>Isn't SunOS 4.1.4 rather insecure in this day and age? Not to mention
>harder to obtain.
I would be very careful before putting it on a publically-accessable network, but there's no indication that that will be happening here.
A bit more difficult to come by- yes, but wasn't there a discussion here a bit ago about mating the computer with a representative operating
system when possible to maintain the period unity?
Segin, now you're trolling. Do you suspect that we can't list the shortcomings of VAX just as easily as the shortcomings
of x86? They pulled alot over from the PDP-11 that should have been reimplemented for a 32-bit arch...
On the positive side, what is the most perfect computer architecture + implementation people have come across here?
Tell us why, especially if it's something like PERQ or Acorn RISC/pc that is not common outside of a limited geographic area.
>
>Subject: IDE doesn't suck! (was: Macs and PCs vs workstations
> From: Roger Merchberger <zmerch-cctalk at 30below.com>
> Date: Mon, 07 Aug 2006 10:56:09 -0400
> To: "General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts" <cctalk at classiccmp.org>
>
>Rumor has it that Zane H. Healy may have mentioned these words:
>>At 4:22 PM -0500 8/5/06, Scott Quinn wrote:
>>
>>>On the Macs: PIDE is horrible for doing more than one thing at once. Period.
Sounds more like a driver problem as in only one task at a time.
>>
>>Nothing new there, is there any platform where it isn't?
>
>The IDE interface for my CoCo *Rocks!!!*
>
>=-=
>
>Well, you did ask... ;-)
>
>Laterz,
>Roger "Merch" Merchberger
>
Generally speaking IDE was as good as the hardware hosting it. More often
than not, better. At it's worst it was as good as WD1003 and a Fast MFM
(quantum D540) Then again, early IDE was exactly that!
Z80/10mhz, enhanced CPM(Zrdos) and IDE... Zoom zoom!
Allison
On Aug 7 2006, 15:14, Roy J. Tellason wrote:
> Well, that one is a 10 MHz part while the 68000 I have is I think an
8 MHz
> part, which is a bigger increase than that, but the clock driving
the thing
> would need to be changed too, and I don't think they have exactly
the same
> pinout, though it's been a really long time since I looked at that
material.
They do have the same pinout, and a 68010 is a drop-in replacement for
a 68000. Except they stopped making it ages ago, and it's easier to
get a 68000 than a 68010. The 68010 fixed the problem of not being
able to recover from an interrupted instruction, handles double bus
faults correctly, added a few vectors, made the exception vectors
relocatable, and fixed the problem that getting back to supervisor mode
>from user mode wasn't privileged in the original 68000 (which made a
nonsense of any protection schemes). However, it has some other minor
differences that mean it may not be 100% software compatible with a
68000, for example the revised exception stack frames. I'd have to dig
out some very old course notes to tell you more.
--
Pete Peter Turnbull
Network Manager
University of York
On Sun, 06 Aug 2006 22:41:36 -0400 and Sun, 06 Aug 2006 22:47:23
-0400, Ray Arachelian <ray at arachelian.com> wrote:
> Absolutely. The 68000 is an amazing little chip when you compare
> it to
> the 6800 and 6502's that it evolved itself from. You can sort of
> get a
> feel from this from this journal:
>
> It's worth a read to get a feel of the excitement the 68K caused
> back in
> the day when it was introduced. Some of it is very funny, there's one
> issue where the author compares an Intel FPU to the 68000 running
> software floating point routines, and guess what, the 68000
> actually ran
> FASTER! :-)
>
>
The excitement was for a good part due to the excellent marketing on
the part of Motorola.
> Tony Duell wrote:
>> That very much depends on the CPU. If the CPU is many chips (not a
>> single
>> package) with microcode in PROMs, there's nothing to stop you
>> desoldering
>> said PROMs and reading them out. I've done that, then written a
>> disassembler for the microode instructions and worked out what was
>> going on.
>>
> True, but you don't find CPU's made of discrete logic these days,
> so it
> makes it very difficult to get at the microcode.
In the early '80s we started development of a process controller and
evaluated the 68K as well as the National 32K processor which had
been just released. The NS 32K processor was released with a FP unit
which we required while Moto didn't get around to getting one to
market for another year - the 68K on software just didn't hack it. We
went with the NS 32K and were quite pleased with the beast.
It was a true 32 bit processor witch came in three flavors: 8 bit, 16
bit, and 32 bit external busses - you could move the code from one to
the other with almost no change. The instruction set was extremely
orthogonal and close to those of the VAX sans the three operand
instructions. The only flaw we noted was that the entire machine
state was not saved on interrupt/trap which made a couple of features
useless.
The floating point processor was not a co-processor ala the 68K, but
a external instruction execution module. When the FPU was attached,
the FP instructions became active and you worked between internal
register pairs. IIRC they also made communication processor that
implemented part of the unimplemented instruction set. I played with
my own external processor to implement macro instructions that were
used to optimize execution time.
When Apple was evaluating processors for the Mac, an internal source
told me that NS marketing only made a half*** effort to sell the
part. Unfortunately NS did their normal thing when it came to
processors and shot themselves in the foot (see PACE - both
Studebaker and NS screwed those up) by trying to keep it all to
themselves. Consequently, there was little third party support for
the chip. I believe it to be a better implementation than the 68K.
CRC
>I'm afriad that you don't understand the issues. To produce an accurate
>archive of a tape, one must preserve things such as block sizes, labels,
>and filemarks. There are packages to do this, but tar isn't one of them.
>While tapes are a one-dimensional medium, there's more variation in
>physical structure than encountered on the typical disk.
>
>Cheers,
>Chuck
I'm going to be horrably pragmatic here and assert that, while it is nice to have a image of the tape (using either dd or Tapeutils: http://www.brouhaha.com/~eric/software/tapeutils),
it is more important to have the software on the tape in a useable backup. With the Sun tapes, that means that you can mostly do tar (with the exclusion of the sandalone copy,
munix, and miniroot which would need to be dd'd off) and it is better than having the tapes sit around in the garage and fall apart. Tar/cpio created tapes are nice in that the
dd'd files can be read with tar -f (or cpio), making them useable as-is. inst-format tapes and wbak/rbak tapes don't have this luxury, so I like to do the extraction to files and "rebinding"
into a tardist or disk-file wbak archive so they can be used even if you don't have a tape drive. IOW, both have their uses, but it is infinitely better to have one than to have none.
>I'm afriad that you don't understand the issues. To produce an accurate
>archive of a tape, one must preserve things such as block sizes, labels,
>and filemarks. There are packages to do this, but tar isn't one of them.
>While tapes are a one-dimensional medium, there's more variation in
>physical structure than encountered on the typical disk.
>
>Cheers,
>Chuck
I'm going to be horrably pragmatic here and assert that, while it is nice to have a image of the tape (using either dd or Tapeutils: http://www.brouhaha.com/~eric/software/tapeutils),
it is more important to have the software on the tape in a useable backup. With the Sun tapes, that means that you can mostly do tar (with the exclusion of the sandalone copy,
munix, and miniroot which would need to be dd'd off) and it is better than having the tapes sit around in the garage and fall apart. Tar/cpio created tapes are nice in that the
dd'd files can be read with tar -f (or cpio), making them useable as-is. inst-format tapes and wbak/rbak tapes don't have this luxury, so I like to do the extraction to files and "rebinding"
into a tardist or disk-file wbak archive so they can be used even if you don't have a tape drive. IOW, both have their uses, but it is infinitely better to have one than to have none.
Anyone remember AMC? A coop venture of AMD and Siemens (and maybe another
firm) to push the Z8000 with development tools? I still have a binder full
of documentation for their assembler.
--
Yup. Have a fair amt of material on bitsavers from Philip Freidin from them,
along with some software. Friends back home developed a HVAC control system
using the AMC tools, and when I moved to the Bay Area, I met one of the last
people who was working on software at AMC.
On Sun, 6 Aug 2006 16:17:48 -0700 (PDT), Fred Cisin
<cisin at xenosoft.com> wrote:
> I'm trying to figure out how to make pneumatic (NOT hydraulic) gates.
> Once I can build a half adder and full adder with compressed smoke
> (no mirrors), THEN I'll be ready to start really learning how
> digital electronics works.
>
All you want to know: <http://www.engnetbase.com/ejournals/books/
book_summary/toc.asp?id=501>. Let us know how it works out :=))
CRC
I have a couple of bits that may be of interest for someone.
I have a manual for a Century 8" disk drive, removable that I will be
putting in the scan pile. If anyone needs it sooner than later, reply,
and I'll get it scanned somehow. I had the drive and may have some
of the media around in my piles as well. This is a 2075 or 2120
drive Unfortunately I only have the user manual, but it has quite
a bit more info than junky manuals do today, if someone needs
the info.
There was an SMD adapter, which I believe we had with
our units.
Also a TVI 925 w/o keyboard on epay, claims it lights up.
5233869793
If anybody happens to have the following for sale, then please contact me
off-list.
- Grundy Newbrain (model AD or M)
- Teleram T-3000
- Sord IS-11 Consultant
- Texas Instruments Compact Computer 40
Thanks,
- Evan
david page <daspage at yahoo.com> wrote:
> [...]is there a website to find out possible market value and maybe
> a buyer? This is what I had acquired:
>
> Hewlett Packard- HP-87
> [... series 80 stuff ...]
I'd say eBay is your best bet. Search for completed auctions which
will give you the closing prices. You have to decide whether you want
sell the whole thing as one item or separately. The all-in-one will
likely fetch less than the items sold separately, but you will save
a lot of time (setting up the auctions, dealing with buyers, packaging
the stuff, etc.) , plus you will not have any leftover stuff.
For more info on the HP-87 and other HP Series 80 computers check:
www.series80.org Series 80 manuals, programs, HOWTOs etc.
www.hpmuseum.net Australian HP Computer Museum
www.hpmuseum.org Museum of HP calculators
**vp
(1) the tape drive: I fixed my IRIS drive by cleaning off the goo and sliding on a section of some sort of (probably very nice & expensive)
tubing I got at Boeing Surplus. Not quite vinyl (matte finish and slightly bluish, more flexable then vinyl), but similar. Get a set of calipers in
there and get the O.D. and I.D. needed and let me know. I still have many yards of the stuff.
(2) Sun tapes are in TAR format, excepting the first couple, Let me grab my "System Administrator's Guide to Sun Workstations".
O.K.- for SunOS 4.0 on QIC:
tape: file: name: format:
1 0 boot image
1 1 XDRTOC TOC
1 2 copy image
1 3 mini-root image
1 4 munix image
1 5 munixfs image
the rest are TARs, except tape1, file 15 (copyright) and tape2, 0 (boot) 2,1 (XDRTOC) and 2,12 (copyright)
Have the whole list if anyone needs it, don't want to choke up cctalk, though
I archive twice: once as "dd" files, once as "extracted" files. On TAR tapes, the dd files double as the extracted files, so there is no issue (same with CPIO). Things
like IRIS-4D disttapes (distcp) and Apollo Domain tapes (rbak) need to be extracted in order to be readable without rewriting a tape, though. Pay attention when
copying older tapes. Sometimes the belt slips and you get some slack that starts to make a snapping or popping noise as it gets pulled taut and goes loose.
If you don't catch this, you can tie your tape in knots.
A script I use to automate the dd copy follows
#! /bin/sh
filenum=1 #where the numbers in the filenames start
bs=1024 #block size, bigger = faster, smaller=better error handling
while [1]
do
dd if=/dev/nrst0 of=file${filenum} bs=${bs}
if [$? != 0]
then
break
fi
filenum='expr $filenum + 1'
done
---------
slightly crude, but works. Replace the /dev/nrst0 with your tape no-rewind device (this is set up for SunOS4 as it stands).
Make a directory with the name of the tape, cd to it, run the script, and the tapefiles will be extracted in file1, file2 ... files.
Pretty much 1985 to when they quit (2000) There are some interesting
computer and computer-related projects in them. Either way, they're
free for shipping to whomever wants. If no one bites, they are hitting
the recyling bin.
Jim
Awhile back I asked for help rescuing two large collections of classic
computers and other related items and to date we are just $1400 dollars from
meeting our goal. The cost of the two trips, one to Nebraska (was KS but
items moved for storage) and the other to Georgia is estimated at $3200
total for truck rentals and fuel. I will be paying for my own meals and
those that help in each State. I have volunteers in each area that have
offered to help load the trucks. So, if I can get just 140 more people to
donate $10 then both trips can be made. A partial list of the items can be
found at www.houstoncomputermuseum.org and your donation large or small is
tax deductible (we are a 501(c)(3) nonprofit). Thanks to all that sent
funds in the last few weeks. Thanks for looking.
I recently found a set of Win95 floppies. Yeehaw what fun!
__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around
http://mail.yahoo.com
"OpenVMS VAX" - pure bloat. 4 extra keystrokes, 4 extra bytes (unless you have a 7-bit impl, in which case it's one nybble less)
and the LMF still calls it VAX-VMS.
And my "no more grumping" resolution's already out the window. Faugh.
On 8/6/06, Zane H. Healy <healyzh at aracnet.com> wrote:
> At 4:22 PM -0500 8/5/06, Scott Quinn wrote:
> >I'll give you Suns, I wasn't thinking clearly. They started going
> >downhill about 1998.
Hmm... so you put the split at about the A3000/A5000 timeframe? (I
was buying $$$$ in Sun equipment for Lucent in 1997 and 1998).
> Was it that far back :^( Sadly most of the Suns I have experience
> with are U60 vintage or older. At the same time I'd be inclined to
> blame the U5 and U10 for when they started going downhill.
I'd agree that U5s and U10s are built for the lowest cost possible. I
used to use a U5 in 1999 - it did make a nice X-Terminal. Glad I
didn't have to compile apps or do real work on it.
> Last version of OpenVMS for the VAX is 7.3, 7.3-1 is Alpha only. I
> believe the last version of VAX/VMS was 5.5-2H4. Yeah, I'm picking a
> couple nits here :^)
I've run 6.0 on a uVAX-II with an RD54... it was a *really* tight
squeeze, but it did (barely) fit. I thought that VAX/VMS went up
through 6.x and stopped at 7.0, or was it 7.1? Can't say for sure
without looking it up - since 7.0, I've been running VMS on Alpha
hardware.
-ethan
> When will the flamewar ever end? Is x86 the magical trolling word around
>here? I'm real sorry, I never knew that mentioning x86 systems here
>would cause such a dicussion.
Really, x86 isn't that bad when you consider that all of its failings are the reason for its triumph:
you can get a working computer that does everything that a single-user needs for $600, and it will have
decent reliability and capabilities. The disappointment comes in playing mind games to the effect of "well, think
what we could have if they just spent a bit more..." That and a disappointment that many "Computer Science/IT"
people think that Windows is so great that they won't bother to consider or even learn anything else.
I'll try to moderate myself. I don't want to be a grumpy old fart at 28, and it does increase list civility.
DOH... My bad... I thought it was a hpux system :-(
----------
From: Scott Quinn
Sent: Saturday, August 05, 2006 10:36 AM
To: cctalk at classiccmp.org
Subject: RE: HP3000/922 attemts at booting...a little farther now
>At the "ISL>" prompt, enter "hpux -is". This will boot the system into single user mode and automatically log you in as "root".
>
>-------
>
>When your in the system, you can change the root password:
>
>"passwd root"
>
>Just reboot he system "shutdown -r now" and let it follow the normal boot process.
So is MPE that similar to HP-UX? I thought it would be something semi-bizarre so I didn't pursue it at all (also the difficulty of finding a 3k and MPE media).
Had it slotted in with OS/400 in the "things that will be a huge headache and very expensive, so don't bother" class...
Not the oldest, but free and intact, apparently.
- John
>At 10:45 AM 8/5/2006, you wrote:
>
>>Hey John,
>>I'm sure what I have is not quite the vintage you're looking for but I would hate to have it wind up in a landfill. I was cleaning out my basement and found my first laptop - a Toshiba Satellite T2135CS. I have all the manuals and a full 40 disc set of back-up discs. Do you know anyone who might be interested?
>>Steve
Hi!
We're all using CDs of different kind (CDs containing data, audio CDs,
maybe even some with more interesting formats like those for some old
arcade games using the 30 MB of R..W subchannel information, ...)
I'm currently trying to gather as much information about the low-level
format of CDs as possible. While there's a lot at a first glance, it's
all mostly unuseable. Eg. the SCSI MMC-3 draft tells you how to get
some of the "interesting" data, but there's of course no reference how
to decode the data.
I've been looking for the "Rainbow Books" (Red Book describing Audio
CDs, ...), but those are quite expensive. Partial information is
available through standards of other kind (eg. most of the Red Book
became an IEC standard, too), but those are a bit expensive, too.
Did you ever come along detailed technical documentation about these
little silver beasts that'd allow to hack some nice extraction and
refactoring tools? Or do you happen to own one of the books and are
willing to hand it over to me for a week?
MfG, JBG
--
Jan-Benedict Glaw jbglaw at lug-owl.de +49-172-7608481
Signature of: Friends are relatives you make for yourself.
the second :
The reason I brought up System 10 is that it is the "best" microkernel implementation I have at this point
(the other one is a OPENSTEP box, substatntially older). Current Macs share much more with PeeCees
than SGI IRISes and Sun SPARCs, so there is most likely a non-insignificant amount of suboptimal hardware
that eats processor cycles like a cow eats grass to do things that a better arch. hands off and is done with.
I was hoping a OSF/1-DUNIX-Tru64 user would pop in a bit more about that platform (hoping to pick up most
of a AS4100 to try it out on soon). It uses the OSF/1 Mach-based system but on well-designed few-compromises
hardware.
>At the "ISL>" prompt, enter "hpux -is". This will boot the system into single user mode and automatically log you in as "root".
>
>-------
>
>When your in the system, you can change the root password:
>
>"passwd root"
>
>Just reboot he system "shutdown -r now" and let it follow the normal boot process.
So is MPE that similar to HP-UX? I thought it would be something semi-bizarre so I didn't pursue it at all (also the difficulty of finding a 3k and MPE media).
Had it slotted in with OS/400 in the "things that will be a huge headache and very expensive, so don't bother" class...