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101090 discussions

by dkelvey＠hotmail.com

It will be at the CHM. The museum is still closed but VCF will be happening. To be consistent with current Santa Clara covid conditions, bring your mask. see: https://vcfed.org/wp/festivals/vintage-computer-festival-west/ I hope to see you all there. Dwight Vintage Computer Festival West 2021 ? Vintage Computer Federation - VCF<https://vcfed.org/wp/festivals/vintage-computer-festival-west/> Updated 2021-05-23. VCF West is for everyone! Computer geeks, families/children, students, collectors, IT professionals, curious onlookers? VCF West 2021 vcfed.org

4 years, 8 months

Help reading a 9 track tape

by jimliu＠umich.edu

Thanks for feedback and offers to assist. I received the tape from one of the maintainers of Schoonship at CERN, and it was probably made around 1978 at SLAC. For some background, Tini Veltman developed Schoonship in the 1960's at CERN on the CDC 6600. My understanding is that he more or less insisted on coding in assembly since he thought FORTRAN or other high level languages would just get in the way and slow things down. The code was maintained by Veltman and Strubbe well into the 1970's, but its future was held back by being so closely tied to CDC hardware. In the mid 1970's, Strubbe began a conversion of Schoonschip to IBM S/360 and S/370. It was sort of a curious technique, as far as I gathered. The idea was to first translate CDC COMPASS source to an intermediate PL/I like language. But then, instead of using the IBM PL/I compiler, a bunch of macros were developed to implement the PL/I like language in IBM assembly. This conversion was never fully completed for reasons unknown to me. Later on, when Tini joined the University of Michigan (that's where I'm located), he realized that Schoonschip needed to be updated. But the update was ... instead of CDC assembly he decided on m68k assembly. (At this time, in the early 1980's, C probably would have been the natural language of choice.) Moreover, he insisted on developing his own toolchain (assembler, linker, etc). This was before my time at Michigan, but basically he ported Schoonschip to just about all the m68k machines of that era (Sun, Atari, Amiga, Mac, NeXT, and others I am not familiar with). We have a pretty good collection of m68k code (http://www-personal.umich.edu/~williams/Vsys/index.html), but nothing earlier. Getting back to the tape, I'm pretty sure it has Strubbe's PL/I like code as it is an archive of the PL/I conversion. It may also have CDC source, but that is less obvious until we can see the contents. The CDC source is historically the most relevant, and I am hoping it exists on the tape. - jim -- James T. Liu, Professor of Physics 3409 Randall Laboratory, 450 Church Street, Ann Arbor, MI 48109-1040 Tel: 734 763-4314 Fax: 734 763-2213 Email: jimliu at umich.edu

4 years, 8 months

XENIX for Tandy 2000

by binarydinosaurs＠gmail.com

Hi folks, Does anyone happen to have any links for XENIX on a Tandy 2000? Cheers, -- Adrian Graham Owner of Binary Dinosaurs, the UK's biggest private home computer collection? t: @binarydinosaurs f: facebook.com/binarydinosaurs w: www.binarydinosaurs.co.uk

4 years, 8 months

FTGH for pickup in So Cal v3: Power Macs, DuoDock, Compaq 486, ...

by spectre＠floodgap.com

A number of the prior systems were picked up or other arrangements made, and a couple more pulled from storage to make room. As before, these are FREE TO A GOOD HOME but you have to come PICK UP from various locations in the Riverside-San Bernardino, CA region. Contact me privately if interested. These remaining machines and peripherals will go to the scrapper on August 14 if not otherwise claimed. NOT WORKING: Network General Sniffer (Compaq 486 portable). Should "just work" with a new power supply, but I don't have any time to deal with it anymore and Wireshark has made it generally obsolete for what I used to use it for. NOT WORKING: Macintosh DuoDock, with key. Doesn't feed; this is usually a capacitor problem. A bit yellowed but otherwise physically intact. I use a different dock with my 2300 so I don't really need this either. PARTIALLY WORKING: 500MHz iBook G3 laptop (snow, not colour) M6497 with tray loader optical drive and power supply. Does boot OS X, but needs a new LCD backlight (mini VGA port works and you can see the display in bright light) and battery is of course toast. Otherwise physically intact except that ex-bro-in-law put grotty stickers on it. PARTIALLY WORKING: Sawtooth Power Mac G4 450MHz. No RAM, no video card, no hard disk. Used to be my file server but had issues with one of the PCI slots. Has optical drive and ZIP with matching Apple bezels. Does power on, but obviously without RAM or a video card (AGP) will not pass POST. Add your own USB keyboard and mouse. Various other items: Apple II Super Serial card with DB-25 670-0020-? (uses 6551 ACIA) and Apple IIe 80 column 64K memory expansion 607-0103-K. Can't test them but both look intact. Kurta Penmouse. Serial and PS/2 connectors. Seems to have a power supply jack (9V) but I don't have the power supply and I don't know if it needs it. Can't test it, no drivers, physically intact. Sun model 411 SCSI CD-ROM. Requires caddy. Won't mount discs, might need a recap. UMAX Astra 2100U flatbed USB scanner with power supply. Powers on. Works with classic Mac OS but probably most systems. No driver disc. Pair of Telular SX5 GSM terminals. These were the server room's backup communication system. They work, but no GSM network to connect to anymore. Might be fun if you set one up. Real serial ports! Real GSM modem! Full kits with power supply. Visual UpTime Select T1 CSU/DSU. Has a Cisco V.35 cable connected and jacks for Ethernet, serial, DSX-1 and T1. Powers on, obviously goes right into Red Alarm since there's no network. You telco nerds will love it. Samsung 17" SyncMaster CRT. Works fine, great shape, just too big to keep around anymore. -- ------------------------------------ personal: http://www.cameronkaiser.com/ -- Cameron Kaiser * Floodgap Systems * www.floodgap.com * ckaiser at floodgap.com -- Never say never again. -----------------------------------------------------

4 years, 8 months

For Sale: FANUC A860 papertape reader with DOSTEK BTR (adapter)

by billdegnan＠gmail.com

FANUC A860-0056-T020 Papertape Reader and DOSTEK 440A BTR https://www.ebay.com/itm/274883740917 Ebay listing includes my project notes. Hopefully someone here will want it. Bill

4 years, 8 months

Compilers and languages (Was: Help reading a 9 track tape

by cclist＠sydex.com

On 8/3/21 1:12 PM, Paul Koning wrote: > > >> On Aug 3, 2021, at 3:28 PM, Chuck Guzis <cclist at sydex.com> wrote: >> >> ... >> One of my favorite 6000 bits of code was the register save and restore >> routines (not using CEJ). It was a favorite interview question for >> those job seekers claiming to be proficient in COMPASS. > > ALL the registers, right? I remember seeing that problem description. And later I saw the code, don't remember it but now I know how it is done. Yup, the trick is getting the first 18 bit register saved. Not obvious since normal stores are done through the (A6,X6 and A7,X7) registers. The trick is using RJ instructions to store an indication of each bit of a B-register. After you get one register saved this way, the rest falls out like a stacked deck in Solitaire. --Chuck

4 years, 8 months

Europe-based restorer of old mechanical keyboards?

by lproven＠gmail.com

I am not a collector exactly -- I just salvaged a bunch when they were being sent to recycling. My Model Ms are going strong, no bolt mod needed, but I also have 2 Apple Extended II and an Extended I and both, sadly, need some attention. I am almost devoid of electronics skills. Does anyone know of anywhere in Europe that does this kind of repair/refurb work? I do not want to do intercontinental shipping... -- Liam Proven ? Profile: https://about.me/liamproven Email: lproven at cix.co.uk ? gMail/gTalk/gHangouts: lproven at gmail.com Twitter/Facebook/LinkedIn/Flickr: lproven ? Skype: liamproven UK: +44 7939-087884 ? ?R (+ WhatsApp/Telegram/Signal): +420 702 829 053

4 years, 8 months

Skew vs. interleave

by mhs.stein＠gmail.com

There's a small discussion on S100computers about the terms 'skew' and 'interleave'. In CP/M documentation 'skew' refers to what's usually called interleave these days, i.e. offsetting sectors on a track to compensate for the fact that by the time the computer has processed a given sector the next one has already passed by, so that the computer has to wait an entire revolution for it to pass by the head again; in other documentation as in Chuck's 22disk for example this is also called 'interleave'. However, in later documentation the meaning of 'skew' seems to have changed to refer to the offset of sectors between adjacent tracks to compensate for the time required to step the head. Can anyone (Fred, Chuck?) shed some light on this apparent double meaning of 'skew'? And if skew was used to describe sector interleave then what was the offsetting of sectors between tracks called? Inquiring minds need to know ;-) m

4 years, 8 months

For sale: FANUC Tape Reader and Adapter

by billdegnan＠gmail.com

I put my FANUC tape reader for sale on Ebay, if anyone might be interested:

4 years, 8 months

Branching the thread away from Compaq deskpro boards: "What We Have Lost"

by lproven＠gmail.com

This was a talk at a recent Chaos Computer Club congress: https://media.ccc.de/v/rc3-525180-what_have_we_lost#t=1707 ? We have ended up in a world where UNIX and Windows have taken over, and most people have never experienced anything else. Over the years, though, many other system designs have come and gone, and some of those systems have had neat ideas that were nevertheless not enough to achieve commercial success. We will take you on a tour of a variety of those systems, talking about what makes them special. In particular, we'll discuss IBM i, with emphasis on the Single Level Store, TIMI, and block terminals Interlisp, the Lisp Machine with the interface of Smalltalk OpenGenera, with a unique approach to UI design TRON, Japan's ambitious OS standard More may be added as time permits. ? It talks about Lisp Machine OSes, which interest me, but I especially liked that there's a demo of Interlisp as well as the better-known Symbolics OpenGenera. Unlike Genera, Interlisp is now FOSS and there is an effort afoot to port it to modern OSes and hardware and revive it as a Lisp IDE. There's also a not-very-inspiring but all too rare demo of IBM i. It's not pretty but this descendant of OS/400 is the last living single-level store in active maintenance and production. But the big thing that made me link to this after the discussion of DOS/V, Chinese Windows 3.2 and Japanese DR-DOS and DR GEM, was the demo of the final version of Japan's TRON OS. Most people have never heard of TRON but it was extraordinarily widely-used, embedded in billions of consumer electronics products. Well, there was also a desktop-PC version, with its own very rich object-oriented GUI, and this talk contains the only demo of it I've ever seen. -- Liam Proven ? Profile: https://about.me/liamproven Email: lproven at cix.co.uk ? gMail/gTalk/gHangouts: lproven at gmail.com Twitter/Facebook/LinkedIn/Flickr: lproven ? Skype: liamproven UK: +44 7939-087884 ? ?R (+ WhatsApp/Telegram/Signal): +420 702 829 053

4 years, 8 months

Reading MT/ST tapes

by len＠shustek.com

>Date: Wed, 28 Jul 2021 18:37:17 -0500 >From: Cory Heisterkamp <coryheisterkamp at gmail.com> > This is a bit of a long shot, but is anyone aware of a successful > method to read IBM Selectric MT/ST tapes? > A museum in Australia has a box of them and are interested in the contents. At the Computer History Museum we sometimes use a software technique to recover data from the analog waveforms on mag tapes. https://github.com/LenShustek/readtape I'd like to try that on MT/ST tapes. Does anyone have a couple of MT/ST tape cartridges with data that I can experiment with?

4 years, 8 months

Unidentified IBM Module / Package

by coryheisterkamp＠gmail.com

Does anyone recognize these IBM modules? My gut says late 50?s based on the transistor packages and font. Perhaps for a contract or military system? Thanks- Cory https://www.dropbox.com/s/izitf1lmjqwcbuo/IBM1.jpg?dl=0 https://www.dropbox.com/s/dq8macaubrechkz/IBM2.jpg?dl=0

4 years, 8 months

Help reading a 9 track tape

by jimliu＠umich.edu

Hi, I have been lurking for a few years, but thought I'd finally speak up as I just received a 9 track tape purportedly containing the source code to Schoonschip (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schoonschip). This is a 2400' reel recorded at 1600 bpi based on the labels, and a cursory examination suggests that it is still in pretty good shape (although I am not sure how it was stored over the years). Here is a picture of the tape: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1JgY8QdVDchxubUz39jYn86gEczSvFhcZ/view?usp=… We no longer have any equipment that can read the tape, so I was wondering if anyone may be willing to help or if anyone had suggestions on where to go to get it read. Thanks! - jim -- James T. Liu, Professor of Physics 3409 Randall Laboratory, 450 Church Street, Ann Arbor, MI 48109-1040 Tel: 734 763-4314 Fax: 734 763-2213 Email: jimliu at umich.edu

4 years, 8 months

Ian Hirschsohn - DISSPLA, Superset Inc. and sad news

by rdawson16＠hotmail.com

As some here know, I collect some dusty deck fortran graphics. We have MOVIE.BYU up and running! (Thanks Douglas Taylor and Emanuel Steibler). Ian built AMD 2901 bit slice hardware to run his graphics, it was called SuperSet, and was very quick for the 1980s. Architecture was 48 bit, A=B op C, similar to DSPs. Compiler processed fortran to this 48 bit 2900 hardware (he wrote the compiler too). Small package, a dormitory size refrigerator with all I/O to drive plotters and graphics terminals. I went to look him up today, as he is not far from me in LA, San Diego, and a fellow R/C flier, and chat about the old Superset days, we did SIGGRAPH many times together. Well, he is dead I find out, killed last year in Mexico is what the news says, buried in a well with his wife. They went often, many times a year. Randy

4 years, 8 months

Reading MT/ST Tapes

by coryheisterkamp＠gmail.com

This is a bit of a long shot, but is anyone aware of a successful method to read IBM Selectric MT/ST tapes? A museum in Australia has a box of them and are interested in the contents. I'm fairly involved in the global Selectric community and while 1 or 2 MT/ST?s exist, they?re non-functional. I know IBM offered a 2495 Tape Reader for the IBM 360, which could be a starting point with modification, but I suspect those are even scarcer than the MT/ST itself. Even the encoding format appears to be a bit of a secret. Recording is character-by-character, tape spacing controlled by sprocket holes along one edge. https://obsoletemedia.org/ibm-mtst/ <https://obsoletemedia.org/ibm-mtst/?fbclid=IwAR28c5ej69AlF0os1PcykpHCh0Q_yz…> Thanks- Cory

4 years, 8 months

LSSM quick update

by mloewen＠cpumagic.scol.pa.us

The A/C is in and running! Tomorrow and Sunday we reassemble the exhibit floor and clean up the mess, just in time for the 60-person group tour on Monday. -- Dave McGuire, AK4HZ New Kensington, PA Thanks to all who contributed to the new A/C!

4 years, 8 months

Reading MT/ST Tapes

by cisin＠xenosoft.com

Yep. And, it was not appreciated when I suggested an interim release between the MT/ST emulator and "Full-ST" to be called "Half Full ST" On Fri, 30 Jul 2021, grif615 at mindspring.com wrote: > Scope Creep.. no telling how many projects died in stalled development. > > On Jul 30, 2021 16:36, Fred Cisin via cctalk <cctalk at classiccmp.org> > wrote: > > On Fri, 30 Jul 2021, Chuck Guzis via cctalk wrote: > > Not really--it's very old technology, (1964), of limited > capacity (about > > 20 KB per tape), was a hideously expensive way to buy a > typewriter > > (about USD$7000 in 1964, or about USD$61,000 today), used > almost > > exclusively in large corporate offices to create form > letters and > > documents. In other words, it was not intended as an > archival medium. > > The effort required in preparing a document was > considerable (one used > > the mini-keypad for various functions). For a memo, it was > easiest to > > use the typewriter as a typewriter. > > There are more interesting things to look at. > > Well, form letters are "important". > But, once microcomputer word processing matured, they could > be done easily > and much better. > > An acquaintance was working on creating an emulation of the > MT/ST, as a > way for those who were familiar with the MT/ST and/or > actually liked it, > to be able to continue unchanged on a microcomputer. > > But, then he started adding features. Besides delaying the > completion > until it was no longer relevant, it was suggested that he > change the name > from "MT/ST" (pronounced "empty ST") to "FULL ST".

4 years, 8 months

Rich Alderson on-list?

by rich.cini＠gmail.com

Is RichA still on-list? If so, could you drop me a note off-list. Thanks! Rich -- Rich Cini http://cini.classiccmp.org http://altair32.classiccmp.org

4 years, 8 months

VCF - west?

by cisin＠xenosoft.com

I heard a rumor that VCF is going to happen again! But, I have seen NO MENTION of that on this mailing list. Is it happening? Will everybody be there? It is now relatively short notice, and between that, not having a station wagon or van, and health issues, I won't be able to pack up and bring a suitable mass of stuff to peddle on consignment. -- Grumpy Ol' Fred cisin at xenosoft.com

4 years, 8 months

Wanted: Windows Driver for Lexar PC Card Reader

by r_a_feldman＠hotmail.com

Does anyone have the Windows (preferably Windows 10) drivers for the Lexar Media GS-UFD-20SA-TP PC card reader? I found a driver online, lexar_card_34806.zip at admirestore.top, but Malwarebytes gives a warning about the download site, so I am hesitant to download that driver. I want to get my old Lexar PC card reader working again so I can read some cards that I used with my Poqet PQ-181. Bob

4 years, 8 months

Mounting ULTRIX CDROMs on Linux

by a.carlini＠ntlworld.com

I'm running Linux Mint (an ubuntu derivative) and I want to mount ULTRIX CDROM discs to see what I can see. (I'm eventually going to image these, but I presume that will "just work" with dd or ddrescue). They are supposed to be UFS format (according to the net) and that usually means you have to tell mount exactly which option to use (as not all UFS implementations are compatible). I've tried (all the options I can find) and failed: $ sudo mount -t ufs? -o ufstype=44bsd /dev/sr1 /tmp/mount mount: /tmp/mount: wrong fs type, bad option, bad superblock on /dev/sr1, missing codepage or helper program, or other error. The CDROM would appear to be readable 9and I've tried a few anyway): $ sudo file -s /dev/sr1 /dev/sr1: Unix Fast File system [v1] (little-endian), last mounted on /UPS_MOUNT_TAR_SOURCE, last written at Wed Sep 28 16:27:45 1994, clean flag 30, number of blocks 243648, number of data blocks 233295, number of cylinder groups 38, block size 8192, fragment size 1024, minimum percentage of free blocks 10, rotational delay 0ms, disk rotational speed 60rps, TIME optimization A later Digital Unix CDROM behaves the same way with mount and reports this with file: $ sudo file -s /dev/sr1 /dev/sr1: Unix Fast File system [v1] (little-endian), last mounted on /kits/tmp/gendisk17665/mnt, last written at Wed Nov 20 13:38:02 1996, clean flag 3, number of blocks 151168, number of data blocks 150383, number of cylinder groups 24, block size 8192, fragment size 1024, minimum percentage of free blocks 0, rotational delay 0ms, disk rotational speed 60rps, SPACE optimization I also have a few OSF/1 CDROMs, which I assume are also the same format. Any ideas? I can't be the first person to try to do this ... Antonio -- Antonio Carlini antonio at acarlini.com

4 years, 8 months

RP/M2 by Micro Methods Inc

by dave＠661.org

I found a copy of RP/M2 for the IBM PC by Micro Methods Inc. with manual and some floppies, 8" and 5.25". According to the manual, this was a CP/M compatible operating system. Doing a web search doesn't tell me anything more than a couple offhand comments. Does anyone here know anything interesting about this? -- David Griffith dave at 661.org 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?

4 years, 8 months

Compaq Deskpro boards/hard drives from the late 1990s

by kevin_anderson_dbq＠yahoo.com

For a time I had quite a few Compaq Deskpro towers that had acquired (for free) from my employer after they updated to a newer HP Compaq model. These Compaq Deskpros were the white-boxed variety with Pentium III the like processors that date to the later part of the 1990s and into the 2000s. They interested me because they were able to work with the flavors of Linux that were becoming plentiful and useful at the time (like Mandrake, etc.) Anyway, the desktops themselves are gone, as well as the PC keyboards and the monitors that went with them, with this paragraph just setting the scene.... But at the same time I also acquired (pulled) from these same computers and their siblings a whole bunch of wired Ethernet network cards, one or two video cards, a whole bunch of the IDE/PATA 5.25-inch desktop CD drives, and a whole bunch(!) of 10- and 20-GByte IDE/PATA 5.25-inch desktop hard drives. I believe the vintage makes them all PCI cards for the network and video cards. For some reason I must have had it in my head that I would all need these extra cards (and more) to keep these boxes (and other desktops) going into the future when the apocalypse came <grin> ! Now I have no need for any of these parts. I don't want to chuck them to a recycler either, but it is tempting just to get the stuff out of the house (as I need to seriously downsize prior to retirement). Is there a market for any of this that is worth pursing, or is this all too generic and plentiful to worry about? Giving shipping and that, I am not sure how much of this I'd care to deal with this through resale (eBay or privately) versus just dropping it all at the electronics recycling shop (which fortunately I have locally). Just starting to sort this out...I've been meaning to send this e-mail for awhile now. Your collective thoughts? I know most of this is too new for most of your interests... Kevin Anderson, Dubuque, Iowa

4 years, 8 months

Floppy capacity.

by cctalk＠gtaylor.tnetconsulting.net

I wanted to take a moment to say thank you to everyone who has contributed to the recent threads related to floppy disk capacity. I have found the threads to be very insightful and have saved things off for re-reading when I update my personal notes on the subject. Thank you! -- Grant. . . . unix || die

4 years, 8 months

OpenVMS Alpha V7.3-2

by mark.darvill＠mac.com

Hi, A plea, does anyone have a copy of OpenVMS Alpha V7.3-2? I have looked at all my archives and only have it for VAX. An upgrade would also work as I have V7.3. If someone has a copy in VMS so-called ISO format that would be great. Just got a Personal Workstation 500au fully working and would prefer to keep it on V7 VMS. Many thanks, Mark

4 years, 8 months

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