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101090 discussions

Honeywell 7-track tape drive - who has EVER seen this?

by aliensrcooluk＠yahoo.co.uk

--- Philipp Hachtmann <hachti at hachti.de> wrote: > Hi folks, > > please take a look at this picture: > http://h316.hachti.de?gallery/tape_drive2/dscn1704 _1024.jpg > More can be found here: > http://h316.hachti.de?gallery/tape_drive/ > http://h316.hachti.de?gallery/tape_drive2/ > > Who has ever seen/used/heard about/repaired this > kind (similar is ok, > too!) of tape drive? Well, thanks to you, I have seen one now :) Regards, Andrew B aliensrcooluk at yahoo.co.uk

19 years, 8 months

My sick A600 = dead

by aliensrcooluk＠yahoo.co.uk

Sadly things have taken a turn to the graveyard... I hadn't been able to find the time to see what the original problem was caused by. A few weeks ago I no ticed that the floppies started coming out of the in ternal floppy drive warm on the underside. Today when I switched her on I heard a click sound ( no, not the switch button, another click) and when I started to see a slight whisp of smoke coming out f rom the floppy drive I knew something was seriously wrong and switched her off. I daren't switch her back on and will have to remove the harddrive and open up my 2nd A600, even if it m eans breaking those damn clips at the back. This comes after a few weeks of long working days (8 to 8.5 hours) when I should only be doing 7 hours a day. I am not a happy man at present. Regards, Andrew B aliensrcooluk at yahoo.co.uk

19 years, 8 months

Need an obituary for Don Tarbell

by webmaster＠rcworks.com

While I met Don briefly a few times my father would be probably the one that knew him best. My father was with him from conception of the cassette interface up to his death. My pop might be open to writing what you want, you should ask him. If your still in need of an obituary let me know and I will give you my dads email address.

19 years, 8 months

DEC 57-27889-01 Chip, what was it used in?

by fm.arnold＠gmx.net

Hi, someone offers on Ebay this chip-carrier (#130038367943) It looks like the CIS-option fot the 11/23B and 11/24 processors, but there are only 5 chips on it. Who knows this piece of HW, what was it used for in which devices? Thanks, Frank -- Computerese Irregular Verb Conjugation: - I have preferences. - You have biases. - He/She has prejudices.

19 years, 8 months

Finding bad RAM chip on PDP11 M7551?

by derschjo＠msu.edu

I have a MicroPDP 11/73 I'm trying to get running again; it has a single M7551-AP memory board (1MB) which appears to have a stuck bit; the startup memory test fails with: Expected Data = 125252 Bad Data = 125253 Address = 01400010 Any ideas how to determine which RAM chip needs to be replaced based on the failing address? Thanks, Josh

19 years, 8 months

UK rescue: Domesday + Acorn stuff (Camberley / Gillingham, Dorset)

by julesrichardsonuk＠yahoo.co.uk

I've just been contacted by a chap who posted to one of the Acorn usenet groups the other day - he has a range of stuff available, including a Domesday system player / disc / manual, 3 x Master 128 machines, and a selection of Cambridge Workstation software and manuals. Unfortunately his deadline for moving it is Monday, and all the people who have responded to his usenet post have let him down. Master 128 machines are common enough, but the rest is reasonably rare. Is anyone able to rescue this lot either for the museum, or for themselves? Whilst we'd welcome the Domesday and Cambridge Workstation stuff at the museum, I'm more interested in the rarer bits not going to landfill than anything. The guy lives in Gillingham (the Dorset one, not any of the others) and works in Camberley, so it seems like a pickup can be sorted out from either location. Original usenet post with a more comprehensive list is here: http://tinyurl.com/y4qv5t If anyone can help, that'd be great and I can put you in touch with the owner; unfortunately there's not a lot more I can do from the wrong side of the pond, and our one guy who lives close to Camberley is away right now... :-( cheers Jules -- If you've ever wondered how you get triangles from a cow You need buttermilk and cheese, and an equilateral chainsaw

19 years, 8 months

Faraday cages

by jonas.otter＠gmail.com

A Faraday cage need not be made of solid metal, it depends on which frequencies you want to keep out (or in). The important thing is that any holes need to be smaller than any wavelength you want blocked. Also, slots and holes can act as antennae, so there are other restrictions as well, but essentially, the idea is to keep the holes small enough.

19 years, 8 months

Faraday cages

by jonas＠otter.se

19 years, 8 months

150 something for disk drive, how about $25,000 for a Kaypro?

by jwstephens＠msm.umr.edu

It hasn't sold, but has two declied offers on it. I have heard of overpricing, but this is pretty much one of the highest I have ever seen. He claims serial number 000003 or such. Anyone know how kaypro serialized their units? Is this really the third Kaypro-II. It isn't an Apple 1, which would demand some sort of premium like this, however, and I wonder if the S/N if it is for anything is for the "test set" he says it is part of, rather than the unit. Jim 300039229895

19 years, 8 months

OT: microsoft browser virus!

by evan＠snarc.net

I use Firefox 99% of the time, but tonight I decided to update IE 6 to the brand-new IE 7. So I opened Firefox, went to Microsoft.com, clicked the update button for IE on their homepage, and .... absolutely nothing happened. I guess they block FF. Not surprising, but no big deal. Instead I opened IE 6.x, again went to Microsoft.com, clicked the same update button, and .... my anti-virus scanner (Alwil Software' Avast, which I highly recommend) immediately popped up! It read the Microsoft download as a virus and it urged me to abort the connection. I rebooted and tried it again with the same results. It cites "VBS: zulu" as the culprit.

19 years, 8 months

Looking for a VT100 keyboard

by derschjo＠msu.edu

Just picked up a VT103 sans keyboard (and also unfortunately, sans any QBus hardware -- just an empty backplane.) First things first, I'd like to find a keyboard for this thing -- anyone in the Seattle area have a spare keyboard they'd be willing to part with? Otherwise I'll go the eBay route... Thanks, Josh

19 years, 8 months

Faraday cages ( was Re: staticy plastic tubs )

by aliensrcooluk＠yahoo.co.uk

--- Ray Arachelian <ray at arachelian.com> wrote: > aliensrcooluk at yahoo.co.uk wrote: > > Ahh, thanks. I had forgotten about Google > > (not surprising since I have been working > > 8.5 hour days for the past week and only > > getting 6 hours sleep each night). > > > Sounds a lot like my schedule. Are you also a > sysadmin? :-) errr.. no. I work for a water company and am a lab technician. Among other things we test the water to make sure it's safe to drink. > > I don't like to rely too heavily on Wikipedia > > as (like alot of information online) you can't > > be sure what's right or wrong, unless someone > > knowledgeable in the subject can confirm it. > > > For things that I'm familiar with Wikipedia is > almost always correct. > For things that I'm not familiar with, their > external links point to > data that agrees with it. > > So if I understand correctly, the outer casing > > of a harddrive acts as a Faraday cage? My > > (4GB) Toshiba ones I use in my Amiga 600 > > have circuitry on the underside, but I suspect > > that may stop it being a Faraday cage, unless > > it's stuck onto the outside of the unit. > > > The platters are very well protected by the metal > case. There are holes > for air, (hard drives don't like working in a vacu um > or low air > pressure) and of course holes for the control/data > cables, so it's not a > perfect Faraday cage, but it's close enough. They must be really small air holes (or well hidden) as I never saw any when installing the HD's Regards, Andrew B aliensrcooluk at yahoo.co.uk

19 years, 8 months

staticy plastic tubs

by aliensrcooluk＠yahoo.co.uk

--- Ray Arachelian <ray at arachelian.com> wrote: > David Griffith wrote: > > This brings to mind a question: I have lots of > chips packaged in > > static-safe chip tubes which are then put in > metalized anti-static plastic > > bags. Is it okay to put packages like this into > said staticy plastic > > tubs? > > > Yes. But to be even safer, you could line the > inside of those bins, and > if you can, the sides and top with aluminum foil. > This will build > something like a Faraday cage which will keep the > chip tubes nice and > safe. > err... what's a Faraday cage? Someone I know sends disks to people (including myself) wrapped in aluminum foil. I keep them as he sent them, so I can tell which disks he sent me. The only problem is after getting them out I have a tough time getting them back in the box because of the foil. Regards, Andrew B aliensrcooluk at yahoo.co.uk

19 years, 8 months

8-inch drive substitutes

by dgriffi＠cs.csubak.edu

I recently sold a Qumetrak 842 8-inch floppy drive to a fellow who's restoring a CMI vintage synthesizer. He says that this particular model is what the synth uses. Can anyone think of a reason why he couldn't use some other model of drive as long as it's capable of reading DSDD media? -- 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?

19 years, 8 months

8-inch drive substitutes

by tshoppa＠wmata.com

From: "David Griffith" Subject: 8-inch drive substitutes > I recently sold a Qumetrak 842 8-inch floppy drive to a fellow who's > restoring a CMI vintage synthesizer. He says that this particular model > is what the synth uses. Can anyone think of a reason why he couldn't use > some other model of drive as long as it's capable of reading DSDD media? Stepping rate and head-load timings will vary between drives. Sometimes dramatically (e.g. Persci's!) Jumpering of drives for things such as drive ready, disk change, etc. can get hairy unless you have documentation for both the "original" and "target" drives. Jumpering details can vary between different board revisions. Often transliterating the jumpering needed is easy; other times you think you did it right but there are gotchas you don't see until you look at schematics or pull out your scope. In industrial uses sometimes you see door-lock and disk-eject solenoids - available on many models but not commonly found in many circumstances. (These are also options on some 5.25" and 3.5" drives...) Some drives are capable of remotely spinning up and down. As Nico mentions, some use 50Hz AC for the drive motor, some use 60Hz AC for the drive motor, and others run the drive motor from the +24VDC. And as Nico alludes to, some need just +5/+24V and others need some negative power supply for the electronics and others need line AC for the motor. Often the drive itself is behind some panel/bezel and the holes in the panel must match the holes in the drive :-). Some drives are distinctly non-standard in terms of dimensions, even if they come from "standard" manufacturers (there were some weird-ass Shugarts out there.) Tim.

19 years, 8 months

Wow; $192 for a 5.25" floppy disk drive

by trag＠io.com

>Date: Thu, 19 Oct 2006 12:51:00 -0700 >From: "Chuck Guzis" <cclist at sydex.com> >Subject: Re: Wow; $192 for a 5.25" floppy disk drive >To: "General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts" > <cctalk at classiccmp.org> >Message-ID: <453774B4.25279.812F7FE at cclist.sydex.com> >Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII > >On 19 Oct 2006 at 14:16, Jules Richardson wrote: > >> I don't think you necessarily need anything like that much; I remember Dave >> Dunfield and I discussing this a while back and it worked out at something >> like a couple of hundred KB I'm sure. > >If you're going track-by-track, probably a couple hundred K is more >than enough. But holding a complete 8" DSHD image runs to something >like 6MB if you hang onto the whole histogram. > >I think you'd definitely want to have enough storage to hold a >complete image--it'd make copying much simpler, no? Besides, a few >megabytes of RAM is nothing nowadays. > >> I don't know, what's a couple of hundred KB of memory, a CPU (say a Z80 for >> sake of argument), a bit of ROM, and a serial interface chip, plus a bit of >> glue logic? > >Probably use something a bit more common, say an ARM? Not that I >have anything against a Z80 (or Z180, or EZ80). Just that extra >horsepower can be very nice, even if you don't need it right away. They're a bit more expensive (about $5 in quantity) but the MC9S12UF32 looks interesting. It has a built-in USB interface (in addition to the SCI serial interface) and a built-in ATA-5 interface. I'm not sure what one would use the latter for in this application, but the built-in USB interface would be nice if one wanted to build a unit with both serial and USB interfaces to the host. It would require considerably more software development, but another interesting possibility might be to have an ethernet interface and build the disk drive as a network storage/reading device. The MC9S12NE64 has an ethernet MAC and EPHY built-in as well as the more common SCI. And of course, they both have plenty of extra horsepower. Jeff Walther

19 years, 8 months

OT: Good deal on knockout punch set

by cclist＠sydex.com

(For list members in the USA only) We were talking about panel work a little while ago and use of punches for larger holes (like the Greenlee punches). Today I note that in my email I have a coupon from Harbor Freight Tools for their knockout punch set: http://www.harborfreightusa.com/usa/itemdisplay/displayItem.do?itemid= 91201 $11.99 with coupon, good at any HF retail store. If you'd like said coupon, drop me an email off-line and I'll forward it to you. Cheers, Chuck

19 years, 8 months

UniVac Factronic Computer System

by healyzh＠aracnet.com

Spotted on comp.os.vms No idea if this is for real or not. http://atlanta.craigslist.org/sys/219423935.html Guy wants $10,000 or "trade for working condition sanfrancisco cable car". I'm suspicious as there doesn't appear to be any history on the system, and the pictures appear to be dated.

19 years, 8 months

What's the easiest way to test unmarked crystals?

by ethan.dicks＠gmail.com

I have a small handful of crystals and was wondering what the easiest way to divine their frequencies... I can say that I'm reasonably certain that all of them are between 32.768Khz and 50MHz, but some are blank, and some have non-obvious cryptic markings. What I'm looking for is some simple way to get them to oscillate and measure them with a frequency counter (i.e. - assume one is starting with a working, trustable frequency counter). Is it as simple as a pair of inverters/NANDs in the classic crystal loop, or is that circuit massively frequency dependent (i.e. - works for 1Mhz-10Mhz, not faster or slower...)? Thanks for any suggestions. -ethan

19 years, 8 months

SBC-6120 (was Re: Help about am2901)

by ethan.dicks＠gmail.com

On 10/20/06, woodelf <bfranchuk at jetnet.ab.ca> wrote: > woodelf wrote: > > Well tommorow I plan to test my SCB6120 so I hope the magic smoke stays > > inside as I just finished soldering in the sockets. Tommorow a PDP-8 > > lives < sound effects > Evil laugher , thunder bolts < / sound effects > > > > A bolt of lightning strikes the 6402 ... > Ok I installed it backwards, but I had a spare in my junk box. Oops! At least it's a common chip. > I pull the power switch ... A bat flies by ... It *lives* . Nicely done. > Now I just have to run over to the local computer store a > IDE cable and adapter for a laptop drive and mounting hardware. I have a Mesa-brand CF adapter on mine (and a stack of sub-32MB CF cards). One caveat - it's been discussed on alt.sys.pdp8, but one of the commonly-available games disk image with ADVENT on it has a corrupt FRTS.SV. You'll need a good copy of that to get Colossal Cave working. (thread on alt.sys.pdp8 - http://www.gatago.com/alt/sys/pdp8/21898642.html ) Spare Time Gizmos ADVENT page http://www.sparetimegizmos.com/Hardware/SBC6120_Adventure.htm In any case, congrats on the new 12-bitter. -ethan

19 years, 8 months

3.5" disk storage

by aliensrcooluk＠yahoo.co.uk

Hi, I'm starting to get a rather large collection of Amiga and PC disks. What is better for storage and easy access, small cardboard boxes (W:5" D:4" H:5") that I can get for nothing from work or the proper plastic case things that can hold 50 or 100 disks? Regards, Andrew B aliensrcooluk at yahoo.co.uk

19 years, 8 months

vax/vms file archival ideas and suggestions

by aek＠bitsavers.org

I want to take the hundred or so TK50s I have and restore them to the hard drive -- I would suggest leaving them as blocked tape images and save them uncompressed. If the tapes read without errors, you can deal with them in the future using an emulator or using file extraction programs on whatever system you eventually deal with them on. Tapes with errors are more difficult.

19 years, 8 months

M9312 boot rom offer

by jwest＠classiccmp.org

I'm going to be burning some M9312 boot roms within the next few days, as I find myself short on the ones I want. If anyone wants a particular image, let me know and I'll do it for my cost of the chip, plus $2.00 to get me a rallyburger, plus postage :) I have just a few blanks on hand, so if more than just a few people want roms I'll have to place an order and it'll take a week or so. I don't mind doing that if need be. Off-list please... Jay West

19 years, 8 months

DEC H8571-J MMJ adapters?

by tothwolf＠concentric.net

I've had a hard time finding inexpensive H8571-J equivalent adapters, but I have a huge box of surplus DE9-F to 6-conductor RJ11 adapter kits. I was planning to make up a batch of H8571-J equivalent adapters out of these and some RJ11 to MMJ cords and wondered if anyone else out there could use some? Based on what I've seen on eBay, I suspect I could sell some there, but I wasn't sure if there would be any demand from classiccmp folks as well. I could also wire up some H8571-B equivalent adapters if there is any interest in those as well. Those would actually be simpler to make than the H8571-J. I personally don't need any more H8571-B adapters as I have plenty for the few MicroVAX systems that I have, but they aren't always easy to find. -Toth

19 years, 8 months

M9312 boot rom offer

by jwest＠classiccmp.org

19 years, 8 months

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