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Michael Sokolov Cooking: The Ultimate VAX

by gunther＠aurora.regenstrief.org

Hello, for those of you who are not (or no longer :-) subscribed to the Quasijarus list, you still want to read this. This is Michael Sokolov as we all love him: Passionate and knowledgeable about VAXen, and just that. The project sounds kinda cool, if he delivers I'll want to get it. regards -Gunther Hi there, It's me again, your faithful 4.3BSD-Quasijarus maintainer. Sorry that I've been silent for a while... but guess what, I've got something cool, something that may raise your hair... So, what is it? Well, after whining and whining to myself about being deprived of the past 10 years worth of technological advances (NVAX, the last thing from DEC as far as classical VAXen go, came out in 1992), I've decided it's time to stop whining and start doing something about it. We've got to bite the bullet and design and build a new VAX that would use today's technology, be comparable in performance to today's CPUs, and still be a fully compliant VAX. Design the CPU, the system bus, the console and other support facilities, etc. and build it all on a sparkling shiny board. Since for the past 10 months I've worked for a company building single-board computers with today's technology (PowerPC CPUs, system bus at 133 MHz, memory SDRAM at system bus speed, I/O the fastest PCI chips they could find) and was involved in most phases of board design and bring-up, I know now what's involved in building such a beast and I've decided I'll give it a try. The major difference of course will be having to design the VAX CPU instead of having a ready-made PowerPC or MIPS or Sexium or whatever chip. Not having six to seven digit cash to build an ASIC, I'll have to settle for the CPU on an FPGA. As those are field-programmable, there are no big bucks to pay someone to fab it, and there's plenty of room for debugging and experimentation. I'll just have to take the VAX Architecture Reference Manual and implement it, in VHDL or Verilog or somesuch. Scary, I know. But what the heck, I'll give it a try. Part of designing a CPU is designing the bus coming out of it. This brings us to the next part of our VAX design: what should its system bus be? As you may remember from discussions on this list a few years ago and from my writings about VAX hardware on the Quasijarus WWW pages and elsewhere, in order to have a true VAX, one must have a real VAXist system bus. It has to follow all the VARM rules as to memory and cache coherency, VAX native memory and I/O address spaces (512 MB each usually), interlocks, interrupt messaging, transaction ordering, nice and orderly machine check exceptions when accessing a non- existent address, etc. So, what bus are we going to use? I believe that in order to be a true VAX, we have to natively support all traditional DEC buses and peripherals with the top-level bus meeting the above requirements. Having just PCI or somesuch would make a very poor man's VAX. Our new VAX should of course be top of the line: completely supercede all earlier VAXen and support everything that DEC ever supported. This my friends means XMI. That's what DEC's last top-of-the-line VAXen (6600 and 9000) had. XMI gives you a 14-slot backplane which you can further expand with an XMI-to-VAXBI adapter and a VAXBI-to-UNIBUS adapter, and between UNIBUS, BI, and XMI you've got the whole DEC universe covered. This plus how nicely these buses work together plus the closeness of this design to the original VAX pillars of 780 and 8600 makes me believe that XMI is the way to go. So, should we use XMI as our top-level system bus? Not necessarily. While architecturally beautiful, XMI by its age alone will be a performance bottleneck in our SuperVAX. I think even on the 6600 (NVAX-based, the last VAX >from DEC with XMI as its top bus) they were already feeling it squeeze, that's maybe why they went from 6600 to 7000 (Alpha bus, very ugly) so quickly. (The 7000's Alpha bus makes it so ugly because the software can't directly access XMI or any other I/O bus, just memory, as the Alpha bus doesn't support I/O transactions, just memory.) What we need then is our own top-level bus of new design with year 2002 performance characteristics with XMI and other buses (see below) attached to it. The top-level bus will have CPU(s) and memory on it. The memory should of course be modern SDRAM. To make this kosher by VAX standards this top-level bus will have to meet all VARM requirements with all downstream buses interfaced to it as proper VAX nexi. If it's done right, it'll be the same design as the last Ultimate VAX from DEC had. The last Ultimate VAX from DEC was the 9000, folks. We'll have basically the same design but on one board. Cool! I also mentioned having other buses besides XMI and its subordinates. I'm thinking about PCI (ideally 64-bit 66 MHz, the top) and VME. Yes, PCI is decidedly not a DEC bus and it's very substandard compared to real VAX buses like VAXBI or XMI, but I think we need to support it to be competitive and to be able to take advantage of all the devices that come in the form of PCI chips. Now support it doesn't mean make it our main bus. If it sits by the side, doesn't stand in the way of data flowing through real DEC buses, and its use is entirely optional, it should be OK I think. As for VME, while we should faithfully reproduce everything that DEC made that's holy and pure, we don't need to reproduce their screw-ups. In particular, their deliberate blocking of third parties doesn't need to be reproduced. There's nothing wrong with supporting an open standard multivendor bus. The last point applies not only to VME. It applies even more so to SCSI. DEC's stubborn refusal to support it except in low-end systems definitely doesn't need to be reproduced in our new VAX. DEC only supported SCSI on low-end BabyVAXen, but not on anything higher-end: not on Q-bus, not on BI, not on XMI. As there seems to be no place for SCSI on the XMI side of our new VAX, we can go for the obvious alternative: if we are going to have PCI in there, just stick your favorite PCI UltraSCSI chip on the board. So we are going to have our new fast system bus with XMI and PCI hanging off of it, and eventually VME too. So what should this system bus be? Well, I've been thinking about it for the past few days and I've come up with a design that I think is sound and I think I can implement. After working for 10 months with screaming fast PowerPCs, I've been spoiled by their 133 MHz system bus. I've been even more spoiled by some of the chips available for this bus. I've been particularly impressed by Galileo GT-64240 and GT-64260 system controllers for MIPS and PowerPC respectively. So far I've only worked with PowerPCs and GT-64260 and haven't looked at the 240 yet, but as I understand it the MIPS and PowerPC system buses are very similar and the 240 and the 260 are essentially the same chip with minor mods. These system controllers are not PeeCee stuff. They are specifically designed for high-end systems with heavy I/O requirements, which is exactly what we would want in our VAX. Each GT-642x0 system controller includes the CPU interface running at up to 133 MHz, an SDRAM controller running at full CPU bus speed, 2 64-bit PCI interfaces running at up to 66 MHz, 3 10/100 Mbps Ethernet ports, 2 high-speed serial ports running at up to I believe 55 Mbps (!), and support for all system glue logic one can think of: ROMs, random logic devices, I2C, you name it. All interfaces run simultaneously in parallel and are interconnected by a "pizza arbiter", a crossbar switch with a 64-bit data path running at 133 MHz. This is the kind of stuff I have in mind when I talk about using year 2002 technology. I believe the GT-642x0 is the most powerful chip of this kind available today. (The cost is a bit high by PeeCee standards but should be fine for a high-end SuperVAX: GT-64260A costs $170 IIRC.) After thinking about it for a while, I have come up with my VAX design based on either GT-64240 or GT-64260 (haven't yet decided which). It took some hard thinking, but I think I've got it right. The most challenging thing of course is to gerrymander the MIPS/PowerPC system bus into a VAX bus, i.e., make it meet all VARM requirements. OTOH, the benefits from using those chips are significant: using the same system bus used in today's fast CPUs would assure comparable performance for our VAX at least as far as the bus goes, the time to market is reduced as some important components (the SDRAM controller, the PCI interface, and some of the support logic) will be ready-made, the chip is among the best one can pick for this purpose, and we'll have the Ethernet and fast serial interfaces for free. To understand how I'm going to use the MIPS/PowerPC system bus as the VAX main bus and still call it a VAX, one needs to consider the board design. It'll have this system bus interconnecting the CPU, the GT-642x0, the XMI interface chip, and other stuff later. One nice thing about the GT-642x0 is that it's specifically designed to support being not the only system controller, but one of many. It doesn't mind seeing transactions on its interfaces that it doesn't understand and that are meant for someone else. As it turns out, the MIPS/ PowerPC system bus is not that alien to the VAX, it's basically a subset of what the VAX needs. Since it's a subset, it needs to be extended. As I'm going to implement the CPU and the XMI interface on FPGAs, I'll have the freedom to tweak it as I want. Of course the GT-642x0 won't understand my extensions, but it won't need to: we need strict VARM compliance when talking to XMI, but not necessarily to PCI, as PCI is alien to VAX anyway. Now the GT-642x0 will be the main memory controller, so it better be VARM-compliant as far as memory goes. At first I thought this was going to be a show-stopper, as I couldn't figure out how I would communicate the special bus transactions for the BBCCI, BBSSI, ADAWI, INSQHI, INSQTI, REMQHI, and REMQTI instructions. But then a solution struck me. It's hard to explain without going too much into the PowerPC cache coherency model, but basically the CPU can hoard a little chunk of memory (32- byte granularity) and not let anyone else touch it until it's done with whatever it wants to do with it. In my case the whatever will be implementing the above 7 VAX instructions as prescribed by VARM. Voila! (If you are reading this babbling about using a MIPS/PPC system bus in a VAX and wondering how is it different from VAX 7000 using an Alpha bus that I denounced so loudly, you're right, it isn't, except for one detail. That Alpha bus doesn't support transactions smaller than a full word (don't remember if that was 32 or 64 bits, but you get the idea), so if you wanted to dink an 8- bit or 16-bit register on an I/O bus, you would be out of luck. That's one of the main reasons they didn't support direct CPU access to XMI and other I/O on the 7000. The PowerPC system bus doesn't have this problem, it supports all transfer sizes, and the GT-642x0 chips move data of different sizes between their interfaces all the time.) Since we are going to have our own top-level bus with the CPU(s), memory, and bus adapters sitting above XMI, PCI, and VME, it'll need its own backplane of our own design to hold the CPUs, memory modules, and bus adapters. There are many possible designs, but here is the one I've chosen from considerations of ease of implementation, time to market, and cost, as well as some marketing considerations. The backplane will be active, and will have the GT-642x0 on it. The slots on it will be PCI, nexi, and SDRAM DIMMs. It will be mechanically compatible with an ATX motherboard, but past the same mechanics it'll have enough differences to assure anyone looking at it that it's not a PeeCee. Of the 7 slots allowed for by ATX mechanics, 3 will be PCI and 4 will be nexi. The nexus slot connectors will be of my own design. The first nexus slot will always have to have a CPU card in it, which will be the master CPU, and the other 3 nexus slots will support identical CPU cards (slave CPUs) and bus adapters such as XMI and VME. The active backplane will also provide most of the system support logic, including the console FEP (front end processor, a small cheap microprocessor which I haven't yet selected) and the console port. Each CPU card will have just the VAX CPU with minimum support logic on it, which will reduce the incremental cost of adding CPUs. The FPGA-based CPU will only implement the VAX architecture as a running processor, and will truly halt like a 780 rather than implement halt microcode. This will certainly make it cool in a VAX hacker's eyes and reduce the time to market by moving the halt complexity from the harder to design FPGA into the easy to write FEP software. The CPU FPGA will communicate halts and architectured console IPR accesses to the FEP via the Inter-IC bus (I2C) or a similar bus. The active backplane will also provide Ethernet (GT-based) and SCSI (PCI-based) interfaces. (The high-speed serial interfaces of the GT-642x0 may also be routed out to external 50-pin connectors of the type DEC has used on sync serial options.) Thus in the minimal configuration with only one CPU card and some SDRAM one will have a fully functional system. Since such a system will fit entirely in an ATX enclosure and offer ready PCI expansion, it can be used to introduce the VAX architecture and this high-end product into new markets not previously exposed to VAXen. We'll be able to build and sell these systems in any required quantity entirely from current parts, no dependence of exhaustible stockpiles of old DEC parts. OTOH, since when equipped with an XMI adapter the system will be a fully compliant VAX and will be highly compatible with top of the line systems from DEC, this system should be acceptable even to the most ardent DEC purist. In the future systems can be built in other form factors if ATX is unacceptable or if more than 4 nexus slots are needed. The backplane will still have to be active most probably, though, because such a high-speed bus cannot have more than a few slots, and if we want to offer something like the 14-slot XMI backplane for our new system bus, the only way I can think of to implement it is to have several independent bus segments each with no more than 4 slots and interconnect them with intelligent bridges. These bridges would be active and quite sophisticated. But that's for the future, I think for a start a single bus segment with 4 slots in the cheapest form factor (ATX) will be fine. Proper design of the system support logic on the active backplane will ensure that the memory and interrupt mappings are as close as possible to those of next of kin DEC systems. The GT-642x0 will play nicely with this as its memory map is completely programmable, and it'll have no problem with the physical address space being only 30 bits instead of 32 (VAX architecture limitation). That's what I have on my mind, folks. As you can see I've put a good deal of thought into it and I'm serious about it. The next step is to better explore FPGA technology to see if I can match or beat the NVAX in performance. On our side we have 10 more years of technological advances since the NVAX, but OTOH DEC had built the NVAX as a fully custom IC rather than an FPGA. We'll see. Now here comes the part where I'll need your help, folks. While I have everything I'll need to design the active backplane and the CPU card (for the CPU card I'll just need the VARM which I have and the backplane is all current technology, no DEC specs needed) and thus I think I'll be able to deliver the base system in the ATX box, in my mind to make the project worth doing and thus to maximise the chances of me actually doing it, we'll need an assurance that the XMI adapter would follow shortly. I am prepared to design the FPGA and the board, but it'll require the XMI spec. I know it conceptually which allowed me to come up with the conceptual design outlined here, but to actually build it I will of course need the full spec detailing each signal and all. So, to make this project worth doing and thus see to it that I actually do it, you folks with spare time on your hands may want to start looking into prying the XMI specs out of DECompaq. -- Michael Sokolov 786 E MISSION AVE APT F Programletarian Freedom Fighter ESCONDIDO CA 92025-2154 USA International Free Computing Task Force Phone: +1-760-480-4575 msokolov(a)ivan.Harhan.ORG (ARPA) Let the Source be with you Programletarians of the world, unite! P.S. To the folks I've Cc'ed this to besides the Quasijarus list: your input could be extremely helpful to this project and other great projects being discussed on our list, and I would very much like to have you on the Quasijarus list. To subscribe send a message to quasijarus-request(a)ivan.Harhan.ORG. TIA.

24 years, 2 months

Anyone have...

by jimw＠agora.rdrop.com

...a programmer that can do a dump from a MC68701S-1 microprocessor? -jim --- jimw(a)agora.rdrop.com The Computer Garage - http://www.rdrop.com/~jimw

24 years, 2 months

SMD disks to good home

by jwbirdsa＠picarefy.com

I have a pile of SMD disks, one Fujitsu Super Eagle and six (I think) Fujitsu Eagles, which are taking up space. They're all 19" rackmount units, most with rails, and since they weigh in at about 150 pounds each, I can't ship them. Some were in service with me five or six years ago, some I've never used; the condition of none of them is known for sure. I would like to see at least some of them go to a good home as opposed to going to the dump at the end of March, but one way or another they need to go. They're free for pickup in Federal Way, WA, which is between Seattle and Tacoma. I also have an assortment of SMD cables available. --James B.

24 years, 2 months

MicroVAX 4000/VLC

by mbg＠TheWorld.com

> I have a 233 MHz CPU from a dead Multia in my AXPpci33 What did you have to do to get it working? I was under the impression that using a faster processor required some board modifications... If it will simply work, I guess I need to locate a 233 Mhz CPU. Megan Gentry Former RT-11 Developer +--------------------------------+-------------------------------------+ | Megan Gentry, EMT/B, PP-ASEL | Internet (work): gentry!zk3.dec.com | | Unix Support Engineering Group | (home): mbg!world.std.com | | Compaq Computer Corporation | addresses need '@' in place of '!' | | 110 Spitbrook Rd. ZK03-2/T43 | URL: http://world.std.com/~mbg/ | | Nashua, NH 03062 | "pdp-11 programmer - some assembler | | (603) 884 1055 | required." - mbg KB1FCA | +--------------------------------+-------------------------------------+

24 years, 2 months

PDP-10 Emulators (was Re: Alpha AXP (was Re: MicroVAX 4000/VL

by healyzh＠aracnet.com

> OTOH, he's had TOPS-10 up on the TS10 em before, and I thought Zane > Healy was doing likewise. And I'll have one of the -10 ems up for > my historical simulation of the IU Computing Network, but not for a > year or so... I've got a system running two copies of SIMH for TOPS-10 7.03 and TOPS-20 4.1. I've got another system running KLH10 for TOPS-20 7.0. I've found that those emulator/OS combo's are what work the best. SIMH supports 'virtual terminal lines' and 'printers', while KLH10 supports ethernet. > > Etc., etc... - If I only had more time, I'd really need one of those > > emulators! > > Once you get the emulator build done and the DEC tape images downloaded, > it takes less than an hour to install TOPS-10 7.03... well, a little > longer to get *all* the cusps and product set stuff loaded... Take a look at http://www.aracnet.com/~healyzh/pdp10emu.html I've got links to prebuilt emulator installs. Off the top of my head I think they're all for TOPS-10. Zane

24 years, 2 months

1101 Static RAM Chips Wanted for Mark-8

by bill_r＠inetnebr.com

I'm in search of 24 or more 1101 RAM chips so I can fully populate the memory board on the Mark-8 I'm building. Anybody have a stash of them? I've searched the web but have been unable to find any obsolete IC dealers who have them. Bill Richman bill_r(a)inetnebr.com http://incolor.inetnebr.com/bill_r Home of Fun with Molten Metal, technological oddities, and the original COSMAC Elf computer simulator!

24 years, 2 months

Santa Monica: pdp 11/23 system for trade

by elmo＠mminternet.com

Help me clean my apartment. I have an 11/23 system running RSX 11M in a large Trimm pedestal chassis. (Think world box - size of a two-drawer file cabinet). It has a working TK50, RD53(?), and RX50 floppies, and 4 DL ports. I can offer an extra ESDI controller if you're looking for more storage. Too big to ship, I will help you carry it down the stairs. Will trade for laptop(s) in good condition, or perhaps you can trade skilled labor (assist in my rooftop antenna construction / design / installation). Eliot

24 years, 2 months

OT:RE: Stoned? [was: RE: Rush! ( was: RE: Once in a Lifetime...)]

by Robert_Feldman＠jdedwards.com

DuPont advertising, 1939 to 1980's: http://heritage.dupont.com/touchpoints/tp_1939/overview.shtml -----Original Message----- From: Joe [mailto:rigdonj@cfl.rr.com] Sent: Tuesday, February 26, 2002 2:14 PM To: classiccmp(a)classiccmp.org Subject: RE: Stoned? [was: RE: Rush! ( was: RE: Once in a Lifetime...)] My turn. Where did the saying "better living through chemistry!" come from? The answer will surprise you. Joe <snip>

24 years, 2 months

Stoned? [was: RE: Rush! ( was: RE: Once in a Lifetime...)]

by Robert_Feldman＠jdedwards.com

I have it on the Easy Rider movie soundtrack album. Could look it up tonight if you want. -----Original Message----- From: David Woyciesjes [mailto:DAW@yalepress3.unipress.yale.edu] Sent: Tuesday, February 26, 2002 1:00 PM To: 'classiccmp(a)classiccmp.org' Subject: OT: Stoned? [was: RE: Rush! ( was: RE: Once in a Lifetime...)] <snip> Quick quiz! "Don't bogart that joint, my friend. Pass it over to me." Who wrote it, and what albumn? Really, I can't remember the answer! --- David A Woyciesjes --- C & IS Support Specialist --- Yale University Press --- mailto:david.woyciesjes@yale.edu --- (203) 432-0953 --- ICQ # - 90581 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, 2 months

20,046 pages of scanned old docs online?

by skkkeliris＠hotmail.com

Hello. i need this book 6502 Assembly Language Subroutines (Leventhal) Can you tell me the link to download it , or how to get it? Can you upload it somewhere or send it as an attachement? Regards, S.K

24 years, 2 months

OT: Stoned? [was: RE: Rush! ( was: RE: Once in a Lifetime...)]

by rigdonj＠cfl.rr.com

At 01:59 PM 2/26/02 -0500, you wrote: >> From: Doc >> >> On Tue, 26 Feb 2002, David Woyciesjes wrote: >> > > >> > > Ohhh, wowww, man. Geddy Lee, yeahhhh.... >> > > >> > > Doc >> > > >> > Doc? Hello? Sounds you're stoned man! And you didn't share either! >> >> Heh. I stayed that way from '74 till '89, but then I ran out. >> Permanently, it looks like. >> "No no no no, I don't smoke it no more; I'm tired of wakin' up on the >> floor!" >> >> Doc >> > Heh. Sounds like my buddy, when he was growing up in Vegas.... > >Quick quiz! > >"Don't bogart that joint, my friend. Pass it over to me." > >Who wrote it, and what albumn? Really, I can't remember the answer! I don't know who wrote it but it was on the Easy Rider soundtrack. I THINK The Byrds sang it there. Joe

24 years, 2 months

OT: Stoned? [was: RE: Rush! ( was: RE: Once in a Lifetime...)]

by DAW＠yalepress3.unipress.yale.edu

> From: Doc > > On Tue, 26 Feb 2002, David Woyciesjes wrote: > > > > > > Ohhh, wowww, man. Geddy Lee, yeahhhh.... > > > > > > Doc > > > > > Doc? Hello? Sounds you're stoned man! And you didn't share either! > > Heh. I stayed that way from '74 till '89, but then I ran out. > Permanently, it looks like. > "No no no no, I don't smoke it no more; I'm tired of wakin' up on the > floor!" > > Doc > Heh. Sounds like my buddy, when he was growing up in Vegas.... Quick quiz! "Don't bogart that joint, my friend. Pass it over to me." Who wrote it, and what albumn? Really, I can't remember the answer! --- David A Woyciesjes --- C & IS Support Specialist --- Yale University Press --- mailto:david.woyciesjes@yale.edu --- (203) 432-0953 --- ICQ # - 90581 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, 2 months

OT: cleaning pots on my vintage audio amp

by pete＠dunnington.u-net.com

On Feb 20, 14:01, Roger Merchberger wrote: > Rumor has it that Tony Duell may have mentioned these words: > >> > > Or you can call it "Isopropyl alcohol" or just "rubbing alcohol"! > >> > > (But you want the 90+% stuff, NOT the 70%) > >> > > >> > But I don't think either of those are official convention. > >> > >> In spite of not being "official convention" (and sometimes not even > >> CORRECT), when telling somebody to get something, it just might be useful > >> to them to know what it is called at the places that they buy it. > > > >Unfortunately the 'local' names are just that. Local. I've never see > >anything called 'rubbing alcohol' for sale in the UK. I have seen it > >labelled isopropanol or propan-2-ol. Since this is an international list, > >it would seem to make sense to use the official name and then to look it > >up in a local chemical catalogue if necessary. > > Although I agree with you totally, for many things there is *no* > international name. If you send anyone over to Wal-mart or K-mart for > isopropanol or propan-2-ol, they'll *never* find it. I've only ever seen > labeled is "rubbing alcohol" (which I'll admit is much too vague) or > "isopropyl alcohol" and the percentage (you can get 91% at Wal-mart, but > most places stock only the 70% AFAIK. (I'm looking at a bottle as I type) > Even under the ingredient listing (required by law in the US) it's > "isopropyl alcohol". "iso-propyl alcohol" is the "old" name for it; "iso-propanol" is a more modern version of the same name; the "systematic" name (used almost everywhere *by chemists*) is "propan-2-ol". In this particular case, "iso-propanol" and "propan-2-ol" give exactly the same information, since there are only three carbon atoms, so the hydroxyl group can be either in the middle (iso-propanol/propan-2-ol) or at an end (n-propanol/propan-1-ol). If there are more carbon atoms, there are more possibilities for branches and aatachment positions, so the "old" names are less informative. > Even "aluminum" is different, but I don't remember how different... You mean "aluminium" :-) Like sodium, potassium, uranium, ... ^ ^ ^ ^ -- Pete Peter Turnbull Network Manager University of York

24 years, 2 months

Rush! ( was: RE: Once in a Lifetime, Twice in Forever)

by DAW＠yalepress3.unipress.yale.edu

> ---------- > From: Doc > > On Tue, 26 Feb 2002, David Woyciesjes wrote: > > > Ahh, you should've made it to their last show, the Test For Echo > > tour, "An Evening With Rush". They played all 20 minutes of 2112, the > first > > time in about 20 years. And a lot of other classic Rush tunes as well. > > For those who don't know, 2112 is a Sci-Fi type story song, well, > > more of a composition I think. Normally, in concert, they play only > about 5 > > minutes of it, since the opening act takes up some time in the night. > This > > last tour, however, there was no opening act... Freeing up another 1 1/2 > > hours for Rush... > > Ohhh, wowww, man. Geddy Lee, yeahhhh.... > > Doc > Doc? Hello? Sounds you're stoned man! And you didn't share either! --- David A Woyciesjes --- C & IS Support Specialist --- Yale University Press --- mailto:david.woyciesjes@yale.edu --- (203) 432-0953 --- ICQ # - 90581 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, 2 months

A Jolly Good Find!

by jss＠subatomix.com

Well, folks, I'm a happy camper today. In a nice contrast against recent reports of list members screwing over other list members, I have some good news. Today, I met up with another list member in the mid-south USA. We had a fund day hopping around a scrapyard, and each of use went home with some cool gear. We found all sorts of goodies: remains of some Interdata minis, a DG Nova 3, a MicroVAX II, TS05 tape drive, piles of RA8x and other drives, a PDP-11/34, several VAX 4000-400s, some 8-bit stuff, and surely much more. The main thing I ended up carrying away, though, due to my schedule and the lack of space in my truck bed for anything else, was a PDP-11/70 carcass. I say 'carcass', because the scrappers had already yanked the cards out of all the cages and because there were a few other things missing. However, I've been lusting for a /70, and finding what I did put me a good ways along towards having a complete system. Cost: $20 for two H960 racks. This /70 is disguised as a DECdatasystem 570. I've got some questions about that, but I'll put them in another thread. The list member and his party were extremely nice. To save me the trouble of driving to a nearby ATM to get cash, a member of the party loaned me the dough. I was also treated to lunch at a nearby restaurant after leaving the scrapyard. Thanks for the hospitality, guys! So now I'm driving around with this PDP-11/70 in my truck. For a bit of fun, I showed it to a girl from work, being the evil bastard that I am. Much to my surprise, she seemed to actually be *interested* in the machine. No running away or screaming occurred. I'll hopefully be going back to this scrapyard in a few weeks to get some of the things I left behind this time. -- Jeffrey S. Sharp jss(a)subatomix.com

24 years, 2 months

Magnetic media and mold cleanup

by dhquebbeman＠theestopinalgroup.com

> Jerome Fine replies: > > "donor" diskette? Are we now harvesting computer parts? I never had good luck cleaning the plastic shell of a 3.5 inch diskette; most of them have a thin liner materials inside, a type of plasticized frabric, that would disintegrate. So you want to use a blank, new, or otherwise unused floppy from which you remove the media and toss it. You insert the cleaned media into that plastic diskette shell. This is a very trivial operation, unless you're challenged in the hand/eye coordination department... > The person I am doing the recovery for may already have > enough of the files. I will see how much further I should go. > > > > I have one floppy that has over 100 error blocks (can't be read) > > > out of 988. Others have just a few. Is it possible to only spot clean > > > the ones with a few errors without removing the jacket? > > Dunno- let us know! > > Likewise for the answer above. Ok, again, perhaps we're having a communication problem. I have never tried anything other than what I described. Remove the messed-up media from its original shell and put it in a clean one. Clean the whole thing. This is what I've done, and your suggestion of partial cleaning has never occurred to me. And on reflection, I can't see any purpose in it. Unless you're reading into this some difficulty that isn't there. > > > Will Formula 409 work with floppy media? Where can it be purchased? > > Oh, it's a common household cleaner here in the U.S... a > > comparable cleaner is Fantastik. > > We have Fantastik here in Canada. I am in Toronto. Windex > is also a grease dissolving fluid and is used for glass. How > might that do? I would not make a recommendation regarding something I've not only never tried, but never even considered trying. Sorry! > >Joe wrote: > >If you just want to be able to read it long enough to recover it's data > >then don't put it back in a jacket! Just put the bare disk into the drive > >and copy it. I know several people that have successfully done this with 5 > >1/4" disk. However if your dirve has a spring loaded ejector, you may need > >to open up the housing and push the ejector back by hand. > > I will try that also if I go that far. for 5.25 inch floppies, I've done that too, but even still, it's easier to use a donor sleeve than trying to get naked media into the drive IMHO, although YYMV, etc. -dq

24 years, 2 months

DEC BC09J cable

by alan.pearson＠cramer.com

I'm looking for a DEC BC09J cable to hook up a VS3100 to a CD drive... can anyone point me to a likely source in the UK? Failing that, any hints about making one up? I'm not sure about one of the parts that I would need - from what I've heard the 68-pin connector is a "non-standard" DEC part? Sounds like the other end is just a 50-pin centronics-style job so I guess getting one of those won't be a problem. TIA Al

24 years, 2 months

Rush! ( was: RE: Once in a Lifetime, Twice in Forever)

by DAW＠yalepress3.unipress.yale.edu

> From: Doc > > 2112 was the only album of theirs I really cared for, taken as a > whole, but I'd break hell _and_ the bank to get to one of their shows. > Anytime, amywhere. > The last time I saw them was in Lubbock in '92?, the tour with the 30' > bunny-rabbits on stage. The 5'2" teenybopper next to me, a total > stranger, spent the entire show standing tippy-toe on my motorcycle > helmet. One of the best rock shows I've seen since Black Oak Arkansas > broke up. > > Doc > --- Ahh, you should've made it to their last show, the Test For Echo tour, "An Evening With Rush". They played all 20 minutes of 2112, the first time in about 20 years. And a lot of other classic Rush tunes as well. For those who don't know, 2112 is a Sci-Fi type story song, well, more of a composition I think. Normally, in concert, they play only about 5 minutes of it, since the opening act takes up some time in the night. This last tour, however, there was no opening act... Freeing up another 1 1/2 hours for Rush... --- David A Woyciesjes --- C & IS Support Specialist --- Yale University Press --- mailto:david.woyciesjes@yale.edu --- (203) 432-0953 --- ICQ # - 90581 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, 2 months

NIC Card for MV3100

by SleetEB＠corning.com

Can anyone tell me if a network interface card exists for a MicroVax 3100? Ed Sleet Systems Analyst Tech. Corning Incorporated Harrodsburg, Ky 859-734-3341 x345 Fax: 734-5103 email: sleeteb(a)corning.com

24 years, 2 months

Magnetic media and mold cleanup

by dhquebbeman＠theestopinalgroup.com

> > For floppies, I just break 'em open any way I can, > > and then use bare, clean hands with dish detergent. > > Let dry on a lint-free rag and you're through. > > Jerome Fine replies: > > I am trying to recover some files from an DEC RX02 (8" SSDD) > floppy. After you clean the media, how do you put it back into > the drive? Using a brand-new donor diskette, which gets the same Xacto- knife treatment, I put the cleaned media in the new shell, and with one or two carefully-placed drops of cyanoacrylate, you have a reconstructed floppy. > I have one floppy that has over 100 error blocks (can't be read) > out of 988. Others have just a few. Is it possible to only spot clean > the ones with a few errors without removing the jacket? Dunno- let us know! > Will Formula 409 work with floppy media? Where > can it be purchased? Oh, it's a common household cleaner here in the U.S... a comparable cleaner is Fantastik. -dq

24 years, 2 months

Rush! ( was: RE: Once in a Lifetime, Twice in Forever)

by DAW＠yalepress3.unipress.yale.edu

> ---------- > From: Dave McGuire > > On February 25, David Woyciesjes wrote: > > 'Rush' is for up-tempo rock, Great programming music. > > "Power Windows" is a good album to start with. > > Their lyrics are written by the drummer, if that's any > > indication. > > Ahh yes, Rush is my all-time favorite band. Wonderful stuff! > > -Dave > > -- > Ah-ha! So Dave does have interest in things other than wondering if the girl is cute! --- David A Woyciesjes --- C & IS Support Specialist --- Yale University Press --- mailto:david.woyciesjes@yale.edu --- (203) 432-0953 --- ICQ # - 90581 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, 2 months

Rush! ( was: RE: Once in a Lifetime, Twice in Forever)

by DAW＠yalepress3.unipress.yale.edu

> ---------- > From: Cameron Kaiser > > > Hmmm... Being quite the Rush fan (waiting for them to finish the > > albumn, and come around on tour!), I have to politely disagree with the > > Power Windows recommendation. My suggestion is to buy the Chronicles 2 > CD > > set. It's probably on tape too, maybe even vinyl! You should be able to > find > > it used. It covers Rush's first 20 years, and the style changes they've > went > > through. > > I actually prefer the Retrospective '74-'80 compilation CD. I think this > covers all the classics in a smaller package. > Retrospective? Hmm, sounds kinda familiar. I'll have to go down to Cutler's and find it... > Myself the album I particularly enjoyed was Signals, but even more so than > that was what I think was the peak of their art ... Moving Pictures. > Signals, yes that is some good music. Moving Pictures? Yes that was definitely a high point. Then sadly it started to slide a little after that, then picked back up around Counterparts... Has anyone else heard the Working Man CD, a tribute to Rush? Some pretty good versions of classic Rush tunes... --- David A Woyciesjes --- C & IS Support Specialist --- Yale University Press --- mailto:david.woyciesjes@yale.edu --- (203) 432-0953 --- ICQ # - 90581 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, 2 months

MicroVAX 4000/VLC

by DAW＠yalepress3.unipress.yale.edu

> From: Megan > > > > I've sort of been wondering, since we're on AXP anyway, is anybody at > > all still running Tru64 or NT on Alpha? > > Everyone I know who owns AXP runs either *BSD or Linux or OpenVMS, > > including me. NetBSD flat screams on the LX164. > > I have a PWS500a with 3x4Gb disks ... two are dedicated to Linux and > one is Tru64... I can boot whichever I want whenever. > > My other alpha is an AXPpci33 166Mhz CPU overclocked to 200Mhz, rock > solid and running Linux (working on getting RHL7.2 on it to do some > testing) > > +--------------------------------+-------------------------------------+ > I have a 233 MHz CPU from a dead Multia in my AXPpci33 (WinNT4-SP6a) box. 8-) Just gotta find a way to get Win2K running on it... --- David A Woyciesjes --- C & IS Support Specialist --- Yale University Press --- mailto:david.woyciesjes@yale.edu --- (203) 432-0953 --- ICQ # - 90581 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, 2 months

MicroVAX 4000/VLC

by DAW＠yalepress3.unipress.yale.edu

> From: Doc > > On Mon, 25 Feb 2002, Ethan Dicks wrote: > > > > Did the guy doing the OpenVMS port to the AXPpci133 ever get it working > > enough to use? > > I've sort of been wondering, since we're on AXP anyway, is anybody at > all still running Tru64 or NT on Alpha? > Everyone I know who owns AXP runs either *BSD or Linux or OpenVMS, > including me. NetBSD flat screams on the LX164. > > Doc > Well, here at Yale University Press, we still have NT4 on an Alpha Server. Runs pretty good, but since it's the PDC, Boss won't let me bump it up to Win2K/Alpha-2128... Bummer... --- David A Woyciesjes --- C & IS Support Specialist --- Yale University Press --- mailto:david.woyciesjes@yale.edu --- (203) 432-0953 --- ICQ # - 90581 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, 2 months

Magnetic media and mold cleanup

by rigdonj＠cfl.rr.com

At 08:46 AM 2/26/02 -0500, you wrote: >> > For floppies, I just break 'em open any way I can, >> > and then use bare, clean hands with dish detergent. >> > Let dry on a lint-free rag and you're through. >> >> Jerome Fine replies: >> >> I am trying to recover some files from an DEC RX02 (8" SSDD) >> floppy. After you clean the media, how do you put it back into >> the drive? If you just want to be able to read it long enough to recover it's data then don't put it back in a jacket! Just put the bare disk into the drive and copy it. I know several people that have successfully done this with 5 1/4" disk. However if your dirve has a spring loaded ejector, you may need to open up the housing and push the ejector back by hand. > >> Will Formula 409 work with floppy media? Where >> can it be purchased? Umm. you're not in the US are you? If you were you'd know what that stuff is. Anyway it's just a spray-on general purpose cleaner that you can buy in the grocery stores. Joe

24 years, 2 months

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