test-drb

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101090 discussions

George Morrow died Wed May 7th 2003

by dgari＠msn.com

I had the pleasure of working at Morrow Designs in 1980 as a board repair tech (I was 20). I poured over George's schematics and wondered at his elegance of design. When he came to the shop floor he was always hyperactive, funny and informative, a genuine treat to be around. He will be missed. -David Gari

22 years, 11 months

ADM 5 terminal

by pete＠dunnington.u-net.com

I have an ADM 5 terminal to get rid of. It's Lear Siegler's successor to the ADM 3a, and looks very much like an ADM 3A, but has lower case (with true descenders), cursor keys and function keys. It's very clean, works well, and comes with the manual. Collect only, though. If you're interested, make me an offer (small amount). -- Pete Peter Turnbull Network Manager University of York

22 years, 11 months

OT: clearout including UPS

by pete＠dunnington.u-net.com

As part of my clearout, I'm trying to get rid of my "big" UPS. I mentioned this several months ago on the list, but here it is again: It's a Powerware Prestige 6000, with two battery boxes, software, manual, and various cables. Input is rated 200/208/220/230/240V AC at 19A (power factor 0.9) single phase, output is 200/208/220/230/240V AC at 19A (max 3000W). The battery boxes are each rated 120V DC 50A and 5AH capacity. Size is about 40cm deep x 25cm wide x 28 cm high for the control box and the battery boxes are half the height, so 40 x 25 x 14 each. They all stack nicely together (in any sensible order). I have used it, but the batteries (10 x 12V gel batteries in each box) do need replaced -- none will hold any significant charge/voltage. The batteries cost about ?7 each. You only need one box, though. If no-one wants this, it's going in the skip (or at least to recycling). No, I will not even consider shipping it; collect only. -- Pete Peter Turnbull Network Manager University of York

22 years, 11 months

Need Data Sheet: CRT5027 CRT controller

by dgari＠msn.com

Chip Directory ( http://www.xs4all.nl/~ganswijk/chipdir/ ) which is usually infallible came up with this: http://www.xs4all.nl/~ganswijk/chipdir/c/s.htm#smsc but a cursory search of the SMSC site didn't come up with anything. Try calling a human there. >Does anyone have a datasheet for the (very discontinued) CRT5027 controller >(SMSC) that they would be willing to scan/send to me?

22 years, 11 months

Altair version differences

by RCini＠congressfinancial.com

Hi: Someone asked me what the difference between the 8800 and 8800a models. I know that some significant changes but I couldn't enumerate them. Can someone help here? Thanks. Rich ========================== Richard A. Cini, Jr. First Vice President Congress Financial Corporation 1133 Avenue of the Americas 30th Floor New York, NY 10036 (212) 545-4402 (212) 840-6259 (facsimile)

22 years, 12 months

A very old hard drive for sale

by classiccmp＠vintage-computer.com

A gentleman contacted me about a large old hard drive he has for sale. I couldn?t use it as anything other then a paperweight, but maybe someone on-list has a use for it, even a decorative one? I?ve posted pictures at: http://www.vintage-computer.com/images/hokushin1.jpg http://www.vintage-computer.com/images/hokushin2.jpg http://www.vintage-computer.com/images/hokushin3.jpg Please contact the seller, Daniel, at natalierowe(a)earthlink.net Erik www.vintage-computer.com

22 years, 12 months

Need Data Sheet: CRT5027 CRT controller

by allanh＠kallisti.com

Don Maslin <donm(a)cts.com> wrote: > The TMS9927 data sheet which I have sent to Joe and Patrick states > that the CRT5027 is an SMC second source of this chip. It came > from a google search for TMS9927 and is on www.spies.*mumble* In case that doesn't turn out to be close enough, I have an SMC databook including the CRT5027 datasheet that I could scan in. allan -- Allan N. Hessenflow allanh(a)kallisti.com

22 years, 12 months

NASA Auction

by Robert_Feldman＠jdedwards.com

Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt MD: http://sales.gsfc.nasa.gov/catalog.cgi?salenumber=80322620030009. Lots of PC's, Macs, monitors,printers, and office equipment. Fair amount of HP, Tektronic test equipment, various tape transports and hard drives. Some Sun, SGI, DEC, Next. Two Concurrent 3280mps. Unfortunately, divided into big lots.

22 years, 12 months

Who wanted my RA81s?

by alanp＠snowmoose.com

Last fall someone offered to take some RA81s off of my hands. To avoid the hassle of trying to ship them, he was supposed to pick them up from my house in the spring, when he would be driving through Seattle. Well, it is spring and I haven't heard from you. If you are the person who wanted the RA81s, let me know if you still want them. Thanks. alan

22 years, 12 months

hotrod Kaypro acquisition & problem

by frustum＠pacbell.net

This past weekend I went to the monthly swap meet in Livermore, CA. I had a late start, the weather wasn't promising, and I was tired, but I hadn't gone for a while so I went anyway. I'm glad I did. I picked up a Kaypro II for $20, although the seller asked for "Oh, $20, maybe $15" since he seemed like a nice guy. It didn't have any floppies or any manuals, but the rest is pretty nice. First, the case is in great shape. It was well taken care of. On power up, the character generation is pretty clean. More interestingly, it has had a lot of mods done to it. I haven't opened it up yet, but some of the changes are evident anyway. 1) addition of a fan. this is way too noisy and I must replace it. Also, it appears to be powered from the DC side of the power supply; I infer this from the fact that the fan keeps running for 5-10 seconds after power is removed! 2) one of the full height 5.25" floppies is replaced with a hard drive. I haven't confirmed the size, but the seller recalled that it was 10 MB. The hard drive has been partitioned into A, B, C, and D drives. The remaining floppy is E. 3) there is a RAM disk, which is F. I'm not sure of the size yet. 4) On the rear there is a toggle switch: 2.5 MHz/5.0 MHz. Cool. 5) On boot up, I get a notice saying that it has the Advent TurboROM 3.0 (1985) modification. That is all to the good. Now the bad news. The seller tried to "erase the hard drive", but said he didn't remember enough how to do it. Well, he managed to erase the A partition, although B, C, and D are still there. As you might expect, A contained the most interesting stuff. I can't do PIP, nor STAT, nor ED, nor DDT. The built-in DIR and TYPE work, of course, as I imagine the other built-ins would. On cold boot and warm boot, I have to hit carriage return a dozen times or so to get past the "Drive A: BDOS bad sector" (or somesuch) spew, but I do eventually get a prompt. So his attempt to erase the hard disk got rid of the directory apparently, but not the boot tracks. I am hopeful that the information is still there, and all I need to do is somehow boot off of the remaining floppy and use a sector editor to unerase the damage done to drive A. However, the fact that it is saying "bad sector" instead of just saying drive A has "no files" on a DIR would seem to indicate things aren't so simple. I may need to completely rebuild drive A. I've combed through the various CP/M archives and have found out a bit about the Advent TurboROM. I believe that if I have a bootable disk, I can put it into the "E" floppy drive and it will become the "A" drive on a reboot. So that leaves the question: how to get a kaypro II disk image? I have a PC (P-166) lying around that I added a 5.25" drive to for the purpose of reading some trs-80 disks. I'm not sure of the drive density at the moment; that was a while back. What density drive should I use in my PC? What software it recommended for making a bootable disk? Short of bothering the tireless Don Maslin, are there any disk images available online that could help me out? Should I scratch any plans to recover the CP/M 2.2 image on the A drive and instead just attempt to reformat and reinstall CP/M (Or ZCPR?) All suggestions are welcomed. Thanks.

22 years, 12 months

Tektronix 8560 with PDP-11/23 CPU running TNIX (UINX)

by aek＠spies.com

>Has someone distribution media or stand alone tools? IIRC one of the units here has a hard drive attached to it. The hard drive unit is a separate piece that's about the same size as the 8560 and had a model number 8650 or something like that. I think there may be some docs down here as well. My friend is a real Tektronix nut and he has a huge collection of Tektronix equipment and docs. They looked interesting but too specialized to do anything with. Joe ======= Could you ask if he has the maint manual for the 8650 or 4051? I've not been able to turn these up anywhere.

22 years, 12 months

PerSci drive manual wanted

by pete＠dunnington.u-net.com

Hi, Al. On May 8, 16:46, Al Kossow wrote: > Would it be possible to get one of these sets on > loan to add to the archive at www.spies.com/aek/pdf ? In principle, yes, of course. I'm in the UK, so postage might be an issue, but they're not very heavy so I'll check that out at the weekend. -- Pete Peter Turnbull Network Manager University of York

22 years, 12 months

PerSci drive manual wanted

by aek＠spies.com

Would it be possible to get one of these sets on loan to add to the archive at www.spies.com/aek/pdf ?

22 years, 12 months

PerSci drive manual wanted

by pete＠dunnington.u-net.com

My newly-acquired Cromemco System 3 came with lots of disks, spare boards, manuals, licences, and a terminal, but only one dual PerSci S299 floppy drive, which needs some attention (it seeks but returns read errors). Anyone got a manual I can download, borrow or trade? I have two sets of manuals (2 of each of the "Product Specification" and "Logic and Schematic Diagram") for the 270/272/277 drives, several spare ADM-5 manuals, and some spare Cromemco FDC manuals. -- Pete Peter Turnbull Network Manager University of York

22 years, 12 months

Working 8" Floppy drives???

by nick＠4realworld.com

CCTech folks, Does anyone know the whereabouts of any working 8" floppy drives? I have a client who needs a few to allow a legacy system to keep on working while I revamp their whole system. Regards, Nick Garnett

22 years, 12 months

Need Data Sheet: CRT5027 CRT controller

by patrick＠evocative.com

Does anyone have a datasheet for the (very discontinued) CRT5027 controller (SMSC) that they would be willing to scan/send to me? Many thanks! Patrick

22 years, 12 months

Altair version differences

by classiccmp＠vintage-computer.com

> One difference was the use of flat vs round toggle switch handles. The > round handles cut into your fingers and made them SORE after toggling in > long programs. My first Altair was a 8800 but had the flat handles as used > on the A model. Steve Gabley (sp?) was tracking Altair serial numbers and > differences. He said that my Altair was the highest known SN for an 8800 > and one of very few 8800s with the flat handles. You should check with him, > I'm sure that he could tell you a lot more about the differences. At least some 8800a systems had the round switches. . . like mine. Erik S. Klein The Vintage Computer Forum www.vintage-computer.com/vcforum

22 years, 12 months

Working 8" Floppy drives???

by pete＠dunnington.u-net.com

On May 8, 11:09, Ethan Dicks wrote: > --- "Fred Cisin (XenoSoft)" <cisin(a)xenosoft.com> wrote: > > On Wed, 7 May 2003, Nick Garnett wrote: > > > Does anyone know the whereabouts of any working 8" floppy > > > drives? > > Have you considered substituting 1.2M 5.25" drives? > > Once you make the appropriate cables and jumpering, they will usually > > work as a drop-in replacement, with NO software changes. > > Serious question (not meant to merely contradict Fred), what would it > take to do that for an RX01 or RX02? The drive mechanism itself in > a DEC 8" drive has no electronics - it's a motor, a head loading relay > (the drive motors spin whenever the unit is powered on, unlike modern > equipment), a couple of sensors and a head cable. All of the "work" is > done on the board above the drives. There might be issues around matching the head's impedances etc to the preamps and drivers on the RX01/2 electronics, and possibly even around the step angle of the positioner, but nothing inssurmountable, I suspect. > Even getting past electrical issues, one trick would be how to low-level > format the disks. Not too hard. An RX01 floppy is a standard format; you could do it on any CP/M machine that exepcted 8" drives but actually had a suitable 5.25" drive, or on a PC with a suitable FDC and suitable version of DOS (or Linux, probably), or indeed on many other systems. Once formatted to single density (RX01) most DEC system can then "reformat" the disk as RX02 (modified double density). > Among other reasons for doing it is that I have an RX01 that came from > a client with a siezed rotation motor on one drive and a siezed head > positioner motor (with attendant incinerated head motor driver > transistors) on the other drive. Yes, I can repair the transistors and > move one good motor to the other mechanism, but it means that I have 1/2 > of a full RX01. I had a drive motor seize on my RX02. It wasn't all that hard to free the spindle, clean the bearings, and re-lubricate them. It's running fine now. It's certainly worth a try. -- Pete Peter Turnbull Network Manager University of York

22 years, 12 months

Altair version differences

by classiccmp＠vintage-computer.com

The only significant differences, aside from the logo, were a somewhat beefier power supply in the 8800a and a standard 18 slot motherboard. The 8800 had 4 slot motherboards that were chained together. The 8800a had the 18 slot board with options for how many connectors and card guides you could buy. Earlier 8800a models had the short round switches shared with the 8800, later versions seem to have had the flat 8800b switches. Typically the 8800a had later rev boards, but some 8800s did too. Erik www.vintage-computer.com > Hi: > > Someone asked me what the difference between the 8800 and 8800a > models. I know that some significant changes but I couldn't enumerate them. > > Can someone help here? Thanks. > > Rich > > ========================== > Richard A. Cini, Jr. > First Vice President > Congress Financial Corporation > 1133 Avenue of the Americas > 30th Floor > New York, NY 10036 > (212) 545-4402 > (212) 840-6259 (facsimile) > > --

22 years, 12 months

Tektronix 8560 with PDP-11/23 CPU running TNIX (UINX)

by jkunz＠unixag-kl.fh-kl.de

Hi. I got a "Tektronix 8560 Multi-User Software Development Unit" together with a Tektronix 8540 in system 68k CPU emulator. The 8560 is based on the DEC M8186 PDP-11/23 CPU module but that card is the one and only DEC part in the machine. Everything else is from Tektronix. There is a 35 MB 8" disk and a 8" floppy in the 8560 and it runs some flavor of UNIX called TNIX. I am trying to break into it currently, as I have no passwords. I can't get it to single user mode and I have no distribution media nor no stand alone tools. Has someone heared from this machine bevore? Has someone distribution media or stand alone tools? -- tsch??, Jochen Homepage: http://www.unixag-kl.fh-kl.de/~jkunz/

22 years, 12 months

Tektronix 8560 with PDP-11/23 CPU running TNIX (UINX)

by aek＠spies.com

> Has someone heared from this machine bevore? yes, I have several 8" disks that were created by the fbu program on that system that I need to recover and asked around a few months ago with no replies.

22 years, 12 months

Working 8" Floppy drives???

by dwightk.elvey＠amd.com

>From: "Fred Cisin (XenoSoft)" <cisin(a)xenosoft.com> > >On Wed, 7 May 2003, Nick Garnett wrote: >> Does anyone know the whereabouts of any working 8" floppy >> drives? I have a client who needs a few to allow a legacy >> system to keep on working while I revamp their whole >> system. > >Have you considered substituting 1.2M 5.25" drives? >Once you make the appropriate cables and jumpering, they will usually work >as a drop-in replacement, with NO software changes. > Hi I suspect that you'll need to transfer the files and such to the 5.25" disk. I've tried folding a 8 inch disk into a 5.25" drive with little success. Dwight

22 years, 12 months

Working 8" Floppy drives???

by dwightk.elvey＠amd.com

>From: "Fred Cisin (XenoSoft)" <cisin(a)xenosoft.com> > >On Wed, 7 May 2003, Nick Garnett wrote: >> Does anyone know the whereabouts of any working 8" floppy >> drives? I have a client who needs a few to allow a legacy >> system to keep on working while I revamp their whole >> system. > >Have you considered substituting 1.2M 5.25" drives? >Once you make the appropriate cables and jumpering, they will usually work >as a drop-in replacement, with NO software changes. > Hi One other thing that Fred didn't mention is that some of the older systems use the data separator on the 8 inch drives and not the raw data. I don't recall any 1.2M drives with data separators. Dwight

22 years, 12 months

Qualstar 1260

by allanh＠kallisti.com

Joe <rigdonj(a)cfl.rr.com> wrote: > I just picked up a Qualstar 1260. Can anyone tell me anything about it? > What kind of interface/controller does it need? It has an interface cable > with a male D-subminiture connector with 62 pins in three rows. I have a 1260 also; it is a 1600/6250bpi drive. They're not exactly fast, but are nice and compact. It has a Pertec formatted interface. The cable on it was probably for an Overland Data controller; if you remove the cover plate the cable goes through you'll see that it terminates at two 50 (I think) pin connectors in the drive. Those use the standard Pertec pinout. allan -- Allan N. Hessenflow allanh(a)kallisti.com

22 years, 12 months

Sphere 6800

by aek＠spies.com

> Does anyone have any service manuals or technical documentation on it? Eric and I retreived a rather complete collection of documentation and software from person who ran the Sphere User's group about a month ago. It was promised to the Computer Museum, but it is in the queue to be scanned and the cassettes duplicated.

22 years, 12 months

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