--------Original Message:
Date: Thu, 22 May 2008 07:46:59 -0400 (EDT)
From: Steven Hirsch <snhirsch at gmail.com>
Subject: Re: Wanted: DEC VT-180 "Robin" Corvus interface + software
On Tue, 20 May 2008, Richard wrote:
>
> I have a VT-180, but I have no idea what a "Corvus interface" is, so
> I'll ask the obvious question. What is it?
Corvus made a family of external hard drives using a common bus interface
(quasi-network, actually). There was an interface board produced for the
DEC VT-180 that, along with the driver software, permitted it to use files
on attached drives.
I have never seen one, but presume it's a small internal add-on (possibly
piggy-back style) circuit board or a little external box. It would be
labeled 'Corvus' or 'Corvus Systems, Inc.'
Steve
--
----------Reply:
I have an external Corvus drive enclosure (the small MFM version, not the
8" IMI 7700) that I used to house an external HD for another system, but
I still have the original interface board if anyone's interested. I think it was
an Omninet drive; the only connection to the outside world AFAIR is a
3-pin header plug.
m
Alexis writes:
> I've got here some electronic modules made by Venner Electronics LTD,
> Kingston By-Pass, New Malden, Surrey. One is a Transistor Decade Unit
> type TS.10/5 and the other just has Type TS 11/HF on it, where 11/HF is
> scratched into the metal label.
> Opening one reveals a number of Mullard OC44 Ge transistors.
> What on earth are they for? I can imagine they're for some sort of
> digital machine or even a whole computer, but I can't find any
> information about them or the company.
Venner Electronics made lab equipment in the 60's and maybe early 70's.
What I've seen are digital voltmeters, frequency and period counters, etc.
The decade counter modules you have seem most applicable to frequency
counter and timing applications but I think they were used as part of the
A/D scheme for some of the digital voltmeters too.
HP, Berkley Nucleonics, Ortec, and other companies used in their equipment,
and sold to other companies as well, decade counter modules etc.
>from the 50's onward. I presume "Transistor Decade Unit" was to
differentiate it from the "Tube Decade Unit"s that I am very familiar with.
If sold to the nuclear instrumentation industry they are usually called
"scalers" instead of "counters".
Some have direct readout of 0-9 lamps on the side, some have nixie
sockets, others simply divide by ten and provide outputs but don't
have displays in themselves.
Tim.
Do you still have that Motorola M68HC705KICS K-Series ICS/Programmer?
Found post at
http://www.classiccmp.org/pipermail/cctalk/2006-January/212076.html
Joel Coman
Supervisor, TEST Dept.
VALCOM, INC.
5614 Hollins Rd
Roanoke, Va. 24019
Ph: (540) 563-2000 Ext. 241
Fax: (540) 362-9800
Would anyone have any of the MM57109 numerical processor chips ?
I had no luck finding this at any of the parts suppliers.
This was made about '78
=Dan
--
[ Pittsburgh --- http://www2.applegate.org/~ragooman/ ]
About a year ago I was given a 3B2 1000/70 by Josh Dersch that I've finally
gotten UNIX booted on (in a fashon). I've been spoiled by modern variants of
UNIX that include the disklabel program in the miniroot, and it seems that 3B2
System V doesn't.
The FAQs seem to address either installing on a MFM drive (V3 (500+) 3B2s are
SCSI based), or bringing up a drive in parallel with a valid install (the
original drive died), or installing on an AT&T sourced drive that's already been
labeled (not an option).
(A) Does anybody have the "3B2 Computer Maintenance Utilities" or "IDtools"
floppy image floating around, or is this the one that I have with filledt and
dgmon on it?
(B) is the SCSI-FMT tape the equivalent of IRIX's standalone fx for setting
up completely blank disks? (the one I'm using is an ex-Sun Seagate).
(C) backplane slots: my machine is an interesting hybrid: it's a 3B2-1000/80
backplane with a 3B2-1000/70 system board. I'm trying to figure out if I have
Pbus (looks like these are just an extention of the system bus), B?Bus (some
buffered permutation of the above?), or something else entirely, since this
machine came to me with a PE card (multiprocessor board). How much of the wiring
is backplane-dependant, and how much is system board dependant?
Anyone have spare bits for one of these? I wouldn't mind a network card, or
more I/O (serial or serial/parallel).
One further warning: if you use a SCSI cable scavanged from a dead HP 9000
Nova class (or the HP 3000 equivalent), be forewarned that on the end that
connects to the backplane the IDC connector is installed backwards (as opposed to
the ends that connect to the disks). I blindly assumed that SCSI was SCSI and d
idn't think to check until it didn't work.
**************
Get trade secrets for amazing burgers. Watch "Cooking with
Tyler Florence" on AOL Food.
(http://food.aol.com/tyler-florence?video=4&
?NCID=aolfod00030000000002)
Several months ago I upgraded my PC system to Debian 4.0 for several reasons,
including being able to use X11R7.1 which was supposed to be a most excellent
upgrade.
I have had nothing but trouble attempting to run it as an X server for my
classic-ish machines. IRIX 6.5.30/Origin200 gives random X-server crashes (when I
try Xnest it crashes both Xnest and the parent X), and there is likewise
wierdness when I try to use it to connect to my VAX 4000/200 running VMS v7.3 and
DECwindows/Motif 1.2.6 (in Xnest windows will migrate outside of the
designated server (to the :0 server), and running on it's own screen with XDM the
server will often reset before I get the DECwindows "desktop", dropping me back at
the XDM login screen).
Anyone seen these types of problems before? It seems as though X11R7.1 just
"doesn't work" remotely with R6.X and R5.x clients reliably (haven't tried it
with my Suns or HP boxes). I currently was given a "new" machine (as in not
classic), P4/2.8 with an nVidia 5200 (which might be the problem source) that I'm
running. I've been considering whether this would be fixed in X11R7.2 or
whether I should try to do a parallel install of X11R6.4 or if I should try it
with a Rage128 card in place of the nVidia.
**************
Get trade secrets for
amazing burgers. Watch "Cooking with Tyler Florence" on AOL Food.
(http://food.aol.com/tyler-florence?video=4&?NCID=aolfod00030000000002)
Dupes from a recent SGI motherlode I picked up. Take one, some or
all, just pay shipping from 60074:
May/June 94
Jan/Feb 95
Mar/Apr 96
May/Jun 96
Sep/Oct 96
Nov/Dec 96
Jul/Aug 97
Sep/Oct 97
Nov/Dec 97
Sep/Oct 98
--
j
Is there someone here who has 1) sucessfully built an IOB6120 board for
the SBC6120 and 2) would like to do it again? I have an IOB6120 kit that
I'd like to finish, but after doing one of the harder surface-mount parts,
I realize that I don't have the skills or tools to finish with the really
hard parts. Is there someone who'd be interested in building my kit for
me in exchange for goods or money?
--
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?
Any interest in a Tatung Super COMPstation-20S SPARCstation 20 clone?
Currently has 2xSM71 and 208MB and TGX graphics.
If anyone has a hot yen for a HP9000 G70 (dual-processors with max RAM
(768MB), I've had HP-UX 11i running on it), I might be easily persuaded. It's an
unracked ex-rack model, so the front bezel is loose but present. Includes console
cable and redundant power supply units.
Also, it's sounding like the guy I was going to send my Origin200 (base
model, 1x180MHz and 200-somthing MB RAM, no skins) to might be no longer
interested, so that one could be available.
Also have a set of purple SGI Indigo2 feet and a Xyplex Network 9000 terminal
server (~20 ports, TS720 with Flash boot), and an almost-new-in-box (removed
for testing) Litronic Argus 2102 SCSI PCMCIA reader.
On the flip side, if anyone's getting rid of any little Alpha boards/systems
that take an EV56 or better or 3B2 stuff I'd be interested provided it isn't
the expensive stuff.
**************
Get trade secrets for amazing burgers. Watch
"Cooking with Tyler Florence" on AOL Food.
(http://food.aol.com/tyler-florence?video=4&?NCID=aolfod00030000000002)
I have a working Victor (9000) PC here with a HD. But for reasons
unknown , it does not having any normal DOS files other than what it
takes to run the machine. It does have Wordstar and procom but
no format or any other external files.
I want to back up the Hard drive and make a bootable floppy. This
system, I would guess, use special Version of Dos. I saw a thread
here last year on these, did anyone get a boot disk going. I believe mine
might also have memory problems. did they have test programs for these .
Thanks, Jerry
Hi Out there!
Anybody got the software for comtrol of the Thurlby LA160 logic analyser?
Please Please send me a copy.
Wanyama, B.O.K.
Nairobi, Kenya
bwanyama at icipe.org
All,
Interested in finding the above item. I know they exist, but I have never
encountered them in the wild. Have a nice VT-180 system waiting to go on
the network and party like it's 1979 :-).
I have an extensive collection of Corvus software, hardware and
documentation and can offer interesting pieces in trade.
Please contact me privately if you can help or know anyone who can.
Steve
--
All,
I'm interested in getting my hands on the subject hardware and software.
I have some very rare and interesting Corvus items to offer in trade.
Not into Corvus? I also have an extensive collection of Apple 2 software
and hardware. If you can help, or know who can, please contact me
privately.
TIA,
Steve
--
Hi folks,
I just dug my old Osborne OCC1 (1st model, in the beige vacuum-formed ABS
case), only to find all is not well. Actually, "finding" all is not well is
a bit of a white lie - I already knew it was in trouble, from when I last
tried to boot it about 2 years ago...
Unfortunately, the intervening 2 years have failed to fix the problem, which
is that the video seems to have no horizontal hold.
It took a few goes, but eventually it booted from a CP/M disk; with
scrambled video. The links below are to a picture & two versions of the same
video (16 seconds of special-effects laden trickery...):
PIC: The startup screen in scrambled fashion:
http://www.solutionengineer.com/ozzie/occ1_prb.jpg
VID: Booting to CP/M:
MOV format (4mb): http://www.solutionengineer.com/ozzie/occ1_prb.mov
MPEG2 format (9mb):
http://www.solutionengineer.com/ozzie/occ1_prb.mpg
Please excuse the camera wobble on the movie... The constant high-pitch
whine is, I think, the image stabiliser in my camera working away.
Now.... If I pull the termination block off the External Video connector,
the screen goes out (as one would expect); push it back on & the screen
comes back on with the display as steady as a rock -- unfortunately, it's
crashed the computer... From this, I deduce that it must be something in the
mainboard electronics that's failed (a cap, maybe?), rather than something
in the monitor unit.
Any ideas where to start looking? I have an oscilloscope (albeit I've
forgotten how to use it, and am not 100% sure where the probes are), and a
multimeter... beyond that, not a lot.
I've tried cleaning the contacts to the monitor, and around the Ext Vid.
termination block; and I've wiggled the three cable connectors to the
mainboard a few times to clean them up. I've also popped each of the three
socketed chips in & out a couple of time to clean the legs up. Finally, I
soldered the contrast knob back together - one of the legs had broken.
Basically, everything works except for the shaky video. Sometimes you see a
whole page full of 1s, or 0s; essentially, it's all a bit random. Bad
connection somewhere, perhaps, or maybe a failing chip?
Cheers!
Ade.
No virus found in this outgoing message.
Checked by AVG.
Version: 7.5.524 / Virus Database: 269.23.16/1431 - Release Date: 13/05/2008
19:55
----------Original Message:
Date: Tue, 20 May 2008 10:28:11 -0600
From: Richard <legalize at xmission.com>
Subject: Re: Capacitor values for original PET power supply?
In article <20080520111556.GD1028 at usap.gov>,
Ethan Dicks <ethan.dicks at usap.gov> writes:
> The memory board looks interesting - any idea what was meant to go
> in the cartridge slots?
I wonder if it isn't a memory board scavenged out of some other piece
of hardware and simply hacked to appear as more memory in the PET?
--
----------Reply:
I think if that were the case, the interface to the PET expansion connector
would be a lot messier than what looks like a straight-across ribbon cable
with just a transition board to connect to the old-style edge connector, so
it does look like it's specifically for the PET, presumably with optional
different transition boards for the different PET connectors.
An interesting board indeed; what could those slots be for? I don't think
C64 carts would work very well in a PET...
m
That part of the Corestore collection which remains in the UK is finally moving!
Most will be put in a shipping container and taken to the USA, some will be remaining in the UK at a different location. But there may not be room for everything, so some items may need rescuing.
The first item on the list for probable disposal is the Convex C220 supercomputer... I rescued it myself around 12 years ago, it's been untouched since then: http://www.corestore.org/convex.htm
Complete, with manuals and software. If I'm honest I'm probably not going to have time or, especially, space for it, so first offer of a good home takes it. If no offers are received, it may sadly end up scrapped. If the will is there but time is a problem it can probably remain in Cambridge for a couple of weeks. RSVP by email, ASAP.
Thanks!
Mike
http://www.corestore.org
_________________________________________________________________
Keep your kids safer online with Windows Live Family Safety.
http://www.windowslive.com/family_safety/overview.html?ocid=TXT_TAGLM_WL_Re…
If anyone's interested I have an Altos-III terminal with keyboard (slightly
yellowed) and manual available. There's a fault in the PSU and it isn't
bringing up the logic board power properly, and so far I haven't gotten
around to
messing with it.
Free pickup as-is, Renton, WA.
If you have something to trade you'd probably be able to persuade me to make
fixing it a priority.
Also I have a Diablo 620 daisy-wheel printer with multiple print wheels,
spare ribbons, and manual. works, best offer accepted.
Also in the free pile:
HP AdvanceStack "Switching Hub" for 10BaseT (it's a hub, not a switch).
Includes management module
Cartridge for Canon LBP-SX printer engine (LaserJet II/many LaserWriter IIs),
also a used-working fuser assembly for the SX engine
Sun Type-4 keyboards (no cables)
SBUS parallel cards
CG6's
a XENIX-compatible Pentium-233 machine (used to run XENIX at a dental office)
a Sun Aurora-II chassis and PSU - put a fast 1/2 height CD-ROM in your
SPARCstation!
Xyplex MAXserver terminal server cards and
baa-daa-bum
a Xyplex X-25 bridge card! Infuriate yourself or buy for your closest
enemies! Can even supply a MX3k or MX5k chassis for the above 2 things if you
want.
Sun 3/200 boardset (CPU and RAM, 24 or 32MB worth). Needs chassis and a PROM
chip.
Sun 501-1153 VME -> IPI-2
Sun VME "SCSI-II" (not that SCSI-II, it's SCSI-I) card in either a X/X60
carrier (no external port) or a carrier with an external DD50 SCSI-port.
Sun Xylogics-450 Multibus SMD controller in a Sun VTM adaptor. Can be removed
>from the VTM as well.
AT-101 keyboards, many of them.
Possibly a RS/6000 3CT as well. It has GXT150M graphics, sound.
**************
Get trade secrets for amazing burgers. Watch "Cooking with
Tyler Florence" on AOL Food.
(http://food.aol.com/tyler-florence?video=4&
?NCID=aolfod00030000000002)
Does anyone here have any pointers on getting a decent used oscilloscope?
The intended use is for fiddling with classic computers and assorted
homebrewed projects (like synthesizers and geiger counters)
--
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?
On Wed, 21 May 2008, Robert Jarratt wrote:
> Have you tried contacting the BCS Computer Conservation Society? I have
> forwarded your email to them just in case.
I forget if it's been mentioned here, but Slashdot had a story a few days
ago about how Bletchley Park was having money troubles and is danger of
closing...
--
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?
-----------Original Message:
Date: Wed, 21 May 2008 12:42:58 +0000
From: Ethan Dicks <ethan.dicks at usap.gov>
Subject: Re: Capacitor values for original PET power supply?
<snip>
Between subroutines past $9800, and some tables referenced
earlier, and a complete lack of a reasonable end of the code,
I'd say that's only the half of it.
It was common to stuff code in 2K or 4K chunks between $9000
and $BFFF... the hex files, though, seem to only describe
2K chunks. Are your ROMs all 2K and some haven't been copied
yet?
-ethan
-----------------------Reply:
Looks like there are only three, but it might be interesting to know what
the other labels say (and confirm the EPROM sizes).
Computhink also made other add-ons, including a disk drive IIRC, so those
PCB slots are probably for things like the disk interface, etc.
You might be able to track down someone through old archives who has (had)
the manual for it.
m
m
> Message: 18
> Date: Mon, 19 May 2008 17:57:26 -0400
> From: Allison
> ;) Like Blackfin or PIC.
Yup. Nothing like downloading your code into a little 6-pin
cockroach of a PIC only to find it totally unresponsive. Maybe
there's a job description for "electronic psychic". "I've channeled
your PIC and it says you forgot to set up the TRISIO register, you
stupid idiot." :)
Cheers,
Chuck