test-drb

test-drb@ccmp.vtda.org

101090 discussions

by julesrichardsonuk＠yahoo.co.uk

We recently managed to (finally!) get our HP 2116 machines out of 'deep store' and into the light of day, and some initial cleaning work was done on the panels earlier. I did a quick inventory: 2116B 2116C 2160A (PSU) 2161A (PSU) 2748A (tape reader) HP1016C (two - 512 track drum) One of our guys managed to flip the front door catches (the keys for the machines are long-gone), so I was able to take a board listing too: 2116B: slot board 1 pwr fail / AR 10 sense amplifier 11 sense amplifier 12 sense amplifier 13 sense amplifier 14 driver switch 15 driver switch 16 inhibit driver 18 inhibit driver 20 DML 22 sense amplifier 101 A101 102 A102-105 103 A102-105 104 A102-105 106 A106 107 A107 108 A108 110 EAU logic 111 EAU timing 116 DMA word count 117 DMA word count 118 DMA address enc. 119 DMA control 120 DMA packer 201 A201 202 central interr. 211 I/O multiplexor 214 tape reader 216 I/O multiplexor 218 buss loader 2116C: slot board 101 A101 102 A102-105 103 A102-105 104 A102-105 105 A102-105 106 A106 107 A107 201 A201 205 A108 206 MDB / A13 207 power fail 208 power fail 209 power fail 210 power fail 211 power fail 212 inhibit driver / A4,6,16,18 213 inhibit driver / A4,6,16,18 214 inhibit driver / A4,6,16,18 215 inhibit driver / A4,6,16,18 216 MMD / A2 217 sense amplifier 218 MMD / A2 219 driver switch / A8,9,14,15 220 MDB / A13 things found kicking around in the 2116C case: Core stack with connectors labeled A1, A2, A3, A6 (made by Ferroxcube corporation) Core stack with connectors labeled A1, A2, A3, A6 (made by Ampex) Core stack with connectors labeled A1, A2, A3, A4, A6, A7 (international scientific) 'short' board, HP assy. 02116-8015 'short' board, HP assy. 02160-60031 power fail board (identical to the ones in card slots) unknown full-size board, HP 1150-1198. Most of the boards sitting in the card slots are just loose, i.e. not plugged into the backplane, so there's no guarantee they're in the right place (the bottom row of the 2116C machine looks particularly disorganised). Anyone familiar with the systems know if this is anything like two machines' worth though? Or is it some sort of dual-cabinet system, and one crate was likely just I/O with the other for CPU? Nice to finally see inside them anyway, as for all we knew they could have been completely stripped out inside... I *assume* the pair of drums go with them, but there's no guarantee there (I'm just not sure what they *do* belong with if it isn't these machines :-) cheers Jules

18 years, 5 months

Who wants some press in south florida?

by brucebaur＠att.net

Jay Did you ever come up with a fix for the DC300 tension loop that breaks? I have two Tektronix 4051 computers that works great. I just wish I could save some of the tapes. Thanks for any help you might be able to extend, Bruce

18 years, 5 months

Anyone interested in some Xyplex terminal servers?

by compoobah＠valleyimplants.com

I have several Xyplex terminal servers - One MaxServer 4500 with 5x16 port cards and one enet module One MaxServer 5000 with 12x8 port cards, 2x LAN interface (ethernet) and 1x NetManagement module (including the floppies) one Xyplex 1500 1U 16-port terminal server 2x Network 9000 PS/130 power supply modules Any interest? Renton, WA area.

18 years, 5 months

HP2116 inventory

by jam＠magic.com

18 years, 5 months

Indicator tubes for transistor logic machines.

by ajp166＠bellatlantic.net

> >Subject: Indicator tubes for transistor logic machines. > From: "Bob Shannon" <bshannon at tiac.net> > Date: Sun, 28 Oct 2007 14:03:43 -0400 > To: "General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts" <cctalk at classiccmp.org> > >Is anyone familiar with vacuum tube indicators used on transistor logic >machines? > >I recently found a small rack filled with small transistor logic modules. >Each module holds a flip flop or two at most. >The modules are small PC boards with a metal frame and handle. Test points >give you the state of each transistor >on the module. > >Several modules have some sort of visual indicator tube as well. > >These tubes are not much larger than a standard NE-2 bulb, but they more >resemble subminiature vacuum tubes. > >The tubes are marked 01037 J3, each had four leads. Two of these leads >shows a resistance of 9.8 Ohms, and >appears to be a low voltage filament. One is grounded, the other is >connected to a bus in the rack of logic. > >There is no 'getter flash' inside the glass tube, so they may be some sort >of glow discharge tube. > >Looking at the insides of each tube thee appears to be a very fine V style >filament and a grid-like structure, but >I see no clear anode or plate structures. There are two thin 'wires' >outside of the grid, one in front and one >behind the central grid-like / filament structure. > >The logic itself is made from 2N414 transistors, mil-spec at one time, >covered in conformal coating. Markings >show this device came from the USAF Airborne Instrumentation Labs. I only >have a small part of some >larger system, but I would like to power this rack of logic up and see these >indicators in action. > >There is something very familiar about these things. They remind me of >something I may have seen once >in a telephone switching application when I was in the USAF long ago. > >Any idea what these things may be? I'll try to get a digital photo, but the >tubes are mounted under small >metal clips with short leads. > They are vacuum florescent indicators. the anode (part that will glow) is +V applied around 16-40V range and the cathode (most minus voltage) is formed by the two wires that are a filliment (heater to some). Some flavors of these also have a grid between the heater and the anode and act like a triode vacuum tube in that if the grid is sufficiently negative compared to the cathode/heater the tube will not glow if it is zero or positive (a few volts) the tube will glow. The transistors are then not required to handle much voltage or current as 2n414 was a low power alloy junction germainium (Vce of -20V and Pd of 150mW) so it could not switch much current or voltage. Any display used had to be operatble with less than 20V (more like 15or less) and only a few milliamps. I've also seen several such racks and displays down in RI. Basically the system is built of standard logic elements available in the late 50s early 60s and an element could be a gate or Flip flop and likely not many gates and only one FF to a card. Voltages were typically low in the less than 15V range. The cards rarely were a complete computer but more like a sequencer or other fixed logic system that was designed for a specific use. Use care powering that as power supplies may have bad caps, and wires may be cut/shorted. Allison

18 years, 5 months

Video clips (was Re: modern serial terminal)

by aliensrcooluk＠yahoo.co.uk

Jay wrote: >> >> Ok, I'll trump your VCD with... >> >> Laserdisc Is this thread somewhat vaguely related to classic computing? Yup. The first (and only) time I saw a laserdisc was around 1991. I was at school and among the Acorn Archemedes in the computer room (so called because it was full of computers!) was a newfangled piece of kit. It looked like a vinyl LP player, but had a shiny disc on it the size of an LP. We were told not to go near it , presumably because of the laser. When the teacher left the room at lunchbreak some of us did take a closer look, but being about 12 at the time (and having never owned a CD player at that time) I was rather clueless as to what it was. I know laserdiscs are largely used for films (hence why I can see why Jay thought they were off-topic), but I believe this one had some sort of software on it. Not sure now whether the laserdisc player was hooked up to one of the Archemedes, or some new computer. Almost all the computers at school were Acorn Archemedes, except for a handfull of BBC's. Regards, Andrew B aliensrcooluk at yahoo.co.uk

18 years, 5 months

old Laserdisk players

by jeffj＠panix.com

> OK I'll bring it back around.....during VCF Midwest I saw a > DEC-branded Laserdisc unit at Pat's computer wonderland. Was it a top loader or a tray? I pulled apart an old InfoTrac library system that used a Pioneer LD-V1000 since CD-ROM drives were not yet available. Top loader, CAV disks only. Real He-Ne laser on the sled. The Centronix connector was a proprietory parallel port controlling video playback, getting frame # and it allowed reading digital data if it was recorded in that format (video playback was still NTSC, no digital at all, not even a frame buffer). citing http://www.laserdiscarchive.co.uk/laserdisc_archive/pioneer/pioneer_ld-v100… This is an NTSC laser disc player that was used in Astron Belt (with proper hardware), Badlands (with different EPROM), Casino Strip, Cobra Command (with proper hardware), Dragon's Lair, Esh's Aurunmilla, Galaxy Ranger (with proper hardware), Interstellar, Space Ace, Super Don Quixote, and Thayer's Quest

18 years, 5 months

Silicon Graphics Indigo2 hard drive spinup time issues

by jlobocki＠gmail.com

hello all, i have an SGI indigo2 which ive installed a 2GB IBM hard drive in. however, >from a cold boot, i receive a drive/cable error, and it asks me to press any key to continue. when i do, i press start system and it all comes to life. im assuming it takes longer for the drive to spin up than the indigo2 takes to wait for the drive. is there a way to adjust this? thanks

18 years, 5 months

Tektronix 4051

by cc＠corti-net.de

We've got a Tektronix 4051 with the optional Data Comms Interface and tons of tape cartridges. As the belts in the Scotch/3M DC300 tapes are worn out or torn I need to copy the contents 1:1 to other media. But how? The simplest would be to write a simple BASIC program that will read in each tape file and send it over V.24 (and back again for new media). I'm looking for a solution that will work with all file types (e.g. SECRET program files). It would be nice if there was a way to program the 4051 in machine language in order to have raw access to the files and its headers. Christian

18 years, 5 months

cctalk Digest, Vol 51, Issue 31

by compoobah＠valleyimplants.com

On Nov 10, 2007, at 10:00 AM, cctalk-request at classiccmp.org wrote: > hello all, > i have an SGI indigo2 which ive installed a 2GB IBM hard drive in. > however, > from a cold boot, i receive a drive/cable error, and it asks me to > press any > key to continue. when i do, i press start system and it all comes to > life. > im assuming it takes longer for the drive to spin up than the indigo2 > takes > to wait for the drive. is there a way to adjust this? thanks Which drive? IBM has a number of 2GB drives, and I know definitely that one of them (0664) doesn't work in a R3k Indigo at all. OTOH, SGI OEMed some IBM drives, so it isn't all of them (the 0664 was originally from a RS/6000 AFAIK). The Hitachi site has setup sheets still for many old IBM drives - see if there's a "spinup on power-on" jumper.

18 years, 5 months

modern serial terminal

by aijones2＠bsu.edu

> > Message: 4 > Date: Mon, 05 Nov 2007 12:31:28 -0700 > From: woodelf <bfranchuk at jetnet.ab.ca> > Subject: Re: modern serial terminal > > PS. I like windows/95 over the latest versions of linux ... Too much bloat. > There was never a version of Linux, or UNIX in general, less bloated than Windows 95. Windows 95 will very comfortably get you TCP/IP, protected memory, preemptive multitasking[1], and a graphical desktop on a 486 SX with 8M of RAM. Linux 2.0 with XF86 3.x was a carnival of swapping on that configuration. Solaris x86 wouldn't even boot. If Windows 3.1 was the last nail in the coffin for UNIX on the desktop, Windows 95 was the last shovel of dirt and the weepy obit. It's almost fun to load up Redhat 4 on a typical PC of the day and watch it take twenty minutes to boot. [1] Yes, Windows 95 had memory protection and preemptive multitasking. All native win32 and native kernel code ran that way. The catch was that 16 bit drivers and applications were exempted from these restrictions. Worse still, Windows 95 shipped with some 16 bit drivers for generic devices, giving you a broken configuration out of the box on a lot of hardware.

18 years, 5 months

cctalk Digest, Vol 51, Issue 29

by dm561＠torfree.net

Date: Fri, 9 Nov 2007 16:54:18 -0500 (EST) From: bpope at wordstock.com (Bryan Pope) Subject: Re: Commodore PET >DRAM!? In a PET?! That is crazy talk! ;) There was never even DRAM in >the C64... Although I believe the SuperCPU used DRAM memory, but that >was third-party. -------- Say what? AFAIK all their stuff used DRAM except for the first two 8K versions and the oddball VIC-20 (or VolksComputer as it was known in Germany to avoid the connotations of a certain homonym of VIC, pronounced 'fick' in German...), which they probably produced to use up 2114s left over from the old PETs ;-) I've never owned or seen any 8K PETs other than the 6540/6550 version, but as Ethan says there was a 2114 version with industry-standard ROMS; >=16K units were all DRAM AFAIK. Once DRAM caught on it didn't make economic sense to use SRAM in any quantity; look at S-100 boards. m

18 years, 5 months

Commodore PET

by dm561＠torfree.net

-----------Original Message(s): Date: Sat, 10 Nov 2007 19:38:08 +1300 From: Ethan Dicks <ethan.dicks at usap.gov> Subject: Re: Commodore PET To: "General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts" <cctalk at classiccmp.org> Message-ID: <20071110063808.GA31194 at usap.gov> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii On Fri, Nov 09, 2007 at 09:23:25PM -0700, Richard wrote: > > That's cool! This is the first I've heard of bitmapped graphics on > the PET. The first bit-mapped board I saw for the PET was by, IIRC, MTU. It was advertised in Byte, etc., in the day. Never saw one up close, just screenshots of plotted mathematical equations. -ethan ------------Reply: Ah, their logo, the ubiquitous 'hat'... Just happen to have one; the first version was actually designed for the KIM & SYM (SRAM BTW) and when the PET came out they made an adapter board for it; the second version was specifically for the PET and had DRAM, and they could both also be used as ordinary expansion memory. They also made music boards & software for KIM/SYM/PET, expansion chassis, and other neat stuff for 6502-powered machines. Their catalogue'll make you drool... m

18 years, 5 months

Commodore PET

by dm561＠torfree.net

Date: Thu, 8 Nov 2007 18:37:39 -0800 (PST) From: Cameron Kaiser <spectre at floodgap.com> Subject: Re: Commodore PET >> "Collectible Microcomputers" says: $150 to $400 (chiclet keyboard), >> $25 to $150 (typewriter keyboard) >> >> But I don't find that their idea of prices translates at all to the >> real world. Maybe about 10 years ago when noone cared about vintage >> computers, but not now. >FWIW, my Chiclet PET cost me a cool $900. -------- Feh! My 8032/8050 cost me $5000! And the Chiclet PET >$1000 IIRC. Of course, that was a while ago, when no one cared about vintage computers 'cause there weren't any to speak of, and in CDN$ when they were worthless ;-) Gonna run downstairs right now to replace the upgrade keyboard with the original keyboard & tape drive; oughta double my net worth... ;-) mike

18 years, 5 months

Fairchild 9401

by aek＠bitsavers.org

It's in the 1976 macrologic book http://bitsavers.org/pdf/fairchild/_dataBooks/1976_Fairchild_Macrologic.pdf

18 years, 5 months

Tek 405x tape drives

by aek＠bitsavers.org

> I have a drive and controller that Don Maslin gave me supposedly from > a Tek terminal of some sort. It's a Wangtek drive and a like-sized > controller board with an 8085 on it. Interfaces on both ends are 50 > conductor--if the computer side was something like SASI, it wouldn't > surprise me--I've never had to use it. The pinch roller in the drive > is in pretty bad shape now, though that could be dealt with without > too much trouble, I imagine. I wonder if the drive-side interface > isn't QIC-36, which would mean that there are PC-based controllers > available for it. -- The tape drive in a 405x predates QIC. The head is fixed in place and uses one track for clock and one for data. It is more similar to digital cassettes than the later QIC drives.

18 years, 5 months

Commodore PET

by dm561＠torfree.net

Date: Thu, 8 Nov 2007 23:37:52 -0500 From: "Golan Klinger" <gklinger at gmail.com> Subject: Re: Commodore PET >The last PET 2001 with the chiclet keyboard I bought cost me $35. >Clearly, there are bargains to be had. $150 is a fair price though. Shhhh! I wanna find another Cameron that'll give me $900! (CDN$, none of that US green paper...) mike

18 years, 5 months

Fairchild 9401 ttl ic pinout wanted.

by jos.mar＠bluewin.ch

Anyone has the above ? It is a 14 pin TTL IC, according to google some sort of CRC generator. It is part of the mididisk controller of the ETH Lilith, which I am reverse engineering. Jos

18 years, 5 months

CDC Terminal (was Commodore PET)

by dm561＠torfree.net

-----------Original Message: Date: Fri, 09 Nov 2007 11:47:34 -0800 From: "Chuck Guzis" <cclist at sydex.com> Subject: Re: CDC Terminal (was Commodore PET) On 9 Nov 2007 at 14:17, M H Stein wrote: > Control Data Corporation > QSE 1253 Display Controller > QSE 1255 Display Equipment Maybe Billy Petit recognizes this. Before I saw the above, I was about to declare it an Intercom terminal controller (Intercom stations were used for remote job entry). But QSE is CDC parlance for "Quote for Special Equipment" (as opposed to QSS "Quote for Special Software"). Which means that it was a custom-order job, perhaps for a defense customer. Cheers, Chuck ---------Reply: Makes sense. Assuming I'm looking at the right PCB rack it's pretty modular; the cards all look pretty well the same and it also had a quite large and some smaller diode matrix boards, so I guess with the right cards, backplane wiring and diode placement you could make it do pretty well anything. Defence? In Canada? We're your peace-lovin' neighbour who welcomes our enemies with open arms (and without the kind of arms you carry down there)... m

18 years, 5 months

Commodore PET

by dm561＠torfree.net

Date: Fri, 09 Nov 2007 20:53:54 +0000 From: Jules Richardson <julesrichardsonuk at yahoo.co.uk> Subject: Re: Commodore PET <snip> > In my not-so-humble opinion, the PET's metal case and automobile-style 'hood' > ('bonnet' to you), hefty linear power supply, crisp built-in monitor, IEEE port, and its > generous supply of other I/O ports, not to mention Commodore's good official > support, made it stand out among the Apples and R-S model 1s of the day. I think it's not that they're particularly bad, just that I'm failing to see why they've got quite the following that they have (unless this is just another one of those UK/US differences - there were lots of expandable, well-built, well-documented systems around in the UK back in the day, but perhaps that wasn't so true of the US?) On a personal note, the styling never appealed somehow - a dinky monitor physically bolted to a large, squat, angular case with a large footprint just didn't seem too practical. But then I've never been a big fan of all-in-one systems anyway, I suppose - I'd much rather have separate keyboard / display / CPU / drives, and with units that took up vertical space in favour of horizontal. ---------------- MHS: Well, that 'splains everything; I'm a horizontal kind of guy and bemoan the trend for PCs to go from AT style to towers; they're coming back to horizontal but now they're too small to put any drives into. Then again, once you put your TV set or monitor on top of your Apple it didn't look much different; just a fuzzier display and some extra cables. But a PET sure wasn't as easy to carry over to a friend's house to play with, I'll grant you that. To each his/her own as far as styling goes, but it did look more like a 'computer' (i.e. terminal), at least after that very first graphic kbd/tape drive version. The BM in CBM did stand for Business Machines after all... ======== > And, as an aside, it was many years before the mainstream reached the 500MB > *per side* of the 8050 and 8250 disk drives (which could use pretty well any > diskette you had on hand, soft sector, 10 or 16S hard sector, whatever). Granted that does seem pretty good (I assume you mean 500KB ;) - I think Acorn would have been doing 400KB around that time but a lot of the competition (at least in the UK) were aiming at something like half that. ----------------- Oops; a small glitch in the 1/2 MB to 500K conversion... ======== I'm not really serious about them being nasty machines (hence the smiley in the original message) - they just don't really 'do' anything for me. But then we all have out *cough* 'pet' systems... ;) (Anyone know the price on a 8250 drive back in the day? I bet they didn't come cheap!) cheers Jules ----------------- Well, yes, there is that; $2000+... But they were meant for someone who could write them off their taxes... m

18 years, 5 months

PET IEEE problem (was Commodore PET)

by dm561＠torfree.net

Date: Fri, 9 Nov 2007 17:45:36 +1300 From: Ethan Dicks <ethan.dicks at usap.gov> Subject: Re: Commodore PET <snip> >I got a lot of miles out of that PET. I still have it and it still >fires up (but I think I have an IEEE problem that may turn out to be >cruddy 40-pin sockets on the VLSI I/O chips). <snip> Those sockets were indeed a PITA, but another easy-to-overlook problem I ran into with my 8050 disk drive is that if you happen to catch the tip of one of the contacts in the female IEEE connector while plugging in the cable you can easily push it into the connector and out the back, causing an intermittent. m

18 years, 5 months

Commodore PET

by dm561＠torfree.net

Date: Fri, 09 Nov 2007 09:55:34 +0000 From: Jules Richardson <julesrichardsonuk at yahoo.co.uk> Subject: Re: Commodore PET >We still seem to get them offered to the museum in healthy numbers - including >the chicklet models (and once in a while one of the blue-fronted ones, which I >believe are the earliest). >I've never tried actively seeking one out though as there's been no need. >Finding one that works seems to be the difficult bit - I don't think I've ever >seen one which hasn't required some form of TLC inside. Nasty, clunky, >horrible things they are ;-) >cheers >Jules --------Reply: Well, recognizing that this was probably just flame bait, I respectfully disagree. Granted, with time there were problems with poor connectors and failing RAM & ROM chips, but that was common in systems of that day (and still is). In my not-so-humble opinion, the PET's metal case and automobile-style 'hood' ('bonnet' to you), hefty linear power supply, crisp built-in monitor, IEEE port, and its generous supply of other I/O ports, not to mention Commodore's good official support, made it stand out among the Apples and R-S model 1s of the day. Mine _is_ originally one of the blue-front models and it still works fine to this day; the only problems I've had with it is one of the ROMs developing a stuck bit and the occasional dirty connector, and the keyboard contacts need to be cleaned once in a while (and a little rust from Racoons peeing on it while it sat for many years in the garage with a hole in the roof). And, as an aside, it was many years before the mainstream reached the 500MB *per side* of the 8050 and 8250 disk drives (which could use pretty well any diskette you had on hand, soft sector, 10 or 16S hard sector, whatever). Archiving some 25+ year old diskettes recently I had one read error in 20 diskettes (and I could use the computer for playing a fast game or two while formatting or copying diskettes)... m

18 years, 5 months

Fairchild 9401 ttl ic pinout wanted.

by jdbryan＠acm.org

On 9 Nov 2007 at 13:44, I wrote: > Perhaps: > > http://www.bitsavers.org/pdf/fairchild/_dataSheets/F94xx_dataSheets.pdf > > ...has what you need? Alas, it does not. Several interesting 94xx parts, but the 9401 is not one of them. -- Dave

18 years, 5 months

*ON*-topic car question

by gordonjcp＠gjcp.net

At least one version of the Aston Martin Lagonda used CRTs driven by some sort of microcomputer for the dashboard displays. Anyone know anything more about it? Short of scouring eBay and buying such a car (and incurring the wrath of SWMBO) I can't find out much about it. I bet someone here knows though. Gordon

18 years, 5 months

CDC Terminal (was Commodore PET)

by dm561＠torfree.net

---------- From: Richard[SMTP:legalize at xmission.com] Sent: Friday, November 09, 2007 12:33 PM To: M H Stein Subject: Re: Commodore PET [off-list reply] [on-list re-reply for general interest] In article <01C822C6.8F421200 at MSE_D03>, M H Stein <dm561 at torfree.net> writes: > Just one of many things I dumpstered before I saw the light; the North > Star and CDC terminal I tossed because I only wanted the desks, the What "CDC terminal"? ---------------- Reply: Well, "terminal" might not have been accurate; it might have been a console or even something else altogether But it so happens I still have the 'desk' and some of its innards; the model numbers are: Control Data Corporation QSE 1253 Display Controller QSE 1255 Display Equipment Maybe someone on the list knows more. I may be confusing it with an MDS Data entry station which I scrapped for the same reason (I needed a lot of small desks to put computers and terminals on), but I believe it was the CDC unit that had the 3-row rack of cards, mostly populated with house-numbered 10-pin TO-5 ICs and an acoustic delay line for memory, and it was the MDS unit that had the larger boards and the small core memory plane that are all still lying around somewhere in the Chaos Basement. mike

18 years, 5 months

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test-drb