by p.gebhardt＠ymail.com

Hello all, the headline says it all. DEC document number is EK-CI750-UG I've been looking for that one for years but never came across a paper copy or scanned document. Does anybody know where to get one? The technical description and the schematics are available, though. Thanks for any feedback on this. Best regards, Pierre ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- http://www.digitalheritage.de

6 years, 1 month

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Emergency help needed

by sales＠elecplus.com

My warehouse got flooded. Is there anyone from Austin or SA that can help rescue kbds and old computers? Cindy Croxton Electronics Plus 1613 Water Street Kerrville, TX 78028 830-370-3239 cell sales at elecplus.com -- This email has been checked for viruses by Avast antivirus software. https://www.avast.com/antivirus

6 years, 1 month

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Got the RX01's running and TSX

by cz＠alembic.crystel.com

So I got the RX02 drive up and going with the RXV11 controller. Man it's interesting to hear those old disks *click*. Both work (which is good) and now I'm starting to look through my old disks. Interesting issue: Many of my disks are formatted RX02. So I need to dig out my RXV21 controller from some box around here and see if that works. I never liked the RXV21: It's only 18 bits, does DMA, and is quite weird in a 4mb pdp11. But I would like to get this data off. I also uncovered my old TSX disks. I have TSX+ 6.5, 6.4, and TSX 5.something here on double sided RX02 disks. Looks like my support contract ran out in 1991, I'll have to see about renewing that.... Anyone here still running TSX, or did everyone go to RSX11M+? C

6 years, 1 month

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IBM DCS/DCOS--how common?

by cclist＠sydex.com

This talk of old tape brings up a question that I wanted to ask the list. I've run into some tapes that say they were prepared on the IBM DCS setup (7044-coupled-to-7094) running DCOS. I confess to never having run into the 7044 in real life--it always seemed like an odd machine--basically, a 7094 Jr. There couldn't have been very many DCS setups, am I correct? --Chuck

6 years, 1 month

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LINC-8

by jnc＠mercury.lcs.mit.edu

> From: Bob Smith <bobsmithofd at gmail.com> > saw a comment that this belonged to CJL. Chris Lindblad? Sorry, I'm drawing a blank on someone with those initials who is connected with the LINC. > From: Jon Elson > Wow, those were fairly rare back when, and now there may only be a > couple in existence. Yeah, that's why I was hoping that someone connected to this community would get it, so we don't lose track of this rare artifact. I'd buy it, but i) it's not a PDP-11, and fails my 'PDP-11's only' test (intended to put a strict limit on the amount of junk I accumulate), and ii) I already have a whole bunch of PDP-11 gear I have yet to get to. :-( There's no way I would ever get to it. > Two complete CPUs, capable of running at the same time in shared memory > (I think). The documentation (1967 Small Computer Handbook) is unclear. It is clear that the general mode of operation was for only one CPU at a time to be running, but that appears to be to simplify programming (although it does say that "In the PDP-8 mode, the LINC subsystem is disabled"). The memory is indeed shared; it's on the PDP-8, and the LINC gains access via the standard PDP-8 'data break' (i.e. DMA) mechanism. Noel

6 years, 1 month

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FedEX unsurance issues

by jnc＠mercury.lcs.mit.edu

> From: Paul Koning > I suppose they still charge you an insurance fee according to what you > declared as the value? Yes, IIRC. > This seems like a pretty clear case of fraud, and you should report it > to the authorities. Well, at the time, I thought it was just a local manager being a hard-ass; so maybe not worth the effort of taking further steps. Now, of course, it looks more like a policy change, but the incident I was a party to is now many months ago, so perhaps not optimal for reporting. Noel

6 years, 1 month

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FedEX unsurance issues

by jnc＠mercury.lcs.mit.edu

Hi, a heads-up on sending expensive items via FedEx. They appear to have a new policy, limiting honouring insurance coverage; so, in my opinion, they are now unsuitable for shipping valuable items. Data point 1: a couple of months back, I bought a PDP-11/40 on eBait. It was shipped via FedEx in two separate packages: one with boards, and one holding the chassis/front-panel. They somehow managed to lose the second box - and then refused to fully pay out the insurance coverage on that box. We provided them with data on an open eBay auction for an identical item, to prove that our valuation was not inflated, but it didn't help - they only paid out a reduced amout, not what the thing was worth, and _what we had insured it for_ (even though _they_ lost it). Data point 2: I collect Japanese woodblock prints; a large dealer I do business with used to do all their shipping via FedEx - dozens of shipments per week - but as of yesterday I as informed that they are now switching. Why? FedEx lost a valuable, insured, package - and would only pay out US1K on it, not the full insured value, leaving the dealer to absorb most of the loss (several US$K). There's a clear pattern here; FedEx is refusing to honour the full insurance coverage when an item is lost. So I wouldn't ship anythihg valuable via FedEx unless you can find an outside insurer to cover it - since Fedex's own insurance coverage now often cannot be relied upon. Noel

6 years, 1 month

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DX.sys for RT11 5.5

by cz＠alembic.crystel.com

Quick question: Does anyone have a copy of dx.sys for RT11 version 5.5? I'm getting my RX01 disk running but don't seem to have this driver and the 5.1 driver does. not. work. under 5.5 Thanks! Chris

6 years, 1 month

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Ok, got the Perq tapes

by cz＠alembic.crystel.com

Ok, so this evening I went back to the house to do a quick evacuation of the most critical stuff and take some better pictures. This time I brought a massive xeon flashlight which helps to get quicker pictures with less shake. I also picked up a pile of Perq boards, and all the DC600 tapes and floppies I could take out. The car was loaded with them, someone is going to have to curate these. But since I know that the most important thing is the software and not the hardware I decided this is what to get as the top priority. There appears to be a third Perq in there as well on the other side of the basement. No big drives (14 inch or 8 inch) but a lot of MFM and SCSI disks. Couldn't grab those, too heavy. I'm going to put together a list of people and see if I can figure out a way to get things out. The garage is blocked by an old car, and this stuff will not go up the steps. Too narrow. Never dull. Latest pictures are at https://www.crystel.com/bob (I moved the old ones to a subfolder). I also took a better set of pictures of the VME boards, look like Sun boards. C

6 years, 1 month

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Wake-on-LAN, teletype style

by steven＠malikoff.com

I've started scanning a few more of the BHP docs I recovered a while back, and thought this one was interesting. A 1973 gizmo that buffers just enough received data for a relay to close and power up a teleprinter's motor to operating speed before printing, apparently half a second was sufficient it reckons. The buffering is through a pair of 64 x 4-bit Fairchild 3341 FIFO memory chips. https://archive.org/details/utec-bmc-6092-buffered-idle-line-motor-control-… One of the other docs mentions they had an ASR33 with this buffered motor control installed connected to PDP-11/10. Steve.

6 years, 1 month

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Bob Davis and old computer stuff

by jnc＠mercury.lcs.mit.edu

> From: Chris Zach > We have to move fast though, this needs to be cleaned out. How can > people help me on this? I'm sure there must be institutions that would love to have the PERQs; they were very important machines, historically, and are quite rare. Alas, although I'd normally be up for helping in such a recovery operation (I'm in Virginia), I'm recovering from a moderate case of Covid19 (didn't have to go to hospital, luckily, but I had a bad fever), and am still pretty weak, so it's probably beyond me at this point. Noel

6 years, 1 month

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Cybernetics Data Products scrolling LED sign

by charlesmorris800＠centurytel.net

I'm trying to repair a partially functioning Cybernetics Data Products ADT-2002 scrolling LED sign from the early 80's. Previous owner said there was a power failure or lightning strike, don't remember which, and gave it to me. The brief version of the instructions are taped to the keyboard, and that is the only manual I can find. Power supply is functional and delivering 5 volts where it should. On boot it's supposed to say "UNIT OPERATIONAL" on the display before plugging in the keyboard ribbon cable. There is garbage displayed instead. When the keyboard is plugged in, the display responds to start/stop scroll (green and red keys), and messages can be input. The memory (yellow key) and control (blue key) functions don't seem to work. There actually is a microprocessor (8048 or 8051), but inside the keyboard only. Another observation: The display only scrolls a couple of characters, jumps back to the beginning and repeats forever. But the actual display board has a 24-pin Harris PROM (fuse link), seven 2102's 1K memory for the 7 rows of LEDs and many 7400 TTL including? 4-bit counters, comparators and adders. No CPU at all, so it must be a state machine, and a fairly complex one at that unless some of the "smarts" are actually in the keyboard microprocessor. The cable from the keyboard connects directly to the PROM without any buffering. I have found that only the lowest 4 bits of the memory address lines have activity on them, which explains why two characters scroll before it repeats (16 columns). I can't find anything strange looking (e.g. non-TTL levels) on the middle and upper nibbles except that they don't move. There does not seem to be any information on this unit online. I'd like to find a repair manual (probably too long a long shot), but even a schematic would save a lot of hair pulling! Thanks for any help.

6 years, 1 month

2
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Fixed my pdt11/150

by cz＠alembic.crystel.com

So I've had a boat anchor pdt11/150 here for awhile. It's probably one of the weirdest pdp11s ever built: An 11/03 CPU ish, six serial ports, ish, and a pair of RX01 drives. Ish. The trick is the system is very closed in: There are 4 boards inside with a lot of early microprocessors to do the IO instead of a real Q bus. The bottom board is a controller that is sort of like an RX01 but instead of using the DX: driver it uses a special PD: driver. The CPU connects to this with a 14 pin DIP ribbon cable, and on the back of the CPU module is a 64kb memory module and a serial module that has a console, printer, modem and three additional serial ports that are their own thing. Problem with this one was that it would not come up. Serial tests seemed to fail using an error code of waiting for input which didn't make a lot of sense. So today I decided to pull the serial board and see if I could swap the UARTs. I quickly figured out the problem: The serial board "connects" to the main board by two sets of bars with three screws each that hold the board to an interconnecting header that sends the signals. As soon as I loosened the screws I realized that the header isn't connecting to pins on either board, it literally presses against pads on the boards that complete the circuit. Nothing but pressure and springiness holds it together. No screw, pin and socket, anything. With that I cleaned off the headers and wiped down the pads on the boards till they shined like the top of the chrystler building. I then reassembled and torqued the screws down evenly, finishing with the center screw first followed by the outside screws. It is to note that the hinges that hold the CPU and memory/serial boards to the body of this thing attach to the bottom of those screws so when you open it up you are flexing the assembly and probably stretching the screws a bit. Which results in bad contact... Plugged it in and all is well. RT-11SJ (S) V05.01C .DIR SY: SPCINV.SAV 10 21-Mar-1989 OTHELO.SAV 45 21-Mar-1989 SPCINV.DAT 1 21-Mar-1989 TODAY .SAV 20 22-Feb-1988 DECMAN.SAV 14 21-Mar-1989 SPACWR.SAV 13 21-Mar-1989 STRTRK.SAV 54 21-Mar-1989 SWAP .SYS 26P 27-Jul-1984 RT11SJ.SYS 64P 19-Jun-1988 TT .SYS 2P 19-Jun-1988 PD .SYS 3P 19-Jun-1988 DX .SYS 4P 21-Jan-2000 PIP .SAV 30P 21-Jan-2000 DUP .SAV 52P 21-Jan-2000 DIR .SAV 20P 21-Jan-2000 15 Files, 358 Blocks 128 Free blocks Another little DEC mystery solved. One odd thing about these: There are only four chip slots for the CPU and microcode, but one of the carriers has two dies on it so the system *does* have EIS and FIS instructions. Why not... Chris

6 years, 1 month

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LINC-8

by jnc＠mercury.lcs.mit.edu

Wow: https://www.ebay.com/itm/353062352448 I've read manuals for these, but I've never even seen a picture of one before. Noel

6 years, 1 month

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No subject

by couryhouse＠aol.com

6 years, 1 month

1
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Bob Davis and old computer stuff

by cz＠alembic.crystel.com

Hi! Does anyone here remember Bob Davis? C

6 years, 1 month

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Bob pictures from 2005, it's like the titanic....

by cz＠alembic.crystel.com

The outpouring of messages and help has been quite inspirational. It seems that the Perq data is really important, so I will be going back today for a bit to try and get the boxes of data tapes out of there. DC600's, I'm sure they will need to be restored somehow but I'll try to get them. In the meantime here are 4 pictures from 2005 of the stash. To be honest almost nothing has changed between then and now, it was like looking at pictures of the titanic from 1912 and today. https://www.crystel.com/bob/bob%201.jpg https://www.crystel.com/bob/bob%202.jpg https://www.crystel.com/bob/bob%203.jpg https://www.crystel.com/bob/bob%204.jpg Chris

6 years, 1 month

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pdp11/84 PMI memory: What is the problem with Q bus?

by mark＠matlockfamily.com

> I actually have -B/-C boards, I should plug one in in QBUS mode, and get my > QSIC prototype working again (it somehow random failed during the last year, > and I've been too lazy to debug it), and write a little program to DMA blocks > in and out, and see what happens to the data. If I get really energetic I > could throw a 'scope on the bus and look at bus cycles and see if they look > OK. > > It would be interesting to have some more detail on the failure. > > Noel Noel, The experiments you describe above would be very interesting! In the accidental tests I did using -C boards in an 11/83, RSX booted ok and ran for a good bit but I think errors Started to accumulate due to bad DMA writes that either were written to the wrong logical block Or the data written was scrambled. When this happened on my BA23 11/83 I scratched my head Took the boards to a BA123 11/83 and repeated the mistake. Fortunately I use two SCSI2SD devices In each system and leave one identical unit unmounted except during disk to disk backups. With good memory boards I was able to do a disk to disk restore and recover everything up to My last backup. > And that might make sense: PMI memory responds to the Q bus just like > normal memory. So from a Q bus device perspective it's just boring old > memory and thus no speed improvement. What might speed up is if I did > memory to memory (VM0:) copies, but with only 2mb running at the moment > there's not a lot of time to check for performance differences. Chris, I think the way that you see the biggest performance improvements in PMI over Q22 memory Is when you have heavy asynchronous I/O happening at the same time the CPU is compute bound And the memory access is not well cached due to the type of programs being run. This is more Likely to happen in a busy multi-user environment. RSX has a tool IOX that was developed to load a RSX system and simulate multiple users. The CPU can get at memory via the PMI and not be delayed Waiting on the Q22 bus. This is particularly helpful with larger block mode Q22 transfers that don?t cause CPU memory access delays. Mark

6 years, 1 month

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Dixie Canner CPT 8000?

by anders.k.nelson＠gmail.com

https://www.ebay.com/itm/143536589578 What in the world is this?

6 years, 1 month

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pdp11/84 PMI memory: What is the problem with Q bus?

by jnc＠mercury.lcs.mit.edu

> From: Mark Matlock > Are you able to use a Qbus MTI controller in the 11/84's Qbus section > of the backplane? This is something I've often wondered about but never > tried. I looked into this in some detail, but I don't know: https://gunkies.org/wiki/KTJ11-B_UNIBUS_adapter#QBUS_slots Amswering it definitively would probably require looking at DMA and interrupt cycles with a logic analyzer on the bus, to see what the CPU does with them. And the KDJ11-B and KDJ11-E (the 11/94 uses the same bacplane with a different CPU card) might act differently. > For anyone who is curious about what Happens when a M8637-C version > board is used as PMI memory in an 11/83 I can speak From experience. > ... > After this the disk is corrupted and you will need to restore the > system disk from backups Ah, very informative; thanks for reporting. So whatever the fault is (perhaps the QBUS block transfer issue reported up-thread), it must _seem_ to work, but fail in actuality. It would be interesting to appply a logic analyzer, and see what the bus transaction looks like, if it looks OK on the bus (in which case it's an internal failure). Noel

6 years, 1 month

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pdp11/84 PMI memory: What is the problem with Q bus?

by jnc＠mercury.lcs.mit.edu

> From: Jerry Weiss > Sorry about the uNOTE confusion.. No problem, it only took me about a minute to find the right one; my note was to warn other people who didn't know about the number duplication. > If you look at the Memory Comparison table in this OEM uNOTE, it only > lists Block Mode for "JD/JE ONLY". Oh, right. Still, it sounds from reports here like regular DMA doesn't work in QBUS mode either - and technically that table entry might mean than since it doesn't work for the QBUS _at all_, that includes no block mode. I actually have -B/-C boards, I should plug one in in QBUS mode, and get my QSIC prototype working again (it somehow random failed during the last year, and I've been too lazy to debug it), and write a little program to DMA blocks in and out, and see what happens to the data. If I get really energetic I could throw a 'scope on the bus and look at bus cycles and see if they look OK. It would be interesting to have some more detail on the failure. Noel

6 years, 1 month

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pdp11/84 PMI memory: What is the problem with Q bus?

by jnc＠mercury.lcs.mit.edu

> From: Jerry Weiss > uNOTE # 028 indicates that MSV-11 JB/JC (M8637-B/C) doesn't do block > mode. I went and looked at uNOTE #28, after I found it (it's not in the initial set of uNOTEs, but in the second set - the so-called 'OEM uNOTEs"; note that the numbers were re-used between the two sets, so there are _two different_ uNOTE #28's). I couldn't find anything there about the JB/JC not doing block mode? All it says is they "can not be used in a Q-BUS system due to gate array incompatibilities". Noel

6 years, 1 month

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pdp11/84 PMI memory: What is the problem with Q bus?

by jnc＠mercury.lcs.mit.edu

> From: Chris Zach > Just checked the configuration and block mode DMA *is* off. Interesting. So it's not bklock-mode on the QBUS which is screwed up, but normal QBUS transfers. That jibes with the comment abour "gate array incompatibilities" (which I take to mean "errors" :-). > was the 11/70's MASSBUS channels nothing more than RH11-C's attached to > the old FASTBUS on the 11/45 cpu core (which is what an 11/70 really > is, with cache) or did they port right to the memory box? RH70's are totally different from RH11's - a hex card, and a couple of quads - and the interface to the /70's memory system is totally different from the RH11's (which goes to the UNIBUS): https://gunkies.org/wiki/RH70_MASSBUS_controller It has interfaces to both the cache, and the memory bus (although the diagram in the 11/70 CPU handbook shows it as only connected to the cache). I didn't follow the "the old FASTBUS on the 11/45 cpu core (which is what an 11/70 really is, with cache)"; the 70's cache is what's connected to what used to be the FASTBUS, the memory bus connects to the cache, IIRC. Noel

6 years, 1 month

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Kennedy 9800 - Power-up tips?

by anders.k.nelson＠gmail.com

Hi friends, Now that I have enough hobby time having quit my job two weeks before the apocalypse, I'm interested in poking at my Kennedy 9800 tape controller project. I bought the tape unit in Q3 2017 and the seller said they had powered it up and nothing seemed awry. I have not powered it up and reading about old electrolytic cap issues I'm curious if I should do anything beyond replace any obviously leaking/ruptured capacitors. IIRC people have used a variac to gradually bring the power supply up to operating voltage and somewhat refresh the capacitors - is this a thing? Is this advisable? Any help is appreciated! -- Anders Nelson www.erogear.com

6 years, 1 month

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pdp11/84 PMI memory: What is the problem with Q bus?

by mark＠matlockfamily.com

> Date: Tue, 21 Apr 2020 16:17:07 -0400 > From: Chris Zach <cz at alembic.crystel.com> > To: cctalk at classiccmp.org > Subject: Re: pdp11/84 PMI memory: What is the problem with Q bus? > Message-ID: <27647f0e-19d4-b484-d288-e9f3bb715363 at alembic.crystel.com> > Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8; format=flowed > > Thanks Mark! Actually this was just the boards from the 11/84 (no idea > what happened to the chassis, drat) so it's an 11/84 CPU (18mhz, FPP > chip installed), 2 PMI boards (one old 2mb, one new 1mb) a console board > of some sort and the Unibus map. > > I popped this into my BA23 to speed things up a bit in place of my quad > height 11/73 CPU with 2mb memory. So far it seems to work, and with the > CA memory in the PMI slot managed to boot RSX11M 4.2 and compile up EMPIRE. Chris, I understand now. I also have a PDP-11/83 in a BA123 box and the CPU and PMI memory (M8637-E) can move from the Qbus box to the 11/84 box and work fine In either. I spent a good bit of time tinkering with the 11/84 power supply which did not Work until I put a M7556 minimum load module in it. Basically the +/- 12 Volts needs a Load or you get a hung bus error. Also, with the Unibus you have to pay attention to The NPR/NPG grant jumpers. For disks on the QBus systems I used the UC07 and SCSI2SD. The UC07 can be can be configured for block mode transfers and I think it is doing it. I guess I?d need to hook up a logic analyzer to know for sure. The 11/84 uses a UniBone and when it is emulating a MSCP disk, it can do 150 I/Os a second (using IOX on RSX11M+) The 11/83 using the UC07 and a SCSI2SD Does about 60 I/Os per second. I think the UC07 could go faster but is limited by the SDcard interface. I need to put a fast real SCSI disk on it sometime and see what it can do. > > My guess is the 11/84's Unibus talks directly to the PMI bus and > orchestrates the data transfers, but there is something wrong when the > PMI memory is accessed on the true Q bus. That would not happen on an > 11/84 (CPU and Map use PMI only) but when you have a Q bus DMA device it > probably manifests at random. It's possible the MTI card is throttling > the DMA to single mode instead of hog mode, wonder if I want to screw up > my disk to verify this?. What is the model # for your MTI disk controller? > > Drat. On the positive side it's chock full of 256k chips, which I could > pull off and put on the EA board to bring it up to 2mb memory. I have > air heat tools and a pre-heater so getting the chips off should be > pretty basic. Getting them on the new board though could be a pain since > all the holes are soldered over?. Moving the RAM chips sounds a bit tedious but would certainly be possible. > > No way to reprogram or fix it I assume? Are you asking about making the M8637-B or -C into the -D or -E? If so I?ve never seen any reference to doing that. I was very fortunate that the person Who sold me the M8637-C was willing to trade it for a -E. Mark

6 years, 1 month

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Odd punched cards

by peter＠vanpeborgh.eu

Guys, I got a positive response about the Port-A-Punch cards so no longer any need to respond to this one. Very encouraging. Still looking for Jacquard cards and original Hollerith cards. Hope springs eternal. peter || | | | | | | | | Peter Van Peborgh 62 St Mary's Rise Writhlington Radstock Somerset BA3 3PD UK 01761 439 234 "Our times are in God's wise and loving hands" || | | | | | | | |

6 years, 1 month

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Grinnell Systems

by emu＠e-bbes.com

Hi all, was just fishing in old memories & graphics systems. We had in the 1980's a big fridge from Grinnell Systems as a frame buffer on a 11/34. Anybody remember those? Links to any documentation? Cheers!

6 years, 1 month

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Looking for new punched card type

by cctalk＠emailtoilet.com

Peter, I have several Port-A-Punch cards. Would you like 1 of each? Do a search at www.ibmjunkman.com and check Holders 162, 568 and 1856. Donald

6 years, 1 month

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[ancient thread] HP 1820-1584 IC replacement?

by spacewar＠gmail.com

Back in 2013, Bob Rosenbloom asked: > I have an HP 9872 plotter that just died. According to the internal self > test (very nice!) > one of the bib (MOS to TTL) drivers has failed. Tony Duell wrote: > the devie is very simple (it's simialr to the 74LS245) but the problem is that one side of it does not work with TTL levels. It's a level shifter too. Although the BIB functioned as a level shifter, in later devices using the 1818-2500 standalone 40-pin BPC Binary Processor Chip, including the 9872C and 9872T, HP actually used the 74LS245 instead of the BIB. The only thing they did to meet the MOS level input requirements of the BPC was to put a 10Kohm pullup resistor to +5V on each data line on the MOS side of the buffer. As noted elsewhere, the 74LS245 isn't pin compatible with the BIB, so an adapter would be needed to substitute it. The 9872A, which uses the BPC with the BIB chip, does not have pullups on the MOS side. It also uses the HP 16-bit NMOS ROM directly on the MOS side, and it's remotely possible that adding 10K pullups could be a problem with the ROM.

6 years, 1 month

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MicroVAX 3100/95 PSU Weirdness

by robert.jarratt＠ntlworld.com

I am on a mission to fix a bunch of power supplies and now I am looking at my MicroVAX 3100/95. A few days ago I mentioned that the big smoothing capacitors on the primary side might need replacing. I have done that now. However, in doing so, I have discovered that *one* of the capacitors does not get discharged after the power has gone off (this applies both to the original ones and the brand-new replacements). Furthermore, after discharging them with a resistor and checking that the charge had gone, several hours later, the one that does not discharge, has some charge again, that was not there before! Does anyone know if these PSUs have a bleed resistor to discharge the smoothing capacitors? Why would only one be discharged, is there normally one bleed resistor per capacitor? Why would the capacitor acquire charge again when it hasn't been powered on? Thanks Rob

6 years, 1 month

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Unix Kermit (aka C-Kermit) version 4 spelunking

by imp＠bsdimp.com

Greetings I went looking for a specific version of C-Kermit to reconstruct sources for an old system (The Boston Software Works Venix for Rainbow that I have). I didn't find the 4C(052) I was looking for, but did find many previous 'presumed lost' versions. https://bsdimp.blogspot.com/2020/04/finding-kermit-4x.html has the details. Of particular note: I got almost all the lost versions off DECUS tapes hosted in various places because they were copies of the KERMIT tape, pruned down to just be the DEC stuff. Maybe people here care, maybe not... Warner

6 years, 1 month

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Looking for new punched card type

by peter＠vanpeborgh.eu

Following on from my previous post re punched cards, thank you for replying. I am following up where I can. Now, however, I realize that the IBM Port-A-Punch requires a special type of cards. Does anyone have 1 to 3 of these they can spare. (I already have the instrument.) Many thanks, peter || | | | | | | | | Peter Van Peborgh 62 St Mary's Rise Writhlington Radstock Somerset BA3 3PD UK 01761 439 234 "Our times are in God's wise and loving hands" || | | | | | | | |

6 years, 1 month

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Univac 490 Gallery Talk - 1963 Real Time Computer

by rar＠syssrc.com

The System Source Computer Museum is closed due to COVID-19, so we are making some video gallery talks. Here is the first one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hq7aVCc2GP8 The video describes some of the applications of this 57 year old computer including it original use at Goddard Space Flight Center Bob Roswell museum at syssrc.com https://museum.syssrc.com

6 years, 1 month

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pdp11/84 PMI memory: What is the problem with Q bus?

by jnc＠mercury.lcs.mit.edu

> From: Chris Zach > in place of my quad height 11/73 CPU with 2mb memory. Sorry, which exact quad-height CPU card? {As someone else has previously pointed out, the /73 and the /83 are basially the same machine (roughly the same CPU board - KDJ11-B, perhaps with different clock crystals), just with different memories - QBUS in the /73, PMI in the /83. The /84 is an /83 with i) a different backplane and ii) a KTJ11-B UNIBUS adapter.} > On the positive side it's chock full of 256k chips, which I could pull > off and put on the EA board to bring it up to 2mb memory. I have air > heat tools and a pre-heater so getting the chips off should be pretty > basic. I would advise against that. 256K chips are readily available on eBait, and for not much money. Pulling them may damage them, and may well also do some damage to the memory card, in addition to making it useless. > Getting them on the new board though could be a pain since all the > holes are soldered over.... A vacuum desoldering station will easily open them. Used Hakkos can be found on eBait for not too much money. Noel

6 years, 1 month

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Macintosh Programmers Workbench?

by jwest＠classiccmp.org

Favor to ask: Would anyone have MPW running in some environment, such that if I give them a PEF file they could run dumppef on it and get the symbol table exports and such? The format is documented and I can write python to pull out what I need, but would be so much quicker if someone had MPW installed and running already.. Thanks in advance! J

6 years, 1 month

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Looking for a document regarding PDP8

by bobsmithofd＠gmail.com

I have posed this question to the 8lovers list, and folks seemed to misunderstand. So let me try here. I believe sometime in the late 70s, maybe as late as 1980, a prof associated with UMass wrote a paper describing an extension of the PDP8 called 8/X or 8X. THIS IS NOT the Pre Nova/DG machine but a completely different concept. THis is not the FPGA pdp8 implmetaton that also has an X in the name. I believe, my memory is fuzzy, that it was a prof nnmed Stone or Stoner (perhaps Harold S) who lead the effort and had his name on the paper. My fuzzy recollection was this was PDP8 with a Cache, an extension of the instruction set, maybe to 24bits, and full compatibility with 8/e-8/a. I recall the spec citing a 10mhz (100NS) cycle time. some sort of start up setting that would make it 8 mode or X mode on start up, don't recall if it could switch modes while running. I had a copy of the papers some where and it is misplaced hiding on one of my computers and I am bout to pull out my BigMac that might have the data in it. THanks for any hints as to the online location, Again, this is NOT the pdpX concept that led to the DG or the FPGA system or the spartan 3 based system, it is just a concept paper. Thanks bob

6 years, 1 month

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World's most frustrating FTGH giveaway - Palm Pilot box

by mark.tapley＠swri.org

All, Next to go is a box in which a Palm Pilot was originally sold. The box is in great shape, shrink-wrap intact except where it was sliced just enough to open the top. The manual is in great shape. The registration card is in great shape. The order receipt is in great shape, name of original owner mis-spelled but otherwise apparently correct. The accessories catalog is in great shape. The software on 3 each 3.5? floppies and on CD appears to be in great shape (not test-read yet). The Now Sync accessory software, on 2 more 3.5? floppies, appears to be in great shape. The leatherette protector is in great shape, with its foam insert still inside keeping it shaped for the Palm Pilot. The DE-9 to DB-25 serial port adaptor is in great shape. For Pete?s sake, the screen protector that peeled off the Palm Pilot screen is in great shape, lovingly tucked into the manual. You have probably noticed what is missing. There are no electronics included. No Palm Pilot, no charging/syncing cradle. Grrrr. You probably want this if you picked up the Palm Pilot at ShopGoodwill somewhere, want to re-create that 1997 ?first on the block with a personal digital accessory? feeling and really enjoy going through the accessory paperwork. https://www.shopgoodwill.com/Item/87198940 (but I think that is a different model). Free to a Good Home, preferably one with an actual Palm Pilot. Shipping will be from San Antonio TX, 78254. If as I suspect, nobody interested, headed to the trash. Standard rules, I?ll wait for a week or so, ship to the sender of the first email in my in-box or to Al K if he emails before I ship. - Mark 210-522-6025 office 210-379-4635 cell

6 years, 1 month

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Pdp11/05 boot media

by malcolm＠avitech.com.au

> Hi everybody > > I'm the proud owner of a PDP11/05 system with a couple of 8" floppy drives. I believe they are likely to be RX01s. > > Does anybody on the list have some boot media that they could provide. I understand that the controller can't format > the disks so I'm in a frustrating state where I don't know where to start. > > Doug Jackson > > Canberra Australia. Hi Doug, I'm in Melbourne and have several working PDP-11's. I can send you a couple of bootable RT11 8" disks. I'll need to know whether they are RX01s or RX02s though. Perhaps send me an email offline and we can take it from there? Malcolm www.avitech.com.au <http://www.avitech.com.au>

6 years, 1 month

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Motorola EXORciser M6800 System

by osi.superboard＠gmail.com

Since a few days, my EXORciser Development System is finally able to boot from floppy diskettes. Previous attempts have shown that the Motorola EXORciser M68SFDC1 floppy disk board used has a special modified ROM version. This was probably written for an 8-inch drive, in which the Write protect and Direction signal were inverted. For the sake of simplicity, I have used free inverter on the board to invert the signals accordingly. After adjusting the PLL frequency, reads and writes from the card are now error-free. And all without FDC, only clever programming by Motorola software engineers in the early 76? Originally, the EXORdisk system was a dual drive with two 8 "units. This I have replaced with a double drive of two 5.25 inch units. An Epson and a TEAC, which can be jumpered to 360 rpm. Luckily, 2HD floppy disks are easy to R&W. I also got a GOTEK floppy emulator running, which I can boot from. Thanks to Roland Huisman, Bitsaver has some interesting floppy disks that convert to HFE format work perfectly. This format makes the Gotek drive most reliable. Now to my question. The vintage computer forum at http://www.vcfed.org/forum/archive/index.php/t-44638.html mentioned some interesting manuals. Archive.org has some manuals, Bitsaver does not have manuals about the M6800 development system. If someone already owns scanned manuals to the following list M6800 Basic Interpreter Reference Manual M6800 Macro Assembler reference Manual M68SFDU Exordisk 11/111 Disk `Drive Unit Maintenance Manual M6800 Exorciser 11 User's Guide M6800 Exorciser User's Guide MEX68PP1 PROM Programmer Module Supplement M6800 Exorciser User's Guide I would welcome any feedback or questions --THOMAS

6 years, 1 month

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pdp11/84 PMI memory: What is the problem with Q bus?

by mark＠matlockfamily.com

> > Date: Sun, 19 Apr 2020 15:29:44 -0400 > From: Chris Zach <cz at alembic.crystel.com> > To: CCTalk mailing list <cctalk at classiccmp.org> > Subject: pdp11/84 PMI memory: What is the problem with Q bus? > Message-ID: <3efa4105-3d3d-bb98-0358-8c46fca0fdcf at alembic.crystel.com> > Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8; format=flowed > > So I picked up an 11/84 CPU, 3mb of memory, and a 11/84 Unibus card on > Ebay. Goal is to speed up my fastest 11 here > > For boot time, the diagnostics run in 13 seconds (from when it starts to > prompt) on the 11/73 board I have and 13 seconds on the 11/84 board. > This is with a camintonn 2mb half height memory board. > > Put in the first PMI module above the 11/84 CPU and tried it out. This > is a CA rev board which apparently only works in a Unibus pdp11 and not > a Q-bus one. Apparently it does work. > > So what exactly was the bug with the older PMI memory? Block mode DMA, > I'm using an MTI ESDI controller which can do 16 word block DMA on Q > Bus. Something else? Chris, Congrats on the PDP-11/84! I also have a PDP-11/84 that uses one of Joerg?s Hoppe?s UniBone devices to simultaneously emulate MSCP disks, RL02 disks (including the RL02 Load/Ready/WriteProtect/ and fault lights) and a DL11. I have a question about something you said above, that you are using a MTI ESDI disk controller and then you mention Qbus block mode DMA. Are you able to use a Qbus MTI controller in the 11/84?s Qbus section of the backplane? This is something I?ve often wondered about but never tried. Also, you mention putting the PMI memory above the 11/84 CPU. In the 11/83 Qbus backplane this is of course determines whether the M8637 memory is accessed via Q22 or PMI. In the 11/84 System Maintenance Guide Figure 2-8 shows the CPU card above the memory which if you were to do this in the 11/83 would mean that the memory will be accessed via Q22 and essentially become an 11/73. In my 11/83 I have run both configurations to understand and measure the benefit of PMI. As has been mentioned the 11/84 can use any of the M8637 memory boards but the 11/83 can only use the M8637-D or -E versions. For anyone who is curious about what Happens when a M8637-C version board is used as PMI memory in an 11/83 I can speak >From experience. This was running RSX11M+ and it boots fine but after a few minutes if The system is active, the console starts to report that various installed tasks are corrupted And the system will XDT a bit later. After this the disk is corrupted and you will need to restore the system disk from backups after you get the correct PMI memory boards. I?m not completely sure how the write DMA operations put bad data through the disk controller (I was using an Emulex UC07 with a SCSI2SD) into the disks but that is what happens. Mark Matlock

6 years, 1 month

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HP 41-CX

by abs＠absd.org

I've come into possession of an HP 41-CX calculator - unfortunately it appears to have had batteries left in it which have left corrosion on the internal contacts. (some pics: https://photos.app.goo.gl/48bE7WJZP8R4PF9a9 ) My classic hardware tendencies tend to run more towards the "can run *nix" end, and while I could just clean it up and throw it on eBay I wondered if anyone here has a 41C shaped soft spot and would be interested? (happy to trade/part trade for something they already have for which they are less fond if that works :) David

6 years, 1 month

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pdp11/84 PMI memory: What is the problem with Q bus?

by mark＠matlockfamily.com

> Date: Sun, 19 Apr 2020 15:29:44 -0400 > From: Chris Zach <cz at alembic.crystel.com> > To: CCTalk mailing list <cctalk at classiccmp.org> > Subject: pdp11/84 PMI memory: What is the problem with Q bus? > Message-ID: <3efa4105-3d3d-bb98-0358-8c46fca0fdcf at alembic.crystel.com> > Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8; format=flowed > > So I picked up an 11/84 CPU, 3mb of memory, and a 11/84 Unibus card on > Ebay. Goal is to speed up my fastest 11 here > > For boot time, the diagnostics run in 13 seconds (from when it starts to > prompt) on the 11/73 board I have and 13 seconds on the 11/84 board. > This is with a camintonn 2mb half height memory board. > > Put in the first PMI module above the 11/84 CPU and tried it out. This > is a CA rev board which apparently only works in a Unibus pdp11 and not > a Q-bus one. Apparently it does work. > > So what exactly was the bug with the older PMI memory? Block mode DMA, > I'm using an MTI ESDI controller which can do 16 word block DMA on Q > Bus. Something else? Chris, Congrats on the PDP-11/84! I also have a PDP-11/84 that uses one of Joerg?s Hoppe?s UniBone devices to simultaneously emulate MSCP disks, RL02 disks (including the RL02 Load/Ready/WriteProtect/ and fault lights) and a DL11. I have a question about something you said above, that you are using a MTI ESDI disk controller and then you mention Qbus block mode DMA. Are you able to use a Qbus MTI controller in the 11/84?s Qbus section of the backplane? This is something I?ve often wondered about but never tried. Also, you mention putting the PMI memory above the 11/84 CPU. In the 11/83 Qbus backplane this is of course determines whether the M8637 memory is accessed via Q22 or PMI. In the 11/84 System Maintenance Guide Figure 2-8 shows the CPU card above the memory which if you were to do this in the 11/83 would mean that the memory will be accessed via Q22 and essentially become an 11/73. In my 11/83 I have run both configurations to understand and measure the benefit of PMI. As has been mentioned the 11/84 can use any of the M8637 memory boards but the 11/83 can only use the M8637-D or -E versions. For anyone who is curious about what Happens when a M8637-C version board is used as PMI memory in an 11/83 I can speak >From experience. This was running RSX11M+ and it boots fine but after a few minutes if The system is active, the console starts to report that various installed tasks are corrupted And the system will XDT a bit later. After this the disk is corrupted and you will need to restore the system disk from backups after you get the correct PMI memory boards. I?m not completely sure how the write DMA operations put bad data through the disk controller (I was using an Emulex UC07 with a SCSI2SD) into the disks but that is what happens. Mark Matlock

6 years, 1 month

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Wanted for non-profit public museum: DEC VT100

by bbortnick＠2bcool.ca

Old IBM magnetic media I am hoping someone can help me with a project. I?m volunteer at our local music museum (National Music Centre/Studio Bell.) They are restoring a vintage Synclavier, an early digital audio workstation, which happens to have an embedded DEC PDP 11/23. Part of the museums purpose is to restore, maintain and make available these instruments for musicians to use in addition to static displays. The Synclavier should have a matching VT100, but that is the only component the museum does not currently have for this functioning device. Yes, the VT100 can be easily emulated, but as a museum, historical accuracy is also vital. I was wondering if anybody had any leads on a VT100 that might be donated? Thanks for any help!

6 years, 1 month

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paging rik bos

by jwest＠classiccmp.org

Anyone seen Rik Bos around? I sent him some 12920/21 mux boards to repair, and he got to keep some but haven?t heard anything in a long time?. I may start playing with the HP2000 again soon ?

6 years, 1 month

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Old IBM magnetic media

by bbortnick＠2bcool.ca

Old IBM magnetic media Yes, two cartridges have a total capacity of 100mb, the same as the staging disks, IBM 3330-1. However, the entire cartridge contents are not staged, only the cylinders that have the requested data. Not sure why your cartridges were empty. Here?s a link to my ?working ? 3850 mass storage robotic arm for your viewing pleasure! *https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V8ifNxDgxuY&pbjreload=10* <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V8ifNxDgxuY&pbjreload=10> ?\_(?)_/?

6 years, 1 month

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pdp11/84 PMI memory: What is the problem with Q bus?

by cz＠alembic.crystel.com

So I picked up an 11/84 CPU, 3mb of memory, and a 11/84 Unibus card on Ebay. Goal is to speed up my fastest 11 here For boot time, the diagnostics run in 13 seconds (from when it starts to prompt) on the 11/73 board I have and 13 seconds on the 11/84 board. This is with a camintonn 2mb half height memory board. Put in the first PMI module above the 11/84 CPU and tried it out. This is a CA rev board which apparently only works in a Unibus pdp11 and not a Q-bus one. Apparently it does work. So what exactly was the bug with the older PMI memory? Block mode DMA, I'm using an MTI ESDI controller which can do 16 word block DMA on Q Bus. Something else? Here's the output from RT11. .show all RT-11FB (S) V05.05 Booted from DU6:RT11FB USR is set SWAP EXIT is set SWAP KMON is set NOIND TT is set NOQUIET ERROR is set ERROR SL is set OFF EDIT is set KED FORTRAN is set FORTRA KMON nesting depth is 3 Global .SCCA flag is disabled PDP 11/83 Processor 2048KB of memory Floating Point Accelerator Unit Extended Instruction Set (EIS) Memory Management Unit ECC Memory Cache Memory PMI Memory 60 Cycle System Clock Device I/O time-out support Error logging support Memory parity support System job support Global .SCCA support FPU support Extended unit support Device Status CSR Vector(s) ------ ------ --- --------- EL Not installed 000000 000 LD Installed 000000 000 BA Installed 000000 000 DY Not installed 177170 264 VM Installed 177572 250 SP Installed 000000 110 XL Not installed 176500 300 304 DL Installed 174400 160 MS Not installed 172522 224 DU Resident 172150 154 LS Not installed 176510 310 314 NL Installed 000000 000 TT (Resident) DU (Resident) DU6 = DK , SY MQ (Resident) LD DL VM SP BA NL 9 free slots Job Name Console Level State Low High Impure --- ---- ------- ----- ----- --- ---- ------ 0 RESORC 0 0 Run 000000 103232 105046 No multi-terminal support Address Module Words ------- ------ ----- 160000 IOPAGE 4096. 132174 DU 5570. 103274 RMON 5856. 001000 ..BG.. 16990. LD0 is DU6:RTTST.DSK[6000.]

6 years, 1 month

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Unusual Punched Cards

by cctalk＠emailtoilet.com

This card is shorter than 40 columns but I can't tell if it has been cut off or not. I only have 1 so I can't let it go. http://www.ibmjunkman.com/cards/?Holder=2551 <http://www.ibmjunkman.com/cards/?Holder=2551&Img=0> &Img=0 You can search on Style and select different ones.

6 years, 1 month

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correction OK Looking to purchase "Sensicall" and the ATT Code-Com" bell system attachment that woukd allow deaf to tap morse over phone lines thanks Ed at SMECC

by couryhouse＠aol.com

OK Looking to purchase "Sensicall" and the ATT Code-Com" bell system attachment that woukd allow deaf to tap morse over phone lines? thanks? Ed? at? SMECC

6 years, 1 month

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Looking to purchase CODE A PHONE bell system attachment that woukd allow,deaf to send morse code through bell system phone. Respond off list...... they would tap on litte finger pad . this,was,an attachment to a regular phone,set made in later 60s or 70s. Person on other end would see light flash I guess... drop us a line off list.

by couryhouse＠aol.com

Looking to purchase CODE A PHONE? bell system attachment that woukd allow,deaf to send morse code through bell system phone.? Respond off list...... they would tap on litte finger pad . this,was,an attachment to a regular phone,set made in later 60s or 70s. Person on other end would see light flash I guess... drop us a line off list.

6 years, 1 month

1
1
0 0

Unusual Punched Cards (Peter Van Peborgh)

by michael.99.thompson＠gmail.com

> > Guys, > > I have been collecting all types of computer punched cards for a few years > now. In the distant past I actually used them! > > I am desperately looking for two types I do not have been able to find a > sample of: > * Jacquard fabric/carpet loom cards. OK, not computer but the > ancestor, for completeness of the history. There may be several formats of > these. > > Something like this? http://www.ricomputermuseum.org/Home/interesting_computer_items/jacquard-lo… -- Michael Thompson

6 years, 1 month

3
2
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Unusual Punched Cards

by peter＠vanpeborgh.eu

Guys, I have been collecting all types of computer punched cards for a few years now. In the distant past I actually used them! I am desperately looking for two types I do not have been able to find a sample of: * Jacquard fabric/carpet loom cards. OK, not computer but the ancestor, for completeness of the history. There may be several formats of these. * Original Hollerith card, 12 rows by 24 columns. Once again, this is a long shot. Well if you don't ask, you never get! Thank you for your interest. Peter

6 years, 1 month

3
2
0 0

Another Unrelated PSU Question

by robert.jarratt＠ntlworld.com

I have another PSU I have been meaning to look at for a long time. This one has fairly high output ripple and some of the voltages do not appear to be where they should be. I have checked all the capacitors for ESR and they appear to be OK, with the exception of the two big smoothing capacitors on the primary side. One of them appears to be slightly bulging, but has low-ish ESR, the other has a much higher ESR. Is it possible that these capacitors could be the cause of the out-of-spec outputs? Thanks Rob

6 years, 1 month

3
3
0 0

VAXmate PSU fixed, but no video

by robert.jarratt＠ntlworld.com

Some of you may recall seeing me post about the VAXmate PSU failure. Thanks to members of this list I found the failed part in the PSU and the PSU is now working again. However, it looks like the PSU failed because of a failure on the monitor board. There is a burning smell coming from it, possibly the flyback transformer, but I am not 100% sure. I don't see physical damage, but of course that doesn't mean there isn't a problem. When I took the monitor board out again after this, I wasn't sure if the EHT lead was making good contact with the CRT anode. The monitor board is described in section 4.4 of this document: http://bitsavers.org/pdf/dec/vaxmate/EK-PC500-TD_VAXmate_Technical_Descripti on_1987.pdf I need some advice on diagnosing the problem, I have a few questions: 1. If the EHT lead was not properly connected to the CRT anode, could that cause problems? 2. Is there anything I can safely do with a bench power supply to isolate the problem? 3. Any other suggestions for diagnosing the problem? 4. There is an outline spec of the flyback transformer in the section 4.4.3.2 of the VAXmate technical description, what chance of finding a "modern" replacement? I have posted about the PSU repair here: https://robs-old-computers.com/2020/04/18/vaxmate-h7270-psu-fixed-but-no-vid eo/ Thanks Rob

6 years, 1 month

5
11
0 0

Looking for a document regarding PDP8

by len＠shustek.com

At 10:00 AM 4/17/2020, Bob Smith <bobsmithofd at gmail.com> wrote: >...I believe sometime in the late 70s, maybe as late as 1980, a prof >associated with UMass wrote a paper describing an extension of the >PDP8 called 8/X or 8X. >...I believe, my memory is fuzzy, that it was a prof nnmed Stone or >Stoner (perhaps Harold S) who lead the effort and had his name on the >paper. That is probably Harold S. Stone, whom I knew as a Stanford prof in the early 1970s and did some corporate consulting with. Brilliant guy. From 1974 to 1984 he was at UMass Amherst, so your memory isn't fuzzy at all. He also worked at the IBM Yorktown Heights research center. He was the author of several books and many papers about computer architecture, algorithms, and interfaces. Unfortunately I don't remember him working on a PDP-8 extension, and a quick search of the ACM Digital Library turned up nothing. As far as I know he's still alive at the age of 82.

6 years, 1 month

2
1
0 0

DEC QBUS Backplanes

by bill.gunshannon＠hotmail.com

I have been sorting thru a bunch of stuff in an effort to clean the place up (Aren't we all doing that now with all this time on our hands?) I found a backplane. It says Digital on it but does not have an H- number. I also don;t find it listed in any of the lists I can find on the web. It has 8 A-B slots and 4 C-D slots. the Four C-D are on the bottom half of the backplane. I am assuming it is 18 bit and the C-D were intended for things like the 2 board RL controller. Anybody familiar with this and able to identify it? Anybody interested in it? It should fit in a USPS Medium Flat Rate Box. bill

6 years, 1 month

8
15
0 0

Fwd: ROLM CBX 8000 System Service Manual Vol. 2 Scans Released!

by rgalliett＠surewest.net

Hello. I have both, Rolm CBX System Service Manuals l and ll as well as a Release 8/8001 Student Maintenance Course binder. Are you interested in these??Thank youSent from my LG Phoenix 3, an AT&T 4G LTE smartphone

6 years, 1 month

1
0
0 0

Scanning incomplete and updated documents

by aperry＠snowmoose.com

I recently received a bunch of hardware/software documents to scan. I am only roughly familiar with the systems covered by the docs. I have encountered a couple situations that I would like guidance on. 1. One document is a software installation manual in a loose leaf binder with other documents. It has a title page, tables of contents, etc., several chapters, and then it gets interesting. It has several appendix sections (starting at A), an index, then more appendix sections (starting at A as well), and then another index. The document title and its font match of the second set of appendix sections and second index matches the table of contents and chapters. The first set of appendix sections and index are a little different. The topics covered in the sets of appendix sections are not the same. Should I create two different pdfs with different appendix sections or create a single pdf with both sets? 2. One document is missing the title page and table of contents. Should the pdf just be what I have or should I create those pages for the pdf? Thanks, alan

6 years, 1 month

4
10
0 0

ICL1501 Cobol manual available

by jos.dreesen＠greenmail.ch

Since you are all talking COBOL now : ftp://ftp.dreesen.ch/ICL1501 There is the manual for the early 70?s COBOL implementation for the ICL1501, a small 8K or 16K TTL based personal computer ( TTL based CPU, with 2x 74181 ALU and a 32x8 CRT display) Not the best of scans, but that alas reflects the material I have. Some other? doku on the ICL1501 is also included :? an operator guide and tape utilities user guide. I do have the tape with the COBOL itself, alas no way yet of gettig it on modern hardware. And if anyone has dokumentation on the ICl1503 or 1501/43, in particular the Diablo drive interface then I sure would like to see it ! Have the kontroller, but no documentation... Al, as always, feel free to add any and all to bitsavers. Jos

6 years, 1 month

16
22
0 0

anybody have MOVIE.BYU?

by rdawson16＠hotmail.com

The famous Brigham Young University 3D graphics program, by Dr. Hank Christensen. I am looking for the fortran source, it should be 7 files: DISPLAY SECTION UTILITY TITLE COMPOSE UPDATE MOSAIC Any docs related too. Thanks for letting me beg. Randy

6 years, 1 month

6
13
0 0

Core Memory Photo

by keith＠saracom.com

I have three others with the cover still on :) I want to make a clear plexiglass cover for them. Also have the driver boards. On 2020-04-15 13:00, cctech-request at classiccmp.org wrote: > Send cctech mailing list submissions to > cctech at classiccmp.org > > To subscribe or unsubscribe via the World Wide Web, visit > http://www.classiccmp.org/mailman/listinfo/cctech > or, via email, send a message with subject or body 'help' to > cctech-request at classiccmp.org > > You can reach the person managing the list at > cctech-owner at classiccmp.org > > When replying, please edit your Subject line so it is more specific > than "Re: Contents of cctech digest..." > > Today's Topics: > > 1. Re: Core Memory Photo (keith at saracom.com) > 2. Re: Core Memory Photo (Fred Cisin) > 3. Re: Core Memory Photo (Joshua Rice) > > ---------------------------------------------------------------------- > > Message: 1 > Date: Mon, 13 Apr 2020 13:05:03 -0400 > From: keith at saracom.com > To: cctech at classiccmp.org > Subject: Re: Core Memory Photo > Message-ID: <c39ba3b5e51779bd29b39938655c5a9c at saracom.com> > Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8; format=flowed > > "Ouch. Looks like that core took a serious hit." > > Yep it did. We ran the microscope into it at the lab. Ouch. Someone had > asked for a picture of core memory without the cover so I thought it > would do. > > ------------------------------ > > Message: 2 > Date: Tue, 14 Apr 2020 09:53:39 -0700 (PDT) > From: Fred Cisin <cisin at xenosoft.com> > To: "General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts" > <cctalk at classiccmp.org> > Subject: Re: Core Memory Photo > Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.64.2004140952460.8842 at shell.lmi.net> > Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII; format=flowed > > On Mon, 13 Apr 2020, keith--- via cctalk wrote: > >> "Ouch. Looks like that core took a serious hit." >> Yep it did. We ran the microscope into it at the lab. Ouch. Someone had >> asked for a picture of core memory without the cover so I thought it >> would do. > > It is beautiful! > > ------------------------------ > > Message: 3 > Date: Wed, 15 Apr 2020 10:09:38 +0100 > From: Joshua Rice <Rice43 at btinternet.com> > To: Fred Cisin <cisin at xenosoft.com>, "General Discussion: On-Topic and > Off-Topic Posts" <cctalk at classiccmp.org> > Subject: Re: Core Memory Photo > Message-ID: <353A7AE4-A147-4A06-9AFD-4A3398FABD1C at btinternet.com> > Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8 > > Was beautiful. > > That?s pretty mangled now. > > On Apr 14, 2020, at 5:53 PM, Fred Cisin via cctalk <cctalk at classiccmp.org> wrote: > > On Mon, 13 Apr 2020, keith--- via cctalk wrote: "Ouch. Looks like that core took a serious hit." Yep it did. We ran the microscope into it at the lab. Ouch. Someone had > asked for a picture of core memory without the cover so I thought it > would do. > It is beautiful! End of cctech Digest, Vol 67, Issue 15 **************************************

6 years, 1 month

3
2
0 0

State of New Jersey needs COBOL programmers

by jeffrey＠vcfed.org

https://josephsteinberg.com/covid-19-response-new-jersey-urgently-needs-cob… -- ========================================= Jeff Brace Vice President & Board Member, VCF East Showrunner Vintage Computer Federation http://www.vcfed.org/ jeffrey at vcfed.org

6 years, 1 month

30
57
0 0

Sun 3 and memory

by aperry＠snowmoose.com

Hi everyone, Update on the barn-find Sun 3/260 that I have been restoring and was supposed to exhibit at VCF PNW until the show was cancelled for some odd reason. The system had been failing to get through self-test because, in the memory tests, bit 13 was always set, whether intended or not. I borrowed a couple Sun 501-1102 boards (8M ECC memory for VME) and one of them passes the self-tests and, if I had a bootable device, the system is now ready to try that. But my question here is about Sun 3 memory. Sun part 501-1102 is described as Sun 3/2xx, 3/4xx, and 4/2xx memory (The Sun System Handbook does not list it as 3/4xx memory). The memory board that worked is tagged 501-1102 and was described as memory to go along with a Sun 3/160 CPU board. I was loaned both boards in case the problem was the backplane. But the System Handbook does not list that memory as an option for that CPU. Does anyone here know whether a 501-1102 memory board be used with a 3/160 CPU? Does anyone here know whether Sun 3/260 schematics are available anywhere like the 3/160 and 3/60 ones are? I would like to give repairing the memory board that came with the 260 a shot, since that is a better story when I exhibit it and the memory board that I have that works now is a loaner. Finally, will a SD2SCSI (configured as 2 Sun0424 drives), Archive 150M QIC drive, or CD-ROM drive work on the 3/260 if I connect them up to the SCSI cable for the QIC-24 drive that the system came with? alan

6 years, 1 month

2
1
0 0

VAXmate PSU

by robert.jarratt＠ntlworld.com

I have posted here a couple of times because I have a failed VAXmate PSU. I have just posted a little bit more information here: https://robs-old-computers.com/2020/03/28/further-analysis-of-the-vaxmate-h7 270-psu-failure/ with some scope traces and a greatly improved schematic. Although the schematic is likely to have errors still. Unfortunately, a stray scope probe ground lead blew the fuse so now I have to wait for a new fuse to arrive before I can continue work. I would really like to know if all the spiking I am seeing is to be expected, and any suggestions why it appears to be detecting an overcurrent? There do not appear to be any shorts on the secondary side, but that could be wrong of course. I don't know if a genuine short anywhere would cause it to trip the SCR quite so quickly (within 20ms of the switching transistor starting to switch). Any thoughts gratefully received. Thanks Rob

6 years, 1 month

7
34
0 0

Old X11/Xt/Motif books

by barto＠kdbarto.org

Going through old books. If no one wants these then they go to the tip. Willing to deliver locally, split shipping over a distance. David O?Reilly Volume 4 X Toolkit Intrinsics for version 11 Volume 5 X Toolkit Intrinsics for X11 R4 and R5 Volume 4 X Toolkit Intrinsics (Motif Edition) For OSF/Motif 1.2 Volume 6A Motif Programming Manual for OSF/Motif 1.2 Volume 6B Motif Reference Manual For Motif 2.1 OSF Published OSF/Motif Programmer?s Reference Release 1.2 OSF/Motif Programmer?s Guide Release 1.2 OSF/Motif Style Guide Release 1.2 By Eric F. Johnson/Kevin Reichard X Window Applications Programming Advanced X Window Applications Programming Advanced X Window Applications Programming Second Edition (Missing CD) Power Programming Motif Second Edition (1.2)

6 years, 1 month

1
0
0 0

DEC VR290 Colour Monitor, free to good home (UK)

by Aaron.Jackson＠nottingham.ac.uk

I have a DEC VR290 colour monitor for use with VAXstations. It was working fine when I last powered it on (2-3 years ago), hooked up to a 3100 M76. It's free to a good home (preferably a home with a VAX), absolutely collection only. I'm in Nottingham UK. It's too heavy and large to ship safely. I have two video cables which are intended for use with it. I think they are both for VAXstations of some kind, one might be for DECstation. You've welcome to have them both with the monitor. Please let me know if you are interested. If in the unlikely event there is more than one person interested, it'll be mostly whoever picks it up first but I will prioritise those who actually do have a suitable VAX to use it with. Also, if there are any documentation hoarders I have an entire book case of VAX/VMS manuals (thick red binders). Full list is here, let me know if you want any. aaronsplace dot co dot uk / dec-manuals.html Cheers, Aaron This message and any attachment are intended solely for the addressee and may contain confidential information. If you have received this message in error, please contact the sender and delete the email and attachment. Any views or opinions expressed by the author of this email do not necessarily reflect the views of the University of Nottingham. Email communications with the University of Nottingham may be monitored where permitted by law.

6 years, 1 month

1
0
0 0

Prime 50-Series emulator announcement

by drb＠msu.edu

I'm reposting this announcement from Jim Wilcoxson. De #### Newsgroups: comp.sys.prime Date: Wed, 11 Mar 2020 08:34:13 -0700 (PDT) Message-ID: <0c560b91-35d2-4dcc-b859-a8eb4d22bd17 at googlegroups.com> Subject: Prime emulator source released on GitHub From: Jim Wilcoxson <prirun at gmail.com> Today, with much help from Dennis Boone, I'm releasing the Prime emulator source code on GitHub for non-commercial use. This is the full version of the emulator running on Linux and supports: - all Prime CPU modes: 16S, 32S, 32R, 64R, 64V, 32I - all Prime models, from the P400 to P6550 - up to 512MB of memory, depending on the Primos rev and CPU - a system console - 128 incoming telnet terminal connections - 8 disk controllers, 8 drives each - support for all 25 disk drives sold by Prime - a tape controller, 4 drives, using the .TAP format - a PNC controller emulating RingNet over TCP/IP - a bypass for Primos system serial number checks - Unix utilities to read/write physical tapes & Magsav tapes Dennis owns the emulator GitHub repo and has also kindly agreed to take over hosting of the public Prime emulators that have been online since 2008. There are 7 public emulators running in a virtual Prime ring, allowing both remote terminal sessions (netlink) and remote disk access via PrimeNet. The Prime emulator on Linux is currently running 45-55 Prime MIPS in 64V mode. A wide range of Prime software is loaded on the public emulators: - ftn screaming fast Prime Fortran 66 compiler, written in assembler - f77 the not-so-screaming but full-featured Fortran '77 - pl1g the PL/I Subset G compiler - pl1 the full PL/I compiler - plp the original Prime systems language (like PL/I) - spl the 2nd generation Prime systems language - cc the C compiler written by Garth Conby of Pacer Software - pascal the Pascal compiler - modula Wirth's successor to Pascal - dbg Prime's source level debugger rivaling modern debuggers - pma the Prime assembler - basicv the Prime BASIC compiler - cobol the original Prime COBOL compiler - cbl the Prime COBOL '74 compiler - emacs the full screen editor still used by many today (me!) - midas the Prime indexed sequential file software This week we are working on releasing Prime disk images for all of the public emulators to make it easy for others to get their own Prime up and running. For the truly adventurous who want to bootstrap their own Prime system, there are links in the emulator readme to Prime tape images at Bitsavers and to a large library of Prime manuals. I learned more about operating systems, compilers, concurrency, and other systems programming topics by reading Prime source code, making changes to Primos, and fiddling with Prime hardware, than I did from all of my college degree work. I loved Prime computers, Prime software, Prime hardware, and the Prime Computer company, and am grateful to all of the former Prime engineers that provided this robust and interesting hardware and software platform. I hope you enjoy it too! https://github.com/prirun Jim

6 years, 1 month

4
14
0 0

Core Memory Photo

by keith＠saracom.com

"Ouch. Looks like that core took a serious hit." Yep it did. We ran the microscope into it at the lab. Ouch. Someone had asked for a picture of core memory without the cover so I thought it would do.

6 years, 1 month

3
2
0 0

Prime Sample System Releases

by Kevin＠rawfeddogs.net

Prime Fans, I just noticed on comp.sys.prime that I missed a couple of sample system releases. I have a process set up to dump messages from some news groups into my IMAP server for easy reading with my mail client, but I don't have anything set up to easily reply via the news groups. Does anyone know what's new in the recent sample system releases? -- Kevin http://www.RawFedDogs.net http://www.Lassie.xyz http://www.WacoAgilityGroup.org Bruceville, TX What's the definition of a legacy system? One that works! Errare humanum est, ignoscere caninum.

6 years, 1 month

2
1
0 0

Computing and communicating in a COVID-19 world

by c.murray.mccullough＠gmail.com

The virus-world we are living in has seen Internet usage dramatically increase world-wide. Thanks to pioneers like Cerf, Kahn, Crocker and Kleinrock, sounds like a law firm, paved the way for the packet-switch system Bell & others fought to prevent. I recall the early days of computing, classic, retro or otherwise defined, that was slow, but had to do more than now, as the hardware wasn?t so great or more accurately small and fast. Their were machines that allowed us to communicate at 300 baud and I was happy! Stay safe. Happy computing and communicating. Murray ?

6 years, 2 months

1
0
0 0

Core Memory Photo

by keith＠saracom.com

Here is a link to pictures of core memory from a PDP1145. https://devilanse.wordpress.com/2009/11/03/nablopomo-digital-equipment-corp…

6 years, 2 months

2
1
0 0

RIP John H Conway - Creator of the game of life

by frank＠tuccio.net

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Horton_Conway

6 years, 2 months

1
0
0 0

RIP John Conway

by frank＠tuccio.net

https://www.math.princeton.edu/people/john-conway Creator of "the game of life" -----Original Message----- From: cctalk [mailto:cctalk-bounces at classiccmp.org] On Behalf Of cctalk-request at classiccmp.org Sent: Sunday, April 12, 2020 1:00 PM To: cctalk at classiccmp.org Subject: cctalk Digest, Vol 67, Issue 12 Send cctalk mailing list submissions to cctalk at classiccmp.org To subscribe or unsubscribe via the World Wide Web, visit http://www.classiccmp.org/mailman/listinfo/cctalk or, via email, send a message with subject or body 'help' to cctalk-request at classiccmp.org You can reach the person managing the list at cctalk-owner at classiccmp.org When replying, please edit your Subject line so it is more specific than "Re: Contents of cctalk digest..." Today's Topics: 1. Re: Discord (Anders Nelson) 2. Re: pdp11/05 key? (Liam Proven) 3. Re: pdp11/05 key? (Eric Smith) ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Message: 1 Date: Sat, 11 Apr 2020 13:40:39 -0400 From: Anders Nelson <anders.k.nelson at gmail.com> To: Jay West <jwest at classiccmp.org>, "General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts" <cctalk at classiccmp.org> Subject: Re: Discord Message-ID: <CAJ2mpAhK_iwO0J8mD2_9E64LED=CiRKpxmVDB-GXpQuQRpMTMw at mail.gmail.com> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="UTF-8" Medal of Honor is one of my all-time favorite games. -- Anders Nelson On Fri, Apr 10, 2020 at 4:09 PM jwest--- via cctalk <cctalk at classiccmp.org> wrote: > Perma-invite > > > > https://discord.gg/CwhYHY2 > > > > From: Derek Newland <derek.newland at gmail.com> > Sent: Thursday, April 9, 2020 7:47 PM > To: jwest at classiccmp.org; General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic > Posts <cctalk at classiccmp.org> > Subject: Re: Discord > > > > Hi J, it appears the invite has expired. Any chance to get a fresh one? > Thanks! > > > > On Fri, Nov 15, 2019 at 12:55 PM jwest--- via cctalk < > cctalk at classiccmp.org <mailto:cctalk at classiccmp.org> > wrote: > > I believe I sent the invite to my game channel, NOT the new classiccmp > server..... please use this instead: > https://discord.gg/gV6PKYW > > -----Original Message----- > From: cctalk <cctalk-bounces at classiccmp.org <mailto: > cctalk-bounces at classiccmp.org> > On Behalf Of jwest--- via cctalk > Sent: Friday, November 15, 2019 11:26 AM > To: 'General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts' < > cctalk at classiccmp.org <mailto:cctalk at classiccmp.org> > > Subject: Discord > > Greetings folks > > > > The past few years I?ve become fairly focused on a particular old > 1999/2000 ww2 fps computer game. Of course playing it but I?m also on the > development team for the game (EA has given up on it, but we still put out > new releases, maps, patches, etc.). As a result of that, I pretty much live > on Discord text/audio chat these days. If you send me an email I will > eventually see it and may even respond heh. But if you send me anything on > Discord I?m going to see it immediately. If any of you are on discord, I am > ?Todesengel#9624?. Feel free to add me as a friend and that way you can get > me usually immediately. I am not leaving the hobby, nor am I saying not to > email me at the usual address. But a lot of you do talk to me > semi-frequently and I?m just saying discord will get to me far quicker. > > > > In addition, mostly as an exercise to see how to do it, I set up a > ClassicCMP discord server. That Discord server is NOT meant to replace this > list, nor should it be taken to signal any less commitment on my part to > keeping this list running. They are fundamentally different things; Discord > is great for real time text chat back and forth. There are also audio and > video channels if people want to use that to talk verbally or via video. To > get on that server, here is a semi-permanent invite: > https://discord.gg/U8Skw5g Joining the server gets you to all the other > folks who may join the classiccmp discord, not just me. Of course, that > could be zero ? Like I said, I just did it as an exercise, and discord is > how some of my family and friends stay in touch. But it is there if peeps > want to use it. > > > > I?d rather not turn this into a long debate of whether discord is good or > bad or anything like that. I?m just saying it?s there, and it?s quicker to > get ahold of me that way at times. > > > > Best, > > > > J > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > -- > > Derek Newland | (828) 234-4731 | <mailto:derek.newland at gmail.com> > derek.newland at gmail.com > > ------------------------------ Message: 2 Date: Sat, 11 Apr 2020 23:51:29 +0200 From: Liam Proven <lproven at gmail.com> Cc: "General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts" <cctalk at classiccmp.org> Subject: Re: pdp11/05 key? Message-ID: <CAMTenCGrLP8yHOsQMtAzm2+Emq9CfFfFZJJEXZTJmHod9XboAQ at mail.gmail.com> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="UTF-8" On Sat, 11 Apr 2020 at 13:55, Chris Elmquist <chrise at pobox.com> wrote: > > This might be one of those jokes that if you have to explain it, it looses the punch ... but I?ll try, > > There used to also be something called a Hong Kong Whore House, similarly staffed with young Asian women, but they didn?t make core planes there. I've been to HK and I was never aware of this! Thank you for the clarification. :-D -- Liam Proven ? Profile: https://about.me/liamproven Email: lproven at cix.co.uk ? gMail/gTalk/gHangouts: lproven at gmail.com Twitter/Facebook/LinkedIn/Flickr: lproven ? Skype: liamproven UK: +44 7939-087884 ? ?R (+ WhatsApp/Telegram/Signal): +420 702 829 053 ------------------------------ Message: 3 Date: Sun, 12 Apr 2020 02:14:12 -0600 From: Eric Smith <spacewar at gmail.com> To: Norman Jaffe <turing at shaw.ca>, "General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts" <cctalk at classiccmp.org> Subject: Re: pdp11/05 key? Message-ID: <CAFrGgTRg_xc3_QSNaL79h5cP-LhjoQD-xBaEWGQ_L3aUtG=BQw at mail.gmail.com> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="UTF-8" On Thu, Apr 9, 2020 at 11:35 AM Norman Jaffe via cctalk < cctalk at classiccmp.org> wrote: > I hope that you mean 'hardware porn', not 'hardcore porn'... :) > Trivia: for a while in the mid-to-late 1990s, a Google search for "computer porn" had as the number one result one of my web pages, of that title, containing images of computers with covers removed. I could see from the server log that the search was fairly popular, but nevertheless I believe that most of the people doing the search were not satisfied with the result. End of cctalk Digest, Vol 67, Issue 12 **************************************

6 years, 2 months

1
0
0 0

Weird Behaviour of VAXstation 4000 Model 60 Power Switch

by robert.jarratt＠ntlworld.com

This machine acts oddly. After powering it off, you usually can't power it back on again for about 30 seconds or so, it just seems to ignore the power switch. Similarly, if it has been switched off at the front power switch, it will switch itself on after maybe a minute of two of being switched off. In all other respects the machine seems fine. I have not opened up the PSU at all, just wondering if anyone has ever seen this and might know what the problem is? Thanks Rob

6 years, 2 months

3
2
0 0

John Conway

by aek＠bitsavers.org

https://www.i-programmer.info/news/82-heritage/13614-john-conway-dies-from-…

6 years, 2 months

1
0
0 0

DEC OS/8 Question (getting an error TOO BIG INIT)

by billdegnan＠gmail.com

Hi, I am sure this question has come up before, but can anyone advise an OS/8 change I can run to avoid the following issue (below)? I am unsure if I need to fix my simh INI file or make more space for the program from the OS/8 dot prompt, or FORTRAN * prompt. Running pidp-8i (simh PDP 8i kit) I load OS/8 and initiate the command from the dot prompt: . FRTS ..dumps me to the * prompt ... *RKB0:ADVENT.LD [return] * [esc] rather than loading ADVENTURE I get the following result: D.F. TOO BIG INIT 0000 MAIN 1740 . (..andkicks me back to the dot prompt). the INI is the default reset set cpu 32k set cpu noidle att rk0 ../imagefiles/os8/advent.rk05 boot rk0 what changes are needed? I searched around, I don't quite understand how to load an LD file in OS/8 to debug the error. It may be I have the wrong RK05 disk, but I'd really like to understand what this error means if anyone knows. My physical RK05 disk loads ADVENT as an SV file, I don't need the extra steps. Thanks BIll

6 years, 2 months

5
7
0 0

pdp11/05 key?

by jnc＠mercury.lcs.mit.edu

> From: Ian McLaughlin > I can confirm that about 6 months ago I gave this very information to > our corporate locksmith, and he was able to make a key for me that > works. Thanks for the confirmation that that info is sufficient to produce a working key. I have updated the page to indicate that the info has been confirmed. Noel

6 years, 2 months

13
17
0 0

Discord

by jwest＠classiccmp.org

Greetings folks The past few years I?ve become fairly focused on a particular old 1999/2000 ww2 fps computer game. Of course playing it but I?m also on the development team for the game (EA has given up on it, but we still put out new releases, maps, patches, etc.). As a result of that, I pretty much live on Discord text/audio chat these days. If you send me an email I will eventually see it and may even respond heh. But if you send me anything on Discord I?m going to see it immediately. If any of you are on discord, I am ?Todesengel#9624?. Feel free to add me as a friend and that way you can get me usually immediately. I am not leaving the hobby, nor am I saying not to email me at the usual address. But a lot of you do talk to me semi-frequently and I?m just saying discord will get to me far quicker. In addition, mostly as an exercise to see how to do it, I set up a ClassicCMP discord server. That Discord server is NOT meant to replace this list, nor should it be taken to signal any less commitment on my part to keeping this list running. They are fundamentally different things; Discord is great for real time text chat back and forth. There are also audio and video channels if people want to use that to talk verbally or via video. To get on that server, here is a semi-permanent invite: https://discord.gg/U8Skw5g Joining the server gets you to all the other folks who may join the classiccmp discord, not just me. Of course, that could be zero ? Like I said, I just did it as an exercise, and discord is how some of my family and friends stay in touch. But it is there if peeps want to use it. I?d rather not turn this into a long debate of whether discord is good or bad or anything like that. I?m just saying it?s there, and it?s quicker to get ahold of me that way at times. Best, J

6 years, 2 months

13
20
0 0

IBM Series 500 1/2" tape reels--What does the little red peg do?

by cclist＠sydex.com

I'm working with a batch of tapes that includes several IBM Series 500 7 track reels. If you look at the back of the reel, there's no customary thumb recess for removing the write ring. Rather, the reels have a small red plastic peg that extends through to the front of the reel. Is this for ejecting the write ring (I haven't tried)? In any case it's a bit annoying because it grazes the edge of the ring sensing finger, making a little "click" every time the reel makes a complete revolution. --Chuck

6 years, 2 months

1
0
0 0

ArcNet board Wanted, Intercontinental Micro

by new_castle_j＠yahoo.com

Thank you Richard, yes if you're willing to check your inventory of ARCnet cards I may find something useful. ARCnet boards are pretty much all the same, but this particular one I'm hunting for from Intercontinental Micro is compatible with a special boot ROM I have that promises to unlock wonders unknown to the world since 1987. Maybe I exaggerate a little bit, but I do appreciate you checking. Jonathan

6 years, 2 months

1
0
0 0

Help installing HP 2000 contributed library in simh

by nospam212-cctalk＠yahoo.com

Okay, I've only ever been a user, back in high school, of HP 2000F TSB system but wanted to play with it again and learn more about the system. I've been able set up Simh with 2000F TSB and everything is working fine. Using the latest release I can find out there, HP2100 release 29. Now I'd like to be able to install some of the Contributed Software Library but despite reading the various TSB manuals and Simh doc, I've been unable to actually get anything loaded. Can anyone with experience with this lend me a hand, some tutorial or point the way to some instructions I may have missed? Thanks in advance. David Williams

6 years, 2 months

5
22
0 0

ArcNet board Wanted, Intercontinental Micro

by new_castle_j＠yahoo.com

I'm on a quest to find an ISA ARCnet board from Intercontinental Micro. It's called the LANPC and would be very useful to me since I have the special software to run it. Here's a picture of what it looks like. https://drive.google.com/open?id=1xAib47IUbTP7Vrclh_vaeGYwrLCA4aeO Thank You, Jonathan

6 years, 2 months

2
1
0 0

DEC OS/8 Question (getting an error TOO BIG INIT)

by rshepprd＠gmail.com

I?m just going to guess (I have no experience with this architecture) ? would that mean either file corruption ? or possibly the last record needs to be padded out with ?empty? blocks to be the same size as the others?

6 years, 2 months

3
2
0 0

Converting Documents

by emu＠e-bbes.com

Hi All, somebody scanned documents for me in .pdfs. Looking into them, they are pages of jpgs embedded in .pdf .. (100 pages resulting in 350MBytes ...) Any easy way to convert them into some b/w .pdf file? It is all text, no drawings ... Pointers? Thanks

6 years, 2 months

3
2
0 0

Old FORTRAN programs, libraries, graphics

by emu＠e-bbes.com

Being stuck at home, was musing the idea to look into some graphics software from the '70's, or early 80's ... Looking for some wire frames, hidden line removal, 3d graphics... Any pointers? View month ago or longer, somebody on this list recovered some large package of FORTRAN code, and wanted to invest it, but I think it was posted under a wrong subject, so I can't find it anymore ... THANKS!

6 years, 2 months

5
6
0 0

ISO: Documentation for Interphase SMD 2181 disk controller

by derschjo＠gmail.com

Subject line says it all. The Lambda uses this as its disk controller and it's looking like the one in mine needs some debugging. There doesn't seem to be any documentation for this controller out there. There are docs for the Interphase SMD 2180 on Bitsavers but it appears to be a very different board. Thanks! Josh

6 years, 2 months

3
4
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State of New Jersey needs COBOL programmers

by commodorejohn＠gmail.com

> From: Neil Thompson <albiorix at gmail.com> > > I'm convinced that Dijksta (and anyone else who came out with similar > comments were full of horseshit. In my opinion, it's the ability to > translate a real world "thing" into an algorithm that is the essense of > programming, and anyone who has managed to learn (particularly on their > own, as many of us did) that ability has learned something that transcends > the language (or tool) you use to implement the algorithm. There's definitely truth to this. The main thing that makes a good programmer isn't memorization of language features or syntax, it's good mental organization and thinking habits; the ability and practice of really *thinking through* the steps involved in solving a problem, building a solid mental model of the relevant data structures and algorithms, and then breaking those down into component steps until one arrives at a suitable representation in native-language operations. If someone has a good understanding of that, they can apply it (with varying amounts of blood, sweat, and tears) in any language; if they don't, there's no language in the world that can impart it to them (no matter *what* the flavor-of-the-decade Savior Of All Programming Forever is - "Try Swift! It's the new Pascal!") *That said,* there are definitely some languages that are more conducive to building these habits than others (and, within each group, many that emphasize different aspects more or less strongly.) I can't speak to COBOL as I've never had cause to get any experience with it, but I would say that BASIC (as in, the old-school, unstructured BASICs of the Bad Old Days) really does teach you a bunch of habits that you end up needing to un-learn as soon as you start working with better languages (not even *newer* languages - ALGOL and Lisp both predate it.) Line-#-and-GOTO programming imposes the same burden of bookkeeping and space-management on the programmer as direct machine-code monitor hacking and the most primitive assemblers, but without any rational explanation as to why, so that any novice attempting to create a program of any real complexity ends up being instilled with a superstitious dread over the ludicrous non-question of where to put things - do I space statements N numbers apart? What if I need to add more than N-1 intervening statements later!? Should I place my subroutines on even 1000s for easy reference? Will the line numbers even go high enough!? - the lack of scoped/local variables or any parameter-passing mechanism for GOSUB makes any non-trivial modularization nearly impossible, and the READ/DATA structure is just flat-out demented. And all that mental exhaustion *before* the newbie even gets to the *real* challenges of learning to program! Now, Dijkstra was a self-important ponce given to wild all-or-nothing proclamations and manifestos (manifestes? Manifesti?) and even if we give him the benefit of the doubt and assume that his statements quoted here were meant tongue-in-cheek they're still pretty ridiculous. And God knows the Appointed Language Messiah in that great holy war, Pascal, was its own special breed of Hell for novices and experts alike (array size as type qualifier? Just kill me now...) And it's definitely true that plenty of people can and did learn to program in BASIC and still went on to learn better and do Good Things down the line. But there absolutely are such things as bad programming languages.

6 years, 2 months

2
1
0 0

cctalk Digest, Vol 67, Issue 6

by athornton＠gmail.com

On Apr 6, 2020, at 10:00 AM, cctalk-request at classiccmp.org wrote: > > They play with the > pennies to discover that they can roll around, and learn that they're not > food or nasal suppositories, I was with you up till here, but wait, what? I?m one of those kids who was just the right age. Five years older and I would have been in the Car Club, and would have ended up being a damn good mechanic without a lot of career opportunities. Five years later and not every damn computer on the planet would have come with a BASIC interpreter in ROM and who knows what my tinkering instinct would have led to. But I, born in 1971, had an Atari 2600 and its BASIC programming cartridge, and in the fall on 1982 I got a VIC-20, and sometime in 1983 my parent bought me an Apple //e. So I did grow up with Microsoft BASIC as my first language, and, sure, it doesn?t lend itself well to structured programming, but then when I wanted to know ?well how do you do _that_?? I ended up in 6502 assembly, and picked up P-System PASCAL and Logo along the way. Then in the summer of ?89 I interned in a physics department, and got OK at Turbo Pascal and sort-of-vaguely-able-to-write C. College brought REXX on (IBM VM/CMS; I didn?t get an Amiga until the 2010s, well after its relevance) and Perl and Scheme and SPARC assembly, and grad school (both for irrelevant degrees: Ancient Mediterranean Civilization and History?but wait, there?s a footnote) 680x0 assembly and Java. (The footnote is, well history of computing, so I got a lot of deep-dive stuff into other languages and architectures.) Since then, whatever I needed to learn when I needed to learn it. I?ve programmed COBOL for money, which has joined the ranks of things I?m not super-proud to have done for money but hey it paid the bills when I needed it. Since then?Python, C, Go, TypeScript, whatever was needed. These days it?s mostly Python. But really what it was was that I was lucky enough to be in that small age window where computers were, one the one hand, something middle-class families could afford while still being capable of doing cool things, and on the other hand, simple enough that a smart adolescent could pretty much understand them more-or-less in their entirety. Adam

6 years, 2 months

2
1
0 0

State of New Jersey needs COBOL programmers

by boris＠summitclinic.com

At 16:12 05-04-20, you wrote: >On 4/5/20 6:28 PM, geneb via cctalk wrote: >>On Sun, 5 Apr 2020, Neil Thompson via cctalk wrote: >> >>>I'm convinced that Dijksta (and anyone else who came out with similar >>>comments were full of horseshit.? In my opinion, it's the ability to >>>translate a real world "thing" into an algorithm that is the essense of >>>programming, and anyone who has managed to learn (particularly on their >>>own, as many of us did) that ability has learned something that transcends >>>the language (or tool) you use to implement the algorithm.? When I first >>>started programming professionally, we had "programmers" (or sometimes >>>designers) who specified the algorithms and "coders" who implemented them. >>>That never worked well >>Yep.? You can write horrible code in /any/ language. ;) >>BTW, I scanned & uploaded this last week.? Oddly relevant. >>https://archive.org/details/cobolcodingform > >I still have lots of them. And Printer Output Forms. And Fortran >Programming Forms. And all kinds of other Programming forms. And >Flow Chart Forms. You know all that stuff we actually used to >engineer programs before the software engineers came along and said >we were all doing wrong. > >bill Ran into a bunch of my FORTRAN programs from over 50 years ago as well as the obligatory flowcharts I would do first before writing a single line of code. Code written in pencil so could erase errors and only then would I use a keypunch for final version. Also a few FORTRAN coding forms. Back then, with sometimes a 48 hour delay between submitting my card deck and getting program output, it was well worth spending an hour or two to print out contents of cards and carefully check that there weren't missing commas and or other errors that would mean correcting the stupid mistake and resubmitting ones card deck. Never got into COBOL as my main interest was real-time computing and so next step up was access to PDP-8 which had FOCAL and quickly learned that programming in assembler was the way to go. Still like assembly language programming and suspect my early experience of learning to code in an environment where there wasn't really a dividing line between software and hardware (people would build custom boards for PDP-8's/PDP-11's to speed up data acquisition) that the biggest change I made in my programming style was to switch to VB as it allowed me to easily create the graphical interface I needed but still let me link to C or Assembler routines in my VB6 code until windoze became too locked down to be of any use. Still haven't got all my VB6 programs running under Wine on Linux but at least Linux has FORTRAN and C. Part of what I've noticed is that I can't sit down at a keyboard and write code (as one is supposed to do nowadays) and it turns into a total mess. I still use flowcharts when I'm dealing with tricky code and the nice thing about flowcharts is that one can easily create a hardware state machine from them. Was nice in 1970's, but now a Propeller chip, even using interperted Spin code, works far faster than the TTL state machines I used to make. Other paleo-programmer related deficits include being totally unable to use RDB and still make use of linked lists and hash tables to create my databases as have been doing this for 50 years. Software Tools was probably the most important book I read in 1983 as it got me out of my rut of writing a massive FORTRAN program to do a specific task that I'd have no idea how to modify even 6 months later to small useful tools that could be strung together. Back then engineers I worked with would have total disdain for Comp-Sci types who would still be working out their code indentation scheme while we would already be using a quickly written throwaway program to perform a particular task. The other thing I should bring up is that my wife is after me to get rid of a lot of my old books. While rumaging through the attic of my shop found boxes of old computer books which I'd like to keep but have been told that if I haven't looked at them in 15 years that it's unlikely I will in future. Will check in see if some of them have been scanned onto bitsavers or other sites but have 68000 programming books, 6502 and other microprocessor related books as well as lots of Mac books when I just had to get into the guts of a Mac to do what I wanted. Have a number of PDP-11 Unibus cards which likely won't use and will have to get all of that sorted out. Once have a list of what I've got will post it on my web site. I live in Kamloops, BC if there's anyone on this list who lives close by who's interested.

6 years, 2 months

5
4
0 0

OT: Weller soldering irons

by pete＠dunnington.plus.com

A few hours ago I started looking at three "smart" light switches that need LEDs replaced, and switched on the soldering iron, and ... nope. It's a Weller WP80 and it seems the sensor in the heating element has died. I discovered that only after resetting and then dismantling the control unit to check it out with a DVM, of course. Clearly I need either a new WP80 element, or a new soldering iron. I could get a WSP80 for far less than the cost of a new element for the WP80, but I'd get the element faster. So which, if any, is the better iron? What would you guys do? I begrudge paying UKP 92 for a new element. That's the cheapest I could find -- /half/ the most expensive price -- but just seems ludicrously extortionate for what amounts to a piece of swaged stainless steel tube with a short length of resistance wire and an even shorter length of thermocouple wire inside it. I could buy a whole new solder station with more bells and whistles, albeit of a "lesser brand", for less. -- Pete Pete Turnbull

6 years, 2 months

4
4
0 0

Prime documentation

by drb＠msu.edu

For those interested in playing with Jim's emulator, a few resources: Bitsavers has some doco and bits: http://bitsavers.org/pdf/prime/ http://bitsavers.org/bits/Prime/ I have been assembling what I hope will be the definitive Prime info site. It's not complete, but contains manuals scanned by, among others, AEK and Jim Wilcoxson, as well as material from my Prime-using past, etc. I have more documentation and software to add as I have time. https://sysovl.info/reference_prime.html Of particular use might be this writeup on installing PRIMOS Revs 22 or 23 on the emulator. It's set up for the old demo version of the emulator, so needs a fair amount of updating, but may help get you started. I'll work on it soonish. https://sysovl.info/reference_prime_drb_installing_primos.html De

6 years, 2 months

6
18
0 0

pdp11/05 key?

by jnc＠mercury.lcs.mit.edu

From: Tom Uban > Does anyone have information on having a replacement PDP-11/05 key made? Google is your friend; here: https://gunkies.org/wiki/PDP-11/05#Keys I don't recall if there's anough info there to create new keys without an original to copy. At one point I made a run of copies (after posting a call here); I suppose I could do so again. Noel

6 years, 2 months

4
3
0 0

APL-11

by mark＠matlockfamily.com

>According to the Ref Manual, that's the one I was looking for. >Now to mount the RL on RSTS and see what it takes to build it >there. I'll let the list know how I make out in case someone >else is interested. > >bill The RL02 image is RSX Files-11, and I?m not sure if you can mount that with RSTS. I could move it to a RT-11 formatted RL02 or if your RSTS system is on HECnet I can put it where you could get it that way. I looked for the original DOS-11 formatted DEC distribution tape but can?t find it at this time. Let me know if you need anything. Mark

6 years, 2 months

4
7
0 0

Identifying Machine for DEC Memory

by robert.jarratt＠ntlworld.com

I mistakenly bought some memory thinking it was for a VAXstation 4000 VLC. It turns out that it isn't. It physically fits a VAXstation 4000 Model 60, but putting it in that machine the machine fails to power up. The part number is 50-19464-02, and I am unable to identify what machine it works in. Can anyone tell me where to find out? Thanks Rob

6 years, 2 months

8
18
0 0

ISO: Cipher F880 tape drive, Fujitsu Eagle disk drive

by derschjo＠gmail.com

I'm working on restoring an LMI Lambda, which is missing both its tape drive and its disk drive. If anyone has a Cipher F880 9-track drive or a Fujitsu Eagle SMD drive, drop me a line. Be nice if they were in working condition, but so long as they're repairable I can work with 'em. Thanks! Josh

6 years, 2 months

4
5
0 0

FYI: ACM library opened

by paulkoning＠comcast.net

This might be of interest to many of the people on the list. paul > Begin forwarded message: > > >> Also, ACM has currently opened up all of its digital archives during these pandemic times, ... https://dl.acm.org/action/doSearch

6 years, 2 months

5
4
0 0

Monroe 7860

by wcn440＠gmail.com

I know this doesn't count as a general purpose computer, but does anybody have detailed technical information about the Monroe 7860 business calculator/printer? I think it was produced in the early 1980's. Specifically, I'm looking for information about the rom OS for this machine. e.g. are there more built-in commands like "dir". Maybe, is there a basic interpreter I can get at? On the hardware side, does anybody know about the mag stripe paper that the machine is supposed to work with? It appears to store user data on the mag stripe on the paper that it prints on...interesting idea, although limited. Thanks. Bill Newman

6 years, 2 months

4
3
0 0

VAX/Smalltalk-80?

by commodorejohn＠gmail.com

Just in the middle of getting a fresh OpenVMS install set up on my VAXStation (the original having been done years ago when I barely had any idea what I was doing,) and looking through various repositories for interesting software to put on there, and I got to thinking about something I recalled reading about a few years back. I know from the book "Smalltalk-80: Bits of History, Words of Advice" - http://sdmeta.gforge.inria.fr/FreeBooks/BitsOfHistory/BitsOfHistory.pdf - that, back when, there were two implementations of Smalltalk-80 for VAXen - the first was Unix-based, done by an independent research group, while the second ran under VMS and was actually developed within DEC. This version - VAX/Smalltalk-80 - was headed up by Stoney Ballard and Stephen Shirron; anybody know if there's a surviving copy out there, if it was ever available outside DEC to begin with?

6 years, 2 months

1
0
0 0

REL APL-11

by mark＠matlockfamily.com

Date: Mon, 30 Mar 2020 10:58:46 -0400 > From: Bill Gunshannon <bill.gunshannon at hotmail.com <mailto:bill.gunshannon at hotmail.com>> > To: "General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts" > <cctalk at classiccmp.org <mailto:cctalk at classiccmp.org>> > Subject: APL-11 > Message-ID: > <MWHPR22MB0878D888143DFB8F78B81AE2EDCB0 at MWHPR22MB0878.namprd22.prod.outlook.com <mailto:MWHPR22MB0878D888143DFB8F78B81AE2EDCB0 at MWHPR22MB0878.namprd22.prod.outlook.com>> > > Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8; format=flowed > > > Haven't given up on DIBOL. May try installing the RT-11 version and > see if it runs. > > But now another language of interest has reared its ugly head. :-) > > Anybody have an image of the tape for APL-11? Manual claims it > runs on all of the PDP-11 OSes and it is another language from > my past that I haven't touched (other than to read some programs > out of curiosity) in more than two decades. Bill, I have the APL-11 V2.1 source files on a RL02 disk image. I will make it available at http://www.rsx11m.com/apl11.zip <http://www.rsx11m.com/apl11.zip> Once you mount the disk image with Simh, the are two ready to run task images that will run under RSX11M or M+ In [201,200]APL6OK.TSK and APL7OK.TSK that are the REAL*4 and REAL*8 versions of APL-11. On the disk are the Original .MAC sources as well as files from a RSX SIG tape that modified APL-11 for I/D under RSX11M+ that increased The workspace (.BXWA from ~30000 to ~60000 bytes). It also contains a character set for Vt220 for the APL character set. When you install the APL task experiment with the /INC to maximize the available workspace, On my system, I can INS APL6.TSK/INC=37000 to max the workspace for the single precision version. Also, the scanned APL-11 reference manual can be downloaded at http://www.rsx11m.com/APL-11-Ref-Man.pdf <http://www.rsx11m.com/APL-11-Ref-Man.pdf> and the APL11 installation guide at http://www.rsx11m.com/APL11ins.pdf <http://www.rsx11m.com/APL11ins.pdf> The RSX SIG files that have the info to change APL-11 to an I/D RSX11M+ task are at [370,360] on the RL02 disk. I remember having this work back in the mid-1980s butI have not been able to get it to work today. If I link it with ODT it seems to blow up when the first overlay is loaded. If anyone could help with that I?d really appreciate it! Best, Mark > > I have the source to something called APL-11 for Unix but it is > not the same thing. Actually, not even close. :-) > > Would love to see a few pointers. > > Oh, and in case anyone is curious about my endeavors.... > The SIMH system I am using now is based on the 11/70 and was built > with only 2M of memory. Why you would do that under SIMH where there > is really no memory constraint at all, I can not fathom. I used to > have a bunch of 11/44's and that has been my favorite since my original > 11/24 system died long, long ago./ I am going to configure a SIMH > System using the 11/44 as my model and then reinstall everything in > order to have a really good system for playing with this stuff. > > Sure wish there was a way to find some of the third party stuff from > the sourcebooks. A lot of nice software that should have been saved > for historical reasons, if nothing else, has been lost. > > bill

6 years, 2 months

5
7
0 0

Power Supply Recap

by david＠thecoolbears.org

There's been a lot of discussion of late about replacing power supply capacitors in DEC power supplies. I have a BA123 and I believe that it uses an H7260 power supply. I feel like it might be a good idea to replace the capacitors before a disaster occurs. I haven't been able to find a schematic for the H7260 and I'm wondering which/how many caps need to be replaced. Does anyone know what specific part# to replace them with? I'd prefer to purchase the replacements before I dig in to the machine, that way I don't have to remove the power supply twice. I also own a BA23. Does anyone know if that power supply uses the same caps as the H7260 and how many are required for that supply?

6 years, 2 months

1
0
0 0

H7874 power supply

by bob＠jfcl.com

Does anybody have a maintenance print or service manual for the DEC H7874? This is the power supply used in the BA4xx and R400x cabinets. As you might guess, I have one that tries to power up but shuts down after a second. Probably a bad capacitor (or several), but this thing is ridiculously complicated and not all that easy to disassemble, either. I'd like to be able to trouble shoot it rather than just firing the proverbial parts cannon at it. FWIW, none of the electrolytic (of which there are many) have obviously failed - no leaking, no bulges, etc. Of course, that proves fairly little. Thanks, Bob Armstrong

6 years, 2 months

7
16
0 0

APL-11

by mark＠matlockfamily.com

>Problem with that is all the files get jumbled into one directory >and I am sure the build will want them in the right proj,uid locations >in order to work. I am thinking a backup tape may do the job. SPD's >seem to say that later versions of RSX and RSTS had compatible BACKUP >formats. We'll see. If that don't work there is always kermit. :-) >It must be possible because the installation manual says the >installation tape works for all four PDP-11 OSes. Bill, I?ve looked extensively to see if I can find the original distribution tape image and can?t find it. At one point DEC donated the APL-11 to DECUS and I think that is when I got it back in 1984 or so. The files I have include the Macro-11 source code which as near as I can tell was not on the DEC distribution when it was a layered product. I now think that the copy of APL-11 I have must have come from a restored backup tape from my old system. In the DEC distribution, it was a DOS-11 tape which could be read by all the PDP-11 OSes as you say. I just attempted to create a DOS-11 tape similar to the DEC distribution, but when I try to run the installation against it I get a task build of APL that doesn?t work. It immediately exits and I think is due to some differences between the auto overlay code in RSX11M+ V4.6 and the V2.1 M+ that I used to have. I added the .MAC files and .CMD files (for assembly, and linking) to the tape and make it available at: http://www.rsx11m.com/apl11.tap <http://www.rsx11m.com/apl11.tap> Let me know if that works for you. It may build under RSTS fine. A backup plan to make it available is that also on the same web site are two disk images for the PiDP-11/70 folks that is a complete RSX11M+ V4.6 ready to run under Simh. On the DU1 disk image in [201,50] and [201,200] are all the APL-11 files I have. That system also installs a working APL-11 for RSX. Mark

6 years, 2 months

1
0
0 0

REL APL-11

by mark＠matlockfamily.com

Bill, The APL-11 files on DECUS RSX85A are not a complete distribution but a modified version that was intended to run under I/D on M+. I have the APL-11 V2.1 source files on a RL02 disk image. I will make it available at http://www.rsx11m.com/apl11.zip Once you mount the disk image with Simh, the are two ready to run task images that will run under RSX11M or M+ In [201,200]APL6OK.TSK and APL7OK.TSK that are the REAL*4 and REAL*8 versions of APL-11. On the disk are the Original .MAC sources as well as files from a RSX SIG tape that modified APL-11 for I/D under RSX11M+ that increased The workspace (.BXWA from ~30000 to ~60000 bytes). It also contains a character set for Vt220 for the APL character set. When you install the APL task experiment with the /INC to maximize the available workspace, On my system, I can INS APL6.TSK/INC=37000 to max the workspace for the single precision version. Also, the scanned APL-11 reference manual can be downloaded at http://www.rsx11m.com/APL-11-Ref-Man.pdf and the APL11 installation guide at http://www.rsx11m.com/APL11ins.pdf The RSX SIG files that have the info to change APL-11 to an I/D RSX11M+ task from RSX85A are also at [370,360] on the RL02 disk. I remember having this work back in the mid-1980s but I have not been able to get it to work today. If I link it with ODT it seems to blow up when the first overlay is loaded. If anyone could help with that I?d really appreciate it! Best, Mark

6 years, 2 months

3
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PDP-8 Straight 8 restoration

by brendan＠mcneill.co.nz

Here in NZ and around the world many of us are in lockdown and spending more time on our computers, if that were possible. I have just completed the restoration of a PDP-8 Straight 8 which I believe is the only one in New Zealand. You can view the restoration story and find appropriate resources here: https://pdp-8.nz <https://pdp-8.nz/> While it plays Chess, it would be great if someone wanted to write (say) a Prime Number Generator, or some other application and email it to me off list. I have Focal-69 and can probably source other languages for this wonderful old machine with 4K of memory. --------------//---------------- brendan at mcneill.co.nz +64 21 881 883

6 years, 2 months

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APL-11

by bill.gunshannon＠hotmail.com

Haven't given up on DIBOL. May try installing the RT-11 version and see if it runs. But now another language of interest has reared its ugly head. :-) Anybody have an image of the tape for APL-11? Manual claims it runs on all of the PDP-11 OSes and it is another language from my past that I haven't touched (other than to read some programs out of curiosity) in more than two decades. I have the source to something called APL-11 for Unix but it is not the same thing. Actually, not even close. :-) Would love to see a few pointers. Oh, and in case anyone is curious about my endeavors.... The SIMH system I am using now is based on the 11/70 and was built with only 2M of memory. Why you would do that under SIMH where there is really no memory constraint at all, I can not fathom. I used to have a bunch of 11/44's and that has been my favorite since my original 11/24 system died long, long ago./ I am going to configure a SIMH System using the 11/44 as my model and then reinstall everything in order to have a really good system for playing with this stuff. Sure wish there was a way to find some of the third party stuff from the sourcebooks. A lot of nice software that should have been saved for historical reasons, if nothing else, has been lost. bill

6 years, 2 months

7
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LegacyOS.org

by peters-cctech＠techwiz.ca

I just stumbled over https://legacyos.org/ and checking here for what you say about it only to find out that it seems like you missed it. Have you all missed it or is it just not interesting ? -- ------------------------------------------------------------------- Techwiz, Peter Sjoberg GPG key (42DDDDDD) on keyserver & homepage Key fingerprint = EB81 3135 1636 576A DA83 826B 2455 0E88 42DD DDDD Homepage: http://www.techwiz.ca/~peters Pictures: http://www.flickr.com/photos/henahadu/ Enigma: http://meinEnigma.com

6 years, 2 months

2
1
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Split Ceramic Disk Capacitor

by robert.jarratt＠ntlworld.com

Since I am forced to stay at home more than I would like I though I would check some more PSUs. One I wanted to check was the H7109-C from one of my VAXstation 4000 VLC machines. I found a leaked capacitor and some other high ESR ones, so I will replace those. However, I also noticed a ceramic disk capacitor that appears to be split all around the edge. Is that a known failure mode? Regards Rob

6 years, 2 months

4
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help needed: Document scan of ISS Sperry Univac Driver Exerciser avalaible for bitsavers upload

by p.gebhardt＠ymail.com

Hello list, I have a scan of a manual with schematics for a ?ISS Sperry Univac Driver Exerciser for 7330 and 843x type of disk drives that was kindly scanned and provided to me by Mark from the Computer History Archivies Project, since he and myself happen to come accross such exercisers. I contacted two times Al via email for access credentials to upload the document as I did in the past years for numerous scans, but I never got an answer. He is probably very busy during the last months. In case anybody has access for uploading documents on this list, can you contact me so that we can make this document available to everybody? Best regards, Pierre ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- http://www.digitalheritage.de

6 years, 2 months

3
5
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DIBOL and RPG for RSTS

by bill.gunshannon＠hotmail.com

Does anyone have a .tap image of a DIBOL install tape for RSTS? And while I am at it, was there ever RPG for RSTS? I am so bored I have decided to really load up a SIMH system and just live in the past for a while. I have Fortran-IV, Fortran-77, COBOL-81 and C installed now as well as BASIC and MACRO. But I haven't had the chance to do any DIBOL or RPG for quite some time and would love to try them again. bill

6 years, 2 months

7
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Unable to download Dave Dunfield's ImageDisk

by dave.dunfield＠gmail.com

>Patrick Finnegan pat at vax11.net Tue Mar 24 18:14:05 CDT 2020 > >It looks like the magic that updates the 5-digit number in the URL doesn't >work after the classiccmp.org recovery. Try: >http://www.classiccmp.org/dunfield/img54306/imd118.zip > >The rest of the things should be in the same directory. >>On Tue, Mar 24, 2020 at 1:47 PM Christian Groessler >> Hi, >> >> the link on http://www.classiccmp.org/dunfield/img/index.htm for >> "ImageDisk 1.18" doesn't work. Apparently most (or all) links on this >> page don't work. The "magic" is me, it has nothing to do with the classiccmo recovery. The links are something I update manually from time to time, and I've recently updated some pages to correct links to my now expired commercial site, and failed to amend these with the current transient page. Should be fixed now - may have to refresh your browser if It cached the bad links. Dave

6 years, 2 months

4
3
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Fonts for Dataproducts printers?

by rdbrown0au＠gmail.com

In the "Dataproducts (300/600 LPM) Line Printers Maintenance Guide" (1984) at (23Mb) https://www.wang2200.org/docs/fiche/742-0432.MNL.2273LinePrinterMaintenance… Table 1-2. 300 LPM Character Band & PROM Set Kits p. 1-10 (p. 30-31 in PDF) & Table 1-3 600 LPM .... p1-12 (p. 32-33 in PDF) List "Country/Language","Character Band Number","PROM Number"."Number of Printable Characters","Description","Font Style","Spacing" Band???????????????? Desc????????????????? Font Style 250035-019 64 Utility?? ? ? ? ?? ???? DPC-C 250042-022 96 Upper/Lower???? DPC-B/C 250045-022 96 Upper/Lower???? DPC-C 250088-039 96 ASCII/Modified? DPC-B "Number of Print..." is 64 or 96 ... except for an Arabic one "Spacing in characters per inch" is always 10, except for 4, 15 pitches "Font Style" is either DPC-B, DPC-B/C, DPC-C, DPC-15, DPC-D for Thai, Arabic Are there fonts available for the common Font Styles (DPC-B. DPC-B/C, DPC-C)? The fonts for the Dataproducts (64-char) drum printers may be in that set. It's possible that the Dataproducts laser printers may have provided the fonts, but googling hasn't shown anything, the Dataproducts website is on archive.org, and my searches showed that the Computer History Museum has a printer and a few bands. The HP2614A Drum printer we had in 1980 was probably one of those and we had band printers later. I should look through my printouts ... There's a font for the IBM 1403 http://ibm-1401.info/IBM140310Pitch-Regular.otf "Chainprinter Regular Font" at http://legionfonts.com/fonts/chainprinter-regular may be related to the IBM 1403 one too. This assumes that fonts might be useful for OCR at some stage, or for checking retyped data, or for fun on SIMH.

6 years, 2 months

1
0
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Vaxstation 400/90 power supply

by emu＠e-bbes.com

Hi all, I have 4000/90 which behaves funny. It only starts, after switching on twice. The first time, all LEDs stay on, flipping the switch off/on, it boots happily. Any insight? THANKS!

6 years, 2 months

4
5
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Unable to download Dave Dunfield's ImageDisk

by chris＠groessler.org

Hi, the link on http://www.classiccmp.org/dunfield/img/index.htm for "ImageDisk 1.18" doesn't work. Apparently most (or all) links on this page don't work. Where can I get the latest ImageDisk version? regards, chris

6 years, 2 months

3
3
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HPE OpenVMS Hobbyist license program is closing

by johnhreinhardt＠thereinhardts.org

For those interested, HPE has finally, formally announced the end of their participation in the OpenVMS Hobbyist Program.? A number of people have received the below message from HPE, probably everyone they have on record as having current Hobbyist licenses. If you have any current or future ( at least before the end of 2021 ) interest in Hobbyist licenses for any version of OpenVMS from 5.0 through 8.4 for VAX ( only up to 7.3) or Alpha and Itanium, then register now.? HPE is looking to find out how many are interested in Hobbyist offerings and even though the new license will be good through 2021, I don't expect them to be generating them past the end of 2020 and maybe sooner. Register for Hobbyist PAKs at one of the following (I suggest the HPE address first): https://www.hpe.com/h41268/live/index_e.aspx?qid=24548 http://plato.ccsscorp.com/hobbyist_registration.php Note the underscore between hobbyist and registration in hobbyist_registration. One Hobbyist user reports this: I?ve just received an update from the OpenVMS Customer lab: Here?s the message from the OpenVMS team.? The idea was that hobbyists would visit the site and renew their licenses, and in response, we would provide the final set of licenses, explaining the scenario: =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= ? As we approach the end of the HPE OpenVMS V8.4 standard support period, HPE ??plans to conclude the HPE OpenVMS Hobbyist license program. ? The HPE OpenVMS Hobbyist licenses we are issuing in 2020 will be the last set. ??Subsequently, HPE will not issue new HPE OpenVMS Hobbyist licenses. Attached ??is the final set of the HPE OpenVMS Hobbyist licenses. These final licenses ??are valid through December 31st, 2021. We hope that this additional validity ??period will enable users to plan for the future. ? Users who wish to avail of HPE OpenVMS long term licenses are encouraged to ??purchase permanent licenses at standard prices. You may contact [Fellman, Jon] ??<jon.fellman at hpe.com <mailto:jon.fellman at hpe.com>> for the same. =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= Cheers, Wiz!! John H. Reinhardt *From:*owner-hecnet at Update.UU.SE [mailto:owner-hecnet at Update.UU.SE] *On Behalf Of *David Moylan *Sent:* Saturday, 7 March 2020 4:14 PM *To:* hecnet at Update.UU.SE *Subject:* [HECnet] HPE OpenVMS Hobbyist license program is closing Hi all, Just received the e-mail below. I?ve hunted around all the various Hobbyist locations and licensing pages and can?t find any additional information. I?ve already replied back to ask what the impact of Hobbyist renewal licensing will be. I have no further information at this stage. Have others received this as well? Does anyone have any further knowledge on this? I can see a few people have forwarded/posted the same message on comp.os.vms. Cheers, Wiz!! *From:*OpenVMS Customer Lab [mailto:openvmscustomerlab at hpe.com] *Sent:* Saturday, 7 March 2020 3:13 PM *Cc:* OpenVMS Customer Lab *Subject:* OpenVMS Hobbyist Notification Dear HPE OpenVMS hobbyist, This is to inform you that HPE is concluding the HPE OpenVMS Hobbyist license program in alignment with the HPE OpenVMS support roadmap. If you wish to understand more details, please reach out to us at the earliest through the usual license renewal webpage. Thank you. HPE OpenVMS team

6 years, 2 months

42
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Getting rid of dec writer II pdp11/83 vt320s

by philmac750＠virginmedia.com

Hello all, I hope you are all staying safe and healthy in current times.? Forgive the cold email, I got your email addresses as collectors of DEC computer history.?The reason for email is that I am clearing out some of my stuff as we are thinking of moving house, I live in Wakefield.?In February 2019 I salvaged a PDP11 which was used in a simulator for a coal fired power station steam turbine unit at DRAX Power Station, where I was working as a contractor up until Dec 2019.In the same building I was also allowed to take a DecWriter II, some manuals and a couple of VT320s with some other smaller hand held kit.?I have supporting documentation from the power station to state that these items are now mine.?They were all in working order as the simulator was last powered up in Nov 2019.? I am not in a position to power up the PDP 11 at home, but have plugged in the VT320s and the DEC Writer and they all work.? The dec Writer has 1 sticky key, and has the original product/shipping notice stuck inside the unit dated 1977 !! I even bought some new ink and ribbons, as my intention was to get these and the PDP11 setup and working in my office.? I used the Dec Writer in school, many many years ago, my first introduction to computers, paper tape and punched cards, a foam modem through to the college from my secondary school ! (Fortran IV)?I simply could not let these items go to scrap, which is where they were heading, so I approached the manager of the building at Drax and agreed to remove these items from site at zero cost to Drax.? The entire simulator, all it?s hand built boards and electronics were simply heading for the skip as they were demolishing the entire training centre in favour of new Gas turbine plant.? ?I am wondering if you know any forums or contacts that might be interested in purchasing these items, I am not asking silly money as these need to go to a collector and preserved, the issue will be shipping or I might even transport them myself, as they are extremely heavy items.?If not, I will google a little more and failing that, contact a UK museum to see if they would be interested in these historic pieces.?Thank you for reading.?PhilSent from my Samsung Galaxy smartphone.

6 years, 2 months

2
1
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[HECnet] VAX/VMS 3.0 Distribution Available for Download --> Decnet

by R.Voorhorst＠swabhawat.com

It looks there is some decnet on the disk. Exec list gives phase-III router: $ mc ncp NCP>show exec char Node Volatile Characteristics as of 21-MAR-2020 15:16:42 Executor node = 0 Identification = DECnet-VAX V3.0, VMS V3.0 Management version = V3.0.0 Incoming timer = 45 Outgoing timer = 45 NSP version = V3.2.0 Maximum links = 32 Delay factor = 64 Delay weight = 2 Inactivity timer = 60 Retransmit factor = 10 Routing version = V1.3.0 Type = routing Routing timer = 600 Maximum address = 1 Maximum circuits = 0 Maximum cost = 1023 Maximum hops = 31 Maximum visits = 63 Maximum buffers = 2 Buffer size = 1000 Default access = incoming and outgoing So ..... playtime ....? R.V. -----Original Message----- From: owner-hecnet at Update.UU.SE [mailto:owner-hecnet at Update.UU.SE] On Behalf Of R. Voorhorst Sent: Saturday, 21 March, 2020 14:48 To: hecnet at Update.UU.SE; 'Ray Jewhurst' <raywjewhurst at gmail.com>; 'General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts' <cctalk at classiccmp.org> Cc: 'simh' <simH at trailing-edge.com>; 'John Dundas' <dundas at caltech.edu> Subject: RE: [HECnet] VAX/VMS 3.0 Distribution Available for Download --> boot on Vax8600/50 Boot on Vax8600: HK0: 'F:\Shares\Distribution\VMS\Vms_30\VAXVMSV3.0-26APR1982\vmsv30.rk07' Contains ODS2 File system HK0: Volume Name: VAXVMSRL3 Format: DECFILE11B Sectors In Volume: 53790 sim> b hk0 Loading boot code from internal vmb.exe %SYSBOOT-W-ECO or microcode version less than minimum required for VMS. %SYSBOOT-E-Unable to locate file SYSLOA SC.EXE HALT instruction, PC: 0000325A (CLRQ R8) sim> So some work to do or not (very well) possible. So it will run on Vax11/780 the original workhorse from then. Somewhere a Decnet-3.0 around for Vms to make it complete? Best regards, R.V. -----Original Message----- From: owner-hecnet at Update.UU.SE [mailto:owner-hecnet at Update.UU.SE] On Behalf Of Paul Birkel Sent: Saturday, 21 March, 2020 13:56 To: 'Ray Jewhurst' <raywjewhurst at gmail.com>; 'General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts' <cctalk at classiccmp.org>; hecnet at update.uu.se Cc: 'simh' <simH at trailing-edge.com>; 'John Dundas' <dundas at caltech.edu> Subject: RE: [HECnet] VAX/VMS 3.0 Distribution Available for Download According to the Release Notes it works on the 11/750 and 11/730 as well. See: AA-D015D-TE https://archive.org/details/bitsavers_decvaxvms3leaseNotesV3.0May82_5458871… -----Original Message----- From: cctalk [mailto:cctalk-bounces at classiccmp.org] On Behalf Of Ray Jewhurst via cctalk Sent: Saturday, March 21, 2020 8:34 AM To: hecnet at update.uu.se Cc: General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts; simh; John Dundas Subject: Re: [HECnet] VAX/VMS 3.0 Distribution Available for Download >From 1982 I see. I know that this will run on the 780/785 but what about the other VAX-11s or the 8600? I am purely a simulator and have never used the real thing and I am not sure what years the models in question were released. Sorry if my questions seem ignorant. Ray On Sat, Mar 21, 2020, 8:08 AM Supratim Sanyal <supratim at riseup.net> wrote: > John Dundas' distribution of VAX/VMS version 3.0 (April 1982) can now > be downloaded from my Dropbox. > > The SYSTEM password is MANAGER. > > Note: Dropbox does not force you to create an account, if you look > carefully you will see a "Continue to view" link at the bottom of that > pop-up. > > Here's what it boots into: > > > VAX/VMS Version V3.0 26-APR-1982 16:21 > > > PLEASE ENTER DATE AND TIME (DD-MMM-YYYY HH:MM) 21-MAR-2020 11:58 > %JBC-I-NEWQUEUE, new queue file created %OPCOM, 21-MAR-2020 > 11:58:34.51, logfile initialized by operator OPA0 > logfile is SYS$MANAGER:OPERATOR.LOG > Login quotas - Interactive limit=64, Current interactive value=0 > SYSTEM job terminated at 21-MAR-2020 11:58:39.91 > > Username: SYSTEM > Password: > Welcome to VAX/VMS version V3.0 $ $ > > Grab it from https://bit.ly/vaxvms30 > > Regards, > Supratim > > -- > Supratim Sanyal, W1XMT > 39.19151 N, 77.23432 W > QCOCAL::SANYAL via HECnet > >

6 years, 2 months

3
2
0 0

[HECnet] VAX/VMS 3.0 Distribution Available for Download --> boot on Vax8600/50

by R.Voorhorst＠swabhawat.com

Boot on Vax8600: HK0: 'F:\Shares\Distribution\VMS\Vms_30\VAXVMSV3.0-26APR1982\vmsv30.rk07' Contains ODS2 File system HK0: Volume Name: VAXVMSRL3 Format: DECFILE11B Sectors In Volume: 53790 sim> b hk0 Loading boot code from internal vmb.exe %SYSBOOT-W-ECO or microcode version less than minimum required for VMS. %SYSBOOT-E-Unable to locate file SYSLOA SC.EXE HALT instruction, PC: 0000325A (CLRQ R8) sim> So some work to do or not (very well) possible. So it will run on Vax11/780 the original workhorse from then. Somewhere a Decnet-3.0 around for Vms to make it complete? Best regards, R.V. -----Original Message----- From: owner-hecnet at Update.UU.SE [mailto:owner-hecnet at Update.UU.SE] On Behalf Of Paul Birkel Sent: Saturday, 21 March, 2020 13:56 To: 'Ray Jewhurst' <raywjewhurst at gmail.com>; 'General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts' <cctalk at classiccmp.org>; hecnet at update.uu.se Cc: 'simh' <simH at trailing-edge.com>; 'John Dundas' <dundas at caltech.edu> Subject: RE: [HECnet] VAX/VMS 3.0 Distribution Available for Download According to the Release Notes it works on the 11/750 and 11/730 as well. See: AA-D015D-TE https://archive.org/details/bitsavers_decvaxvms3leaseNotesV3.0May82_5458871… -----Original Message----- From: cctalk [mailto:cctalk-bounces at classiccmp.org] On Behalf Of Ray Jewhurst via cctalk Sent: Saturday, March 21, 2020 8:34 AM To: hecnet at update.uu.se Cc: General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts; simh; John Dundas Subject: Re: [HECnet] VAX/VMS 3.0 Distribution Available for Download >From 1982 I see. I know that this will run on the 780/785 but what about the other VAX-11s or the 8600? I am purely a simulator and have never used the real thing and I am not sure what years the models in question were released. Sorry if my questions seem ignorant. Ray On Sat, Mar 21, 2020, 8:08 AM Supratim Sanyal <supratim at riseup.net> wrote: > John Dundas' distribution of VAX/VMS version 3.0 (April 1982) can now > be downloaded from my Dropbox. > > The SYSTEM password is MANAGER. > > Note: Dropbox does not force you to create an account, if you look > carefully you will see a "Continue to view" link at the bottom of that > pop-up. > > Here's what it boots into: > > > VAX/VMS Version V3.0 26-APR-1982 16:21 > > > PLEASE ENTER DATE AND TIME (DD-MMM-YYYY HH:MM) 21-MAR-2020 11:58 > %JBC-I-NEWQUEUE, new queue file created %OPCOM, 21-MAR-2020 > 11:58:34.51, logfile initialized by operator OPA0 > logfile is SYS$MANAGER:OPERATOR.LOG > Login quotas - Interactive limit=64, Current interactive value=0 > SYSTEM job terminated at 21-MAR-2020 11:58:39.91 > > Username: SYSTEM > Password: > Welcome to VAX/VMS version V3.0 $ $ > > Grab it from https://bit.ly/vaxvms30 > > Regards, > Supratim > > -- > Supratim Sanyal, W1XMT > 39.19151 N, 77.23432 W > QCOCAL::SANYAL via HECnet > >

6 years, 2 months

2
1
0 0

VAX/VMS 3.0 Distribution Available for Download

by supratim＠riseup.net

John Dundas' distribution of VAX/VMS version 3.0 (April 1982) can now be downloaded from my Dropbox. The SYSTEM password is MANAGER. Note: Dropbox does not force you to create an account, if you look carefully you will see a "Continue to view" link at the bottom of that pop-up. Here's what it boots into: ? VAX/VMS Version V3.0 26-APR-1982 16:21 PLEASE ENTER DATE AND TIME (DD-MMM-YYYY? HH:MM) 21-MAR-2020 11:58 %JBC-I-NEWQUEUE, new queue file created %OPCOM, 21-MAR-2020 11:58:34.51, logfile initialized by operator OPA0 ??????? logfile is SYS$MANAGER:OPERATOR.LOG ? Login quotas - Interactive limit=64, Current interactive value=0 ? SYSTEM?????? job terminated at 21-MAR-2020 11:58:39.91 Username: SYSTEM Password: ??????? Welcome to VAX/VMS version V3.0 $ $ Grab it from https://bit.ly/vaxvms30 Regards, Supratim -- Supratim Sanyal, W1XMT 39.19151 N, 77.23432 W QCOCAL::SANYAL via HECnet

6 years, 2 months

11
11
0 0

SS Voyager: DC / DC Board

by salgernon＠me.com

I?ve been rehabilitating a SparcStation Voyager when I get time (of which I seem to have some now). The display did work off and on but doesn?t show anything now. As per the troubleshooting docs, I check the DC/DC board voltages but the service manual (from oracle!) has wire colors that bear no resemblance to my board. I found a pin that starts out at 12v but decays fairly quickly. Does anyone know if the pin3=12v, 4=5v, 5=5v, 6,7,8=gnd and 9=3.3 from the manual is correct? This one voltage that drops to zero after initially showing 12v - is that a reasonable symptom for a bad power supply? Is that kind of thing fixable? I don?t expect I?ll be able to find a replacement board. I don?t see any blown capacitors or expressed smoke. I?m not sure how the pin counting is supposed to go for this 10 pin molex power connector. The female side on the main board looks from the top like: OOOOO OOOOO \-/ Where the little thing at the bottom is the locking tab. The power board itself has a line of wires coming out, and they are numbered 1-11 with #10 not connected. But again, the color of those wires don?t seem to bear any resemblance to the manual. On the off chance: anybody have a spare DC/DC converter for a Sparcstation Voyager that they want to unload cheap? Part number is, I think 300-1234. Cheers, ?sma

6 years, 2 months

1
0
0 0

stuff for sale - recent move

by joezatarski＠gmail.com

Hello Everyone, I recently moved and just got my storage unit of stuff transported to the new house. I'm starting to go through it all because I know there's a good mixture of stuff I want and stuff I don't want but may be useful to someone else. I've started inventorying a lot of the stuff I'd like to pass on here: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/19vhF-o6vx9g7l-D8cvLJ5OPJzpdmU9PTTkn… I'm not looking to get much out of any of this, pretty much just recover whatever I paid for it plus effort for shipping (generally should be 50% or less ebay value, plus cost of shipping). Alternatively, I'm in the west suburbs of chicago if anyone local wants to pick something up. Quick run down of what I've got posted so far: -a couple DEC Alpha items (RAM and SCSI caddy stuff, possibly a couple drives later) -HP jetdirects for laserjet 4/5 (standalone to come later) -a KVM or two (more to come) -Mac network cards (nubus and one for IIsi or SE/30) as well as a couple other accessories (Dayna Mini Etherprint, AAUI transceiver, more accessories to come) -misc cables/adapters, if you have something specific in mind, let me know -PSU - mostly just some random ATX PSUs -a few telephone accessories (more to come) -ISA, PCI, PCI-X, PCIe cards (network, video, SCSI, FC) -possibly notable, Compaq ELSA GLoria Synergy graphics cards for Alpha PWS? If anyone has further questions, wants pics, more description, testing of item before sale, etc. feel free to contact me on or off list (if on list, please CC me, I'll see it quicker) or on Freenode IRC (nick is joe_z). As I recently moved, I don't have 24/7 internet available as of right now, but once I do I'll have a bouncer on IRC 24/7. Best Regards, Joe Z

6 years, 2 months

3
4
0 0

SWTPC SuperClock II board

by kylevowen＠gmail.com

In the midst of cleaning up, I came across this board. Can't seem to find any info online about it. There's another board from another company, not SWTPC, with the same name?apparently a timekeeping board for an Apple II. https://imgur.com/a/j8pyqMZ I assume this is a way to generate a composite video signal with the current time displayed? Anyone have schematics or a parts list? Thanks, and stay healthy! Kyle

6 years, 2 months

3
2
0 0

soviet resistor identification help and maybe lamps?

by tdk.knight＠gmail.com

trying to identify these soviet resistors anyone familiar with how they marked them i see 620 on these ones for the panel bulbs https://www.flickr.com/photos/1ajs/49633358106/in/dateposted-public/ want to test all the lamps with power but i dont know where to start with testing. i see markings for 220V on the power feed plug https://www.flickr.com/photos/1ajs/49621260392/in/dateposted-public/ bulbs https://www.flickr.com/photos/1ajs/49623473996/in/dateposted-public/ https://www.flickr.com/photos/1ajs/49623475146/in/dateposted-public/

6 years, 2 months

6
8
0 0

NetBSD on a VAX 3100 (DV-31AT1-A)

by rodsmallwood52＠btinternet.com

Hi All With the upcoming demise of VMS/VAX I thought I might give NetBSD/vax a try. Downloading a bootable image and burning it onto a CD was not a problem. On the 3100 with attached RRD42 and SCSI drive RZ26l the CD duly booted ito the NetBSD install menu. All of versions 7,8 and 9. failed after partitioning at the point where the system is copied to the hard disk. Has anybody successfuly installed NetBSD on a VAX.? If which version on which VAX Rod Smallwood --

6 years, 2 months

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NetBSD on a VAX 3100

by commodorejohn＠gmail.com

I have it running on a MicroVAX 3100/90, but I can't for the life of me remember what version it is (current was 7-ish when I set it up, but I may have had to drop back to an earlier version.) I'll have to check when I have a chance. It's definitely not a speed demon, but it works reasonably well. OpenBSD on the other hand was utterly unusable; it took minutes just to respond to input over the serial port.

6 years, 2 months

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MSV11-Q info and interesting observation

by jnc＠mercury.lcs.mit.edu

> It includes a table which says which chip each bit in the memory is > stored in Oh, there's an entry (well, actually two) missing from the table, which is the parity bits (2; byte parity); I'll work them out and add them. (I know, by elimination, which two columns of chips are the parity bits; I just don't know which is for the high byte, and which for the low.) The flippping documentation doesn't say whether it's even or odd parity, though! I'm assuming odd (which seems to be the usual: probably so that totally failed memory - all 0's - generates an error), but now that I think about it, it should be pretty easy to work out. I'll just store a '0' word, and looking at either parity bit should give me whether it's using even/odd; storing '-1' should confirm. Then I can do byte writes to work out which chips the high/low parity bits are in. I'm assuming the DEC memory diagnostics (for people using them, not their own) will call out parity failures, and high/low, so people will know which chips to replace. Noel

6 years, 2 months

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NetBSD on a VAX 3100

by david＠thecoolbears.org

Not exactly the same thing, but I've run several different versions of NetBSD on both a real 3900 and on SIMH. I have not tried current, but I have tried the 3 series, the 4 series and the 5 series - all seem to work well. In this context, "well" is defined as (in order of decreasing importance): The ability to run colossal cave adventure (the 350 point version) The ability to boot into multi-user The ability to TELNET to remote hosts, e.g., oath.com The ability to TELNET to local hosts The ability to run "vi" The ability to compile/link/run "hello.c" I have not tried to recompile the kernel I have not tried to compile other more obscure/exotic, but less useful operating systems like emacs The only problem I've come across is that the hash function on passwords is VERY slow on the new versions of netbsd (> the 3 series).

6 years, 2 months

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MSV11-Q info and interesting observation

by jnc＠mercury.lcs.mit.edu

So, a while back someone had a broken MSV11-Q QBUS memory card, and needed info on them. I said I'd provide same, but then got distracted. Well, I finally got to it, and it's been added to the CHW page for them: https://gunkies.org/wiki/MSV11-Q_QBUS_memory It includes a table which says which chip each bit in the memory is stored in (which is what one needs to fix one which is basically working, but has some bad bits). While working out that table, I ran into a hitch, which is a good part of why it took so long. The hitch, when solved, revealed something mildly interesting. The hitch was in my process for finding out which bit was stored in which chip. I whipped up a simple loop to store a word with a single '1' bit, and the rest 0's; I set that running, and used a 'scope probe on the DIn pins to find out which column of chips held bit 0, etc. So far, so good. I then looked on the -Wr pin, to find out which row of chips held which banks. Not so good! There were pulses on -Wr for _all_ the banks, no matter which address I tried to write to. Eventually I worked out what was going on: when writing data, the MSV11-Q sends a 'write' signal to _all_ the banks, and selects the one to _actually_ use by use of the RAS signal. I'm not certain why DEC did this, but since there is no explicit 'read' signal on the DRAM chip, and likely the data outputs from all the banks are wire-OR'd together, use of RAS to select the desired bank works for read, and also for write. Has anyone else seen this trick used anywhere else? Noel

6 years, 2 months

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Wangtek 5125ES End-of-Tape Sensor

by web＠loomcom.com

Hello all, This is probably a long-shot, but does anyone have any advice for testing the End-of-Tape sensor on a QIC drive? I've recently restored a Wangtek 5125ES (well, "restored" is a bit strong, I just replaced the capstan roller) and after about 5 tape passes, it completely lost its End-of-Tape sensor. I'm not entirely sure whether or not it's producing IR, pr of the sensors are dirty, or what. -Seth -- Seth Morabito Poulsbo, WA web at loomcom.com

6 years, 3 months

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IBM chip cross reference list?

by mattislind＠gmail.com

I am helping a guy with a dead IBM 3279 terminal The PSU does not seem to work. But as usual it is impossible to find any schematic online for IBM stuff. Just interconnection diagram and high level drawings. Anyone? Now the PSU circuit seems to be quite simple with just one IC in it. A chip marked 4216092. https://i.imgur.com/WMe7DgU.jpg >From the look of mold I guess that the manufacturer is Texas Instruments. At least it matches very well with other TI chips manufactured in the same time frame. The rest is looking like a quite simple flyback mode PSU: A transformer with air gaps, no output filter inductors and one single power transistor. Is there a cross reference list available for IBM numbers to standard chips? It shouldn't be that hard to figure from the how it connected, though, since it is most likely a standard chip. It can be a TL494 or SG3524 perhaps? /Mattis

6 years, 3 months

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Make behavior on TOPS20 Panda distribution

by dave＠661.org

I've successfully managed to get a simulated TOPS20 environment going with networking. Now there's a new strange hitch: the behavior of make. Would someone please look at this and tell me what I'm doing wrong? For a simple Makefile, it works fine if I just type "make", but if I type "make <target>", I get the commands sent to the command line, but no responses. The display then stalls at the eighth source file. Strangely, if I scroll up in the xterm, it gets dragged back down as if more stuff is being printed. Just typing "make", I get this: @make cc -c buffer.c -o buffer.rel PANDA TOPS-20 Command processor 7.1(4453)-4 @cc -c buffer.c -o buffer.rel KCC: BUFFER <DAVE.FROTZ>BUFFER.PRE.3 <DAVE.FROTZ>BUFFER.FAI.3 FAIL: BUFFER @ @POP ... and so on until this: @POP cc -o dfrotz.exe buffer.rel err.rel fastme.rel files.rel getopt.rel ... more .rel files LINK: Loading @ @POP @ and we're done. dfrotz.exe is in the current directory and it works. Here's the strange behavior I can't explain: @make dumb cc -c buffer.c -o buffer.rel ?Unrecognized command - Does not match switch or keyword - "dumb" cc -c err.c -o err.rel cc -c fastme.c -o fastme.rel cc -c files.c -o files.rel cc -c getopt.c -o getopt.rel cc -c hotkey.c -o hotkey.rel cc -c input.c -o input.rel cc -c main.c -o main.rel The process stalls at this point, jerking back the terminal to the bottom if I scroll up. Hitting ^C once or repeatedly doesn't seem to do anything. Logging into the from a different terminal, I can see that no .rel files were generated from this operation. Typing "make foobar" results in this: @make foobar ?MAKE: Don't know how to make foobar perror() says: No such file or directory @ Amusingly, "make love" returns this classic reply: @make love Not war! ?MAKE: Don't know how to make love perror() says: No such file or directory @ Here's the Makefile: CC = cc NAME = frotz C = .c O = .rel E = .exe DFROTZ = d$(NAME)$(E) OBJ = buffer$(O) err$(O) fastme$(O) files$(O) getopt$(O) hotkey$(O) \ input$(O) main$(O) math$(O) missin$(O) object$(O) \ proces$(O) quetza$(O) random$(O) redire$(O) screen$(O) \ sound$(O) stream$(O) table$(O) text$(O) variab$(O) \ dblorb$(O) dinit$(O) dinput$(O) doutpu$(O) dpic$(O) dumb: $(DFROTZ) dfrotz: $(DFROTZ) $(DFROTZ): $(OBJ) $(CC) $(CFLAGS) -o $(DFROTZ) $(OBJ) .c.rel: $(CC) $(CFLAGS) -c $< -o $@ clean: delete *.rel delete *.exe .SUFFIXES: .exe .rel .c *.h This whole thing can be found at https://gitlab.com/DavidGriffith/frotz/ in the tops20 branch. -- David Griffith dave at 661.org A: Because it fouls the order in which people normally read text. Q: Why is top-posting such a bad thing? A: Top-posting. Q: What is the most annoying thing in e-mail?

6 years, 3 months

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DDCMP over serial lines in RSTS V10.1

by paulkoning＠comcast.net

I thought that I had sent a message to the list a few months ago showing the procedure to use the software DDCMP driver in RSTS V10.1. That's a standard feature, but undocumented and probably unsupported. It works well and interoperates with PyDECnet and with the DDCMP implementation in SIMH. Presumably it will talk to the software DDCMP in RSX, though I have not tried that. Attached are the instructions and the program mentioned. paul

6 years, 3 months

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JOSS-II: good news and bad news

by lars＠nocrew.org

Hello, A small group of volunteers are working on restoring JOSS-II, the PDP-6 version, to a working state. We are typing in a program listing provided by the RAND corporation. The listing is the supervisor, which is a large part of the system. So far good news. The bad news is that it's not a complete system. The Computer History Museum seems to have additional program listings here: https://www.computerhistory.org/collections/catalog/102734547 But they have not been scanned. They archvists are willing to let us see the collection, but no one of us lives near the museum. Is there anyone interested in this kind of thing that are willing to help out?

6 years, 3 months

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Manual photocopies available

by a.carlini＠ntlworld.com

I have paper copies of a few manuals I have no use for. Most of these are single-sided photocopies made by others and sent to me for scanning years ago. These are not originals. Almost all of them appear to be available on bitsavers, but if you have a penchant for paper, this might be your chance. Available by post (for whatever it costs to send them plus the paypal fee) or by arrangement in Reading, UK. MicroVAX Troubleshooting and Diagnostics. EK-O19AE-SG-005 MicroVAX Dual-Host Systems. EK-338AC-DH-003 VAX-11/780 Unibus Adaptor Technical Description. EK-DW780-TD.001 VAX-11/730 Diagnostic System User's Guide. EK-DS780-UG.002 VAX-11/780 Installation Manual. EK-SI780-IN-002 Translation Buffer Cache and SBI Control Technical Description. EK-MM780-TD.001 VAX-11/780 Hardware User's Guide. EK-11780-UG-001 VAX-11/780 Console Interface Board Technical Description. EK-KC780-TD.001 FB780 Floating-Point Accelerator. EK-FP780-TD.001 MS780 Memory System Technical Description. EK-MS780-TD.001 * KA780 Centraler Processor Technical Description. EK-KA780-TD.001 * KA655 CPU System Maintenance. EK-306AA-MG.001 The last two (marked *) do not currently appear to be on bitsavers. They do appear in my index of local files so I'll make them available to Al sometime soon. Send emails off-list please. Antonio -- Antonio Carlini antonio at acarlini.com

6 years, 3 months

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1st Annual Kennett Classic October 16-18 2020 - Mark your Calendars

by billdegnan＠gmail.com

Hey all - We have had soft-launched it on our website calendar a few months ago but I wanted to confirm that yes on October 16 - 18 2020 the first annual "Kennett Classic" weekend is scheduled and a GO; venue booked and implementation is under way. The centerpiece of the weekend will be a contest between teams of vintage computer hobbyists competing for the Kennett Classic Cup, an award to the team with the best network of vintage hardware based on up-time and connectivity. There will be a substantial prize awarded to the winning team. We're really excited to share the details of this event, but stand by for now. In addition to the on-site teams, we will open the contest to any qualifying team worldwide. This is a first-of-its-kind world-wide vintage computing networking event! We're working on the registration pages now, and once they're live we'll share all of the details. Think of the Kennett Classic Cup as a car rally for vintage computers. We have many other activities planned for that weekend, stay tuned. Interested? We look forward to making this a huge success. Bill Degnan Kennett Classic Kennett Square, PA https://www.kennettclassic.com

6 years, 3 months

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Looking for Extended Industry Standard Architecture Revision 3.10 Specification

by cctalk＠ibm51xx.net

Hello, Does anyone have the "Extended Industry Standard Architecture Revision 3.10" specification either in printed/book form that they are willing to separate >from or in some sort of electronic format ala PDF? I am mostly interested in the sections on the syntax for EISA CFG files. TIA! -Ali

6 years, 3 months

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IMSAI PCS 80 30 ROM (original)

by billdegnan＠gmail.com

Hi - I am looking for an IMSAI PCS 80-30 ROM image made for with the Tarbell 1011 controller and Persci 277..anyone have this? I received a system and drive but I think the ROM was replaced and since then I was told the system would no longer boot. In the meantime I am going to find a drive and controller that is compatible. Or, ug, have to try to edit the ROM I have (version 1.1) to operate with this hardware. I would not having a copy of ROM 1.0 at least to start from scratch with. Thanks Bill Degnan

6 years, 3 months

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ISO National Instruments MPW DSP tools

by aek＠bitsavers.org

One shot in the dark if anyone has the DSP development or interface toolkit for NI's TMS320C30 Nubus cards. I have a bunch of boards but never found any software to use with them. This is probably LabView 2 or 3 timeframe. I see NI, who is normally pretty good with keeping manuals around doesn't even have them online any more for boards like the DSP2300

6 years, 3 months

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DEC paper, drives, PDUs, chassis, etc (Toronto, Ontario)

by toby＠telegraphics.com.au

Hi, I have access to some DEC items for a month or two before a house is sold. Photographs are linked here: https://imgur.com/a/HqxI4JA I can locate and forward any items, if still available, for actual shipping costs and any nominal packaging material costs. Summary: Hitachi ESDI drives RX50 drives (many) TK50 tapes (many) DEC Professional magazine 1987-1994 DECUS software abstracts DECUS software catalogues Controlling Software Projects (DeMARCO) Programming in C with Let's C (Vine) Surefire Programming in C (Stewart) PDP-11 Systems and Options Catalogs 1983-1989 Various databooks, DECdirect, etc DECUScope magazines Copies of RT-11 SIG newsletter(s) issues of digital Canadian Digest, 1980s DECUS Canada mailings digital news & review magazines ("The Independent Newspaper & Test Lab of Open Computing for DEC Sites") various PDU units (see pic) RD52/RD53 drives various empty chassis/backplanes (see pics) BA23 shells (2) various tapes, drives (see pics) As I said, last call, gone in 1-2 months. --Toby

6 years, 3 months

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Any fun SunWindows/SunView stuff?

by cmhanson＠eschatologist.net

I have my Sun-4/110C set up and running SunOS 4.1.4. Were there any fun SunView applications or hacks back in the day? Other than the demos, the only stuff I currently have is emacstool (built as part of emacs 18.59) and the PLATO client (which I haven?t actually built yet). I know I can read through the comp.sources.unix archives but I figure maybe some folks might remember things to look for. -- Chris

6 years, 3 months

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does anyone have a tektronix 4170?

by aek＠bitsavers.org

Went to Sacramento today to pick this up https://www.ebay.com/itm/TEKTRONIX-Model-4170-Local-Graphics-Processor/3729… and it's missing the cpu and memory boards If I can get pictures of them, I'm going to ask the seller to look for them in the stuff that they still have.

6 years, 3 months

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Is this IBM keyboard compatible with the IBM 3279?

by mattislind＠gmail.com

The connector is the correct one. It has four jumpers that could be used for setting one of the keyboard types using the KB ident lines. https://i.imgur.com/PhfvKaV.jpg https://i.imgur.com/VPT38cK.jpg https://i.imgur.com/nN1gtFu.jpg Which terminal was it used for originally? /Mattis

6 years, 3 months

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RD53 failure modes

by ce.murillosanchez＠gmail.com

Hello folks; I've recently had some free time and decided to look at some hardware failures in my small collection.? I fixed a couple of analog boards in the compact Mac department, and a failed scsi disk in one of them prompted me to test the small stash of such drives that I have.? Turns out, about half of those marked as "working" in 2015 have failed now in many different ways.? Oh well... sucks, but it was to be expected... I decided to image some of the still working ones, both in the stash and in working machines.?? The one in the vaxstation 2000 (a 1GB scsi with 5.5-2) turned out to have file system corruption (probably from? AC power failures), which has taken a while to fix.? And then, I remembered that said system originally came with an RD53 that has sat elsewhere for 25 years.? It passed a read test in 2005.? So I tried to see if I could read it and maybe image it now, but no go. The disk spins up, initiates a seek (the arm is not stuck in a gooey stop pad; I've read that this is a common failure mechanism for Micropolis 1325's; I opened it and saw the arm move) but then the arm returns violently (clacking) to the rest position; it does this a number of times (two to four, usually) and then it spins down. Applied voltages and currents remain ok as this happens. I've seen plenty of internet content about solving the stuck arm problem, but not this. Advice, please? Carlos.

6 years, 3 months

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AT&T DSPs

by mark.kahrs＠gmail.com

I have various TI DSP documentation but also have AT&T DSPs, in particular, the DSP16. The DSP32C was much more popular however.

6 years, 3 months

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Printer Transparencies?

by healyzh＠avanthar.com

Here is a strange question. Does anyone happen to know how long unused Laser Printer and Ink Jet transparencies last? Do they go bad, or break down? I have a stack of them, still in the boxes, a lot are unopened. I scavenged them about 10 years ago, when people were getting rid of them. I wanted them for a Photography Project, that I?ve never had time to try. At this point, I?d like to know if I?m wasting space storing them. Zane

6 years, 3 months

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Can't Select a Custom Device in Eagle

by robert.jarratt＠ntlworld.com

Never mind, I just realised there was a little "+" sign well away from the symbol that allowed me to select it. It looks like the symbol is somehow much bigger that how I have drawn it. I should be able to work it out now. Regards Rob From: Rob Jarratt <robert.jarratt at ntlworld.com> Sent: 07 March 2020 17:12 To: General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts (cctalk at classiccmp.org) <cctalk at classiccmp.org> Subject: Can't Select a Custom Device in Eagle I have been using Eagle to reverse engineer a PSU schematic. I decided I needed to make a custom device in Eagle for the transformer. I have done this and it seems to be fine, except that when I put the symbol on a schematic, after I have confirmed its position, I can't select it, so I can't move it or anything. I have done some web searches but I can't find anything about this. Anyone know what the problem might be? I am using the free version, and I am on version 7.2.0. Looks like later versions are subscription only and I am reluctant to do that because they could take away access at any time. Thanks Rob

6 years, 3 months

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Can't Select a Custom Device in Eagle

by robert.jarratt＠ntlworld.com

I have been using Eagle to reverse engineer a PSU schematic. I decided I needed to make a custom device in Eagle for the transformer. I have done this and it seems to be fine, except that when I put the symbol on a schematic, after I have confirmed its position, I can't select it, so I can't move it or anything. I have done some web searches but I can't find anything about this. Anyone know what the problem might be? I am using the free version, and I am on version 7.2.0. Looks like later versions are subscription only and I am reluctant to do that because they could take away access at any time. Thanks Rob

6 years, 3 months

2
1
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Good picture of a S360.

by cz＠alembic.crystel.com

From Imgur. The question: How the heck can you wear stiletto heels in a data center? https://i.imgur.com/rakM62J.jpg

6 years, 3 months

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2.11bsd rogue can't build

by jacob.ritorto＠gmail.com

Wonder why I can't make(1) rogue on my 11/83, 2044KW, latest patch release from sms. [16] root--> make cc -O -DUNIX -DUNIX_BSD4_2 -c curses.c cc -O -DUNIX -DUNIX_BSD4_2 -c hit.c cc -O -DUNIX -DUNIX_BSD4_2 -c init.c cc -O -DUNIX -DUNIX_BSD4_2 -c inventory.c cc -O -DUNIX -DUNIX_BSD4_2 -c level.c cc -O -DUNIX -DUNIX_BSD4_2 -c machdep.c cc -O -DUNIX -DUNIX_BSD4_2 -c main.c cc -O -DUNIX -DUNIX_BSD4_2 -c message.c cc -O -DUNIX -DUNIX_BSD4_2 -c monster.c cc -O -DUNIX -DUNIX_BSD4_2 -c move.c cc -O -DUNIX -DUNIX_BSD4_2 -c object.c cc -O -DUNIX -DUNIX_BSD4_2 -c pack.c cc -O -DUNIX -DUNIX_BSD4_2 -c play.c cc -O -DUNIX -DUNIX_BSD4_2 -c random.c cc -O -DUNIX -DUNIX_BSD4_2 -c ring.c cc -O -DUNIX -DUNIX_BSD4_2 -c room.c cc -O -DUNIX -DUNIX_BSD4_2 -c save.c cc -O -DUNIX -DUNIX_BSD4_2 -c score.c cc -O -DUNIX -DUNIX_BSD4_2 -c spec_hit.c cc -O -DUNIX -DUNIX_BSD4_2 -c throw.c cc -O -DUNIX -DUNIX_BSD4_2 -c trap.c cc -O -DUNIX -DUNIX_BSD4_2 -c use.c cc -O -DUNIX -DUNIX_BSD4_2 -c zap.c cc -i curses.o hit.o init.o inventory.o level.o machdep.o main.o message.o monster.o move.o object.o pack.o play.o random.o ring.o room.o save.o score.o spec_hit.o throw.o trap.o use.o zap.o -o rogue -lcurses -ltermlib ld:/usr/lib/libcurses.a(refresh.o): text overflow *** Exit 4 Stop. [17] root-->

6 years, 3 months

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Mystery 1970 core board

by jules.richardson99＠gmail.com

Hopefully collective wisdom can help on this one - does anyone have a clue what system this core board was from: http://www.classiccmp.org/acornia/tmp/coresmall.jpg The curved edge connectors (presumably to make board insertion easier) are quite distinctive, plus the way the power's fed in via an edge connector on the "far" side of the board. What's interesting to me is the core ring size; the TTL ICs on the board have 1970 date codes, but I didn't think that the rings got quite that small until right at the end of core's era, more toward the end of the decade. It seems to be 8 blocks of 64x64, i.e. 4KB. p/n on the main board of 2001000755, and just hidden from view under the core daughterboard is a logo that says "LEC", which I suppose might be meaningful. There's a bigger (2181x1863) image as "coreboard.jpg" in the same dir if more detail helps (I doubt it), but it's 2.4MB so maybe save Jay's bandwidth by only looking at that one if you absolutely have to :-) thanks, Jules

6 years, 3 months

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VCF PNW 2020: Cancelled

by mbbrutman＠brutman.com

The short story: COVID-19 More details at http://vcfed.org/vcf-pnw. Mike

6 years, 3 months

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eBay: 2x IBM 5114 and 5103

by anders.k.nelson＠gmail.com

I don't have enough space, but these look neat! https://www.ebay.com/itm/Vintage-IBM-5114-disk-drive-5103-printer-for-5110-… -- Anders

6 years, 3 months

1
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RDI BriteLite

by aperry＠snowmoose.com

> On Mar 5, 2020, at 05:20, Plamen Mihaylov via cctech <cctech at classiccmp.org> wrote: > > ? Does anyone have such machine ? I miss the PSU adapter as well as the Sbus > framebuffer which connects the LCD panel to the mainboard. Any info is > appreciated. I had one, but sold it to someone on this list last year. I used a generic power supply, one with multiple cord tips and selectable output. However, when I exhibited the BriteLite and had it running all day, the power supply died after a day and a half. Good luck on finding a frame buffer for it. I don?t remember the details about it, but I took lots of photos of it. alan > > Best regards, > Plamen

6 years, 3 months

2
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RDI BriteLite

by michael.99.thompson＠gmail.com

> Date: Thu, 5 Mar 2020 14:23:30 +0200 > From: Plamen Mihaylov <plamenspam at afterpeople.com> > Subject: RDI BriteLite > > Does anyone have such machine ? I miss the PSU adapter as well as the Sbus > framebuffer which connects the LCD panel to the mainboard. Any info is > appreciated. > > Best regards, > Plamen > I have several BriteLites, including IPC, IPX, and LX versions. I will see what power supplies go with them. The Sbus video board is something special for the LCD panel. -- Michael Thompson

6 years, 3 months

1
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For those with 6809 experience

by brain＠jbrain.com

Looking at the datasheet for the 6809 (specifically, the 6809E that needs incoming quadrature clock), I read that !HALT can be asserted 200nS (for 1MHz part) before falling Q and the CPU will finish the existing instruction and then go into a HALT state as long as the HALT line is low during the falling edge of Q. That's the store from the datasheet, but when I am testing it, I see that, even if I pull HALT low at the very beginning of the last cycle of an instruction, the 6809 will not acknowledge the HALT until executing the next instruction. My logic is watching for IO address $ff61.? When found, it drops Q so, to start the HALT condition, I need only: lda $ff61 Not that the trigger is being performed by the code, so the current instruction (the lda) should complete and then the CPU should go into HiZ.? What I see is: lda $ff61 lda $ff60 <- the next instruction executed, and THEN the CPU goes into HiZ. I can deal with this (Yes, I should just look at BS=BA=1, which tell when to safely use the bus, but I don't have access to those signals for this project), but I thought I'd see if this was known by all, or if there is something I am missing. Jim -- Jim Brain brain at jbrain.com www.jbrain.com

6 years, 3 months

3
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SWTPC 6800, FLEX and Percom Floppy

by deramp5113＠yahoo.com

Now that I have my SWTPC 6800 loading and saving programs with paper tape, cassette, and floppy disk (using the Percom LFD-400 controller and their MiniDOS and MPX ?operating systems?), the next logical step is getting FLEX up and running. Unfortunately, I only have the Percom floppy controller and I don?t know if FLEX compatible disk drivers and boot code were ever written for it. Before I go create Percom support for FLEX from scratch, does anyone have any leads? Mike

6 years, 3 months

2
1
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Wang 2200 Diskettes

by cclist＠sydex.com

On 3/3/20 4:26 PM, Joe George wrote: > > Yup! Single sided, single density, 32 hard sectors. And the Wang 2200 had apparently some weird insert orientation, the ?Wang? labels are on the back of the diskettes, opposite side of the manufacturer sticker. > > Cheers, My recollection is that the 8" floppy drives (in a lowboy floor-standing unit) were vertically mounted and placed to the right of the operator. The floppy eject button was then closest to the operator and any disk inserted would be visible from the "rear" of the floppy. Not nearly as weird as the Altos ACS8000, for example, that mounted the floppy drives upside-down and horizontally, such that the eject button was topmost. Those disks do have content labels placed on what we'd consider the "backside" of the floppy for obvious reasons. Did any 5.25" floppy-equipped systems do this? --Chuck

6 years, 3 months

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What is this System 360 peripheral/maintenance console?

by steven＠malikoff.com

I was watching this video on highway construction in the 1960's (as you do) and noticed what appears to be a System 360 console, that I couldn't place. Presumably it's some peripheral or CE maintenance panel. I didn't find it in the Physical Planning Guide (not that that's comprehensive) nor from perusing google images. I'm a little curious as to what it is. It's at 23:13 in https://youtu.be/apWSa6QlrTg?t=1393 Thanks Steve.

6 years, 3 months

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stuff for sale - recent move

by joezatarski＠gmail.com

> > On Sun, 1 Mar 2020 at 17:58, Joseph Zatarski via cctalk > <cctalk at classiccmp.org> wrote: > > > > I've started inventorying a lot of the stuff I'd like to pass on here: > > > https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/19vhF-o6vx9g7l-D8cvLJ5OPJzpdmU9PTTkn… > > I can't see these in the Google sheet, for some reason: > > > -Mac network cards (nubus and one for IIsi or SE/30) as well as a couple > > other accessories (Dayna Mini Etherprint, AAUI transceiver, more > > accessories to come) > > I am interested in an SE/30 NIC and associated bits (transciever, > AppleTalk bridge). > > I am happy to pay international postage. I'm in Prague. > -- > Liam Proven ? Profile: https://about.me/liamproven > Email: lproven at cix.co.uk ? gMail/gTalk/gHangouts: lproven at gmail.com > Twitter/Facebook/LinkedIn/Flickr: lproven ? Skype: liamproven > UK: +44 7939-087884 ? ?R (+ WhatsApp/Telegram/Signal): +420 702 829 053 Hello Liam, The NICs I have are Asante brand. They are located in the Apple/Macintosh category. https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/19vhF-o6vx9g7l-D8cvLJ5OPJzpdmU9PTTkn… Unfortunately for you, sale is pending on the SE/30 NIC. If the sale falls through, you are in line behind one other person. I'm fairly confident that even if the first buyer falls through, the second in line will not. If you're still interested in the other accessories, I can have a look when I get home, get a few pictures put up for you, and we can continue from there. International shipping should not be an issue, filling out a customs form is not very hard. Best Regards, Joe Zatarski

6 years, 3 months

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TOPS-20 networking

by athornton＠gmail.com

*TOPS-20* The set of config files you need to edit in TOPS-20 is found here, about halfway down the page: http://www.ldx.ca/notes/tops-20-notes.html I'll paste it here: Configuring the system The *Panda Distribution* README has this to say about initial configuration: You?ll need to edit the following files. EMACS is installed on this system, along with TECO and EDIT. [More on these editors later.] SYSTEM:7-1-CONFIG.CMD to set your timezone SYSTEM:HOSTS.TXT to define your local host name and network SYSTEM:INTERNET.ADDRESS to define (again!) your IP address ? must be the same as in klt20.ini. Also define your netmask here as LOGICAL-HOST-MASK SYSTEM:INTERNET.GATEWAYS to define your IP gateway SYSTEM:INTERNET.NAMESERVERS Don?t bother with SYSTEM:INTERNET.NAMESERVERS. That is the configuration file for DEC?s resolver; although it?s simpler it has some interoperability problems with MMAILR which haven?t been resolved yet. SYSTEM:MONNAM.TXT to define your system name DOMAIN:RESOLV.CONFIG to define your DNS servers, your default domain (replacing MYDOMAIN.COM) and any users in addition to OPERATOR who can send control messages to the resolver. To actually edit any of those, you'll probably need to ENABLE first, eg: @ena $ The dollar-sign ($) prompt indicates that your privileges are enabled. *Linux Host* On the host side, I like to convert my ethernet to a bridge so I can add virtual interfaces easily. Here's the script I use (requires sudo, and that the user running it be in group adm, and that the tuntap devices be owned by and writeable by group adm): #!/bin/sh eth0text=$(/sbin/ifconfig eth0 | grep "inet ") HOSTIP=$(echo "${eth0text}" | awk '{print $2}') HOSTNETMASK=$(echo "${eth0text}" | awk '{print $4}') HOSTBCASTADDR=$(echo "${eth0text}" | awk '{print $6}') HOSTDEFAULTGATEWAY=$(/sbin/route -n | grep ^0.0.0.0 | awk '{ print $2 }') # Change as we add more guest OSes with network stacks _maxtap=2 # for i in $(seq 0 ${_maxtap}); do /usr/bin/tunctl -t tap${i} -u adam -g adm /sbin/ifconfig tap${i} up done # # Now convert eth0 to a bridge and bridge it with the TAP interfaces /sbin/brctl addbr bridge0 sleep 1 /sbin/brctl addif bridge0 eth0 sleep 1 /sbin/brctl setfd bridge0 0 /sbin/ifconfig eth0 0.0.0.0 /sbin/ifconfig bridge0 $HOSTIP netmask $HOSTNETMASK broadcast $HOSTBCASTADDR up # set the default route to the bridge0 interface /sbin/route add -net 0.0.0.0/0 gw $HOSTDEFAULTGATEWAY # # bridge in the tap devices for i in $(seq 0 ${_maxtap}); do /sbin/brctl addif bridge0 tap${i} /sbin/ifconfig tap${i} 0.0.0.0 done For some reason this seems to work even though that should be group netdev. I guess because "adam," who is running the emulator, owns the tun/tap devices. I have this in /etc/udev/rules.d/99_net_tun.rules: KERNEL=="tun", GROUP="netdev", MODE="0660", OPTIONS+="static_node=net/tun" I don't think that's standard; I think I added that at some point. And then in klt20.ini, I have a statement that looks like: devdef ni0 564 ni20 ifc=bridge0 ipaddr=192.168.248.249 dedic=false And then finally the dnpni20 executable is setuid root. All of this together gives me a TCP/IP stack on klh10 that allows the emulator to run as me, not as root, and bridges the TOPS-20 host into my real network. Adam

6 years, 3 months

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Panda TOPS20 networking trouble

by dave＠661.org

I'm having loads of trouble getting networking going with the Panda Distribution of TOPS20 and KLH10. Could someone point me to a step-by-step guide on doing this? -- David Griffith dave at 661.org A: Because it fouls the order in which people normally read text. Q: Why is top-posting such a bad thing? A: Top-posting. Q: What is the most annoying thing in e-mail?

6 years, 3 months

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stuff for sale - recent move

by joezatarski＠gmail.com

>> >> Hi. >> >> I forgot to mention it?s an eye phone >> 11 PRO 256gb. > > I may be missing something -- *what's* an "eye phone"? I thought you > were listing vintage kit, not smartphones? > > -- > Liam Proven ? Profile: https://about.me/liamproven > Email: lproven at cix.co.uk ? gMail/gTalk/gHangouts: lproven at gmail.com > Twitter/Facebook/LinkedIn/Flickr: lproven ? Skype: liamproven > UK: +44 7939-087884 ? ?R (+ WhatsApp/Telegram/Signal): +420 702 829 053 I believe Kevin replied to the wrong e-mail by mistake. He must be selling something himself and had a similar subject line. That said, no hits on my post yet? what, nobody needs nubus ethernet cards? or various ISA/PCI/PCI-X expansion cards? a dozen computer mice? DEC Alpha 4100 RAM? some nice combination SCSI/fastethernet cards? OK, I get that it's mostly junk ;), but no attention at all so far. Keep checking, getting more stuff in the list every day. I added a recent section so people can keep up on the recent additions without having to check the whole list. As before, I'm in the west suburbs of chicago in case anyone is local and sees some stuff they want.

6 years, 3 months

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Wang 2200 Diskettes

by jgeorge＠nbi6.com

I bought some 8? diskette cases and they arrived with a bunch of old software for a Wang 2200 in them. One of the boxes HP was badly water damaged, and the diskettes are shot, but those look like backups of some company software. Diskettes that look like they may still viable include 2 marked ?WANG 2200 MVP Operating System v2.6.2? and one marked ?2200 MVP (Multi-user) BASIC-2 System Platter Release 2.5?. There?s also a box of diskettes of what look like source for something ?GBS Mod 1 Diskette Version?. I?m not a Wang person and I can?t use these diskettes for anything, does anyone on the list have any interest in them? Is the software worth rescuing or is it already archived somewhere? If anyone wants them, drop me an email off list. Gimme a couple of bucks to cover shipping and I?ll send you all the ones that look viable. Joe

6 years, 3 months

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Westward

by cc＠informatik.uni-stuttgart.de

Hi, I'm looking for information about Westward graphics workstations, especially for the 2019 (from about 1983) and the 2220 (about 1987). Christian

6 years, 3 months

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cctalk Digest, Vol 65, Issue 22

by athornton＠gmail.com

> On Feb 29, 2020, at 11:00 AM, cctalk-request at classiccmp.org wrote: > >> Anyway, my Googling turned up nothing on the OS, although I did find a Robert Knight at Princeton, but no information on stuff he's done. I will likely email him to ask about it, but wanted to ask here first if anyone knows anything about it. >> When you do, please tell him Adam Thornton says ?hi.? I worked for him at Princeton for a while. IIRC he wrote the LPR RFC. Adam

6 years, 3 months

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ISO National HPC microcontroller users manual

by aek＠bitsavers.org

National didn't document the opcodes for the HPC in the data sheets. Does anyone have the users manual? I found the DOS disks for the cross-assembler and c compiler tonight http://bitsavers.org/components/national/hpc

6 years, 3 months

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Mac Performa 6214CD FTGH from San Antonio, TX

by mark.tapley＠swri.org

All, Next to go is a home-office setup. Mac Performa 6214CD, PowerPC CPU, 3.5? floppy and CD drive on front face Apple Extended Keyboard II (NO ADB CABLE) Apple Apple Desktop Bus Mouse II (round) Apple Multiple Scan 15 Display (matching, includes cable) APS external SCSI hard drive enclosure and cable (Centronix on the hard drive end, DB-25 on the Mac end) Epson Stylus Color 740 ink-jet printer with a spare (unopened) cartridge UMAX Astra 1220S flat-bed SCSI scanner (NO CABLE - DB-25 connector) Pile of accompanying software including at least: DeltaGraph Now Up-To-Date and Contact Sad Macs, Bombs and disasters Retrospect Backup Astra Scanner Driver All Free to a Good Home. You want this if: a) you can afford shipping or pickup from San Antonio, TX, 78254, and b) 15 years after ?Take this job and shove it? came out you finally acted on it, quit your job and set up your own home office and accounting business, and now you want to relive your glory days. All items working when decommissioned, about 15 years back. Fred?s ingenious guarantee (?Guaranteed not to work, double your money back if it does work?) applies. Please, please, please take this as a group, I really don?t want to split it up. If I locate the missing ADB or DB25 SCSI cables in time, I?ll include them, but I?ll double the price :-). FWIW, this was a companion of the Palm Pilot in my other post. - Mark 210-522-6025 office 210-379-4635 cell

6 years, 3 months

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Anyone heard of the S1 Operating System

by wrcooke＠wrcooke.net

Reading through the April 85 issue of Byte, I came across a reference to the "S1 Operating System." In Jerry Pournelle's column on pg 361 he talks about this mysterious OS. Here is a small excerpt: Robert Knight. formerly of Princeton's computer laboratories. is an old fan of my books and columns as well as the creator of SI. which he had running on an IBM Instruments CS9000 Anyway, my Googling turned up nothing on the OS, although I did find a Robert Knight at Princeton, but no information on stuff he's done. I will likely email him to ask about it, but wanted to ask here first if anyone knows anything about it. Thanks, Will

6 years, 3 months

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Anyone heard of the S1 Operating System

by paul＠mcjones.org

Googling for "multisolutions inc. s1 operating system" turned up several mentions from ComputerWorld, an S1 operating system pin at Etsy, plus this blog post: http://mathisliberalarts.blogspot.com/2012/03/?m=0 > One day at Burroughs I received a phone call from a recruiter. Usually I don?t give these headhunters the time of day, but this one mentioned a startup company. It was either intrigue or boredom but I decided to interview. Then I was hired to write compilers which I had been doing for about six years at Burroughs. > > The company was a small startup in Lawrenceville, NJ. The CTO was a charismatic engineer named Robert Knight. The CEO was a wealthy businessman, Charles Lombardo, who provided most of the company?s funding. Somehow, maybe because Lombardo?s wife worked on Wall Street, our tiny company, MultiSolutions Inc., actually went public. Even though they actually did not have a product or a revenue stream. > > The product, under development, was an Operating System called S1. The marketing department used the slogan ?Unix is a dinosaur, MS-DOS is a toy.? This was in 1984 and it was true that there was an opportunity for a new OS in the marketplace. > > To kill any suspense, the OS never caught on. ... > Paul > On Feb 28, 2020, at 10:00 AM, wrcooke at wrcooke.net wrote: > > Date: Thu, 27 Feb 2020 19:20:06 -0600 (CST) > From: wrcooke at wrcooke.net <mailto:wrcooke at wrcooke.net> > To: cctalk at classiccmp.org <mailto:cctalk at classiccmp.org> > Subject: Anyone heard of the S1 Operating System > > Reading through the April 85 issue of Byte, I came across a reference to the "S1 Operating System." In Jerry Pournelle's column on pg 361 he talks about this mysterious OS. Here is a small excerpt: > Robert Knight. formerly of > Princeton's computer laboratories. is > an old fan of my books and columns > as well as the creator of SI. which he > had running on an IBM Instruments > CS9000 > > Anyway, my Googling turned up nothing on the OS, although I did find a Robert Knight at Princeton, but no information on stuff he's done. I will likely email him to ask about it, but wanted to ask here first if anyone knows anything about it. > > Thanks, > Will

6 years, 3 months

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52-pin D-Sub?

by athornton＠gmail.com

I work at an astronomy facility. I get to do some fun dumpster diving. I recently have pulled out of the trash a plugboard with a male and a female D-Sub 52 connector. 3 rows of pins, 17-18-17. I took the connectors off the board: there's nothing back there, so this thing only ever existed so you could plug the random cable you found into it and its friends to see what the cable fit. I can't find much evidence that a 52-pin D-Sub ever existed. Is this just Yet Another Physics Experiment thing where, hey, if your instrument already costs three million dollars, what's a couple of grand for machining custom connectors? Or was it once a thing? (also posted to COFF) Adam

6 years, 3 months

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G15 Drum Followup

by barry＠csguy.org

?Thanks for all the replies to my original post. I sold the heads separately along with a set of replacement cards and the remote display for $400. >From It?s operational days I know one of my drum?s long channels (not a register) is bad. The coating ?looks? ok but it?s been exposed (indoors) for decades with ample touching etc but there are no dents or scratches other than the bad channel. As some have said it ?seems? like a durable coating but I have no idea if it would work. I read somewhere there are 2 timing tracks put down at the factory. I have my doubts about this info (I thought the timing circuit laid down the reference tracks in the final stage of power up) but if true I would not expect my drum to work. I have the drum connected to a small motor and belt to spin it (slowly) for demo purposes. Anybody know what non-magnetic metal forms the drum? Stainless? Nickel? Cheers Barry original post: > Does anyone have an idea as to the value of a Bendix G15 Drum? Its time to pass mine to another caring collector who would appreciate it but I am not sure how of its value. Obviously it is rare but the market demand is unclear to me.

6 years, 3 months

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(Free?) teletype model 32 in cincinatti

by billdegnan＠gmail.com

ANyone interested in a kind of beat up but complete model 32, and you're in cincinnati to get it today or this weekend let me know by sending me a message through my web site https://www.vintagecomputer.net/contact.cfm This is the fairest way, it takes the requests with a timestamp. I will forward your info to the donor immediately, in order of receipt. He can send photos if you need them. On a scale of one to 10 it's in "4-7" condition depending on your taste. Has a built in phone and reader. (baudout) You must be able to physically go to this guy and pick it up this weekend. Bill

6 years, 3 months

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Old tape data retrieval

by trash80＠internode.on.net

(Just reposting this as it did not appear to appear on the list - there was about a two week period when I didn't see any CCMP emails for some reason - apologies if it has already appeared for others). I apologize if this is OT but I'm hoping someone on the list can help me fill a gap in my knowledge. Quick back story - in 1995 my wife and I published a book on her family history. For anyone interested in genealogy, details are here https://catalogue.nla.gov.au/Record/2416803 I think we may have done the whole job end-to-end on a 486 before sending a file to the book printers (we published 500 copies) but my memory is vague on that point. Of course the last job I did on the book I backed up the whole thing (database files, image files, record and document scans etc) to a DC2120 tape. I've even found the tape: http://koken.advancedimaging.com.au/index.php?/albums/interesting-finds/con… The wife says that its time for an update to the book so that means drop all other projects and see if you can get it back off the tape (with an implied now). I know that I used a software app called ResQ120 to run the tape drive. I can't find it (or any info) on-line other than the software came from Alloy but I suspect I have it here somewhere on a floppy disk so its only matter of time before I find that assuming the disk is still readable. Of course over time I have acquired other tape drives from various salvage/rescue sources but I believe this is the one I used: http://koken.advancedimaging.com.au/index.php?/albums/interesting-finds/con… What I'm missing is this - I recall that despite the PC having a floppy controller I added a separate floppy (or similar or other) controller (card) for the tape drive (it might have even run on the same interrupt - I can't remember). As with most stuff, being a prolific rescuer I have acquired many ISA based cards over the years that appear to be floppy controllers but I have no idea what I'm looking for to run this tape drive. Any clues, info etc would greatly appreciated because I don't want to have to tell her that it can't be done and you wouldn't want to be around if she had to hear that :-) Thank you!! Kevin Parker

6 years, 3 months

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4054 in Sacramento

by aek＠bitsavers.org

https://www.ebay.com/itm/TEKTRONIX-Model-4054A-ALL-IN-ONE-Microcomputer-Vin… good price, it's BIG though..

6 years, 3 months

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Bendix G15 Drum

by hills.barry＠gmail.com

Does anyone have an idea as to the value of a Bendix G15 Drum? Its time to pass mine to another caring collector who would appreciate it but I am not sure how of its value. Obviously it is rare but the market demand is unclear to me. thank you

6 years, 3 months

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Buying external SMD cables for Sun gear

by aperry＠snowmoose.com

? As previously discussed here, I have a Sun 3/260 that connects to a Sun external storage subsystem containing two 8? SMD drives. The external cabling is a 0.7m D-sub 25-pin (male both ends) data cable for each drive and a paired set of 0.7m D-sub 25- and 37-pin (male both ends) command cables. These cables are straight through connections between internal ribbon cables from the drives (CDC 9720-368 and Fujitsu M2372) to the controller board (Xylogics 451 on a VME adapter). For reasons described below, I have been unable to buy the original Sun cables. Should off-the-shelf D-sub 25- and 37-pin cables work? I guess electrical shielding/noise could be a concern? As to why I am looking for alternatives, MemoryX has been my source for this kind of stuff, but they have lost my trust. I ordered a full set of cables from them on 2 Jan and they have gone silent responding to my queries on that order. Then this month they were selling a couple sets of the control cables on eBay. I bought the second set. They marked it shipped, left positive comments about the transaction on eBay, but the cable set didn?t arrive as scheduled last Friday and yesterday they cancelled the eBay auction and refunded what I paid, all without any explanation. They still list the cables on their website, each $100 more than what they were when I ordered them on 2 Jan. alan

6 years, 3 months

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Parasitic Engineering Altair Clock Fix Kit...

by deramp5113＠yahoo.com

I scanned my Parasitic clock mod documents and put them at the link below. https://deramp.com/downloads/altair/hardware/altair_8800_computer/Parasitic… Mike

6 years, 3 months

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Seeking Zenith Data Systems Z183-92 documentation

by jplist2008＠kiwigeek.com

Good afternoon all; I picked up a ZDS Z183-92 laptop over the weekend alongside a Kodak Diconix 150 portable inkjet printer. The prior owner doesn't think he ever had a power supply for the Z183, although he discovered that it does power up sort-of from the Diconix power supply wallwart(!) The underside of the laptop has "12V" - and nothing else - so my assumption is I need to find a 12V pack of suitable amperage. The Diconix supply is 9VDC. The 9VDC is enough to bring up the LCD and at least some of the internals (presumably the +5v ones) to have it _appear_ to POST, but neither of the disks sound like they're running (either the internal HDD or the 3.5" drive). I presume the internal HDD requires the +12v to spin up, but I haven't dug into it yet. Anywho - if anyone had any documentation on this machine I would very much appreciate a scan. Or just confirmation what the power supply is supposed to be outputting would be very helpful. Thank you! - JP 50441

6 years, 3 months

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Classic computers, and peripherals offers in France

by p.gebhardt＠ymail.com

Hello list, this might be of interest for list members located in France (Normandie) or close to it: There is seller who offers different types of classic systems. Micros as well as larger systems andwhat appears to be a punched card sorter from the 50s. He writes that he has more stuff and that he can send pictures upon request. Descriptions are in French, but google translate might help out... https://www.leboncoin.fr/recherche/?text=Informatique%20vintage&locations=B… Cheers, Pierre ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- http://www.digitalheritage.de

6 years, 3 months

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HP 9000 Series 360 Thin LAN

by roger.addy＠charter.net

Hi All, I am using an HP 9000 Series 360 with a "Thin LAN" coax card to run a piece of equipment. The LAN connection is not currently being used.? I'm wondering if it's possible to connect it to a modern ethernet network?? If so, what could I do with it? I found an adapter on Amazon. I would like to be able to transfer files and possibly print.? The file systems are not compatible except for maybe ASCII files.? Anyone have any thoughts?? Even if I could transfer files into another HP 9000 system it would be beneficial. Thank you, Roger A.

6 years, 3 months

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cctalk Digest, Vol 65, Issue 16

by frank＠tuccio.net

FWIW I have a copy of Version 3.11 from BCPR Services 1990 spec. Contact me off list if you're interested. Frank Tuccio KC2QQN frank at tuccio.net ------------------------------ Message: 7 Date: Sun, 23 Feb 2020 04:14:37 -0800 From: Al Kossow <aek at bitsavers.org> To: "'General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts'" <cctalk at classiccmp.org> Subject: Re: Looking for Extended Industry Standard Architecture Revision 3.10 Specification Message-ID: <2dcdf609-2997-b458-eb2a-115fec80f6a3 at bitsavers.org> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8; format=flowed On 2/22/20 11:45 PM, Ali wrote: > I am surprised that after thirty or so years and many of the original "gang of nine" being gone the standard has not made its way into the wild..... I was as well, which was why I tried digging for it as much as I did Global Engineering's standards search is really bad. I wasn't able to determine if they actually still sell it and I assume BCPR is long gone. End of cctalk Digest, Vol 65, Issue 16 **************************************

6 years, 3 months

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Looking for manual for Panasonic KX-D4930

by mark＠markesystems.com

The Panasonic KX-D4930 is a ?Laptop Data Terminal?, which includes both a (non-backlit) LCD screen and a thermal printer in a laptop-like package. It was obviously intended to supplant the Silent-700, and in fact appears to do so quite nicely. It has an internal modem (Bell 212) as well as a 25-pin EIA connection, and can even be run from an internal 12-volt battery. However, either my Google-fu is exceptionally poor, or there?s truly no copy of its manual available on the Web. I do have the manual for the KX-D20, which is a VT-100 emulation cartridge for the terminal, but not the manual for the base unit itself. Specifically, I?m looking for the (non-VT-100) escape sequences that can control the terminal, if there are any. If anyone has a paper copy of the manual that could be scanned, I?d certainly appreciate it. In an ideal world, there would also be a service manual with schematics, but that?s probably too much to hope for... TIA! ~~ Mark Moulding

6 years, 3 months

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VCF PNW 2020: Seattle, March 21st and 22nd

by mbbrutman＠brutman.com

Come join us at Living Computers:Museum+Labs next month for VCF PNW 2020! Here is what you can look forward to: - 24 exhibits, ranging from big iron to 8 bitters - 6 presentations including one from Bil Herd and one from Joe Decuir - Our first vintage computer typing contest! (Yes, it will be hilarious) - A consignment area for buying and selling treasure - The museum. A very nice museum at that. Details can be found at http://vcfed.org/vcf-pnw . Mike

6 years, 3 months

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