-------------- Original message from Al Kossow <aek at bitsavers.org>: --------------
> CHM received a bunch of George Morrow's engineering documentation yesterday.
> Is there anything in particular from MD that hasn't already been scanned that
> people
> are looking for?
>
> There are a few odd things, like Adaptec IC data sheets, and the FDC-3
> schematics
> that I've found.
>
> 2 systems
Anything on the "Decision I" S100 system would be nice. I have not looked
lately. A few years back someone connected to his stash was going to send
me the info on these. Never did happen. They were a S100 bus system, but had
non standard things like serial IO on the mother board with lots of jumpers.
The Morrow portable. The one I have is just a Micro Decision in a Compaq
Portable type box with a built in monitor. a little smaller in size though .
- Jerry
On Sun, 9 Mar 2008, Andrew Lynch wrote:
> I think repairing old computers is just like any human endeavor - it is
> flawed and sometimes I follow incorrect logic and/or misdiagnose before
> finding and fixing the real broken part. Sometimes good parts get
> mistakenly identified as bad. That's life and if a part falls under
> suspicion I am likely to just replace it just to test the theory, right or
> wrong it gives information and vital clues. Anything labeled "suspect" is
> pulled aside and labeled as bad regardless.
> These parts are cheap and plentiful enough that if a few good ones get
> trashed in the process of fixing an old machine I consider it a worthy
> investment. Probably I am tossing some good parts occasionally but it is
> worth it time wise to take the chance and maybe find the root cause. Were
I
> more skilled technician maybe I could fault isolate with more precision
and
> just fix exactly what is broken but this is just a hobby and I do not have
> the time/experience to get more precise.
Never discard the old parts, nor charge the customer, until the actual
defect is found.
Any reason to NOT plug the suspect Z80 back in and see whether the
problems follow the chip v coming and going from other "random" acts?
-----REPLY-----
Hi Fred,
Yes, I agree. I always "tag and bag" discarded parts from vintage computers
I repair. "Tossing" was a poor choice of words. It means tossing them into
the box of tagged baggies of suspect/broken parts.
Since I am the owner I don't need to worry about charging anyone but I agree
with the sentiment.
Especially if this were a business I would not feel comfortable releasing
the system unless I had firm evidence of root cause and not some
coincidental fix.
However, that is the dilemma. How to establish what exactly is the root
cause without endangering the original piece of equipment? I would like
some independent verification if possible. Everytime you touch or make a
repair to an old computer there is a risk of unintended damage.
Yes, I could swap the questionable components back into the system but I am
very reluctant to "screw around with it" once it is working. I dislike
using the restored piece as test equipment.
Generally speaking, once it works reliably, I leave it alone until there is
reason to attempt more repairs. I have found it is very easy to
accidentally break things. That is why I rarely ever clean the boards or do
anything to them other than the bare minimum to make them work again.
One concern about swapping possible bad parts into a working system is that
they could induce another failure and start the repair cycle all over again.
What would be ideal is some sort of test equipment I could plug a bad part
into and check to see if it is good or not. I can do that with EPROMs and
apparently there are TTL chip testers like the TOP2049 which provide 74LSxxx
testing.
How do you test a LSI component like a Z80 CPU, PIO, DMA, or DART? Short of
plugging it back in and hoping it doesn't cause more problems.
I am an engineer by education and practice but self taught as a technician.
Sometimes I wish I had more experience in these matters or at least took
some coursework on how to diagnose and repair equipment.
Thanks for your advice!
Andrew Lynch
I'm looking for D-shell hole punches, for DB and DE shells, and
possibly DA as well - Greenlee is the name I know, but I daresay others
make them too. The major constraints: (a) the seller must ship to
Canada; (b) the seller must take phone or fax orders - I can tolerate
looking for things on the Web, but I will _not_ pay over the Web; (c)
they must be decent quality - no cheap knockoffs that break along about
the fifth time you use them (as Tony, I think, put it, I'm not rich
enough to buy cheap tools). There is no need to be especially fast to
use; if it takes a minute or two to position the pieces and crank a
bolt down with a wrench or something, that's OK.
Of course, I'd like them to be inexpensive too, but "inexpensive and
not cheap" is a combination I don't really expect to find. If I'm
asking for a pony, I'd also want the vendor to be in Montreal or
Ottawa, but that's, well, asking for a pony. :)
Any suggestions?
/~\ The ASCII der Mouse
\ / Ribbon Campaign
X Against HTML mouse at rodents.montreal.qc.ca
/ \ Email! 7D C8 61 52 5D E7 2D 39 4E F1 31 3E E8 B3 27 4B
Well, my first guess would be an inductor of some sort;
TDK produces a line of inductors with that basic outline.
It looks like exposed enamel wire and wax on top.
Although I am confused by the outer covering,
which appears to be indicating polarity. . .
Bizarre. . .
T
|On 10 Mar 2008, at 19:27, pichotjm wrote:
|
|> hi,
|>
|> I spent my week-end to write a report on the restoration of the
|> early French computer ODP-505.
|
|Thanks JMP!
|
|That's a great looking machine. Where in France are you located?
|
|-Austin.I lives NW of Paris, close Rouen (20 km) in a small city named
'Pavilly' with http://maps.google.fr/maps type Pavilly and you will have the
location.I have a problem, to answer to messages. I don't know how to do it.
I just consult archives of the group, and there is no reply possibility.So i
need to open my OE and copy manualy, title and text... Is there a better
method? In France, collectors prefer to discuss in newsgroups
(fr.comp.ordinosaures)Have a nice day!JMP
Hi,
Someone sent me this yesterday and I thought it might be of interest
to the various 6502 enthusiasts on this list.
It's a PDF of the transistor schematic of the 6502 CPU. It's high
resolution and fairly detailed (includes annotations of the various
bits of the CPU).
I put it up on my website at: http://www.shiresoft.com/downloads/docs/6502.pdf
Have fun!
TTFN - Guy
> I've run across something that looks kind of like an
> electrolytic capacitor on a diet. I'm unable to
> identify it and I feel like an idiot :).
It's a polarised inductor. There will be a permanent
magnet on one end or the other of the core. Inductors
like this are often used in the linearity circuits in
monitors.
> At any rate, it appears to be leaking something so
> I'd like to replace it
That's probably just wax to damp any mechanical vibration
and stop it making noise. These inductors can often run
very hot but I wouldn't bother replacing it unless there
was evidence of the windings burning, which would destroy
the plastic outer.
Lee.
CHM received a bunch of George Morrow's engineering documentation yesterday.
Is there anything in particular from MD that hasn't already been scanned that people
are looking for?
There are a few odd things, like Adaptec IC data sheets, and the FDC-3 schematics
that I've found.
hello everyone ,
since a long time I have lots of motorola ,exorciser bus,boards:
I'd like to use them,I have looked on the web on several sites for
documentation and found nothing,
they are:
*motorola microsystems m68mmoia2,it includes :cpu 6800+clock,two pias,one
acia ,8 2012 rams ,sockets for rom
* one exorset floppy interface
*micro module 7 :4 serial lines.84dw6756x01
*another micromodule 1,with cpu+clock+2 pias ,no acia:84dw6200x01
*a debug2 oidw1708x01,test card .
* static ram 2 mex68 84 dw6714x01 fith 4 rows of 9 2141 rams
several of them may come from an exorciser ,I also have the backplane from
an exorciser ,as I am playing with 6800 cpu now (and other ones) any
information would be useful ,thanks very much best regards
a.nierveze
Hi all - I've got a line on this old AIX box, with the monitor, books,
etc (not sure about O/S media but I think that can be "found.") Any
opinions on it? Any historical significance ("first machine run
____," etc?)
It's cheap, but it will have to be shipped, which may not be cheap.
--
j
Hi,
I started a Google Groups mailing list and archive for the WaveMate
computers like the Bullet SBC.
If you are a current owner, former owner, or just plain interested please
check it out at:
http://groups.google.com/group/wavemate_computers
The archive contains lots of technical information like manuals, schematics,
boot disks images, files, pictures, etc.
There is a mailing list with some WaveMate Bullet owners to help answer
questions and help you restore your system.
Any contributions of WaveMate technical data, files, disk images, articles,
or experiences are greatly appreciated.
Please forward this message to any WaveMate owners who may be off list.
There appear to be very few WaveMate computers still in existence so it
would be nice to reach as many people as possible.
Thanks! Please contact me off list if you have any questions.
Andrew Lynch
Does anyone know where I can find a copy of C/nix that was published
by The Software Toolworks?
C/nix was a software toolkit that implemented a bunch of UNIX commands
like "cat", "ls", "grep", etc. for CP/M. I've looked in the usual
places, but no luck.
-Mardy
I found a PDF of the workshop manual for the Casio FZ-1 sampler online,
and rescued it from what seems to be a rather slow and flaky site.
Why mention it here? Well, the FZ-1 (and indeed the FZ-10m I'm
repairing) are at least 10 years old and probably nearer 20, and are an
example of an 8086-based device that's a) not a PC, and b) is capable of
running user-supplied code.
Tony - you'd probably like the manual. It details what the various
ASICs do pin-by-pin, and even includes about two pages on how dynamic
RAM works and why it's such a good idea.
Even if you're not into weird old musical equipment, it's probably worth
a read.
http://www.gjcp.net/~gordonjcp/FZ-1_Service-Manual.pdf - 60M, don't kill
my server.
Gordon
> From: "Bob Bradlee" <caveguy at sbcglobal.net>
>
>>> Wouldn't that imply that your system works off of a basis of 256
>>> degrees
>>> instead of 360?
>>>
>
>> In this case, 1/262144 of a circle as it was on an 18 bit computer,
>> but today you would probably use 32 bits. There's nothing special
>> about dividing a circle into 360 parts anyway, 420 would have allowed
>
>
> 2PI are Round!
> There are 2Pi radians in a circle, very few in the graphics world
> use interger degrees for anything other
> than human readable or heman generated I/O. A line is bounded by 2
> points or can be described as a
> angle and distance from a relitave point. While Arc's can be
> specified by a start, end, and center point,
> Curves are almost always specified in radians. Autodesk had an
> interesting bulge value.
>
> In the graphics world 2 pi are round and can represent an infinate
> number of angles, and truely not
> square :)
Yes of course this is generally true now that we have floating point
built into nearly every processor, but suppose you using say a Pic
chip to process navigational data, I don't think these have floating
point so fixed point would still be useful. For my work when
programming Microspot Interiors (http://www.microspot.co.uk/products/
interiorsPro/index.htm) I mainly use normalised vectors which I find
far better in 3D systems than angles from the axes, but it is horses
for courses. I also work on MacDraft (http://www.microspot.co.uk/
products/macdraft/index.htm) which is an old 2D program, which used
to store angles in fixed point degrees and I have changed to floating
point degrees, but without rewriting a lot of code and possibly
creating bugs, thats as far as I am going. There are issues using 2Pi
because of rounding errors. Usually you end up having tolerance
values. Without tolerances, if someone rotates something by 90
degrees four times, they don't QUITE get what they started with when
using 2PI, but with degrees, they do.
As for representing an infinite number of angles, don't be silly.
Especially if you are using tolerances.
Roger Holmes,
Technical Director, Microspot Ltd.
>By the way, the original wasn't written for Unix, though IIRC a ported
>version did appear in the games directory in one or two BSD releases.
>The original was written in BASIC in 1972-73, and the late Greg Yob (the
>author) wrote a piece about which is in the BASIC Computer Games books.
> My BASIC Games page has a machine-readable version at
>http://www.dunnington.u-net.com/public/basicgames/
>Pete Peter Turnbull
> Network Manager
> University of York
If anyone wants to play WUMPUS, I have it on my Wofford Witch system
online. Just go to my web site http://www.woffordwitch.com, and log
onto my system using the guest account 40,1. Once you've logged in,
you can run WUMPUS by typing
RUN GAME:WUMPUS
at the READY prompt. If you want to see the BASIC PLUS listing,
you can type
OLD GAME:WUMPUS
and then type
LIST
at the READY prompt.
This version is from the early-to-mid 1970s.
Ashley
http://www.woffordwitch.com
On 10 Mar 2008 at 12:00, Ed Thielen wrote:
> Greg Mansfield had KRONOS going, and shipping to some customers,
> - mostly educational - by the time I left.
> Greg was kind of a one man band - a bit of a Dilbert
> - a remarkably imaginative and productive individual -
Greg later left CDC (during the 1980's decline and fall) and went to
Cray. He was an active microcomputer addict and at the time, had a
pretty elaborate Compupro system, IIRC.
I had the pleasure of introducing Greg to the wonders of gelato; I've
lost contact with him over the years and am not aware of what he's up
to.
His compatriot in crime at Arden Hills, Dave Callender (sp?) was
quite a character in his own right. "Dr. Dave" maintained an active
interest in bats and had various specimens on display in his office.
Greg's work with MACE would not likely have attracted any notice at
CDC were it not for Dave.
I was once told (but don't know if it's accurate) that he was a
student of Harold Edgerton's and had suggested photographing bats
using Edgerton's strobe--whence the great photos of the bats of
Carlsbad Cavern originated. Perhaps someone can confirm this.
Cheers,
Chuck
> Date: Sun, 09 Mar 2008 14:50:55 -0400
Roy wondered about systems with various CPU options.
What CPU did the Jolt system use? Was there more than one CPU
option?
Does anyone still have one of these? (basically a stack of
interconnected PC boards)
Cheers,
Chuck
Hi,
I have been fixing an old WaveMate Bullet computer and have come across a
question I thought maybe the CCTALK mailing list could answer. I apologize
if this is an overly long post but it takes some explaining to get to the
real question.
When I bought this WMB machine it was completely dead. It had no response
at all and the Z80 CPU was completely static except for the clock input on
pin 6. I used my oscilloscope to debug the circuit. The PS checked out
fine.
On power up the floppy drive turned on and would seek to home but I think
was more a "nervous reflex" of the MB8877/SY1793 FDC powering up and being
selected rather than something the CPU was intentionally doing. No data was
being read from the disk drive with a known good working boot disk
installed.
After finding some illegal voltage values on the address bus and some other
fault isolation, I noticed that if I put my finger on the CPU, then it
briefly went into a flurry of activity before crashing again.
I isolated the illegal voltages on the address bus to just between two
chips. After touching CPU with my finger caused something to happen, I
suspected the CPU was bad or possibly a cold solder joint. As a starting
move, I replaced the Z80 with a new socket and new CPU and made sure all the
solder connections were good and thoroughly good.
The good news is on the next power up the WMB booted and seemed to work just
fine. However, I have two known good boot disks; the first is a partial
CP/M 2.2 system (boot tracks plus minimal generic OS utilities from Gaby's
site. It did not include any WMB specific tools like FORMAT) and the second
is a complete CP/M 3.0 customized for the WMB. I know both boot disks are
good since I have repaired another WMB and both disks work on that machine.
Here is where things start to get strange...
The CP/M 2.2 disk booted just fine. However, the known good CP/M 3.0 disks,
even ones written using the boot drive (to eliminate alignment issues, etc)
would "half boot" and crash just after printing some or all of the initial
boot message. CPMLDR would execute but apparently CCP never got properly
launched before crashing.
So I spent a couple of days searching for what I presumed to be a hardware
failure. The CPU seemed stuck in a polling loop and I could not find the
"broken" part. I ended up finding some strange voltage values on the PIO
and replaced it and a buffer chip but the strange boot behavior persisted.
The CP/M 3.0 disk still refused to boot.
I inspected the source for the CP/M 3.0 CBIOS and found what appeared to be
possible places where it was hanging. Since I had already replaced the CPU
with a socket and a new CPU I thought maybe the "new" CPU was having
problems during the "enable interrupts" command immediately prior to the
printing of the initial boot message.
Sure enough, I replaced the "new" CPU with another one and the problem went
away. The WMB now boots CP/M 2.2 and CP/M 3.0 from the boot disks like
nothing was ever wrong.
So to my actual question; how do I know that the CPU's were really bad and
it is not something else being tweaked during the "fixing"? I can see one
CPU failing and replacing it to fix the computer. However, finding TWO bad
CPUs in a row is just highly suspicious to me. Maybe there is a sneaky cold
solder joint someplace?
I think repairing old computers is just like any human endeavor - it is
flawed and sometimes I follow incorrect logic and/or misdiagnose before
finding and fixing the real broken part. Sometimes good parts get
mistakenly identified as bad. That's life and if a part falls under
suspicion I am likely to just replace it just to test the theory, right or
wrong it gives information and vital clues. Anything labeled "suspect" is
pulled aside and labeled as bad regardless.
These parts are cheap and plentiful enough that if a few good ones get
trashed in the process of fixing an old machine I consider it a worthy
investment. Probably I am tossing some good parts occasionally but it is
worth it time wise to take the chance and maybe find the root cause. Were I
more skilled technician maybe I could fault isolate with more precision and
just fix exactly what is broken but this is just a hobby and I do not have
the time/experience to get more precise.
What is bugging me in this case though is whether swapping the two CPUs is
actually fixing the REAL problem or just coincidentally doing *something*
which is the making it work but not actually fixing the underlying problem.
I am uncertain if my "repairs" are actually causal or coincidental. The
good news is in the end if the machine works reliably it doesn't matter all
that much but I'd sure like to know for certain what actually happened.
Is there some method to verify a Z80 CPU or PIO is actually bad or not? I
have seen 74LSxxx chip testers which apparently work pretty well but nothing
that can test a Z80 CPU or other LSI type chip.
Thanks in advance for any advice or constructive comments.
Andrew Lynch
hi,
I spent my week-end to write a report on the restoration of the early French
computer ODP-505. This computer is built with germanium transistors and has
a core memory.
I spent my monday to translate the job for you.
You will find the result here:
http://pichotjm.free.fr/Serel/ODP505/ODP505us.html
For curious people: you can visit the entire site with
http://pichotjm.free.fr/indexUS.html
Visting http://pichotjm.free.fr/ will gives quite the same, but in French.
More information can be found in French. You can find more pictures...
Enjoy!
JMP
Some of you are aware of a big snit over recent changes by Ebay. If you
aren't, the basic rundown is that beginning May 1, these changes take
place: 1) Sellers are no longer able to leave negative feedback. 2)
Final fees are hiked 67%. 3) Listing fees drop by a few cents. This is
annoying (I'd like to use stronger words) people greatly and another
boycott is planned soon. I'm pondering leaving Ebay if they keep this
abuse of their customers (ie me).
--
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 visited the (Henry) Ford Museum in Dearborn, MI this weekend - first time
in about a year. They had an interesting display on how technology affects
culture, starting out with books and magazines, running through radio and
television, up to personal computers in the 80's. They had a "typical
teenagers" room set up - complete with an Apple IIc, 9" screen, and
Imagewriter II. They also had an original Mac 128 or 512 behind glass, the
home Pong machine, and a selection of electronic games like Mattel Football,
the Tomy Tutor, the Wizard, and others. It was a neat display, if not a bit
limited in breadth.
The Ford used to have an awesome display of old telephone and telegraph
equipment, including a complete turn-of-the-last-century switchboard from a
small local exchange. They mothballed the whole thing, but the huge display
on aviation they replaced it with is pretty neat. They also had a large
antique steam engine operating on compressed air for a while. It's pretty
impressive seeing a 20' iron flywheel spinning using nothing but air.
> Message: 20
> Date: Sat, 8 Mar 2008 21:18:32 -0800
> From: "Rick Bensene" rickb at bensene.com
...
> Message-ID: B9639BAE3F34504E83FEEDD71D4AFB4615D8AB at mail.bensene.com
>
> The displays on the console were driven by a PPU (Peripheral Processing
> Unit), which were small scalar processors (actually, one processor
> multiplexed to appear as a number of independent CPUs), akin to small
> minicomputers (like a PDP-8), which operated out of shared sections of
> main memory. There was a PPU program that ran the display, generating
> it from data in a section of memory.
In SCOPE, PP # 10 was dedicated to this purpose -
Each time shared PP (using a common adder) had its own memory of
4 K 12 bit words. This reduced the traffic to main memory.
PP # 1 was normally assigned to monitor requests from the jobs
assigned to "control points". A job would place a request in
its relative memory location 0 for service by the system.
PP # 1 would monitor these requests and assign other
PPs to do the work, causing a PP to load a new program
if necessary.
I worked in CDC Special Systems from 1966 to 1971 -
We shipped a version of SCOPE modified to run "Time Critical"
which used modified code in PP #1 to guarantee user choice of
- analog and discrete inputs
- x milliseconds CPU time
- analog and discrete output
on a guaranteed time cycle -
This was the best in the world at the time for doing hybrid computing :-))
which unfortunately was on its way out :-((
A system program to calculate resources to see if
a new "time critical" user could be added to the running list.
> The displays were vector only, not raster.
Yes :-))
> There was dedicated hardware in the display console that did
> CDC character set (a 6-bit code) conversion to vector characters.
Not in any system we shipped, and we could run the "EYE"
and Northwestern University CHESS program with
another PP displaying the chess pieces in nice form
on the right hand scope.
The left hand scope being assigned to monitoring
activity at the normally 8 "control points",
showing activity and requests for operator intervention
such as mounting/removing tapes and printer(s) out of paper...
> Vector graphics were possible, within the limitations of the speed of
> the PPU.
Each PP had a 100 nano-second time sharing of the adder each 1 microsecond -
hence a relatively hard upper limit of 10 PPs with out a special
order for another 10 ( for customers such as Boeing).
On later 6x00-series systems, such as the CYBER-73, the PPUs
> ran fast enough to generate a nice looking all-vector chessboard on the
> left screen, and a text-based transcript of the moves on the right
> screen. There were also a number of other cute programs, one being a
> pair of eyes (one on each screen) which would look around and blink.
> The operating system was called KRONOS, and I clearly remember that the
> console command to run the "eye" program was "X.EYES".
Greg Mansfield had KRONOS going, and shipping to some customers,
- mostly educational - by the time I left.
Greg was kind of a one man band - a bit of a Dilbert
- a remarkably imaginative and productive individual -
I left CDC long before the CYBER-73
....
>
> Rick Bensene
> The Old Calculator Museum
> http://oldcalculatormuseum.com
Ed Thelen
I was searching for a 480z game on google when I got a result from
Whsmith (A book shop/Stationers over here in England). It still has a
couple of books for sale from 1985. So I started looking further it's
got a few C64 books, I then tried Vax. I hit the jackpot they have
quite a few books, they are a bit pricy and I wonder if they are still
in stock. When did WHSmith ever sell books like :
User Guide to Stepper Motor Control on the Hvl Vax 11/730 priced at
only 5 pounds
Vax/Vms Internals and Data Structures Version 5.2 priced at only 155 pounds
Have a look for yourself there might be some more gems on there.
http://www.whsmith.co.uk/CatalogAndSearch/SearchWithinCategory.aspx?gq=vax&…
Dan