test-drb

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101090 discussions

by cliendo＠gmail.com

https://web.stanford.edu/~allison/JimWarren.html For those who do not know about Jim Warren Jim Warren's wiki page https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jim_Warren_(computer_specialist)

4 years, 4 months

The precarious state of classic software and hardware preservation

by mjkerpan＠kerpan.com

The recent discussion of the sudden disappearance of DtCyber and the various classic CDC software to run on it from the Internet has got me thinking about just how precarious so much of computer history is in. So much of what's out there online (and in person) today is at risk just vanishing if whoever maintains the archive either loses interest (lots of projects over the years succumb to this) , or rage quits (see the expungement of DtCyber and Controlfreaks from the internet), or ends up dying without having made proper arrangements (See the sad fate of the Living Computer Museum, which was killed by its new owners as soon as COVID gave them an excuse to do so) What are we, as a community, to do to fix this and make sure that our history stays peserved and isn't one bad day away from vanishing. Mike

4 years, 4 months

Extra books

by cctalk＠gtaylor.tnetconsulting.net

Hi, I find myself with some extra books (acquired as part of an auction) that I don't have any interest in keeping. As such, they are available to move to a home that will appreciate them more than mine will. - CBASIC Simplified - Jeffrey R. Weber - 0-938862-10-3 - Mastering CP/M - Alan R. Miller - 0-89588-068-7 - Osborne CP/M User Guide Second Edition - Thom Hogan - 0-931988-82-9 - The Programmer's CP/M Handbook - Andy Johnson-Laird - 0-88134-103-7 - Understanding Pascal - George Ledin Jr. - 0-88248-149-1 - Turbo Pascal Reference Manual from Borland - Pascal With Style - Henry F. Ledgard / John F. Hueras / Paul A. Nagin - 0-8104-5124-7 - Pascal User Manual and Report Second Edition - Kathleen Jensen / Miklaus Wirth - 0-387-90144-2 / 3-540-90144-2 - Invitation to Pascal - Hary Katzan Jr. - 089433-103-5 - Oh! Pascal! - Doug Cooper / Michael Clancy - 0-393-95205-3 - Pascal Programs for Scientists and Engineers - Alan R. Miller - 0-89588-058-X - Mastering Turbo Pascal 5.5 Third Edition - Tom Swan - 0-672-48450-1 I'm mostly asking for postage and handling for book(s). If you want to tip your waiter, that's appreciated too. -- Grant. . . . unix || die

4 years, 4 months

For Sale, Seattle area: Data General MV/7800 + drives, docs

by derschjo＠gmail.com

Hi all -- I'm doing a bit of cleanup to free up some space and I'd like to try to find a new home for my MV/7800. It's a really cool system that I just haven't had time to spend a lot of time with, and unfortunately it seems unlikely I will anytime soon. The power supply in the CPU has been repaired. There are two large 5236 drives (I believe they have 14" platters, and they weigh about 150lbs apiece) as well, unfortunately I do not have the cabling for them but I don't think it'll be too hard to recreate it. The system appears to be complete with CPU, memory, and disk/tape controllers but apart from getting the power supply going I haven't done anything else to restore it. If anyone's interested, drop me a line. I'd much prefer local pickup but I could be convinced to put this stuff on a pallet if you want to arrange freighting. Thanks, Josh

4 years, 4 months

The precarious state of classic software and hardware preservation

by commodorejohn＠gmail.com

> On 2021-11-21 9:45 a.m., Adam Thornton via cctalk wrote: >> On 11/19/21 9:33 PM, Steve Malikoff via cctalk wrote: >> >> And what happens when you wake up one morning to find archive.org is >> gone, too? >> >> > Fundamentally, eventually we're all going to be indistinguishable > mass-components inside the supermassive black hole that used to be the > Milky Way and Andromeda galaxies anyway. > > Smoke 'em while you got 'em. Yeah, I had a long, hard think about this while the Caldor Fire was looking like it was about to come knocking on my doorstep this fall and I was trying to prep myself for a short-notice evacuation and decide what I could and couldn't take (read: leave stowed in the trunk of the car for the next couple weeks.) Ultimately, while I'd *like* what I have and enjoy to pass on to someone else once I get busy decomposing, in the long run it's all dust, so I'm not gonna worry myself too much over it.

4 years, 4 months

Anyone want … Creo Brisque badges

by aperry＠snowmoose.com

Hey, A few years ago I did a rescue of a couple Creo Brisque RS/6000s. They didn?t seem to have any Creo software on them, so I removed the Creo badges from them, reinstalled AIX on them, and passed them on. Anyone here want the badges? If so, send an address and I will drop them in the mail and send them your way. alan

4 years, 4 months

PDT11/150 supported in RT11 5.7?

by cz＠alembic.crystel.com

I spent the other day adjusting and getting my RX02's and the PDT11/150 working in tip top shape. They run fine, but I was wondering: I didn't see the PD.SYS driver on my RT11 5.5 and 5.7 releases. Does anyone know if Dec dropped support sometime after 5.1? C Next project: Put the pdp8/L back together. Or maybe the 11/05. Current working systems: 11/83 with RL02,RX02,TK70, 380mb CDC Esdi,DELQA 11/24 with RL02,RX02 controllers PDT11/150 with both drives running VT52 with repaired power supplies Stuff to work on: Decsystem20/20 LS120 (not an LA/120) pdp11/05 Pair of Pdp8/L's 11/23 system in a BA11-S Plessey/Diablo drives 2 Perq 1's 2 Perq2's Big assed Microvax

4 years, 4 months

Pictures: Early IC Package with Rolled Legs

by lists＠glitchwrks.com

I figured this would probably be of interest to some people here, too: https://imgur.com/a/TCrIxEH I've had this NS DM8200D 4-bit comparator for a while, after posting some pictures of it to Twitter, Evil Mad Scientist Labs offered to take super macro photos of it for me. It's just a comparator, but the DIP package is a very early "gold sandwich" style carrier. What really makes the packaging unique is that the legs are rolled into a tubular shape, rather than being the usual stamped/coined construction modern ICs use! Thanks, Jonathan

4 years, 4 months

Passing of Jay Last

by c.murray.mccullough＠gmail.com

I read with sadness an obituary in the New York Times of the passing of *Jay Last*, he being one of the ?traitorous eight? infamy, if you wish to look at it that way. We in CCTalk owe him and others a great deal as they helped create the Silicon Valley from which early small computers evolved. Happy computing, well sort of! Murray ?

4 years, 4 months

Siemens RM200 little endian firmware

by plamenspam＠afterpeople.com

Hello, Does anyone have a copy of Siemens RM200 ARC firmware? It has been used to switch from SINIX(big endian) to Linux or Windows (little endian). Best regards, Plamen

4 years, 4 months

The precarious state of classic software and hardware preservation

by athornton＠gmail.com

> On 11/19/21 9:33 PM, Steve Malikoff via cctalk wrote: > > And what happens when you wake up one morning to find archive.org is > gone, too? > > Fundamentally, eventually we're all going to be indistinguishable mass-components inside the supermassive black hole that used to be the Milky Way and Andromeda galaxies anyway. Smoke 'em while you got 'em. Adam

4 years, 4 months

HP 2000 TSB and FORTRAN

by dlwfanservice＠sbcglobal.net

Like many, I used an HP 2000 TSB system in high school to first learn about programming. Wanting to learn more than just BASIC, I soon discovered there was a program on the system that let you write and run FORTRAN programs. All these years later I can't remember anything more than that and haven't seen anything more on it since then until recently. While clearing out my storage space I came across an old binder with a photocopy of a manual. Looking though it I soon realized it was from my high school computer class and described the system for running FORTRAN. So now I have a name at least and a copy of a manual, but haven't yet found anything more and hope that someone here might be able to shine some light and supply more about it. The manual says it was known as OSMI 2000 FORTRAN and was a "series of programs written in the BASIC language which run short FORTRAN programs" on an HP 2000 BASIC system. Anyone heard of this before? Thanks. David Williams www.trailingedge.com

4 years, 4 months

PDP-11 Diagnostic Program Listings Micro Fiche Scans

by ioerg.hoppe＠gmail.com

Hi Friends, Micro fiche scans of the PDP-11 XXDP listings are online now: http://files.retrocmp.com/fichescanner/bitsavers/pdf/dec/pdp11/microfiche/D… You can insert this into your bitsaver mirror tree with $ cd <your-bitsavers-mirror-root> $ wget --recursive --level 0 --no-host-directories --cut-dirs 2 --no-parent -R index.htm?* http://files.retrocmp.com/fichescanner/bitsavers/ You need about 130 GB space for 1600+ listings. A Win10 version of wget is at http://files.retrocmp.com/wget-1.21.2-win32.zip In 2016 I posted a batch of listings, which was archived at http://www.bitsavers.org/pdf/dec/pdp11/microfiche/ftp.j-hoppe.de/... These were repacked and included in the above distribution. So despite I'm very pleased to see my name on bitsavers: Please discard the "ftp.j-hoppe.de" directory now ! For each listing there are 3 files: - a "gray" pdf in archive quality. - a highly compressed "bw" pdf, about 10x smaller. - an ASCII *.dat with context and title strip data, prepared for database import. The pdfs contain pictures of their fiches as title pages. The quality of the fiches is everything between "brilliant" and "awful" DEC made every possible error while preparating them, the list is endless. My favorite bug: Title strips glued to the wrong fiche (corrected here). I even tried OCR but the results where poor. "ocrmypdf" (= "tesseract + pdf") seems a good tool, but the fiches are too problematic for a fully automatic run. You have to dive into tesseracts training procedures. See https://hub.docker.com/r/jbarlow83/ocrmypdf/ Some project links: http://www.retrocmp.com/projects/scanning-micro-fiches https://youtu.be/X22gr5THBRA https://hackaday.com/2021/09/17/automatic-microfiche-scanner-digitizes-docs/ By the way: This project ate up lots of (physical and personal) resources. I'll will scan other document sets in the future, maybe begging for a donation then. Enjoy! Joerg

4 years, 4 months

The precarious state of classic software and hardware preservation

by jnc＠mercury.lcs.mit.edu

> From: Adrian Stoness > [M?]iror everything guys make copies and stash > From: Paul Koning > The web can make things perpetual if they are stored redundantly ... > But anything centralized is just as vulnerable as any centralized copy > ever was, whether from risk of fire or flood, or abandonment. I've been thinking about this issue for a while (although I tend to have a long scope, e.g. looking forward to a time when everyone currently on this list is dead; so I think things like 'failed states' need to be a concern too), and I think history has a key lesson for us. I've been reading up on the history of the Greek cities after the Pelponnesian War, down through the War of the Successors (the Diadochi) after Alexander the Great died. One book I read said that the only surviving source for many major periods in this stretch was Diodorus (a Greek historian from Syracuse in the first century BC); he wrote a history of the world in 40 volumes, only 15 of which survive today complete. The sad thing is that there _was_ a complete set in the library at Constantinope, as late as 1453 (and we know what happened then). So it survived the best part of 2K years, and was then lost; the parts that _did_ survive, did so because there were copies in other libraries. So the lesson is clear: we need to _replicate_ stuff, in a geographically and nationally distributed way. The mirroring of Bitsavers is _very_ good news. However, even in the class of stuff that it focuses on, e.g. old manufacturer documentation, some things don't make it in there, but do exist in other online repositories (e.g. Manx's collections). So one thing we need to do is come up with something like Bitsavers, but with more curatorial work-sharing. Al has done an _incredible_ job, for which we are all deeply in his debt - but it would be good to come up with some way to help him. (E.g. I've been adding links to online versions of manuals, in articles on older DEC stuff I'm doing the CHWiki, and I often find things which aren't in Bitsavers. But sending Al an email saying 'hey, xxx is {here}, you might want to upload it' is just putting all the load on him.) Getting all this stuff into the replicated, mirrored system is a key priority. > And in the case of digital data the added complication is the loss of > the necessary technology. Multiple independent copies will of course help with this (very real) problem. The mirrors will likely be using different hardware, and will turn it over at different times. We could definitely use more mirrors, though - and geographically distributed: it looks like there are current (non-US) ones in the UK, and in Germany - more would be good. New Zealand? Australia? Maybe Japan and India? Individual volunteers aren't really what we need ('when everyone currently on this list is dead'); it needs to be institutions. > The Long Now Foundation has done some good thinking about this; some > others have as well. Jerry Saltzer thought about this, especially the 'generations of hardware', and 'software formats' (e.g old Word docuents) issues. See: "Technology, Networks, and the Library of the Year 2000" http://web.mit.edu/Saltzer/www/publications/inria/inria.pdf (particularly Section 4.3 "Persistence"), and also: "Fault-Tolerance in Very Large Archival Systems" http://web.mit.edu/Saltzer/www/publications/fault-tol/fault-tolerance.pdf > I'd say more of us need to be more paranoid about mirroring stuff. Yes. Don't just use a link, copy stuff down to a place _you_ control. (I.e. not Google Drive. Nothing against Google, but their business might go somewhere different, like Geocities, etc.) I have a large collection of down-loaded stuff. Already I've run into cases where stuff has gone offline, and without my local copy... Noel

4 years, 4 months

FTGH: FH disk drives (and one HH) - Toronto

by toby＠telegraphics.com.au

Hi, Located in Toronto Canada, for shipping cost only: - 3 x Hitachi DK516-15 - 2 x Computer Memories Inc (CMI) 6426-S - Microscience HH-1060 (half height; marked bad) - Tandon TM-502 Unknown working condition, but have been stored well. First come, first served, etc. --Toby

4 years, 4 months

SCSI2SD for HVD?

by jon＠jonworld.com

Hey everyone! Has anyone been able to use a SCSI2SD setup where HVD is required? I know by default that isn't supported, but given we can get custom kits to solder, we could just change out one of the controller chips (optimistically?) Cheers! -- -Jon +44 7792 149029

4 years, 4 months

Anyone out there with a working Victor 9000 (US only)?

by david4602＠gmail.com

On 10/1/21 1:00 PM, Chuck Guzis<cclist at sydex.com> wrote: > Got a small batch (8) of Victor 9000 floppies, MSDOS ca. 1985. I > really don't want to write a decoder for such a small batch--I've got > other things on the burner right now. Anyone want to take a crack at > transferring the data? (Funds available). > > --Chuck I don't have a Victor (looked for one for a while, and man, are they heavy) because I have a couple of large-ish batch of disks here as well. I read them and have "triangular," Chuck Peddle-esque images, but not sure how to get something like mtools to understand a triangular image. So I understand the motivation to just Kermit the files over to something more sane. :-) - David

4 years, 4 months

Getting files from HP 3000 tapes (was: Re: HP 2000 TSB and FORTRAN)

by sieler＠allegro.com

Ed writes: ?If? we? ever? ?get? a? way? to? read? tapes? ? for? the? 2000 and? 3000? Well, we can "read" tapes for the HP 3000, and restore the files from HP 3000 backup tapes ... via Allegro Consultant's "ROSETTA STORE" product (of which I'm the primary author). I'm happy to restore some files for fellow collectors/enthusiasts (as time/energy permits) for free. The problem breaks down into two parts: 1. reading the tape Although Rosetta can read from a physical tape drive, that capability hasn't been tested for a decade (because of loss of hardware). Every user we know of uses Rosetta to restore files from tape images. There are a number of formats of tape images ... quite a number. Rosetta understands many tape image formats, including: AWS / HET STORE-to-disk SIMH Stromasys tape image Tapecopy format (Data Conversion Resources) (Oddly, I think it doesn't understand Allegro's own proprietary tape image format, which records a lot more information than others (e.g., read-retry information).) If you need an HP 3000 'STORE' tape recovered, and it's in a different format, let me know. 2. extracting files from the tape image Rosetta can read Classic HP 3000 STORE tapes (aka "CM STORE") of various versions, and MPE/iX STORE tapes (aka "NM STORE") of various versions (although 'interleave' has been tested only very lightly). By "read" I mean that it extracts the desired files, converts some (with some controls), and creates either a hierarchical directory structure matching the original, or a flattened one. What about IMAGE databases? On some platforms (Linux, HP-UX, Windows (?)), IMAGE databases can be converted to Eloquence databases (Eloquence is a product of Marxmeier software). On all platforms, IMAGE databases can be converted to .csv or .xml files. It can also handle SLT tapes, and provide some information on a few other kinds of tapes one might see from an HP 3000 (e.g., dump tapes, Serial Disc images), SPOOK tapes. Rosetta runs on Mac, Linux, HP-UX, and Windows. The HP-UX version can read older versions of ORBiT's Online Backup tapes (before they changed the tape record header format) TL;DR Ed: for the 3000, it's essentially a solved problem, and has been for over 20 years! Note: I also have a utility to restore files from (older?) Burroughs mainframe (e.g., B6700) backup tapes.

4 years, 4 months

Smecc hp 2000 enclosed in glass being used as a backdrop for phx business journal cio of the year award. [PDF]Back to the Futuremedia.bizj.us/view/archive/phoenix/pdf/CIOs 2012 Final.pdf

by couryhouse＠aol.com

http://media.bizj.us/view/archive/phoenix/pdf/CIOs%202012%20Final.pdf Sent from the all new AOL app for Android

4 years, 4 months

Ken Gielow passed away

by w9gb＠icloud.com

Ken Gielow sold his Z80DIS (Z80 disassembler) for CP/M 80 as shareware ($20) thru his Butler, PA firm (SLR Systems), until the end of the 1980s. I left Slippery Rock (just north of Butler) in the summer 1983 (about time of release). ? Info World, October 24, 1983 Software Review by Steve Mann https://books.google.com/books?id=rS8EAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA40&lpg=PA41&dq=Z80DIS&s… greg == Date: Wed, 17 Nov 2021 17:23:06 -0800 From: Stan Sieler <sieler at allegro.com> To: "General Discussion: On/Off-Topic Posts" <cctalk at classiccmp.org> Subject: Ken Gielow passed away Last week, Ken Gielow passed away. He was the author of the Z80DIS disassembler, which was both interactive and used a form of "artificial intelligence" to cleverly disassemble Z80 code.

4 years, 4 months

IEEE-488 on the PDP-11

by dj.taylor4＠comcast.net

In my pile of DEC computer stuff I have a DEC qbus IBV11 IEEE-488 controller board (M7954) with cable (BN11-A) that connects to the GPIB bus. It would be interesting to try this out, but I don't have the DEC 'Instrument Bus Subroutines' that work under RT-11.? Does anyone have this package?? Or know where it can be found? Doug

4 years, 4 months

Tektronix 4051/4052/4054 GPIB IEEE-488 Flash Drive

by mmcgraw74＠gmail.com

I saw the recent posts on IEEE-488 on the PDP-11, and Christian's post on his Commodore GPIB floppy drive connection to the Tektronix 4051. I have been working for a couple of years on a GPIB/IEEE-488 Flash Drive for the Tektronix 4051, 4052 and 4054 computers, and am getting close to completion. My Tektronix 4050 GPIB Flash Drive emulates the Tektronix 4924 Tape Drive, which is supported by all the 4050 computers using secondary GPIB addresses for commands. This allows the flash drive to be used without needing an option ROM Pack. In particular, 4051 ROM Packs are not compatible with the 4052/4054 ROM Packs as the 4051 used a Motorola 6800 CPU and the 4052/4054 used a Tektronix custom 16-bit bit-slice CPU in order to improve performance 10x and double the memory capacity from 32KB to 64KB. The 4050 GPIB Flash Drive design uses an Arduino directly connected to my custom interface PCB with the GPIB connector, and a micro SD Flash board. I picked the 644-Narrow Arduino board by Pandauino as it has the Atmega644 processor which has twice the flash and RAM as the Arduino Nano and also has 5V I/O which can interface without buffers to the Tektronix 4050 GPIB port. The current code takes 40912 bytes of flash and 2798 bytes of RAM (more than the Nano) and supports PRINT, INPUT, READ, WRITE, OLD, SAVE, BOLD, and BSAVE. These commands have been tested on my 4052 and 4054A and my software development partner's 4051 computer. The flash drive also adds two secondary address commands not supported by the 4924: HEADER and CD. We are using the Arduino FAT32 library which supports long filenames, and create the filename to match the Tektronix tape file header format which includes a file number, file type (ASCII, BINARY, NEW or LAST), data type (PROGRAM or DATA) and the file size. We also take advantage of the extra spaces in that format to insert the file name as a comment - like the Tektronix 4050 BASIC program to add comments to the file header. The CD command is for changing the directory in the microSD card, and allows multiple different Tektronix 4050 DC300 tapes that I have recovered and posted on my github repository: https://github.com/mmcgraw74/Tektronix-4051-4052-4054-Program-Files to be stored in separate directories - while maintaining the original tape file numbers. More info and photos in my project thread on vcfed.org: https://www.vcfed.org/forum/forum/genres/other/64990-tektronix-405x-gpib-fl… Monty McGraw

4 years, 4 months

Manual, Amiga, Broadcast Titler 2

by ethan＠757.org

Anyone have the manual for the Amiga software Broadcast Titler 2? If so, can I scan it and return it to you? Thanks - Ethan -- : Ethan O'Toole

4 years, 4 months

HP 3056DL - looking for system tape image

by ce.murillosanchez＠gmail.com

Hello everyone; The HP 3056DL was a datalogger consisting of an HP3421 and an HP85B; I bought one many years ago and that's how I got my HP85B and one of my HP3421's. I never restored the tape drive since I had an HP9121 floppy drive available early on (I still have it but it is in need of repair). The 3056DL? came with the manual, but without the tape containing the datalogging software.? Now that I am a happy owner of an EBTKS board, I am looking for an image of the original system tape for the 3056DL.? Does anybody have it by chance? Regards, Carlos.

4 years, 4 months

Apple cube cleaning

by jnc＠mercury.lcs.mit.edu

> rom: Paul Koning > WD-40 is a good solvent to use for adhesives stuck to plastic. It's > unlikely to hurt the plastic but it will soften the glue. My go-to solvent for non-ionized glue residues (use water for ionized) on all sorts of materials has been, for many years, mineral spirits (US name; 'white spirit', in the UK): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_spirit It scores highly on both i) 'doesn't harm underlying material' and ii) 'softens residues' axes. (I've mostly used it on books, to remove stickers, but my experience should transfer to use on computers.) > As always, check on a hidden part of the case to make sure the > particular plastic doesn't object to the stuff you're using. Sage, and important, advice for _any_ removal method. Noel

4 years, 4 months

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test-drb