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Computer stuff 1970's ish at Lucas Birmingham Gt King St ?

by RodSmallwood＠mail.ediconsulting.co.uk

Very Interesting!!! 1. The console terminal is a Creed Model 75 Teleprinter ie Baudot Telex code not ASCII This may be a Bletchley Park legacy. The later electronic BP systems were designed to break teleprinter codes and hence the high speed tape readers and terminals were for telex code. You can just see the M75 reader/punch above the operators hand. 2. To the left of the operator are two high speed paper tape readers. 3. You can see the holes in the top of the desk where the tape went after the reader 4. The tape rewinder is on the corner of the other desk. 5. The two boxes on the right are the storage cases for the high speed readers or could be tape punches. 6. The row of horizontal drawers on the right of the desk are for rewound paper tapes. 7. The row of cabinets under the window is the electronics. 8. You needed a whole cabinet to hold 16K of core + PSU 9. The desk to the left appears to have some punched cards on it. But they look a bit big. 10. The drawers in the desk to the left look like card storage. 11. The desk to the left could be a punched card station but I have never seen one so am unsure. Rod Smallwood -----Original Message----- From: cctech-bounces at classiccmp.org [mailto:cctech-bounces at classiccmp.org] On Behalf Of Dave Caroline Sent: 15 May 2007 21:02 To: cctalk at classiccmp.org Subject: Computer stuff 1970's ish at Lucas Birmingham Gt King St ? Here's a few obscure pics from the 1970's I believe take the picture link Pertec tape drive and a box with System 90 on it? and what else http://www.archivist.info/collection/searchv8.php?srcdata=title&srcprog= searchv8.php&searchv4page=1&errlev=0&searchstr=lucas+computer+lab Any information gratefully received as a treat here is an Elliott 803 at Lucas http://www.archivist.info/collection/searchv8.php?srcdata=title&srcprog= searchv8.php&searchv4page=1&errlev=0&searchstr=lucas+elliott Dave Caroline

19 years, 1 month

The Last of The Line

by RodSmallwood＠mail.ediconsulting.co.uk

Well I think I understand the list. But for clarity's sake here's the problem again. 1. I have a number of PDP-11/94's 2. The first three slots are Quad Qbus 3. The missing KDJ11-EB would have been in slot one 4. Slot two has a M9714 ALT PWR FOR KDJ11-E in it. 5 Slot three is empty. 6. Slot four is a Unibus slot and has a M8191 KTJ11-B Unibus controller in it 7 Slot five has a M7547 TUK50-BB Tape controller in it. 8. Slot's Six,seven and eight are empty 9. Slot nine has a M9302 (UNIBUS TERMINATOR) at one end and a M9713 (MIN. LOAD MODULE) at the other. "Your mission Mr Phelps (Should you accept it) is to replace the missing KDJ11-EB with the lowest cost plug in alternative that will run" The winner gets (for the cost of the shipping) a 11/94 system unit box as described above. Rod Smallwood PS Speed is not an issue here. -----Original Message----- From: cctech-bounces at classiccmp.org [mailto:cctech-bounces at classiccmp.org] On Behalf Of Glen Slick Sent: 15 May 2007 19:24 To: General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts Subject: Re: The Last of The Line On 5/15/07, Pete Turnbull <pete at dunnington.plus.com> wrote: > > > Anybody want to amend and add the module for the memory? > > http://www.dunnington.u-net.com/public/PDP-11/QBus_memory > > It also doesn't have columns to specify whether the boards work in > Qbus/Qbus backplanes or Q/CD backplanes without releasing magic smoke, > whether they have provision to use battery power, whether they have > options to disable the parity CSR, or support block-mode transfers. > I'd expect users to get the nitty-gritty from the relevant user guides > or handbooks. > > As always, additions and corrections are welcome. > http://www.bitsavers.org/pdf/dec/qbus/EK-MSV1J-UG_001_May85.pdf MSV11-JB M8637-B 1 MB ECC PDP-11/84 ONLY MSV11-JC M8637-C 2 MB ECC PDP-11/84 ONLY MSV11-JD M8637-D 1 MB ECC PDP-11/84 or PDP-11/83 MSV11-JE M8637-E 2 MB ECC PDP-11/84 or PDP-11/83 NOTE: Modules designated MSV11-JB and MSV11-JC may be used in the PDP-11/84 (UNIBUS) system only. Modules designated MSV11-JD and MSV11-JE may be used in both the PDP-11/84 and PDP-11/83 (Q-bus) systems. NOTE: MSV11-JB and MSV11-JC cannot perform Q-bus protocol. NOTE: Insertion of the MSV11-J in a Q-Q backplane my damage other components or the memory itself. The PMI bussing of the MSV11-J's CD connectors is not compatible with the +12V bussing on the Q-Q backplane.

19 years, 1 month

Anyone recognize this terminal?

by legalize＠xmission.com

This little photo is all I have to go on; someone else is looking to ID this puppy and I said I would ask around. <http://www.xmission.com/~legalize/tmp/hlac.jpg> -- "The Direct3D Graphics Pipeline" -- DirectX 9 draft available for download <http://www.xmission.com/~legalize/book/download/index.html> Legalize Adulthood! <http://blogs.xmission.com/legalize/>

19 years, 1 month

Vintage Test Set, a Hardware Hackers Delight on eBay

by whdawson＠nidhog.net

(LURK OFF) Item 290114723691, Safetran Dual Tone Multi-Frequency Test Set A41080. I thought about buying another of these just for its potential, but am passing on bidding on this one and letting the list be aware of what I found this in this little 14x10x6 inch fiberglass case. I bought one of these, 290112949036, from the same seller. It arrived UPS 3-day today, was very well packed, and looks to have never been used. I'm quite pleased with its quality and potential. Oh, and it works great. The manual that came with mine is everything a manual should be, Operation, Circuit Description (4 1/2 pages alone), Block Diagram (detailed), Troubleshooting, Wiring Diagram, Schematics, Component Layout Diagrams and Parts Lists. If someone on this list wins the auction, ending May-16-07 13:29:44 PDT, I'll photocopy the manual for them if it's not available anywhere else (I haven't looked). The manual is dated April 82, although my test set was made in August 85. Portable uProcessor controlled tone DTMF decoder/encoder 2 & 4 wire. Audible monitor Intercom mode, includes adjustable amp, speaker & electret mike. 12 digit LED readout (2 x HP HDSP3733) Reset Button All I.C.s in sockets Contents: Separate Keyboard/Display and Processor/Power Supply boards connected by a ribbon cable, and an Intercom board with Volume control and transmit level controls. Processor board: MC6809 @ 1Mhz, 2x 2716, 2Kx8 CMOS RAM (MSM5128), MC6821 PIA, MT8865 DTMF Band Splitter, 2-of-8 Tone Encoder MC14410P, Keyboard Encoder MM74C923, Hex Bounce Controller MC14490VL, Watchdog, all the necessary glue, and power supply rectification & regulation Display/Keypad board: LED displays, Hex Keypad, 4 other momentary buttons, 3 other LEDs, 2x Hex Display Driver Controller MM74C917, Keyboard Encoder MM74C92312, and 12 digit LED readout (2 x HP HDSP3733). Great hacking potential, now to figure out what to hack it into. Guess a nice 6809 Monitor in EPROM would be a good start... I have no relation to the seller in this auction other than as a very satisfied buyer. Regards, Bill Dawson (/LURK OFF) -- This message has been scanned for viruses and dangerous content by MailScanner, and is believed to be clean.

19 years, 1 month

Harwell (was RE: A local computer history group for my area . ..)

by RodSmallwood＠mail.ediconsulting.co.uk

Yes slight aberration of the brain. The building was called "The Atlas Computer Laboratory" but the system was ICL. One of my first jobs as a junior engineer (circa 1972) was to refurbish 4K core memory stores for an Elliot system. They were about three feet long with a Mullard Core stack in a box in the middle and plug in cards on either side. They used early transistors of the OC71 era (Yup -ve supply). I soon learned all about read, write and sense amplifiers and how the cores actually worked. As a final test I would put the store back in the system (Elliot 4100?) load a very complex FORTRAN program from paper tape ( it worked out handicaps for large racing yachts based on their dimensions) then a data tape. The answer came out on one of two IBM golfball printers (no keyboards). That's what I call classic computing as opposed to a classic computer! Rod Smallwood -----Original Message----- From: cctech-bounces at classiccmp.org [mailto:cctech-bounces at classiccmp.org] On Behalf Of Roger Holmes Sent: 15 May 2007 19:44 To: cctalk at classiccmp.org Subject: Re: Harwell (was RE: A local computer history group for my area . ..) > From: "Rod Smallwood" <RodSmallwood at mail.ediconsulting.co.uk> > > Well now let me see now I left School for College in 1964. My major > subjects were Industrial Electronics and Computing. > > We were taken to Harwell Research centre to see 'The' Computer. It was > an ICL 1900 series system. It took up three floors of a substantial > building. Input on the top floor (80col Cards and papertape). > Processing > and storage on the middle floor and output on the ground floor. Had to > be that way or the vibration from the line printers would have shaken > the building to pieces. > > I remember it was called Atlas and even had an operating system called > George III. So that's just over 40 years ago. In computer terms > certainly vintage if not veteran. Hi Rod, I think you have mixed up two different systems. The Ferranti Atlas (later ICT/ICL Atlas) was in a custom built building, I understand the CPU occupied two floors, and yes there was one at Harwell I've been told. I would expect that Harwell also had at least one ICT/ICL 1900, and that would indeed run the George 3 multi access system. I did my computer science degree at Queen Mary College (University of London) and we had a ICL 1905E, upgraded to a 1904S which ran George 2 batch processing and the Maximop multi access system. Later I used a 1906 (S?) at the Royal Aircraft Establishment and it used either George 3 or George 4, and I was relieved to find that all the Maximop commands worked on it. When I was in the sixth form we visited the computer centre at the NatWest tower - huge floors - IIRC, one floor had nothing but IBM CPUs (probably 370s - this was 1969) and other static electronics, one floor had all the storage - magnetic tapes, discs, and juke box like machines which picked up strips of magnetic tape. Another floor had the hard peripherals - card readers, line printers and a massive document reader with a curved 'retina' on top about 20 feet across where all the optical sensors were. Another floor had all the cheque reading machines, the operators were moaning about people stapling their cheques and the staples getting caught in the works. At that time a random 2% of the cheques were also processed manually for quality assurance purposes, and presumably to prevent fraud. That day was the first I heard of the fraction of a penny (or cent) scam, where all interest payments were rounded down and all the fractions of a penny credited to the programmer's account. The same day I visited the University of London's central computer centre (as opposed to the individual college's private ones). They had a CDC 7600 and one operator was using a terminal to send messages to chat up a girl operating one of the remote stations which fed the 7600 with punched card data and printed the results. A very early form of Internet chat room you might say. Roger Owner of a ICT 1301 built 1962

19 years, 1 month

Subject: Re: Manuals being scanned

by ed＠ed-thelen.org

Message: 8 Date: Sat, 12 May 2007 11:49:02 +0100 From: Paul Williams <paul at frixxon.co.uk> Subject: Re: Manuals being scanned To: General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts <cctalk at classiccmp.org> Message-ID: <46459B9E.4040706 at frixxon.co.uk> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed > Al Kossow wrote: >> >> They are some of the ugliest, bloated pdf's I've ever seen. >> What are you doing to them to make them look so BAD. > This is Adobe Capture at work. I had a look at the CP/M manual to see if > the OCRed text was overlaid on an original full page image beneath, but > unfortunately, the 256-page document consists of 13441 image fragments > that couldn't be OCRed. There are no images where text has been OCRed. > -- > Paul Paul - in all kindness (I've been there, done that) Stop scanning a bit and consider: 1) your current technique is not good! a) your current files are indeed much too large by maybe a factor of 6 or 7 b) your current files contain OCR errors - with no warning to users, who tend to think .pdf means a valid image. Two easily found errors are on "your" http://www.cse.uta.edu/TheMuseum at CSE/Manuals%20Scanned/CDC/Control%20Data-Cyber%2070%20Computer%20Systems%20Models%2072,73,74,6000%20Computer%20Systems.PDF on page 3-7 or page 19 in the file in HTML, several variable which should be l<sub>i</SUB> have been mis OCRed and are shown as I, Adobe blunders such as the above caused me to abandon Adobe for several years, until I met an Adobe employee who straightened me out. I now use Adobe Acrobat Professional as scanning input control, (not optimum, but it works OK) - trim off the images of paper holes with "Crop Pages" - check the "Recognize Text using OCR" which places Adobe's interpretation "behind" the image (for direct searching) - and have figured how to make "Reduce File Size" work Another thing to consider is that GOOGLE OCRs .pdf files that it spiders, highlighting search hits :-)) To some extent, your Adobe OCR is bypassed by GOOGLE. So - I'm back "PDF"ing, http://www.ed-thelen.org/comp-hist/on-line-docs.html http://www.ed-thelen.org/#h-documents etc. For serious work, I suggest you look at Al Kossow's suggestions at http://www.bitsavers.org/ "Keep Smiling" ;-)) Ed Thelen

19 years, 1 month

Old electrolytic capacitors (IME-86s calculator)

by julesrichardsonuk＠yahoo.co.uk

I'm guessing that old (circa early-70s) electrolytics which have a green cap at one end and a red cap at the other are polarised and that the green end is -ve. Can anyone confirm to save me tracing out schematics? They're in the power supply of an IME-86s calculator and are decidedly past their best :-) (At least four of the ten in the PSU are showing signs of major leakage) The rest of the machine *looks* healthy enough; once I've replaced the electrolytics is there any good reason not to slowly run the system up on a variac (rather than giving it full AC from the start)?

19 years, 1 month

Problem reading CP/M floppy on a PC

by john_a_s2004＠hotmail.com

Hi, I have a Transam Tuscan system and recently received a set of boot disks for it. I am trying to back these up to a PC, but when reading the disks with Anadisk or Imagedisk I get 'no data' errors on tracks 3 and higher. The errors get worse from tracks 3 to 15 then nothing can be read. I have taken the 5.25" drive out of the Tuscan and put it in the PC, and the contoller passes the TESTFDC tests for single density and double density. The odd thing about these floppies is that Anadisk reports them as 512 byte / sector and 10 sectors per track. The norm for '360K' floppies is 9 sectors / track. The outer sector (track 0) can be read fine with Anadisk, and I can read the CP/M welcome message. I was hoping someone could advise on what tricks or techniques I could use? Would it help for example to slow the drive down below 300rpm? I assume that with 9 sectors / track there is more time for the FDC to recgnise the start of each track. I think the Tuscan FDC uses a WD1771 controller, is that better than the NEC765 type-controller and able to pack more data in? I read on http://www.s100-manuals.com/Disk-drives.htm that Kaypro also uses 10 sectors of 512 bytes. Another thought is to try different PCs, perhaps formating, writing and reading 10 x 512 byte sectors is another test that could be added to Dave's TESTFDC program to help find a suitable machine :-) Lastly (before anyone asks) yes the floppies are soft sectored. Regards, John _________________________________________________________________ The next generation of Hotmail is here! http://www.newhotmail.co.uk/

19 years, 1 month

DEC Pro380 RX50 boot frustration

by chd_1＠nktelco.net

I have been trying to boot my Pro380 from an RX50 and can't seem to get it to work. I have to be missing something. I have been using RX50 floppies that work fine in an -11/73. When I put those disks in the Pro I get an error code that translates to "Bad format or blank disk." and a picture of a floppy with a question mark. I created RT11 boot disks for the FB monitor and used the COPY/BOOT:DZ thing to get the right bootstrap. All on a real -11/73. I was able to initialize a volume on the diskette using P/OS from the Pro's hard disk. The resulting disk boots in the -11/73 with the message ***THIS VOLUME DOES NOT CONTAIN A HARDWARE BOOTABLE SYSTEM ***. In the Pro it gives me that same error code 340. The fact that this message was created by the Pro makes me think there is nothing wrong with the hardware or the floppy format. I have swapped floppy controllers and RX50 drives with no change. I have downloaded a couple disk images that I thought should be bootable (P/OS maintenance utilities) with the same results. I have a little less confidence in this because I had to convert .td0 images to binary images to copy to the floppy. I did find a note about installing 2.9bsd on the Pro that indicates that the floppy must have a special header for the bootstrap different from the NOP and BR that the normal PDP-11's usually require. Shouldn't this be taken care of by the RT11 bootstrap installation process? Is there something that needs to be in the first track that is missing from my disks? This Pro380 was a VAX console. Is there possibly something different about the firmware?

19 years, 1 month

Color Macintosh boot floppy?

by dbetz＠xlisper.com

Can anyone help me with creating a boot floppy for a Color Macintosh? I have a machine whose hard disk died and I'm trying to replace it but I don't have a boot floppy containing DiskTools to format the new (Apple) hard drive. I *do* have an install CD for System 7.5 but it doesn't seem to want to boot on the Color Classic even if I hold "C" down when I start up the Mac. I'd be happy to pay for shipping and something extra for the effort involved in making the DiskTools boot disk. By the way, I've already tried downloading the DiskTools 7.5 and 8.5 images that are available on the net. Unfortunately, they won't boot on the Color Classic. I get a message saying that a system resource is missing. I'm assuming that they don't have the right enabler for the Color Classic. Thanks! David

19 years, 1 month

phree stuph

by chrism3667＠yahoo.com

reply offlist hosers Logitech Scanman Handheld scanner user manual a bunch of caddies, prolly 20+ generic Mac ADB trackball Wordstar Reference Manual for 2000 plus release 3, I may have others in this series, no disks/images I don't think though MCS-8080/8085 Family User's Manual Adobe Streamline, boxed, 5 1/4" disks, I won't vouch for their integrity DBase III Plus Command Performance Series (M$ Press?) The New Wordstar Customizing Guide Analyzing Broadband Networks, 3rd Ed. Soundblaster Midi Kit, boxed, disk and cable AS/400 User's Manual, wire bound The Modem Reference, 2nd Ed. Brady pubs. 3 non-functional Commodore Plus 4's (I think, the brown squarish ones). chips missing. Basically doorstops or parts. I might want to keep one, don't know... *these are moldy, but readable* PC Tools Deluxe Hard Drive Back Up PC Tools Data Recovery and Dos Utilities PC Tools Data Recovery and Utilities If any interest, postage must be payed in advance by snail mail. I don't have paypal and don't want to bother with it right now. If there's no interest after ~1 week, I throw it all in the trash. Muahahahahahahaha ____________________________________________________________________________________Got a little couch potato? Check out fun summer activities for kids. http://search.yahoo.com/search?fr=oni_on_mail&p=summer+activities+for+kids&…

19 years, 1 month

interesting classic video game anniversary story

by innfoclassics＠gmail.com

This is an interesting read and some pics of the very first video games. http://www.1up.com/do/feature?cId=3159462 Found the link on slashdot. Paxton -- Paxton Hoag Astoria, OR USA

19 years, 1 month

opinion needed

by chrism3667＠yahoo.com

a very nice man is offering to send me (2) 5170s replete w/5175 monitors and the associated PGA graphics boards. These were used in the "common area" at MIT. As such, do these represent any particular value? I have an AT already, but these are seemingly more interesting having dwelt w/i the hallowed halls of an illustrious technical university. Any thoughts... ____________________________________________________________________________________ Never miss an email again! Yahoo! Toolbar alerts you the instant new Mail arrives. http://tools.search.yahoo.com/toolbar/features/mail/

19 years, 1 month

Rainbow on eBay and looking...

by jba＠sdf.lonestar.org

The Rainbow does operate at standard TV rates, i beleive. The monochrome signal is actually a straight composite signal, meaning, if you build an adapter, you can connect any old composite monitor to it. I used a Commodore 1084 (I think that's the model...) for a while. One of the oddest features was that you could switch to European rates at any time through the bios. Just press F3 while the system was on to get to the Set-Up screen. One of the flags was 'Frequency' and it presented two options: 50Hz and 60Hz. Just flip the flag depending on your continent, and you're all done. The high-res graphics mode was 800x240, which does seem a bit wide. Maybe the engineers predicted the coming of widescreen monitors... ;) Low-res graphics mode was a more normal ratio at 384x240. The Rainbow in the auction looks nice, but there is no color monitor in the pictures. Is the seller sure that he has a color monitor? jba at sdf.lonestar.org SDF Public Access UNIX System - http://sdf.lonestar.org

19 years, 1 month

Televideo TS-802 also in Canada

by chrism3667＠yahoo.com

http://cgi.ebay.com/Vintage-1982-Televideo-TS-802- CP-M-Z80-PC-Computer_W0QQitemZ250077921603QQihZ015 QQcategoryZ4193QQrdZ1QQssPageNameZWD1VQQcmdZViewItem ____________________________________________________________________________________Ready for the edge of your seat? Check out tonight's top picks on Yahoo! TV. http://tv.yahoo.com/

19 years, 1 month

General SCSI+ DLT speed questions

by james＠attfield.co.uk

> Date: Tue, 15 May 2007 13:07:03 -0500 > From: Jim Leonard <trixter at oldskool.org> > Subject: Re: General SCSI+DLT speed questions > To: General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts > <cctalk at classiccmp.org> > Message-ID: <4649F6C7.4010402 at oldskool.org> > Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed > On the system I had it hooked up to (a 933MHz Linux box with hardware > RAID) keeping the drives fed was no problem. > > Anyway, I'm happy to see that, although seeming to need a cleaning tape > every 4 loads or so, they function as expected :-) > -- > Jim Leonard (trixter at oldskool.org) http://www.oldskool.org/ The cleaning light can also indicate media problems, not just head cleaning time. I have a few tapes which frequently trigger the head-cleaning light even though recently cleaned. Jim

19 years, 1 month

3.5" Altair CP/M

by grant＠stockly.com

I have a tarbell floppy controller card that has been rewired to access 3.5" disks using a standard PC 3.5" disk drive. I have 3 disks that the Altair can boot off of and read, but my windows computer can't do anything with them. I've tried rawread.exe and diskinfo.exe and they both choke on the disk. I assumed that if a disk could be written with the standard 3.5" disk drive on the tarbell card then it should also be read on the same drive connected to a modern IBM compatible. The disks are 720K style, they don't have the high density hole. I was hoping that these disks would be an easy way to move data to and from the Altair. The version of CP/M is 1.4. What could be missing? If the bitrate is fixed, then is CP/M not writing standard sectors? Rawread says "Address not found" and diskinfo says the drive is not ready. Grant

19 years, 1 month

Disk Nicolet 1280 spectrometer

by mikeee＠tiscali.it

Good morning, excuse me for the trouble, have I seen a discussion on a forum and have I seen that her posside it "Nicolet 1280", do I have the necessity to restore mine "Nicolet 1280", don't I have the floppy disk that allows the operation anymore, is it possible to send me by mail the packet of the softwares? I Thank you in advance. Dr. Michele Marongiu

19 years, 1 month

General SCSI+DLT speed questions

by trixter＠oldskool.org

(Hopefully this is on-topic since the technologies and hardware are over a decade old) Background: I rescued two DLT 7000 drives this weekend (one Quantum, one SUN) and hooked them up to an Adaptec 29160 HBA. The Adaptec has an external 50-pin (Ultra 2?) connector, so I used a 50-to-68 pin (Ultra wide SCSI?) cable to connect the HBA to the first DLT drive, and a 68-pin to connect both DLT drives together. It took a bit of configuring in the Adaptec BIOS (had all targets set to U160 16-bit) but after some sane reductions they both were recognized and speed was set to 10MB/s. My concern is that it takes nearly two hours to fill a DLT IV (35GB) tape, regardless of which drive I use or HBA settings I configure. The Quantum drive averages 4168 kB/s; the SUN drive is slower and averages 3355 kB/s. Are these times normal? With such large capacities per tape, I would have assumed they could be filled faster... They are reporting a 10MB/s speed, why am I getting only 4MB/s? Another question: Is it normal for DLT drives to go faster if compression is disabled? I thought the point of hardware compression was that it came without cost. I'm running a test now, but was curious to know if other drives were known for being "slower" with compression on. -- Jim Leonard (trixter at oldskool.org) http://www.oldskool.org/ Help our electronic games project: http://www.mobygames.com/ Or check out some trippy MindCandy at http://www.mindcandydvd.com/ A child borne of the home computer wars: http://trixter.wordpress.com/

19 years, 1 month

Anyone know the MTI "THORN" board?

by oldcpu＠rogerwilco.org

The recent discussion on tape backup devices has been timely, to say the least. I just picked up an Exabyte 8505XL 8mm tape drive, hoping to scan a ziplock bag-full of 8mm tapes that were included in a pickup of several Qbus PDP-11s and uVAXen last year. Included with the drive is a bare board that rumor has it came from a Micro Technology 'Liberator' tape backup subsystem. The interesting part about this board is that it is also rumored to be a DSSI-to-SCSI adapter. If true then I just maybe, sorta, kinda, might have a way to connect SCSI hard disks and/or a CD-ROM drive to my DECsystem 5400, which would be very, very nice. Unfortunately, I have no docs or technical information on this board, or the Liberator. Nothing turns up on bitsavers.org, Manx, the MTI website, or a general search of Google. I have tried to query MTI's support group via email, but no reply for a week, and I'm guessing that whoever received that email just took me for a crank collector of old comptuers! ;) While this board isn't really a 'classic' item by any means, nor even the DECsystem 5400, I'd still appreciate any information that anyone might have on this. It is marked "Model: THORN / T/A: 640036-007 REV M / S/A: 640036-001 REV K" and is built around a 68C000 @ 16Mhz, a couple NCR 53C700 SCSI drivers, 3 (I think) AMD 29c983 bus exchangers (whatever they are) and a bunch of logic, and two 68-pin SCA-like connectors on the SCSI side. You can see an image of the board on my mystery boards page at: http://www.rogerwilco.org/mystery_boards/#MTI_THORN If I can sort out the power connection, I might start experimenting a bit through what appears to be an on-board RS-232 port. The big question is: can I really use this to connect at least one SCSI hard disk or CDROM to my system? Thanks! Jared

19 years, 1 month

CBM Plus/4 sluggish keyboard

by julesrichardsonuk＠yahoo.co.uk

I'm leaning toward the idea of offloading my Plus/4 as it's sat in the attic for years and I've never got around to *doing* anything with it. :-( It works, but some of the keys are a bit sluggish - are there any gotchas involved in dismantling the keyboard in order to give contacts a clean? (I just want to check I'm not going to be faced with tiny springs going every which way if I unscrew the backplate :-) Also, am I right in thinking that the tape unit was an optional extra? I don't have one [1], but looking at the boxed plus/4 on ebay at the moment, it doesn't seem to include one either in the standard package. [1] I *did* have a broken one once, but it's either seriously buried or I tossed it out long ago.

19 years, 1 month

Looking for a dead machine

by ploopster＠gmail.com

Hi. I'm looking for a dead IBM 5155 Portable Personal Computer. The only conditions are that the power supply, monitor and floppy drive need to work. None of the motherboard-based devices (including the CPU) need to work. A canvas carrying case would be a nice plus. Anyone have a line on one? Peace... Sridhar

19 years, 1 month

Harwell (was RE: A local computer history group for my area . . .)

by roger.holmes＠microspot.co.uk

> From: "Rod Smallwood" <RodSmallwood at mail.ediconsulting.co.uk> > > Well now let me see now I left School for College in 1964. My major > subjects were Industrial Electronics and Computing. > > We were taken to Harwell Research centre to see 'The' Computer. It was > an ICL 1900 series system. It took up three floors of a substantial > building. Input on the top floor (80col Cards and papertape). > Processing > and storage on the middle floor and output on the ground floor. Had to > be that way or the vibration from the line printers would have shaken > the building to pieces. > > I remember it was called Atlas and even had an operating system called > George III. So that's just over 40 years ago. In computer terms > certainly vintage if not veteran. Hi Rod, I think you have mixed up two different systems. The Ferranti Atlas (later ICT/ICL Atlas) was in a custom built building, I understand the CPU occupied two floors, and yes there was one at Harwell I've been told. I would expect that Harwell also had at least one ICT/ICL 1900, and that would indeed run the George 3 multi access system. I did my computer science degree at Queen Mary College (University of London) and we had a ICL 1905E, upgraded to a 1904S which ran George 2 batch processing and the Maximop multi access system. Later I used a 1906 (S?) at the Royal Aircraft Establishment and it used either George 3 or George 4, and I was relieved to find that all the Maximop commands worked on it. When I was in the sixth form we visited the computer centre at the NatWest tower - huge floors - IIRC, one floor had nothing but IBM CPUs (probably 370s - this was 1969) and other static electronics, one floor had all the storage - magnetic tapes, discs, and juke box like machines which picked up strips of magnetic tape. Another floor had the hard peripherals - card readers, line printers and a massive document reader with a curved 'retina' on top about 20 feet across where all the optical sensors were. Another floor had all the cheque reading machines, the operators were moaning about people stapling their cheques and the staples getting caught in the works. At that time a random 2% of the cheques were also processed manually for quality assurance purposes, and presumably to prevent fraud. That day was the first I heard of the fraction of a penny (or cent) scam, where all interest payments were rounded down and all the fractions of a penny credited to the programmer's account. The same day I visited the University of London's central computer centre (as opposed to the individual college's private ones). They had a CDC 7600 and one operator was using a terminal to send messages to chat up a girl operating one of the remote stations which fed the 7600 with punched card data and printed the results. A very early form of Internet chat room you might say. Roger Owner of a ICT 1301 built 1962

19 years, 1 month

Sun 2/120 chassis

by bear＠typewritten.org

Howdy, guys. I'm working on restoring a Sun 2/120. My particular machine appears to have been a diskless workstation (no storage controllers). I think I have enough spares to give it a local disk and QIC-11 drive, but there is no obvious way to mount a drive of any type in the upper part of the chassis. There's a cutout on the front panel, so I know you were at least supposed to be able to put a tape drive up there. Can somebody draw me a picture of how things are supposed to look with drives in the cabinet? I guess if worse came to worst I could attach one of the 511 shoeboxes, but I'd need a panel kit for my multibus SCSI controller. Also: I guess this is a long shot, but I would also like to find a Sun-2 keyboard and mouse for this machine. I'll pay some money for it, if somebody has one they would be willing to part with. Thanks! ok bear

19 years, 1 month

Rainbow on eBay and looking...

by jfoust＠threedee.com

At 08:38 AM 5/15/2007, Ethan Dicks wrote: >Babylon 5 used hopped-up Amiga 2000s w/68040s and Toasters and >Lightwave for their first season, but I think they switched the >rendering platform to Lightwave on Pentium-class machines for the >remainder of the show. Don't know if they continued to use Toasters >for laying down the rendered images to tape or not. As I recall, they all used non-video / all-digital methods of laying down the rendered frames. I remember writing an Abekas utility at one point for Newtek for someone at the Post Group, I think it read and wrote Abekas-format data to an Exabyte 8500. Back then there were video recorders that could cleanly lay down single frames of video to tape. They may also have simply 'tar'd rendered frames to Exabytes and delivered them to a post-production service, who rendered them to high-quality video output. - John

19 years, 1 month

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