> From: Ethan Dicks
> One of these?
> ..
> Looks neat.
Wow; that's pretty impressive! Not only will it talk to an RK05, it also
works with drives from Ampex, Control Data, Diable, Pertec, etc, etc. I
didn't realize they were all similar enough (in terms to the controller
interface) to be interchanged like that.
For the RK05, it must have used a flat cable from the Berg header on the card
to a custom dual card that plugged into the mini-backplane in the RK05
(similar to the RKV11-D).
> From: Chris Zach
> I have wondered if the Plessy can do 22 bit DMA
Depends on whether or not it's program compatible with the RK11. That's
because on almost alll UNIBUS controllers, DEC was in the habit of putting
the A16/A17 bits of the buffer address in the CSR (usually in the 060 bits).
So they could only handle 18-bit DMA addresses.
Early QBUS contollers just copied that, so that they were then 100% software
compatible. That's why the RLV11 and RLV12 differ a bit: the RLV11 is 18-bit
address only; to add 22-bit capability to the RLV12, they had to add an extra
register (the RLBAE).
(Interestingly, the Dilog card above claims to the RKV11 compatible; but also
says it has "memory addressing capability" to 256KB. They can't both be true,
though; although the RKV11-D has the A16/A18 bits in the CSR, they aren't
connected to anything! See EK-RKV11-OP-001, pg. 3-5.)
Noel
This item:
https://www.ebay.com/itm/383837694443
(described as just an "EIA distribution panel" in the listing) turns out to be
a DZ11 distribution panel, if anyone needs/wants one. The price is vaguely
reasonable, but maybe the seller would accept a lower offer.
Noel
> From: Al Kossow
> I have to find my qbus rk11 card.
The RKV11-D is a set of 4 quad cards (3 of them the same as the RK11-D) and a
custom 4-slot backplane (different from the RK11-D's), along with another
dual QBUS card, connected via flat cables. It was apparently usually supplied
by DEC in a mounting box of its own.
Noel
> From: Al Kossow
> it's a single-card controller made by Xylogics.
Ah; never heard of that. If you don't mind indulging my curiousity, how did it
connect to the drive (if it used RK05's, and not a Diablo, or something)?
Normal flat cables to a dual card (like the RKV11-D), or a connector on the
back edge (like a UNIVERTER; so it could use a BC11A cable)?
Noel
Hi all,
you're invited to the Update computer club[0] public lecture series
"Updateringar"[1]! Update is a Swedish computer club founded in 1983
whose members tinker with all kinds of computers, from Raspberry Pi to
PDP-12. The club has a big collection of historic computers. In this
lecture series we'll talk about everything related to computers:
Historic and modern computers, operating systems, programming, hardware
projects, creating art with computers, building a computer museum, and
more. We'll start with a classic: the PDP-8.
When: 2021-04-10, 19:00 CEST
Where: https://bbb.cryptoparty.se/b/upd-0mo-m2u-aq8
Get to know the PDP-8 through emulation
An emulator is a program that pretends to be a computer different from
the one the emulator is executing on. This allows execution of software
intended for a physical computer that you do not have. In this talk
Pontus will explain the basics by implementing a fully working PDP-8
emulator and explaining each instruction and feature along the way. The
end result is a working emulator in less than 1000 lines of C code. And
hopefully you will walk away with both an understanding of the classic
PDP-8 computer and emulation.
Pontus Pihlgren (Update)
The lecture is free and open to everyone.
Upcoming: 2021-05-08, 19:00: Forth on microcontrollers. Crest (CCCHB)
Hope to see you there,
Anke
[0] http://www.update.uu.se/index_eng.html
[1] https://www.update.uu.se/wiki/doku.php/projekt:updateringar
Looking to buy any of the IR. INTERNATIONAL RECTIFIER KITS WITH SOLAR RADIOS OR SOLAR RADIO EXIMERMENTS? FOR SMECC MUSEUM'S SOLAR ELECTRONICS DISPLAY.? -- ALSO INTERESTED? BY SOME BY OTHER MAKERS TOO ...EMAIL US OFF LIST PLEASE
Sad but true it all looks the same to me most times . In my life time I have typed far more upper case material than upoer...lower stuff..
In usaf the typewriters? we used to send massive? Mars radio messages between name. And families.... had no lower case
Them the years of teletypes,and upoer case computer terminals. .. it's been a hard life... alas
On Sunday, April 4, 2021 Tony Aiuto via cctalk <tony.aiuto at gmail.com; cctalk at classiccmp.org> wrote:
On Sun, Apr 4, 2021 at 9:44 PM Adrian Stoness <tdk.knight at gmail.com> wrote:
> im pritty sure? he uses his teletype to send us emails
>
LOL.? No excuse.? I like old hardware, but that doesn't mean I use it for
real work.
My hand cranked drills are to show my grandchildren. My 18V battery drive
is what
I actually use.
>
> On Sun, Apr 4, 2021 at 8:17 PM Tony Aiuto via cctalk <
> cctalk at classiccmp.org> wrote:
>
>> Ed. When you type in all caps it looks like you've been owned. Can you
>> tone
>> it down so we know it is real mail.
>>
>> On Sun, Apr 4, 2021 at 6:54 PM ED SHARPE via cctalk <
>> cctalk at classiccmp.org>
>> wrote:
>>
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> > Looking to buy any of the IR. INTERNATIONAL RECTIFIER KITS WITH SOLAR
>> > RADIOS OR SOLAR RADIO EXIMERMENTS? FOR SMECC MUSEUM'S SOLAR ELECTRONICS
>> > DISPLAY.? -- ALSO INTERESTED? BY SOME BY OTHER MAKERS TOO ...EMAIL US
>> OFF
>> > LIST PLEASE
>> >
>>
>
Exactly spend years with those too... I am old
On Sunday, April 4, 2021 Chuck Guzis via cctalk <cclist at sydex.com; cctalk at classiccmp.org> wrote:
On 4/4/21 8:28 PM, ED SHARPE via cctalk wrote:
>
> Sad but true it all looks the same to me most times . In my life time I have typed far more upper case material than upoer...lower stuff..
> In usaf the typewriters? we used to send massive? Mars radio messages between name. And families.... had no lower case
>
> Them the years of teletypes,and upoer case computer terminals. .. it's been a hard life... alas
>
What's wrong with upper case?? Do you know of any keypunches with lower
case?
--Chuck
At 12:19 AM 3/04/2021 -0600, you wrote:
>On 4/2/21 10:27 PM, Guy Dunphy via cctalk wrote:
>> There are defects in your 'good' flatbed image too - for eg the
>> bleed-through of the orange lettering on the other side of the
>> sheet. The way to correct that is to use a black, highly light
>> absorbent backing sheet. Eg black velvet.
>
>Hum.
>
>Why do so many scanners come with glossy white (usually on foam) backing
>to hold the image down?
>
>I'm questioning why they do that, not your recommendation.
I think it is a combination of habit, and marketting/customer expectations.
People intuitively expect the white backing, and for many scanning tasks
it is preferable. Yet for scanning anything printed on both sides of thin
paper, it's a real problem.
I have a sheet of matt black plastic, and some black velvet cloth for this.
The plastic is easier to use, but the velvet works better for really
thin paper with a lot of visual bleed through. The more light absorbent
the better. If I ever find a sheet of 'vanta black' (new light absorbent
substance, very close to 100%, look it up) I'll be using that.
That's not the only 'strange & unfortunate lack' in typical scanners.
Another is that the raised plastic bezel goes all the way round the glass,
rather than having at least one of the glass long sides be flat right
to the edge, with the scanner sensor also going very close to the edge.
This is needed for scanning sheets larger than the bed, and also very
essential for scanning pages of books that are too thick to allow getting
any page flat on the typical scanner bed.
There are special 'edge scanners' that allow this - draping the book over
the side of the scanner, so one page can be fully flat on the glass.
They cost _much_ more than normal scanners. And yet the actual
construction has very little that would cost more to manufacture.
Construction is just arranged a little differently. The higher cost is
another case of 'marketting.'
Guy
Minerva and SMSQ/E, both related to Sinclair QDOS, the original OS for
the Sinclair QL.
https://youtu.be/yU0ptNyNqcI
And EmuTOS, a FOSS recreation of Atari TOS & GEM, which reached v1.0
about 6 months ago.
https://youtu.be/eqrM4TE5jTM
I knew about the 1st 2, but this video taught me a lot. It's an
insular community and most materials are aimed at people who already
know about it.
I wrote a blog post to explain a bit of the history and context:
https://liam-on-linux.livejournal.com/78738.html
Found via the m68k.info community:
https://m68k.info/#sinclairql:video:SMSQE:mar2021
Which in turn I found when I asked if there were any 16-bit homebrew
computers out there and learned of the Kiwi 68K:
https://www.ist-schlau.de/
--
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
If there is anyone on the list familiar with scanners I'd be most grateful
for some advice please.
Some time ago I bought a HP 8270 sheet feed (full duplex) scanner NOS. I
wanted to digitise a whole heap of old computer documentation and for a
little while I've been working through the big heap of stuff. But for quite
some time I've had an issue with scans that go through the sheet feeder
(irrespective of whether I do them double sided or not). Basically the
problem is that anything that goes via the sheet feeder has issues with
"streaks" in the document whereas anything done on the flat bed is perfect
(I have some links to some examples below).
By way of clarity, anything done on the flatbed the lamp traverses the flat
bed to do the scan. For sheet fed items the lamp is moved to specific slot
on the scanner and the sheet feeder takes over wrapping the document past
the lamp. Given that flat bed scans are OK I don't think its an issue with
the lamp.
I've done the following things to try to resolve the issue with no joy:
* Checked for any specific settings
* Tried doing scans in grayscale
* Tried increasing the resolution (default is 300dpi) to slow the speed that
the document is fed through the feeder.
According to HP the issue is a cleanliness one i.e. dirt on the glass can
cause reflections. I've followed their instructions for cleaning the glass
but still no joy.
Flatbed example.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1jYiFzERiZiaq7-WoTiQ2eIzITn6giviR/view?usp=s
haring
Sheet feed example.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1WF4SHbwV3bVET_bzwIUiULywbCGZBf_V/view?usp=s
haring
Thank you!!!
Kevin Parker
> On Apr 1, 2021, at 10:00 AM,Al Kossow <aek at bitsavers.org <mailto:aek at bitsavers.org>> wrote:
>
>
> Interpress had nothing to do with the Alto
>
> Talk to Paul McJones re. Interpress translation
I included Press-to-{PostScript,PDF} conversion in the program that generated http://xeroxalto.computerhistory.org, but I don?t have any code for Interpress.
> From: Al Kossow
> Dover was not an Interpress printer
Yeah, it used Press format. BTW, here:
http://ana-3.lcs.mit.edu/~jnc/tech/unix/s2/press.c
is the program from our V6 Unix machine to produce PRESS format files for the
MIT Dover. (.v was the format for the Varian printer, a poor man's XGP, but
which had finer resolution; our copy of troff had been hacked to produce .v
format output.)
Noel
I'm in the middle of imaging a set of 5 1/4" diskettes from 1988
containing the Interpress conformance test suite.
My plan is to
- convert the MS-DOS backup format images to files (trivial)
- find interpress to postscript converter to print the files.
- compare them to the reference pictures to verify I got them all.
The third part is the hard one. I believe there was a document to go along
with the images, so you could verify they printed as expected. I don't
think I have that any more. I'm looking for pointers to an online copy. My
search has come up empty.
Of course, the alternative is if someone has an interpress printer. We
could just print them. Perhaps Curious Marc has one alongside the Alto?
Hello, DEC enthusiasts -
I've got some 5-1/4" disks here that purport to be from a DECmate
(probably II) and may have data offloaded from a bigger system. But the
disks don't have any recognizable trace of a filesystem on them; just
vast swathes of data that looks like this:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/12EO4Lg1Uh7NvCUJksHQ2AUiK550OX7UJ/view?usp=…
It seems to be a pattern of a near-zero byte followed by some other
byte. It's like they're storing 12-bit words in 16 bits or something.
Does anyone recognize this sort of thing, just eyeballing it?
- David
> Date: Mon, 29 Mar 2021 21:27:58 -0400
> From: Chris Zach <cz at alembic.crystel.com>
> To: dstalk at execulink.com, "General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic
> Posts" <cctalk at classiccmp.org>
> Subject: Re: Pro350/"XT" pre-release documents
> Message-ID: <9f8a2890-d268-bb19-1989-e26364c9c7a8 at alembic.crystel.com>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8; format=flowed
>
> Well, what I have is this:
>
> SPSS/Pro introductory guide
> (2) SPSS/Pro for DEC professional/350
> SPSS-X User's guide, third edition (Think telephone book)
> 4 disks VOL NAME SPSSPRO1 (to 4)
>
>
> Hey, in one of the manuals there is an additional disk SPSS/Pro
> DEMONSTRATION
>
> I guess I can copy them on my Pro/380 to other disks, but does anyone
> have a better way to make a spare copy? They are almost 40 years old at
> this point...
>
> Interesting stuff.
>
> C
Chris,
There was also a SPSS-11 for RSX and your SPSS for Pro/350 would likely be a later version. A few years ago I bought the SPSS-11 manual from an Ebay seller. It looks like SPSS-11 ran a lot like the IBM OS/360 version in that it was feed a file of input and it produced a file of output (like a batch job).
The Pro 350 version was likely a bit more interactive and I would be very interested in getting a copy of it. As far as the best way to get a copy made, it would be great to read them on a M+ system that has TCP/IP or is at least connected to HECnet so the disk images could be uploaded somewhere. Also, the manuals would be of interest as well. The SPSS-11 manual I have is a relatively thin paperback book.
Thanks,
Mark
Also came across a TSX Plus reference guide and install guide, from
1985. These two fill a very large binder, have they already been scanned?
If not I'll burn out my scanner doing these. If so I can pulp or Ebay them.
C
Hi!
Given that other people seem interested in the Pro/350 series systems I
thought I would dig out and scan some of the remaining manuals I have.
These seem to have come from an agreement with SPSS back in 1982 or so
and all appear to be draft documents.
I'll upload them as I scan them (takes time) to https://www.crystel.com/pdp
I'll upload a PDF file along with a zip file of the scans at 300dpi.
Question: Would the SPSS manuals be interesting?
Also I have an RSX11M 3.2 manual set in a big binder, worth scanning or
is that up there already? I'm assuming the Fortran manuals have already
been scanned in the past.
Final thought: Looks like I have the spss/x floppies for the Pro version
1.0, are those out there somewhere already?
Thanks!
Chris
Hopefully this is an easy question - are the sources for the XXDP
diagnostics online anywhere? I particularly looking for NKXA, the
Falcon-11/KXT11/DCT11 one.
Thanks,
Bob
Ladies and Gentlemen,
I was sifting through a huge box of industrial junk in my basement and
found two NIB DEC H8575-A DB25 to MMJ adaptors in their original bags
with a 1991 date code. The DB25 is female and the MMJ is, of course,
a jack.
Does anybody want them for postage from Athabasca, Alberta?
--
Richard Loken VE6BSV : "...underneath those tuques we wear,
Athabasca, Alberta Canada : our heads are naked!"
** rlloken at telus.net ** : - Arthur Black