Hi folks,
I guess people have looked at the pdp-8/m-2 Chassis:
http://hisdeedsaredust.com/pdp/pdp8m-2/04112008359.jpg
There are some interesting goodies as it's completely max'd out!
It appears to have 3x8K memory (a stunning 24K!).
M8320 = OmniBus Bus terminator loads.
G111 = 8K Memory.
M849 = Memory Shield.
M8357 = RX8E (8" Dual Floppy controller).
M8650 = Teletype control.
M847YA = Hardware Bootstrap Loader.
M8350 = Posibus interface (surprising).
M837 = Memory Extension / Timeshare.
M8300 = CPU Regs.
M8310 = CPU Regs Ctrl.
M8330 = CPU Timing.
It was last tested (amazingly) as late as July 1990, a mere 18 years ago.
Again, I'm wondering who took the pdp-8/m: Was it the Surrey Museum or Peter?
Also Peter, you said it was a simple circuit, do you have the circuit diagrams and procedure for converting a normal PC-based 5.25" Floppy drive to work as an RX-50? I did use PUTR recently on a PC to transfer RT-11 to 5.25" disk so I could install it on my pdp-11/73 (before the PSU failed!); so I know they *can* be used in some sense.
Also Johnny, are you actually offering a pdp-8/m or /f!!!!?
-cheers from julz @P
> he has not enough web space for
> anywhere near the amount of data which needs to be published.
I'd be happy to include the data on bitsavers.
ICT/ICL documents and software are quite rare in the US.
Yo,
I need about 50 UV erasable 27c256 for a project. Anyone have a stash
they'd be willing to part with reasonably priced?
--
Steve Robertson
steerex [at] ccvn [dot] com
I have at long last sold one of my two ICT 1301 computers, built in
1962.
I will soon want to supply the purchaser with original manuals,
technical drawings, software listings, tapes, punched cards etc, some
of which are now unique.
Before doing this I would like to put these into modern machine
readable form so they can be published on the web.
I am interested in how I can go about this for each of the different
types of information, which varies from hand written coding sheets
(which include the comments which were never punched onto the cards)
through 80 column cards in BCD code extended in a non IBM way (not
EBDIC), to drawings about A1 size (US 'D' size or 22" by 34" approx)
which are too big to scan and stitch together and too frail for a drum
scanner.
The punched cards include columns representing all the number 0 to 15
plus 1/4, 1/2, 3/4. I even have some 160 column cards, same as 80
column cards but with two round hole positions in each normal
rectangular hole position. I can read the 80 column cards but not the
160 column ones.
Though I have been aware of, and used Bitsavers for some time, I
thought their aim was mainly archiving the microprocessor era until I
deleted the tail of URL of a page and looked at the home page with a
description of the project. It seems that the information I have is
part of exactly what they are seeking to archive.
I estimate I have 300-400 drawings, 90,000 punched cards, 50 manuals,
3000 coding sheets and 1000 sheets specifying source, destination and
route of every signal in the computer. There are also 300 off 1/2 inch
magnetic tapes but these are 10 track (Ampex TM4) tapes and I think
only my 1301 will be able to read them.
I am in the south eastern corner of England if that makes a difference.
Your thoughts on how to do this in an efficient manner, what formats
to use, sources of help and equipment to do the job and anything else
you would like to throw in.
> Strangely, bitsavers doesn't have the Monitor II-D reference.
I've not had time to scan any of the 1620 material in CHM's collection.
The 1620 cards at CHM were read and indexed a while ago, and I read
some more from Doug Martin recently.
I hadn't looked at Dave Babcock's 1620 web site in a long time, looks like
nothing much was ever filled in for it. That's sad, since we have quite a
bit of information on the machine.
http://www.computerhistory.org/projects/ibm_1620/
and
http://jowsey.com/java/sim1620/
> Why don't they just send the tapes to CHM? They have a wall of 729 tape drives
There is no good reason for them to be considering a 729, other than apparently they
couldn't find another 7-track drive in Oz.
Off-line conversations from several people have strongly suggested to them not
to attempt recovery using a 40+ year old tape drive.
I *may* soon be acquiring a NeXT slab. Snag is, while it has mouse,
keyboard etc., it has no monitor.
Does anyone know about what kind of connector I'd need to connect a
plain ol' VGA type monitor to it?
I don't yet know if it's a colour or a mono slab. If it's a mono one,
I have an old Sun 19" mono monitor I could use (13W3, I think?), and
indeed an old Viking II Mac 19" mono (DB9, IIRC) and a colour 21" that
always swaps green and red over, on both Macs and PCs, for no reason I
can determine (It has a Mac lead, and I've tried on both Macs and PCs
thru' a Mac-PC convertor). Any chance of connecting any of them to it?
I've only been in this hobby for a quarter of a century or so and the
first 5-10y it was either a TV set or CGA. I know nothing about all
these older monitor connections... :?(
--
Liam Proven ? Profile: http://www.linkedin.com/in/liamproven
Email: lproven at cix.co.uk ? GMail/GoogleTalk/Orkut: lproven at gmail.com
Tel: +44 20-8685-0498 ? Cell: +44 7939-087884 ? Fax: + 44 870-9151419
AOL/AIM/iChat: liamproven at aol.com ? MSN/Messenger: lproven at hotmail.com
Yahoo: liamproven at yahoo.co.uk ? Skype: liamproven ? ICQ: 73187508
> I don't know if it's enough to keep us from now seeing
> 20 planes filtering out onto ebay...
Unlikely. "posthuman" buys a lot.
Sadly, it will not be part of the CHM collection.
> Look at what Al Kossow has managed to do with bitsavers. Yup, a lot of
> "collectible" documents have undergone spine-ectomies, but had he simply
> rented a warehouse and shelved everything, I'd guess that none of us
> would have heard, much less benefited from, bitsavers.
> In the real world "good enough" trumps "ideally."
Exactly. You can collect paper of marginal historical
value faster and with greater volume than you can afford to store it.
There is absolutely no way that I can afford to keep the paper that I
currently have, and have been working on triage and recycling for several
years now. Bitsavers is just under 100gb right now. That is a LOT of linear
feet of paper!
I've been scanning hundreds of magazine dups at CHM for the past two months
just to OCR and index the text for research on the exhibit we are building.
I'm not concerned about the images of the ads (including the WPS ones). We
approached other institutions, and they were not interested in the paper.
The spines were cut, and have been scanned using a high speed sheet feeder.
They are worth more to researchers as indexed bits than as pallets of dead
trees.
Newsprint is an even worse problem.
> For some reason I'm thinking about getting a Sparc 20.
> Does anyone have any lying around to trade?
I have one that is maxed out. It has everything you could
want in a SS20, incl. VSIMM. I have never booted it, but I
got it directly from when it was retired.
I'd mostly be interested in trades.
Here's a video of a 1985 US TV computer show that I believe was broadcast on PBS stations. Products reviewed are Atari 800, Commodore 64, Amiga IBM PC Emulator, Commodore Amiga, Atari 520, STNEO Paint:
http://www.archive.org/details/Amigaand1985
Found this accidentally and I'll bet there are many more computer related videos on this site that would be interesting to watch. If you find some more, please post the links here.
Tonight, in a TV commercial for 800okcable.com, I noticed a Kaypro .... the
cable folks were making fun of the phone companies supposedly being behind
the times, as text in the scene said "1996".
> Also, I wish they'd do something more than show off paint programs...
> Still, interesting bits of history--thanks!
One of the things that annoyed me greatly at the time was the brand name bigotry of the pundits. You'd hear it all the time on Computer Chronicles. The Atari ST offered a price performance ratio way beyond anything else available at the time and yet these "experts" just couldn't get over the name "Atari." They didn't even realize that the Atari ST had been designed by Commodore engineers while the Commodore Amiga had been designed by Atari engineers, including the great Jay Miner and that it shouldn't matter anyway what the brand label is on superior, low cost hardware.
> But it's just a plain old 1/2 inch tape drive.
7 track
A 729 would be my least favorite choice for data recovery.
They must not have looked very hard at recovery services.
As much as I hate him, John Bordynuik has working high-quality
7 track equipment already working with high success rates.
> William Blair wrote:
> > Found this accidentally and I'll bet there are many more computer
> > related videos on this site that would be interesting to watch. If
> > you find some more, please post the links here.
> That would be a lot of links, since the entire Computer Chronicles
> series was donated to the Internet Archive.
Yep, I noticed that right after I sent the message. 560 shows.
The museum's been offered a reasonable archive set of Computer Shopper
magazines, but doesn't however really have the space to justify taking/keeping
them given the historical 'worth' and anticipated demand for them as reference
material.
Consideration's being given to just scanning them as an electronic-only
reference - question is, has this already been done by anyone? There seems
little sense in duplicating effort!
cheers
Jules
For some reason I'm thinking about getting a Sparc 20. Does anyone
have any lying around to trade?
--
David Griffith
dgriffi at cs.csubak.edu
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?
I posted this over on the rescue list, but I figured it's probably close enough for here too, since I use these for classic machines. I'm looking for magneto-optical disk cartridges. Primarily the 3 1/2" versions, I use the 128mb disks for shuffleing data around between old machines, but I actually have a mix of drives - 128mb mostly, but also a 230mb and a 640mb drive. I also checked last might, and found the 600mb 5 1/4" drive I had forgotten about. Just no media for it.
I've been checking on eBay, and they turn up from time to time, and I actually just bought a few 128mb disks there. But mostly, the MO disks available tend to be the expensive, higher capacity disks that I can't use. These old, small ones rarely get listed, and I almost never see used ones. Or, when they do get listed, the shipping is wildly inflated. For example, I found an auction for 20 used 128mb disks. Flat rate $20 shipping. How it can possibly cost $20 to ship a small box of disks is beyond me. Likewise the BIN of $2 for five disks, with flat rate $12 shipping.
So, anyone have a good source of these critters? I remember buying a few boxes many years ago (back when the Zip drive was the great new thing) from an online media store, and paying about five bucks apiece for brand new 128mb cartridges. Surely the prices should have come down, but the the cheapest I can find them is $7 each. I'd really like to just buy some used cartridges, but I guess the used media market isn't what it was, I don't really even see used tapes much anymore.
So, anyone know of a source of 128mb, 230mb, 540mb or 640mb 3 1/2" disks, or the 600mb 5 1/4" disks?
-Ian
I have a brand new Cipher Model 920 9-track tape drive that needs a
new home. It can do either 800 or 1600 BPI and uses what I believe is
a Pertec like interface, i.e. Pertec compatible signals, but non-
standard connector pinouts. It also comes with a complete set of
documentation and schematics. From the picture below, you can see
that it is still in the original shipping frame with all of the
protective paper still on the plexiglass.
http://web.mac.com/mardy/iWeb/Cipher920/front.jpg
It was given to me for free by someone else on the list, so I'm going
to continue the tradition and offer it for free as well. For local
pickup, I am located in Southern New Hamphire, but I am also willing
to ship it if someone is willing to cover the shipping costs. I have
already crated it. I am guessing that it will be somewhere around
$150.00 to ship it within the continental US.
-Mardy
No
------Original Message------
From: Greg Manuel \(V\)
Sender: cctalk-bounces at classiccmp.org
To: General Discussion: On-Topic Posts Only
ReplyTo: General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts
Subject: RE: Datec?
Sent: Nov 9, 2008 4:15 AM
Evan, do you mean Datek? They were electronics liquidators. Well, they did
electronics and lots of other stuff to. It was a catalog(ue) company IIRC.
Greg
> -----Original Message-----
> From: cctech-bounces at classiccmp.org
> [mailto:cctech-bounces at classiccmp.org]On Behalf Of Evan Koblentz
> Sent: Thursday, November 06, 2008 11:31 PM
> To: 'General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts'
> Subject: Datec?
>
>
> Is anyone familiar with a company called Datec Inc., based in Colorado
> Springs in the mid-1980s?
>
I have a Quimax PX 22. I had it hooked up to my PC XT to a CGA card. It
was working but began to heat up so I shut it off. Tried to bring it up
using a A/C VARIAC. But nothing. It has the ability to display in Red or
Green or White. Is it worth fixing. Is anyone interested in IT. It might
be an easy fix Couple of CAPS.
