> From: Jon Elson
> I have NEVER had even the SLIGHTEST damage with FedEx, even their
> ground service. This could just be statistical chance
This. I once had FexEx Ground destroy the entire packaging of a shipment (one
of those rigid plastic tubs, sealed closed with those tension tapes) so badly
they had to build entirely new packaging for it.
Assume _all_ shippers will throw your item across the room, and pack
accordingly - because they will.
Noel
I?ve just come into possession of both of these units.
The Mac has a 20MB internal HD and doesn?t startup. There is no happy mac or boot chime. The video is just a single line in the middle of the screen.
The HDD spins up and wants to be formatted by any Mac I?ve got that has USB on it.
If anyone wants either of these let me know (San Diego area of California). If I hear nothing both will go to the electronic recycler next Saturday.
David
Hello,
I also have a bunch of manuals, mainly for rt11, which aren't available in
bitsavers.
I always thought of bitsavers as the "whole" archive for DEC stuff, however
time ago, sorting these manuals, I found they where available only on Manx
or Antonio Carlini's archive.
Many manuals then are available on other sites, etc
Now the question: why collected manuals from other sites couldn't be added
to bitsavers too?
Thanks
Andrea
Today I got home and my Mouser order had arrived. I soldered in the new
6-position DIP switch and popped a new 1488 in the socket. Nice RS232 data
coming out... for about 10 seconds, then the transmit data line went to
around +2 volts and stayed there. WTF. Tried another one, same thing. Went
back to the first new chip, same thing - so it's not blown (and maybe the
old one wasn't either).
OK, it has to be the power supplies. Again.
Sure enough, +12 was sinking slowly until it was near zero at which point
the RS232 output basically went floating...
This looked familiar and it didn't take long to discover that the CT on the
transformer for the + and - 12 volt supplies was open again!! This time it
was the wire from the transformer broken as it entered the Molex connector.
Fixed that, back in business. I am amazed that none of the epoxy drop
tantalums on the high leg with the open neutral have blown. Maybe they're
open circuit :)
Also I don't know what gorilla at the salvage place was
connecting/disconnecting until he found a combo of base, board and monitor
that worked.
---
This email has been checked for viruses by Avast antivirus software.
https://www.avast.com/antivirus
I have a full book case of DEC binders, each containing one or more
manuals. I went through the lot of it this evening and checked to see
what was on bitsavers. It seems an awful lot of it is not available. I
cannot bring myself to dispose of any of it until it is digitised, but
keeping hold of this much paper is not practical for me.
I'm going to try to scan as much as I can. The full list of what I have
is available at the link below. It is mostly mid 1980's VAX/VMS
stuff.. If anyone would like one of the manuals for the cost of
shipping, I'd gladly send it over to you.
http://aaronsplace.co.uk/dec-manuals.html
*** If there is anything you consider a priority in terms of being
scanned, please let me know and I'll try to do it sooner, rather than
later. ***
Finally, I'd like to mention that these manuals came from a friend,
Marc, who passed away early last year. Marc used to be somewhat active
on this list (more so the #classiccmp IRC channel). A friend of Marc
will be participating in a walk for the Campaign Against Living
Miserably (CALM) charity. If anyone is willing to donate (even a small
amount), it would mean a lot to me. CALM is a charity supporting men who
suffer from depression - one of the leading killers of men under 45 in
the UK.
https://www.justgiving.com/fundraising/losthourswalk2019inmemoryofmarc
Many thanks,
Aaron
> But then it turned out not to be the load at all. No matter what I ran
> on that Pi, it would corrupt its SD cards in a matter of weeks (the
> symptom was that the fourth bit of some bytes would just stick on). I
> assume it was just something broken in the Pi itself.
You can simply root off of a USB disk by changing the "root=" parameter in
cmdline.txt on the FAT partition on your SD card. Since the card won't
otherwise be used unless you mount it if you do this, your next card
should last forever. I've got a Suptronics x830 board and enclosure with
an 8 TB drive which boots this way.
Any Pi processor newer than the original ARM1176JZ should run NetBSD
pretty well. My 900 MHz Pi 2 runs NetBSD/vax almost as fast as a
VAXstation 4000/30 (VLC), which is about 5 VUPS. An original Pi or Pi Zero
should be able to emulate a VAX at least as fast as an 11/780.
One issue with CPU intensive things on Raspberry Pis is that even if your
power supply provides plenty of current, the slightest drop in voltage can
cause throttling. If you know your power supply is good but see a
lightning symbol anyway, add "avoid_warnings=2" to config.txt on your SD
card's FAT partition.
John
Well, I knew the computer, just not the city.
It's Zell am See, a small town in western Autria, far from everywhere it seems.
The computer is a Datapoint 2200 - 50lbs, 10x19x20 inches.
I want to get it shipped to Calfornia, where I live.
The cheapest option is to just use local Austria mail, but max dimensions are 60x60x100cm, or
23.5x23.5x40 inches. That would leave just 2-inches on each of two sides for padding.
Best option - remove the plastic cover and mail it separately. Correct me if I'm wrong, but the entire bottom of the computer seems to be a solid piece of metal, like the Apple III = very strudy. The back is a giant metal heat sink.
I think it's do-able, do you?
Steve.
> From: Jon Elson
>> On 08/22/2019 12:47 PM, Tom Uban via cctalk wrote:
>> On a possible related note, I am looking for information on converting
>> CISC instructions to VLIW RISC.
> I think it might end up looking a bit like the optimizers that were
> used on drum memory computers back in the dark ages.
I dunno; those were all about picking _addresses_ for instructions, such
that the next instruction was coming up to the heads as the last one
completed.
The _order_ of execution wasn't changed, there was no issue of contention
for computing elements, etc - i.e. all the things ones think of a
CISC->VLIW translation as doing.
Noel
On another mailing list, someone asked if there was any list specifically
about bit-slice design and microcoding. I don't know of one, so I've
created a new mailing list specifically for those topics:
http://lists.brouhaha.com/mailman/listinfo/bit-slicers
The intent is for the list to cover technical discussion of bit-slice
hardware design and/or microcoding. In other words, discussion of
microcoding that doesn't use bit-slice hardware is fine.
> From: Ethan Dicks
>> Speaking of KE11-A's, does anyone know what's behind the bidding wars
>> on recent eBay KE11-A component board listings, e.g.:
>>
>> https://www.ebay.com/itm/372685033144
> Perhaps someone has a broken KE11-A
Must be two such people, though - I was neither of the top two bidders.
Odd for there to be so much interest in them.
Noel
> KE11-A Field Maintenance Print Set
> http://manx-docs.org/details.php/1,9358
Speaking of KE11-A's, does anyone know what's behind the bidding wars on
recent eBay KE11-A component board listings, e.g.:
https://www.ebay.com/itm/372685033144
AFAIK, the boards (a complete set is an M7210, M7211, M827, and two M234's)
are pretty useless without the custom backplane, so do some people have such,
or do they not know they need the backplane, or what?
I do have a couple of BB11's (they came in an old custom interface I bought),
and the KE11-A FMPS includes the backplane wiring, so if I were interested
enough to devote the time to wiring a replacement backplane, I could probably
get one running, but they aren't _that_ interesting...
Noel
I was one of the bidders. I have a KE11 backplane and it is populated. I just wanted some spare boards. You don't see these boards that often.
I am hoping that a backplane would appear too. The seller seems to have some early pdp11 backplanes.
Paul
>> KE11-A Field Maintenance Print Set > http://manx-docs.org/details.php/1,9358
>Speaking of KE11-A's, does anyone know what's behind the bidding wars on recent eBay
>KE11-A >component board listings, e.g.: https://www.ebay.com/itm/372685033144
> AFAIK, the boards (a complete set is an M7210, M7211, M827, and two M234's) are pretty useless > > without the custom backplane, so do some people have such, or do they not know they need the > > backplane, or what?
Hi Jim,
Do you still have any systems and/or peripherals left? I'm looking
for a PDP-11/34 Model A or C (Preferably C) with the Octal Programmers
Console and Digital Display along with peripherals. Please let me know
what you have. Would you be willing to accept monthly payments
because I'm a disabled vet and get paid within the first week of each
month? I have a pickup truck and I'm coming from the Cleburne, TX
area. Would be willing to meet you half way. Looking forward to your
reply.
Most sincere and all the best,
Scott
https://www.ebay.com/itm/312738923353
Sez:
"Older DEC PDP console face-plates DEC PDP 11/55 rare, PDP 8-straight 8
'glass'rare,
PDP 8/L, PDP 8/I, DEC TU58 status/diag. Panel . All in goodshape. $1000 for
the lot or $200 apiece. "
-----
> KE11-B Field Maintenance Print Set
> http://manx-docs.org/details.php/1,9361
> the KE11-B I also just found (IIRC, on one of the collections they list
> as indexed).
Oh, speaking of KE11-B's, does anyone have either the Technical or User's manual
for it (I couldn't locate either)?
It appears to be a program-compatible re-implementation of the KE11-A, on a
single hex board, but it'd be nice to confirm that, and find out more about
it. E.g. does it go in a MUD slot? (Yes, with the prints, I could eventually
work out the answers to most questions - the prints do contain the PROM
contents - but I'm lazy... :-)
Noel
This is listed under the informative title "vintage computer":
http://www.ebay.com/itm/291934825422
which leads me to post it here under a more informative title, hoping that
someone here has a soft spot for Primes!
Noel
> They try and list all known DEC manuals and print sets
Ooops, my mistake; the coverage is much wider than that (they default to
DEC). On the home page, there's a pull-down menu labelled "Company",
which lists over 100.
> From: "Paul Birkel" <pbirkel at gmail.com>
>> the KE11-B I also just found (IIRC, on one of the collections they list
>> as indexed).
> Please share a pointer to the location of that document
Here:
http://wwcm.synology.me/pdf/KE11-B%20Arithmetic%20Unit%20Engineering%20Draw…
It was in someone's clone of Wilber Williams' Computer Museum (UQ Museum of
IT), which is indeed in Manx's list of sites they included. ('.me' is
Montenegro, and Synology is some Taiwanese tech company.) The whole list is
here:
http://wwcm.synology.me/scanned.html
They have a lot of good stuff (I just found an MD10 brochure there, which is
AFAIK the only piece of MD10 documentation left in the world, other than a
section in a PDP-10 manual). I need to go through it and see what else they
have that I'm missing...
Noel
On 8/20/2019 11:08 PM, John H. Reinhardt wrote:
> On 8/20/2019 10:37 PM, Zane Healy wrote:
>>> On Aug 20, 2019, at 5:16 PM, John H. Reinhardt via cctalk<cctalk at classiccmp.org> wrote:
>>>
>>> On 8/20/2019 1:51 PM, Zane Healy via cctalk wrote:
>>>>> On Aug 20, 2019, at 11:43 AM, Noel Chiappa via cctalk<cctalk at classiccmp.org> wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>>> From: Glen Slick
>>>>>> This?
>>>>> Yes; thanks!
>>>>>
>>>>> I don't know it didn't show up in my Web searches - I tried a number of
>>>>> different things, no luck.
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> Also,http://manx.classiccmp.org/ (which is the medium-old URL I had for it)
>>>>> redirects to something that has no working link to Manx; probably ought to fix
>>>>> it to go to the new location.
>>>>>
>>>>> Noel
>>>> Stupid question. What is MANX? I?d thought that it was an alternate source of manuals. To my disappointment, the manuals that turned up when I searched it, apparently don?t exist online anywhere.
>>>>
>>>> Zane
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>> It's kind of like an internet index. Most (if not all?) of the entries are pointers to where the document is (or was) located. I've run across some dead links but most seem to be current. At least the stuff I've searched for.
>>>
>>> --
>>> John H. Reinhardt
>> Leave it to me to search for obscure stuff, like manuals for DEC ALL-IN-1, or DEC Ada. What I found really odd was that it had part numbers and manual names from one version, but when I clicked on the links it said no known version online.
>>
>> Zane
>>
>>
>>
> Anyway... What version of the ADA manuals are you looking for?? VSI has some for an Alpha Version 3.5 that they scraped off the HP site before they disappeared.? I have some older VAX ConDists that might have ADA documentation.
>
> Some links that still work:
>
> Master SLP/ODL Index 1997- 2017 <http://h30266.www3.hpe.com/masterindex/Consolidations_external.shtml>
>
> Just Checked.? I have the 1999 Q3 (Sept) SPL and ODL which should have VAX ADA V3.5 binaries and Documentation.? Are there Hobbyist PAKs for them?
>
>
> --
> John H. Reinhardt
Here's the link the the VSI "Legacy" documentation page.? The Ada there is V3.5 for Alpha but if you want VAX I would think that it's close.
--
John H. Reinhardt
> From: Glen Slick
> This?
Yes; thanks!
I don't know it didn't show up in my Web searches - I tried a number of
different things, no luck.
Also, http://manx.classiccmp.org/ (which is the medium-old URL I had for it)
redirects to something that has no working link to Manx; probably ought to fix
it to go to the new location.
Noel