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101090 discussions

Floppy controller Q - VCO Inhibit / VCO Sync, and IBM format

by classiccmp＠philpem.me.uk

Hi, I've been playing about with the HDL code for the floppy reader (after a "short break") and started thinking about how the VCO Sync/Inhibit line on the data separator should be driven. At the moment it's driven permanently high; this seems to work OK insofar as the sync detector (which is why the datasep is there -- to extract a clock signal for the MFM data stream) will pick up SYNC-A1 signals and the data seems to be valid. What I don't know is if this is how things are supposed to be done... The uPD765 and 827x datasheets are predictably rather sketchy on this front... All they really say is that the VCO line inhibits the VCO in the PLL, which would have the effect of allowing the PLL's loop filter to discharge, and reset it to a predetermined state. What they don't say is under what conditions the FDC will do that... So I guess the million dollar question is what I should do with said VCO line. Wire it to /INDEX via an inverter to reset the PLL on every rotation? Or just wire it to VCC (VCO enabled) and leave it? Thanks, -- Phil. classiccmp at philpem.me.uk http://www.philpem.me.uk/

17 years, 9 months

AIX 3.2 Weird Networking Problem

by devonstopps＠gmail.com

Definitely the right netmask, and seems to be the right interface (en0) - although, as a side note, can you explain the difference between this and the et0 interface? No problems with any other system in the building. I've set up many a solaris or linux box with no problems. arp -a shows nothing interesting, just another system I ftp'd into - have tried adding a static entry for the gateway, with no luck: ? (xxx.xx.132.118) at 0:b0:d0:26:7b:5d [ethernet] the netstat -rn (x's added, obviously): Routing tables Destination Gateway Flags Refcnt Use Interface Netmasks: (root node) (0)0 ff00 0 (0)0 ffff ff00 0 (root node) Route Tree for Protocol Family 2: (root node) default xxx.xx.132.1 UG 0 472 en0 127 127.0.0.1 U 50 340667 lo0 xxx.xx.132 xxx.xx.132.191 U 11 1773 en0 (root node) Route Tree for Protocol Family 6: (root node) (root node) T.H.x. Devon

17 years, 9 months

AIX 3.2 Weird Networking Problem

by devonstopps＠gmail.com

No one has any ideas about this problem? Devon

17 years, 9 months

DMS 3F Fox portable computer available for sale/adoption...

by summersigh6teen＠comcast.net

Hello; I have a DMS 3F with the original nylon carry bag for computer and keyboard. Bag is damaged but computer is in excellent shape. Unfortunately no software comes with it. It has the Hi-Net LAN built in. This was my first work computer in 1984-5. I don't want to just throw it away. Please contact me if you are interested. Thanks... Carl M. summersigh6teen at comcast.net

17 years, 9 months

Osborne Vixen prototype?

by tosteve＠yahoo.com

I have this system, but is it an Osborne Vixen prototype or early release? 1. It's all black, instead of white 2. horizontal drives, instead of vertical 3. smaller screen than 'later model' 4. screen says "OCC4 1.01 BIOS - 1984" pictures here: http://members.cox.net/stengel/temp/vixen.html Let me know what you think, know, or think you know.

17 years, 9 months

Capri: The Rule Breaker

by silent700＠gmail.com

As long as the rule is "no smoking in the machine room:" http://www.archive.org/details/tobacco_jmu03f00

17 years, 9 months

Capri: The Rule Breaker

by sellam＠vintagetech.com

Wow, there's something very creepy pornographic about that commercial. Nice find, Jason! -- Sellam Ismail Vintage Computer Festival ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ International Man of Intrigue and Danger http://www.vintage.org [ Old computing resources for business || Buy/Sell/Trade Vintage Computers ] [ and academia at www.VintageTech.com || at http://marketplace.vintage.org ]

17 years, 9 months

Floating-point numbers (on the Amiga)

by aliensrcooluk＠yahoo.co.uk

Hi, I am trying (and failing) to learn how AMOS Basic (and Amiga's) store floating point numbers. Whilst it is clear that it uses Motorola Fast Floating Point (MFPP) I have been unable to get it to work based on an equation found online (the Amiga RKRM's all say to use the FPP functions in the maths libraries, and also confirm the layout - 24 bit mantissa, 1bit sign, 7bit exponent). Am I doing something wrong with my maths?? Formula: FP result =[(-1)^SIGN] * [2^(EXP - 0x40)] * [MANTISSA / 0x1000000] 0x1000000 = 16,777,216 0x40=64 floating-point variable value=0.5 Binary value of variable=%10000000 00000000 00000000 01000000 Values calculated using formula (above): SIGN=0 (positive) EXPONENT=64 - 64 (bias) = 0 MANTISSA=2.51658 E+07 / 16,777,216 = 1.5 Thus: result = [(-1)^SIGN] * [2^(EXP - 0x40)] * [MANTISSA / 0x1000000] = [(-1)^0]*[2^(0)]*[1.5] = 1*1*1.5 = 1.5! I have uploaded a bitmap image of my maths to my site if it isn't clear from above what I am doing. http://www.geocities.com/aliensrcooluk/public/MFPP_problem.bmp Please help! Andrew B aliensrcooluk at yahoo.co.uk

17 years, 9 months

vintage IBM board?

by mcguire＠neurotica.com

I just spotted this on eBay. Isn't this a very early (pre-S/360) IBM board? eBay item #230231322529 -Dave -- Dave McGuire Port Charlotte, FL

17 years, 9 months

wang network cabling and junction boxes Free >. + shipping

by g-wright＠att.net

This is a repost from a week or so Ago.... did not see it go through I have a box of cable and some junction boxes for a Wang system. Free + shipping. located in the Kent, Wa. area Have not seen any CCtalk traffic in my IN box in a week. hope this is working - Jerry g-wright at att.net

17 years, 9 months

Wang 2200 in Portsmouth, England

by frustum＠pacbell.net

This is a message that I sent out during the classiccmp blackout in early july. I didn't realize at the time that the message wasn't delivered. Here it is again: I received an email today from a gentleman in Portsmouth. He said it was OK to share the message with the list. (begin quote) Hiya im due to pick up a wang 2200 from one of my relatives houses as my grandad has recently passed away and was wondering if you know anyone in the uk either portsmouth or liverpool that might be interested in it. It is a Wang 2200 A which comes with a cassette drive built into the screen/keyboard, a separate CPU, a separate power supply and a separate I/O unit. I have found some manuals. They are a Wang Basic Language Ref Manual, A Wang System 2200 STATS/Engineering General program library & a Matematics general program library. There are also 3 cassette albums each containing about 12 cassettes with various programs and one game. Whether these work or not is unknown. As far as i know it was working before it was put in the loft 12 months ago. Regards malcolm (end quote) I know he would like some money for it, but I'm not sure what his expectations are. I don't think he knows either. :-) It would be hard to set a price on it as these systems appear on ebay rarely, and also he doesn't know whether it is functional. If you are interested, email me and I'll forward his contact information to you (frustum at pacbell.net). I don't want to post his email address for fear of email address bots might pick it up. I don't care if they get mine though. I'll also send along a couple small photos of the system. The 2200 came out in the early 70s and was Wang's first successful general purpose computer. The BASIC interpreter was written in microcode, and systems had from 4KB to 32KB of RAM. You can visit my site, www.wang2200.org, to get more information about this family of computers. Malcolm said that this is a Wang 2200A, which would make it very early, but many of these machines had board upgrades, turning them into later model machines.

17 years, 9 months

Vintage Computing in San Diego

by wayne.smith＠charter.net

You missed a prime opportunity for double geekdom - Comic-con was this weekend. If you attend Comic-con and VCF in the same year you achieve the rare Geek Half-Slam. I am half way there. > Date: Fri, 25 Jul 2008 14:08:01 -0400 (EDT) > From: Mike Loewen <mloewen at cpumagic.scol.pa.us> > Subject: Vintage Computing in San Diego > To: "General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts" > <cctalk at classiccmp.org> > Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.64.0807251406370.24856 at cpumagic.scol.pa.us> > Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII; format=flowed > > > I'm going to be in San Diego during the 3rd week in > August. Are there > any vintage computing sites worth visiting in the general > area? Surplus > dealers? > > > Mike Loewen mloewen at cpumagic.scol.pa.us > Old Technology http://sturgeon.css.psu.edu/~mloewen/Oldtech/ >

17 years, 9 months

Best OS for an IBM Butterfly (was: Any ideas on how to clear a BIOS password on a Thinkpad 701C?)

by lproven＠gmail.com

2008/7/25 madodel <madodel at ptdprolog.net>: > Warp should support the 701c. I don't know if the 701c ever came preloaded > with OS/2 though. All the ones I see on eBay have win 3.1 or win95 on them. > But of course you will need the external floppy drive to install it and a > copy of Warp that is on 3.5in floppies. I'll have to get a copy of Warp on > floppies at InfoAge next time I'm there. Or I can build the floppies from > the CD I have here if I can dredge up enough diskettes. Just FYI... I did get Warp 3 working on my Butterfly. I have a SCSI CD-ROM for mine with a PCMCIA SCSI host adaptor; the OS/2 setup disks couldn't see this. I do have a floppy drive, though. So what I did was pull the HD, connect it to a desktop machine, and copy the installation CD to a folder of the same pathname on the HD. The ideal is to have a boot drive, then another partition with the install files on - that way, it /thinks/ it's looking at a CD drive that is [boot drive+1]. I think the way mine was set up was that I had a smallish FAT16 C drive with Win95OSR2 on it, then a logical drive for OS/2, then a 2GB FAT16 data drive to share between them. You need to keep C: in FAT16; the suspend/resume code is part of the BIOS and it reads/writes FAT16 directly, without using an OS. If you use any other filesystem, the BIOS can't read it and you lose suspend/resume. I think it whinges at you each boot, too. This is some 10y ago now - I couldn't swear to it being Warp 3. I think it was. IIRC, it worked OK - it found the PCMCIA slots, it understood power management and sound. However, I never got the screen working. It's only a VGA-res screen but it should run in 32K colours, maybe even truecolour, and it should be able to drive an external monitor at 1024x768 or maybe even 1280x1024. However I could never get OS/2 to recognise the chipset, which is some kind of Cirrus Logic one >from memory. I also tried Linux on mine. Debian was, as ever, a battle, but it did run. SuSE worked fine but was sluggish and barely fit on my ~700M drive. I also ran Win98SE, NT4 and Windows 2000. I cut down Win98 *hard* with 98Lite, removing anything that wasn't absolutely essential, such as Internet Explorer & all the other Internet tools, but it was still notably slower than Win95. A pain since I had to use Laplink to get it on there and it was a slow process. NT4 worked fine and drove both PCMCIA slots, but it can't do plug&play in any useful way and has no power management, so it's not ideal. Win2K worked amazingly well, considering, but was e-x-t-r-e-m-e-l-y slow. I got power management & PnP, but it was unusable. (FWIW, my Butterfly has 40MB RAM, an unofficial upgrade and the max its planar can recognise. I also replaced its HD with first a 700MB and then a 4GB one. The BIOS displayed this as something like a D92MB drive, lapsing into hex as it didn't expect more than 3 digits, but it worked fine, including suspend-to-disk.) In my experience - which was fairly considerable; this was my main notebook from about 1996 to 2000 or 2001 - Win95B is the best OS for the Butterfly. Performance is good, all the hardware works fine, battery life is decent as power management works, and it's easy to get working. There's a few updates to apply - WinSock 2, DUN 1.3, stuff like that - but it's easy enough to get working. You can keep C: small and efficient - <512MB - and have a nice big FAT32 D: for apps and data. IE5.5 works well but Opera was for most purposes better. Suitable apps are MS Office 95, with the 97 import filters, Acrobat 4 or 5, some lightweight email client - maybe Pegasus or Eudora; I used Ameol (www.ameol.com) - and so on. It even has a good stab at running Doom! The main limitations of W95 are actually fairly few. Don't press it hard and it's quite stable. It can only understand 4 IP addresses; I had a NIC and a modem card, plus the internal modem, and also ran the AOL client for international dial-up, and that maxed out my available IPs. (This is why I tried W98, which does not have this limit, but 98 was too much for a 40MB 486.) W95's PnP is flakey; it took me a *lot* of fiddling to find stable combinations of 2 PCMCIA cards and I had to apply various patches and updates concerning the PCMCIA controller chip to get it working. It was often a case of power down, insert 1 specific card in 1 specific slot, power up, then insert 2nd specific card in 2nd specific slot, that sort of thing. In the end, though, I had it working stably and reliably with either 56K dial-up+SCSI or NIC+SCSI, but it was too much hassle for daily use so I mainly just used a single card at a time. It's a *lot* easier to get Win95 running than OS/2, which was a battle, as it all too often is. I plan to resurrect the machine with a new battery, replace its crashed 4GB hard disk (a large heavy book fell on the machine when it was running; the HD died, the laptop was fine) with a CF card in an adaptor, and try to bring it back to life. I may have another bash at OS/2 - it would feel artistically /right/ to run an IBM OS on this classic IBM machine. -- 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

17 years, 9 months

VERY Old RDB Manuals (V2.3) wanted!

by hoelscher-kirchbrak＠freenet.de

RDB V2.3 (or any other Version 2.x or 3.x) manuals wanted to borrow, buy oder trade for hobbyist use. Genuine manuals, copies or files (pdf/tiff/...), anything is welcome! Regards Ulli

17 years, 9 months

Apple 1 Obtronix

by us21090＠yahoo.com

The next step in my evil plan... For various reasons I'm selling my Apple 1 Reproduction from Obtronix. Ebay auction: 290247234821 , ie, http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&&item=290247234821 Scott

17 years, 9 months

Looking for final rev IBM PC/AT roms.

by jzg22＠drexel.edu

cctech-request at classiccmp.org wrote: > Go to: > > http://members.dodo.com.au/~slappanel555/bios.htm > > mike The PC 5150 revision 2 (10/19/81) dump on that site is bad (first few bytes are correct but the rest is garbage?). I have a good copy here (thanks, Jim Leonard and billdeg from http://www.vintagecomputer.net/ ) though I don't have the proper chip numbers from it. Speaking of AT 5170, if the rtc clock crystal from an AT is missing/cut off, will it boot at all, or will the RTC chip hold the PIT (and CPU) in reset forever? -- Jonathan Gevaryahu jgevaryahu(@t)hotmail(d0t)com jzg22(@t)drexel(d0t)edu

17 years, 9 months

Scientists decry Bletchley Park's decline | The Register

by gstreet＠indy.net

I went to the Bletchly Park website and tried to make a small donation (even though I realize the USD only half the value of the Pound). After attempting to create an account, they were supposed to email me a password so I could properly login. I'm not sure why they've not yet send a password, since it did not seem to indicate that folks outside of Britian could not contribute. I can only hope that so many are trying to donate that it's overloaded their servers -- but I'm sure that's a pipe dream... It would at least be nice for the Yanks to show their support. Regards, Robert Greenstreet

17 years, 9 months

IBM System 360 Mod 70 info

by aek＠bitsavers.org

> I came across this press release in the computerhistory.org archive. > any assistance in determining the Who, Where, and When of this photo will be appreciated. http://archive.computerhistory.org/resources/still-image/IBM/IBM_360/IBM.36… Fred Brooks press photo from the 360 product intro.

17 years, 9 months

Looking for final rev IBM PC/AT roms

by dm561＠torfree.net

---------Original Message: Date: Thu, 24 Jul 2008 15:25:21 -0500 (CDT) From: Julian Wolfe <fireflyst at earthlink.net> Subject: Looking for final rev IBM PC/AT roms. Hi, I have a PC/AT that I believe the ROM BIOS has gone bad in. Does anyone here have the final rev (November 1985?) BIOS ROM image around that I can use to check my ROM against and/or burn another copy if need be? I use this machine on a constant basis so to have it running again would be a real boon. Thanks Julian ************* Go to: http://members.dodo.com.au/~slappanel555/bios.htm mike

17 years, 9 months

Anybody know details on this diode matrix patch panel?

by broswell＠syssrc.com

Hello all, I have an old memory patch panel, probably a diode matrix. Estimated to be from the early 60's, maybe IBM? Pictures are at http://i36.tinypic.com/29paqfb.jpg http://i37.tinypic.com/2h6tzd5.jpg http://i34.tinypic.com/51wl6h.jpg I have 3 kinds of diode plugs that fit in the sockets It has white plugs with one type of diode in it. It has brown plugs with a different type of diode in it It has grey plugs that will be a short. So it appears that each location can have one of four values open, short, diode1 or diode2. I am interested to find out more about this - any information such as documentation, model, or what it belonged to would be helpful. Thanks! Bob Roswell broswell at syssrc.com Bob Roswell System Source broswell at syssrc.com (410) 771-5544 ext 4336

17 years, 9 months

Old data books online

by aek＠bitsavers.org

leeched from bitsavers

17 years, 9 months

Any ideas on how to clear a BIOS password on a Thinkpad 701C?

by madodel＠ptdprolog.net

I'm trying to get a TP 701c I bought off of eBay working to install OS/2 Warp on. But it has a password set in the BIOS. According to the service manual ftp://ftp.software.ibm.com/pc/pccbbs/mobiles/tpvol2.pdf there are two Power-On Password Bypass Pads on the bottom of the lower system board, but no instructions on what to do with them. Do I need to short them out? If so how? Someone else suggested desoldering the backup battery, but if I can just short two pads, that would be preferred. Right now its completely disassembled. I have two other 701c machines, but they each have their own problems. Worse case if I can't clear the password I can try to take the display off this one and put it on the 701c that has a display problem. Mark

17 years, 9 months

Looking for final rev IBM PC/AT roms

by dm561＠torfree.net

ISP trouble; sorry if this is duplicated. mike ---------Original Message: Date: Thu, 24 Jul 2008 15:25:21 -0500 (CDT) From: Julian Wolfe <fireflyst at earthlink.net> Subject: Looking for final rev IBM PC/AT roms. Hi, I have a PC/AT that I believe the ROM BIOS has gone bad in. Does anyone here have the final rev (November 1985?) BIOS ROM image around that I can use to check my ROM against and/or burn another copy if need be? I use this machine on a constant basis so to have it running again would be a real boon. Thanks Julian ************* Go to: http://members.dodo.com.au/~slappanel555/bios.htm mike

17 years, 9 months

Scientists decry Bletchley Park's decline | The Register

by woyciesjes＠sbcglobal.net

Demand government action to save Station X http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/07/24/bletchley_park_appeal/ -- --- Dave Woyciesjes --- ICQ# 905818 --- AIM - woyciesjes "From there to here, >From here to there, Funny things are everywhere." --- Dr. Seuss

17 years, 9 months

Alphas available

by ggs＠shiresoft.com

Hi, I have a number DS20s (~16) and DS40s (~8) plus (new style & old style) DEC storage arrays with 9GB drives (total > 1TB). Free for pickup in San Jose (ie you come by my storage unit and haul off what you want...sorry no shipping and no delivery). Any of it that's left after 8/23 will be scrapped. They were pulled working years ago, but they've been moved a couple of times so I don't know the actual operating condition. I also don't know what's in 'em (except that they're pretty max'd out) so don't ask about specific configs. Contact me off-list for making arrangements. Thanks. TTFN - Guy

17 years, 9 months

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