test-drb

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101090 discussions

by tim.myers＠sunplan.com

I've just got hold of a DEC MiniMINC - supposedly an LSI/11 woth 2 8" floppy drives (I've not had a good look at it yet as I've spent all day installing Solaris 8 on the SPARCstation 10 I picked up at the same time ;). Anyone have any more information about this beast? Tim.

24 years, 1 month

HP 3000 gear in Bristol, UK

by coredump＠gifford.co.uk

I've just been shown a load of HP 3000 and HP 1000 gear which is about to be thrown out, located in Bristol (UK). This list is approximately what's available: HP 3000 Series II 7970 B Digital Tape Unit 7970 E Digital Tape Unit Metier 50 Megabyte Data Storage Unit (disk) HP 3000 Series III 97935 top loading disk drive 7970 E Digital Tape Unit HP 1000 E-series computer "Artemis System" 12979 B I/O Extender 7906 Disk Drive 13037 Disk Controller 2648 A Graphics Terminal 2631 B Line Printer unknown modem 2392 Terminal (qty 3) Flexible disk drive for HP desktop calculator (qty 2) Falco Terminal 91148 Floppy Disk Drive Alignment packs for HP 7905/7906 disk drives They want to clear out the storage space quite soon, and if anybody wants any of it, we'll have to arrange something quite quickly. Most of the computers are in 19-inch racks of about 5-foot (1.8metre) height, but some of them are double-width racks. Basically, you'll need a van to move them! Any takers? -- John Honniball coredump(a)gifford.co.uk

24 years, 1 month

HP-IB <something>

by doc＠mdrconsult.com

I grabbed this yesterday at goodwill. It looks like an HP-IB/floppy-IDE interface, but I can't find any references. HP model appears to be: 09L Rev C 09153-66511 or 2815 or 0TF0C07 or RSWKC3 The card has a bulkhead plate w/ HP-IB connector, address dial switch 0-9, and configuration dial switch 0-9. PCB itself is about 10" by 3" with a 1.5" by 3" cutout. There is a 34-pin male and a 40-pin male header and dip switches: TEST <--> NORM B <--> C 30/40 <--> 10/20 BOTH < 10/30 <--> 20/40 NO FLOPPY <--> FLOPPY What is it? Doc

24 years, 1 month

MiniMINC

by ajp166＠bellatlantic.net

From: Tony Duell <ard(a)p850ug1.demon.co.uk> >> >> I've just got hold of a DEC MiniMINC - supposedly an LSI/11 woth 2 8" >> floppy drives (I've not had a good look at it yet as I've spent all day >> installing Solaris 8 on the SPARCstation 10 I picked up at the same time >> ;). Anyone have any more information about this beast? > >If it's the machine I think it is, it's closely related to the PDT11/150. >There is an LSI11 in there, but with some odd (by PDP11 standards) >peripherals. Nope, It's an LSI-11/02 Qbus machine woith a small cage and rack and RX01(maybe an 02). You need Qbus for the varions analog IO and digitial IO cards. >I am not sure how the miniMINC differes from a PDT11/150. By rights, the >miniMINC should have some kind of 'lab' I/O (ADC, etc), but I have no >details of that. The PDT11/150 has no user bus and the oly IO is serial. It is however the same LSI-11 chip set but no provision for the EIS/FIS. Yes, I know you can piggy back one of the microms to do that but the board only has 4 40 pin sockets that are filled where the LSI-11/03 Qbus board has 5. Allison

24 years, 1 month

ZX-TEAM meeting and Webcam

by acme_ent＠bellsouth.net

> From: Fred Cisin (XenoSoft) <cisin(a)xenosoft.com> > Is there a Linux port for the ZX81? No, it doesn't even have a serial port (yuk yuk). If you'd like to turn your favorite 486 into a ZX81 there are ZX81 emulators for Linux, but to my knowledge no one has even entertained the idea of doing some flavor of Unix on ZX81 hardware. Hmm, now thatcha mention it, Linux makes more sense than Windows or GEM, CP/M's already been done, VMS ain't happening here, and I *really* don't want to port MS-DOS ;>) Glen 0/0

24 years, 1 month

ZX-TEAM meeting and Webcam

by acme_ent＠bellsouth.net

> From: Joe <rigdonj(a)cfl.rr.com> > That's true but I think they just enjoy seeing who can hang the most > stuff off of a ZX81. Sort of like the guys that see who can put the biggest > engine inside a Chevy Vega! After considering this, I think you've hit the nail on the head, Joe, except that the only thing we don't change is the engine! The Z80, ROM and ULA *have* to be present! Our goals seem to be: 1 -- Build an interface for every device under the sun, including the toilet seat. 2 -- Write software to perform every task ever performed by any computer anywhere. The software should be 100% Z80 machine code and should push the ZX81 as hard as possible. 3 -- Do all of the above for US $25 or less. I hope everyone has as much fun with their old computers as I have with mine! Glen 0/0

24 years, 1 month

Destruction of DEC

by rdd＠rddavis.org

Quothe Joseph.Pollizzi(a)encompassus.org, from writings of Wed, Mar 20, 2002 at 03:45:49PM -0600: > Hewlett-Packard and Compaq Computer Corporation have announced that they > both believe that they have enough shareholder votes to approve the merger. DEC's destruction began when DEC was palmerized into a ghost of it's former self and sold into slavery to Microsoft. Then much damage to this once great computer company, DEC, was done by Compaq (a wannabe computer company that never made real computers, and destroyed an acquisition, DEC, that did), and, now, this appears to be little more than the nails being hammered into the coffin of what was once Digital Equipment Corporation. R.D.D. -- Copyright (C) 2001 R. D. Davis The difference between humans & other animals: All Rights Reserved an unnatural belief that we're above Nature & rdd(a)rddavis.org 410-744-4900 her other creatures, using dogma to justify such http://www.rddavis.org beliefs and to justify much human cruelty.

24 years, 1 month

OT and Fluff: Dell Computer shuts down.

by Robert_Feldman＠jdedwards.com

www.theonion.com/onion3810/corporation_reaches_goal.html ;-)

24 years, 1 month

Copy II Plus Apple ProDos

by Robert_Feldman＠jdedwards.com

I flipped a (tetrahedral) coin, and the software goes to Gene (who by coincidence, happened also to be the first to respond). <snip>

24 years, 1 month

SGI Dials & Buttons and no P/S

by hans＠Huebner.ORG

Hi there, I've recently acquired a set of SGI dials and buttons. These are two units: The dialbox has SGI P/N 9980992 and is manufactured by Danaher Controls with Model # DLS80-1022. The buttonbox has SGI P/N 9980991 and is manufactured by Advanced Input Devices with Model # CMN B018B. I have not received any cabling with the units and also I have no power supply. Using google, I could not find any useful information on how these units are expected to be supplied with power. There are some references to SGI boxes which provide for power supply on some serial ports, but these where pretty unspecific and did not reference these exact models. Does anyone reading this have a set of these and can help me with getting the pinout and the expected voltages for the power supply for these units? Thanks in advance, Hans -- finger hans(a)huebner.org for details

24 years, 1 month

list changes & RFC on archives & rack chassis

by csmith＠amdocs.com

> -----Original Message----- > From: Allison [mailto:ajp166@bellatlantic.net] > From: Ethan Dicks <erd_6502(a)yahoo.com> > >I know that some people (very few) have technological > impediments that > >force them into HTML (Outlook, etc., I think). > This is bunk! Outlook can and does post without html, it's > easy to turn > off. Ok, I'll agree that it can and does, since I am unfortunately forced to use it by corporate edict. :( I will argue that it's not "easy" to turn off. "Easy" would be a button that says "don't ever post a message with HTML." There is no such option. It must be turned off as a default, and then still on a per message basis every time you don't want to respond to somebody who's used HTML with another HTML message. So I will agree completely with you if you will replace "easy" with "cumbersome at best." Chris Christopher Smith, Perl Developer Amdocs - Champaign, IL /usr/bin/perl -e ' print((~"\x95\xc4\xe3"^"Just Another Perl Hacker.")."\x08!\n"); '

24 years, 1 month

Copy II Plus Apple ProDos

by Robert_Feldman＠jdedwards.com

I picked up a copy of Central Point Software Copy II Plus ProDOS/DOS Utilities, Version 9 (1989) at my local thrift shop yesterday -- didn't realize it was for Apple at the time. I don't need it, so if anyone wants it, they can have it for $4.00 in the US (what I paid plus shipping); international shipping will be more. It will work on an enhanced IIe, a IIc, or IIGS, all with 128K and 80 column card. Includes 5.25" and 3.5" disks; looks unused. Bob robert_feldman(at)jdedwards(dot)com

24 years, 1 month

list changes & RFC on archives & rack chassis

by DAW＠yalepress3.unipress.yale.edu

> From: Ethan Dicks > > --- David Woyciesjes <DAW(a)yalepress3.unipress.yale.edu> wrote: > > Dave - what/where are the web mail services that don't send html > > mail? > > I'm not Dave, but I am sending from a web-mail service - Yahoo! Plain > text. You can send HTML mail, but it's not by default. > > __________________________________________________ > But I just don't trust Yahoo. Not sure why, just a gut feeling. --- David A Woyciesjes --- C & IS Support Specialist --- Yale University Press --- mailto:david.woyciesjes@yale.edu --- (203) 432-0953 --- ICQ # - 905818 Mac OS X 10.1.2 - Darwin Kernel Version 5.2: Fri Dec 7 21:39:35 PST 2001 Running since 01/22/2002 without a crash

24 years, 1 month

Destruction of DEC

by jeff.kaneko＠juno.com

What ought to happen to these asswipes should be what happened to the company I used to work for: The 'aggressor' company purchased a competitor, but by so doing, bit off *way* more than it could chew, incurring hevy debtload and ensuing layoffs. The whole bloody mess will be in bankruptcy court before the year is out. Serves 'em both right . . . . Jeff On Wed, 20 Mar 2002 17:00:05 -0700 "Richard Erlacher" <edick(a)idcomm.com> writes: > It's more a question of whether Compaq will do to HP what DEC did to > Compaq. > In either case, I'm glad I don' t hold any HP stock. > > Dick > ________________________________________________________________ GET INTERNET ACCESS FROM JUNO! Juno offers FREE or PREMIUM Internet access for less! Join Juno today! For your FREE software, visit: http://dl.www.juno.com/get/web/.

24 years, 1 month

Handyman specials

by Robert_Feldman＠jdedwards.com

I have the following junk^H^H^H^H R@RE computers for anyone who wants them. Pick up in Chicago or pay shipping costs. Most are untested and might not work, all are dumpster finds: (in order from largest/heaviest to smallest/lightest) HP Portable Vectra Toshiba 3100e/40 (power light comes on, but does not boot) NEC MultiSpeed EL TI TravelMate 4000M (color LCD, 486 DX4/75, but was found partially disassembled, so most likely does not work) AST PowerExec 3/25SL (no hard drive) Tandon NB386/SX (has loose/cracked hinge, but is the only one with its power brick) Kenitec (no model number; probably XT compatible) I also have an NEC MultiSpin SCSI CR-ROM reader, external. Again, I don't know if any of these work, but if you've ever wanted to tear apart a portable, or play with an LCD screen, they might fit the bill. Bob robert_feldman(at)jdedwards(dot)com

24 years, 1 month

Destruction of DEC

by msell＠ontimesupport.com

It's my opinion that Compaq will be pissed away by HP just as Compaq pissed away DEC. I never really did *love* Compaq, mainly because they are a PC company. They make good PC's, but I hate PC's. The real problem is that several thousand employees are going to get the axe because of a power trip by an HP CEO. I love to see someone who actually believes that the "new" HP will compete with IBM. - Matt At 09:07 AM 3/21/2002 -0500, you wrote: > > The liklihood is that Compaq will be dismantled as a result, and that, in > > itself seems a decent enough reason for the merger. > >Oh well. Never liked them, even though they ran my >software at their Houston distribution center (I >guess they were our largest client). > >-dq > > > Matthew Sell Programmer On Time Support, Inc. www.ontimesupport.com (281) 296-6066 Join the Metrology Software discussion group METLIST! http://www.ontimesupport.com/subscribe_t&c.html. "One World, One Web, One Program" - Microsoft Promotional Ad "Ein Volk, Ein Reich, Ein Fuhrer" - Adolf Hitler Many thanks for this tagline to a fellow RGVAC'er...

24 years, 1 month

list changes & RFC on archives & rack chassis

by Mzthompson＠aol.com

Jay wrote: A) Reject posts to the list which contain any kind of HTML content. I'll vote for that. B) I also like the 'self-policing' idea of making posts to the list from non-subscribers get a subject tag of [OL] or something like that. I'll vote for that too. My two cents, or actually votes, Mike

24 years, 1 month

Destruction of DEC

by dhquebbeman＠theestopinalgroup.com

> The liklihood is that Compaq will be dismantled as a result, and that, in > itself seems a decent enough reason for the merger. Oh well. Never liked them, even though they ran my software at their Houston distribution center (I guess they were our largest client). -dq

24 years, 1 month

VAX 6460 being slow, IO bottlenecks and SMP woes ...

by ajp166＠bellatlantic.net

From: Eric Smith <eric(a)brouhaha.com> >Not counting an eight-hour power failure, one of my PC-based servers >has had under two minutes of unscheduled downtime in seven years of >24x7 operation. That's better than 99.9999%. > >Of course, it's not running Windows. I have winder boxen that do that as servers. As desktops forget it, Word dies and takes the OS at times. Never seen that on VMS. >I don't know what systems those were, but my first 486 PCI system >routinely got sustained PCI throughput of over 15 MB/second, between >disk, ethernet, and display. and the processor was doing something useful? >Even many ISA bus systems could sustain over 4 MB/second. Yes, it could. Shame the CPU was idle or doing just the block move. I've seen Qbus systems (PDP-11) sustain levels like that but, the CPU was useful. PCs, and their busses didn't allow for concurrentcy of operations especially ISA. Allison

24 years, 1 month

ZX-TEAM meeting and Webcam

by ajp166＠bellatlantic.net

From: Glen Goodwin <acme_ent(a)bellsouth.net> >> From: Fred Cisin (XenoSoft) <cisin(a)xenosoft.com> > >> Is there a Linux port for the ZX81? No but, you might run UZI unix on it. Oh< you want a Zx81 sim? Why? the real thing is far more fun. Allison

24 years, 1 month

Text-based PONG!

by bpope＠wordstock.com

Check out http://www.karber.net/textbased/pong/ where you can play Pong with *ANY* browser, including Lynx! Enjoy!, Bryan P.S. I did not have anything to do with the creation of this masterpiece.

24 years, 1 month

VAX 6460 being slow, IO bottlenecks and SMP woes ...

by ajp166＠bellatlantic.net

From: Gunther Schadow <gunther(a)aurora.regenstrief.org> >Yes, so, let's suppose that ULTRIX didn't take full advantage >of the hardware, but nothing can get me back to using VMS. That's >for sure. Ultrix was not nearly as well developed as VMS for multiple CPU and cluster configs. Available user performance on a 6k system with decent disks was very high under VMS but under ultrix is was a less appealing system. I'd used an identical pair while at DEC with both ultrix and VMS and the ultrix system was a bit doggy even at lighter user loads (no one liked it). Comparing it to a 486... no contest with a pot load of users. the i486 does not have the system robustness and IO capability. Allison

24 years, 1 month

Plexus minicomputer?

by vcf＠siconic.com

Anyone know about Plexus minicomputers? I am going to pick one up soon. I'm told it's about 3-4 feet high by 2 feet wide by 5-6 feet deep, and heavy. -- Sellam Ismail Vintage Computer Festival ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ International Man of Intrigue and Danger http://www.vintage.org * Old computing resources for business and academia at www.VintageTech.com *

24 years, 1 month

list changes

by timwa＠snowgoons.fsnet.co.uk

Pete Turnbull wrote: > On Mar 20, 12:59, David Woyciesjes wrote: >> From: Jay West >>> B) I also like the 'self-policing' idea of making posts to the list >>> from non-subscribers get a subject tag of [OL] or something like that. >> >> Another good idea. >> >> Can't the system compare the From or ReplyTo field against the >> subscriber list, and take action from there? >> > Good point. There are almost certainly people on the list who've > subscribed from a different address than the one they have the mail sent > to. Not insurmountable, but it does need consideraton. While we're on the subject, I do think the [OL] idea is a good one, but I just wanted to add my tuppence worth on the subject... The address I post from isn't always the same as the one I read it from; I tend to choose the address to post from (work or home) as appropriate to the content of the message... If we go with the tagging off-list posts, it would be nice if there was a way of registering additional 'posting addresses' as well as the subscription address. Not essential, of course, but would be handy (would be more essential if we got to the stage of actively blocking off-list posts.) Incidentally, I'm all in favour of the blocking HTML, by the way... Cheers, Tim. -- Tim Walls at home in Croydon - Reply to tim(a)snowgoons.fsnet.co.uk

24 years, 1 month

VAX 6460 being slow, IO bottlenecks and SMP woes ...

by gunther＠aurora.regenstrief.org

It is very contemplative to sit in the basement, room filled with big iron and lots of blower and disk noise, and watch the system creep ahead compiling stuff. I remember those old days back in, say, 1994 when I sat there on a i486/33 watching GCC compile (and those *endless* runs of all the fix-include stuff.) What surprizes me is that the feeling on a 1989 vintage 6-processor million-dollar VAX isn't very different! I expected it to be faster with that. So I looked at statistics. Nothing paged out (0.5 GB of RAM), but looks like the system is heavily I/O bound and I/O is quite slow. I even distributed disk load over 3 RA90, though all on the same controller, but at least that's a KDM70, directly on the XMI bus. Still, disk access seems just a bit on the slow side. Why? All terminal I/O went through the Ethernet, which I thought was a DEBNT but is reported to me as a DEBNA. Anyway, that's just the few lines of text that are being logged as make creeps forward with its job. Looked at cpustat (we're on Ultrix 4.5 BTW), where you can see the load on the CPUs. Sorry, no "screenshot" here, but in short it lists 6 CPU's and the load on each. 5 of them tend to be 97% idle and CPU#1 is 75% idle. CPU #1 gets bombarded with all interrupt requests while the others get none of that. Unfortunately I couldn't figure out how one can see process to CPU allocation. I suppose that each process runs in a single thread on one CPU every time it is active. Since the making and the cc-ing is a sequential thing writing temporary files to disk, I suppose that the 5 idle processors have nothing to do while CPU#1 takes all the burden of the compiling task plus all other system interrupts (essentiall all I/O.) So, that's kind of not optimal. I suppose, once I have my first GCC built I should use the -pipe option to avoid temporary files with the hope that the two ends of each pipe would then be allocated to two different CPUs. That should then speed up the process a lot, basically could stream cpp on CPU#1 to cc1 on CPU#2 to as on CPU#3 right through. I hope. That is, if UNIX domain sockets (i.e. pipes) are implemented so as to not require any hardware IO. I *hope* this is simply done by CPU#1 entering kernel with an mbuf and CPU#2 entering kernel shortly thereafter reading that mbuf, so only memory should be involved. It's interesting. At some time soon, may be early this summer, I'll give a VAX party where one of the highlights will be a race between my i486/33 and the 6460 in compiling something, there we can see if it's really just my perception that the 6460 is kind of slow for the price, even measured by past standards. Another thing that made me wonder is that writing to the TU81+ on KLESI-B showed its signs of I/O bottlenecks. When I just did # tar cvb 20 -f /dev/nrmt0h /usr5/gcc-2.7.2 the tape would write block by block in staccato and would not stream. The TU81 is still nice even in block mode, not that endless back and forth of the TK50 or any other cassette media that I have seen operating, it's a fast staccato tatatatatatata, you gotta see this! Only if I used my dd buffering trick with # tar cvb 20 -f - /usr5/gcc-2.7.2 |dd ibs=2048000 of=/dev/nrmt0h obs=10240 would it stream over larger sections. But the slightest disk read activity would cause a little pause to the tape transport. First I thought I should be rearranging my cards on the VAXBI busses, but then I remembered that the disks are on XMI directly. So, a simple RA90 read through KDM70 on XML is just not fast enough in order to keep the VAXBI - KLESIB - TU81+ streaming. Are the RA90 disks so slow? Or may be it is Ultrix' bad way of using the multipe CPUs again, i.e., they still handle all the work through one single CPU#1 while the others are chatting idly? Does NetBSD do a better job with SMP? Would it use one CPU for the disk IO and another CPU for the KLESI-B IO with shared memory buffers in the middle? May be not if I used just one process to both read from disk and write to tape (like tar only), but with the pipe, tar | dd it should do it and that should allow me to use a smaller ibs for dd, AND have real streaming write to the tape. Or is SMP on NetBSD/VAX still a sub-optimal hack? When I attended BSDcon 2002 in San Francisco few weeks ago, it seemed like all the BSDs would go different ways about SMP. I liked what Jason announced about NetBSD, like IO being handled without memory data copies, and the kernel actually shrinking in size. I would hope that all BSD/SMP efforts nowadays seek to allow true load sharing between the CPUs and not shedule IRQs to only one and not hog that one primary I/O CPU with *all* processes that have any I/O to do. And I sure hope that it will be natural for pipelined processes to operate on different CPUs. Right? regards, -Gunther -- Gunther Schadow, M.D., Ph.D. gschadow(a)regenstrief.org Medical Information Scientist Regenstrief Institute for Health Care Adjunct Assistant Professor Indiana University School of Medicine tel:1(317)630-7960 http://aurora.regenstrief.org

24 years, 1 month

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