<I am interested in purchasing the North Star Horizon. I am not local
<and don't have a trade so would be a cash deal.
<
<Do you have any info about the machine such as amount of memory, type of
<floppy(ies), last known operating system, hard drive (if any), keyboard,
<monitor, and condition (working/nonworking).
Why?
It interests me why some one wants a particular machine especially since
you do not seem to know much about it.
FYI:
NS* were setup with 16-62k of ram. There were three common OSs run on
them NS*dos(nothing like PC dos), CP/M-80, there was also UCSD pascal
P-system. I believe NS*dos reached at least V5.4. They didn't not use
a monitor or keyboard as a terminal was commonly used.
Allison
<> parallel port. In the 78-81 time frame, most video cards were 64char
<
<Probably 64*16 (exactly 1K characters). Easy to design and not wasteful
<of RAM.
Exactly aslo 64x16 was considered reasonable for TV via video modulator.
<I've got some CCS bits here - Z80 CPU card, disk controller, CP/M master
<disk and one of the boxes. It's about the smallest full S100 box I've
<ever seen.
Yep! I ahve two complete systems one has a Discus(morrow/thinkertoys)
8" 10mb(memorex 101) hard disk. Both are operational, have full docs for
them.
<CASU was a not-too-bad UK S100 manufacturer. The machines were certainly
<stable. But they didn't design all their own cards - standard
<configuration was a Cromemco Z-PU processor board and a Micromation
<Doubler disk controller I think. Oh, with those wonderful
<linear-positioner Persci drivers...
Well the persci drives were uh, uhm interesting but the S100 boards are
considered quite good.
Allison
This is semi-OT, but computers had these too (PDP-11 panel?)
These are composed of a sheet of rubber with buttons stamped into
it. On the other side of the sheet are black pieces of metal. After
a while, these keypads start to wear out, and require more pressure
or multiple tries. How can I fix this?
______________________________________________________
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Well, certainly the find of the day was the IBM 5100 manuals. I found
them in a crusty used book store in a last-class indoor flea market,
buried amongst old binders.
I got the "APL Introduction" and "APL Reference Manual" and the "BASIC
Introduction" and "BASIC Reference Manual". The BASIC portion is a
photocopy of the original but the APL set is the original. By the way,
there's a reason why you don't see Microsoft Visual APL these days. What
a messed up language!
Sam Alternate e-mail: dastar(a)siconic.com
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Ever onward.
September 26 & 27...Vintage Computer Festival 2
See http://www.siconic.com/vcf for details!
[Last web page update: 05/11/98]
You should be able to find compatible pens at any drafting supply house
that deals in plotter supplies. There are a couple of mail-order ones as
well -- try looking in the ads in Cadence or Cadalyst magazines.
You should be able to use almost any CAD package -- just contact the
tech folks for the package as to which drivers to use if they don't
specify the 7475.
Paul Braun
NerdWare
"Max Eskin" <maxeskin(a)hotmail.com> wrote:
> Uh-huh. It's time to move out of my apartment. Is the HP 3000 any
> good (in terms of how interesting it is)?
Well, that depends how you define interesting. If you are thinking of
the purported Chinese curse "may you live in interesting times", then
I'd have to say no, they just work and don't try to be interesting at
all. That's why I like 'em.
On the other hand, they run an operating system called MPE that is
interesting in that it's pretty much its own thing, so if you're
thinking of the OS world in terms of "Windows" vs. "Unix" vs. "old
stuff that isn't relevant any more" then this will expand your mind
and maybe introduce you to interesting things like files that aren't
just streams of bytes and pseudo-half-duplexish terminal I/O that is
oriented toward transferring blocks of characters, not just one at a
time.
I looked at the URL that Greg Troutman posted. The description is
about as clear as mud and somewhat less useful, but it does make clear
that what is offered is a fairly large system. It's hard to say what
an HP3000 is beyond "a minicomputer that runs MPE" because there are
several different architectures (two major instruction-set flavors
with several different hardware and I/O schemes) that could be inside
the box. The series number is how you tell them apart; series >= 900
is PA-RISC and <= 70 (or with the name "Micro <mumble>" in place of a
series) is the "classic" 16-bit stack-architecture.
At a guess the system is a late-model "classic" (probably a Series
64/68/70), or an early-model PA-RISC (like a Series 950). If it is
still supported by HP, HP is probably real close to dropping hardware
maintenance on it.
Oh yeah, that some of the classics are called "Micro" is a hint:
they're smaller, lighter, and their Thirst for Power may be satisfied
with residential electrical service.
-Frank McConnell "I want my MPE" (w/apologies to Dire Straits)
Sam Ismail <dastar(a)wco.com> wrote:
> I just picked up an HP 7475A Plotter ($5) and want to get it working.
> Anyone know where I can get a set of pens for it? Also, what software can
> use this thing? It has an RS-232 port.
Hmm, looks like HP discontinued all the pens and stuff in late 1995.
They now suggest calling some other vendors who I guess may still make
the pens. See
http://www.hp.com/cposupport/plotters/support_doc/bpp01965.html for
names and numbers.
Or just go to http://www.hp.com, click on the "search" link,
type in "plotter pens" and click the <mumble> button. That will
get you to a bunch of documents of varying usefulness including
the above.
Sometimes you can turn up new-old-stock fiber-tip pens in the usual
places (swap meet, with other old computer stuff, &c). NOS in this
case means still sealed in a foil bag that has a "use by" date. I've
no idea how well the pens keep past that date, but those are the sorts
of things we used to use with the plotters in an office environment.
What might be better at this point in time is to look for refillable
drafting pens. I don't know, I've never tried to use those.
As for software, the FAQ says that there are Win3.1 and Win95 printer
drivers for these things! Imagine that...no, actually, I think I'd
rather not. What the plotter really wants to see is called HP-GL;
it's pretty much a command language with pen-motion primitives for
drawing lines and text. I can't remember how much you could get it to
do w/r/t shapes and filling or whether you had to do that on the
computer side and turn it into an HP-GL sequence for the plotter.
Check your ObClassic Graphics Package to see if it can spit out HP-GL.
-Frank McConnell
I just picked up an HP 7475A Plotter ($5) and want to get it working.
Anyone know where I can get a set of pens for it? Also, what software can
use this thing? It has an RS-232 port.
Sam Alternate e-mail: dastar(a)siconic.com
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Ever onward.
September 26 & 27...Vintage Computer Festival 2
See http://www.siconic.com/vcf for details!
[Last web page update: 05/11/98]
All,
Got something I can't use and hope one of you can. Available for
cost of shipping (or free for pickup in San Antonio, Texas).
1 ea. Vertical floor pedestal case for Dec Rainbow.
Encloses the Rainbow system unit and holds it vertical so it's a
tower configuration. Has nice vents top and bottom and exits top and bottom
for power and monitor/keyboard cables.
Won't work with *my* Rainbow. Causes the computer to hang, crash,
or otherwise fail either on installation or a few minutes later. My
motherboard is pretty loaded up with daughtercards and I'll bet one of them
is vibrating or jarring loose in the vertical orientation. I decided I can
live with a desktop Rainbow as opposed to a floor tower.
One other quirk, the cooling air flows *down* in this setup. The
fan has to fight gravity to cool the system. On the other hand, at least it
doesn't suck dirt off the floor into the system's innards.
Anyone interested, contact me at mtapley(a)swri.edu
- Mark
Truely rare:
PDP1/4/5/6/9 Collectively there may have been 3000 total.
<PERQ 3a, PERQ 2T4 (a lot rarer than the 3a, BTW), HH Tiger ?, AMT DAP
<(?), Tandy Deluxe CoCo, PDP11/74, HP95-C (OK, it's a calculator), Philips
11/74, there were at most 4 possibly 5 constructed and all 4 within DEC
were disassembled and used as 11/70s or scrapped. The fifth was at CMU
and that was also scrapped. NEver made it to production as it was more
powerful that vax780 and would never pass EMI/RFI standards that were
appearing.
Allison
-----Original Message-----
From: Sam Ismail <dastar(a)wco.com>
To: Discussion re-collecting of classic computers
<classiccmp(a)u.washington.edu>
Date: Sunday, 17 May 1998 8:07
Subject: IBM 5100 Manual Set
>
>Well, certainly the find of the day was the IBM 5100 manuals. I found
>them in a crusty used book store in a last-class indoor flea market,
>buried amongst old binders.
>
>I got the "APL Introduction" and "APL Reference Manual" and the "BASIC
>Introduction" and "BASIC Reference Manual". The BASIC portion is a
>photocopy of the original but the APL set is the original. By the way,
>there's a reason why you don't see Microsoft Visual APL these days. What
>a messed up language!
>
>Sam Alternate e-mail:
dastar(a)siconic.com
>---------------------------------------------------------------------------
----
>Ever onward.
>
> September 26 & 27...Vintage Computer Festival 2
> See http://www.siconic.com/vcf for details!
> [Last web page update: 05/11/98]
>
email: desieh(a)southcom.com.au
desieh(a)bigfoot.com
museum_curator(a)hotmail.com
Apple Lisa Web Page:
http://www.southcom.com.au/~desieh/index.htm
yeah there is lots of good finds out there if you take the trouble to look
for them.....
I love digging around at my local 'tip shop' for old computers and books....
<> CCS, compupro, altos, Vector and a few others had S100 boxen that were
<> equal or better (compupro was really good!).
<
<Altos, Allison? All of the ones that I have ever seen were essentially
<single board computers.
Don,
Single board as in s100 or single board as in no bus? The early ones
were SBC s100 though it ws common to put them in a box with more IO,
hard disk or customer unique periperals.
There were several single board systems that were s100 bus, SDS, teltek,
macrotec were a few. Some were complete systems on one card others
required FDC or other IO, most could be extended using hard disk
controllers, more IO or multiple processors.
Allison
At 09:25 PM 5/13/98 -0400, you wrote:
>last Friday May 8th -- coincidentally the 10th anniversary of the
>death of Robert A. Heinlein {who wrote about the most _likeable_
Ummm... hate to be nit-picky, but RAH passed on while I was working with
Aetna, about 5? years ago... I remember; I cried. (Jerry Garcia was when
I was at Longs, the first time around.)
At 09:26 PM 5/13/98 -0500, you wrote:
>The problem with introducing elementary and middle school kids to
>computers so early is that they either a) know more than the lab admin, or
>b) aren't allowed to use them in any constructive way. I'm only in the
>tenth grade, but I've already seen seven new labs installed in area schools.
>The school districts almost ALWAYS spend WAY too much on new computers,
The problem there isn't that computers are a waste of money; it's that the
educators aren't knowledgeable enough to know how to put them to use. It
would be better to buy a few less computers and send the teachers to a
course on how to integrate computers into their curriculum.
My girlfriend does a wonderful job of putting computers to work. So does
the rest of her school. But she has an advantage; not only did she grow
up/lives in SF (where computers are overly prevalent) but she has me for a
boyfriend, one brother is a successful programmer/sysadmin, and the other
one is going to school for the same. She has spread herknowledge/skills to
the rest of the school.
>aren't used until high school, when word processing/database, programming,
A shame and a waste.
>and other such courses are offered. Anything before is mainly a waste of
>money.
Not true. Computers without training (as in ANY industry) are a waste of
time. Computers in the hands of educators who nkow what they're doing is
an incredibly powerful tool.
>What about the 'net? I don't understand why people think that the
>internet is such a great "tool" that will help schools. Just do a search
>for "barbie" on Yahoo. Or, for that matter, try "video" or something
The 'net is a tool for communication, excellent at bringing together people
of disparate backgrounds. Just as we're doing here. I've a friend who's
on his way back from South Africa; when he gets back, he and Rachel are
going to get together to see about getting kids there talking with kids here.
It is also an excellent reference. Sure, putting a single word into
Yahoo's search engine will get you all kinds of (irrelevant) hits, but
something like AltaVista's search syntax is incredible, if you know how to
use it, and it does promote thinking about your problem/goal to come up
with the keywords that will return the most relevant hits.
>In other words, most of the money spent on computer equipment is a waste.
Well, send 'em out here to Garden Village Elementary in Daly City. They'll
put 'em to use.
At 04:22 PM 5/13/98 -0500, you wrote:
>Anyone heard of such a beast. It's a rather large "laptop" with a
scrunched lcd
>display. Has two half height 5 1/4 floppies. From the keyboard it looks
like a
>pc clone, but it also has a db25 terminal out port on the back.
Yep. Got one. It is a semi-compatible PC, iirc.
<[NS* terminal .vs. video board]
<
<Oh, agreed. The original Horizon configuration was to have a serial
<terminal. I seem to recall a pair of 8251-based serial ports on the
<motherboard, one of which was used for this.
There was exactly that, two serial ports, a hearbeat interrupt and a
parallel port. In the 78-81 time frame, most video cards were 64char
and only some had decenders. Terminals onthe other hand were 80char,
full upper/lowercase and generally required less software than a memory
mapped display.
<a serial port (and a standard MDA card), etc), I wondered if a Horizon co
<be set up with an S100 video card as well. I guess it can.
Most s100 crates could be...even a SOL could ahve more than one!
<YEs, it does look to be a nice machine. One day, when I've got a few
<minuts spare, I'll dig mine out again and look at it more seriously.
After working with the Altairs noisy bus and toggling boot loaders
it was a pleasure to see good signals and boot on reset. The IMSAI
was a better machine than altair but when I moved up I really didn't want
a front pannel and I needed more serial IO, the NS* box, CPU and the MDS I
had in the altair solved most of my problems.
CCS, compupro, altos, Vector and a few others had S100 boxen that were
equal or better (compupro was really good!).
Allison
<email: desieh(a)southcom.com.au
< desieh(a)bigfoot.com
< museum_curator(a)hotmail.com
<Apple Lisa Web Page:
<http://www.southcom.com.au/~desieh/index.htm
<
<I have own a NorthStar Horizon very nice little computer abit heavy, mine
<in the wooden box and has a pair of 5 1/4" floppy drives in the front an
<yes it runs off an terminal.....
Of course it does, mine has for 20 years!
<mine even has full docs and the origianl receipt of purchates from aroun
<1976.....
Try '78 or very late 77 as the MDS floppy predated the horizon.
<many of the cards inside it arom from an Altair if my memory is correct..
<A VDM -1? i think thats whats its called...anyway in the manual for this
<video card it has the source code for the programmng code for a Altair an
<IMSAl mechines....
Yes, still have my VDM-1 (from 1976) and the docs for it. Originally used
in my altair.
Brief history: I started with S100 in 1975 with the order of my altair
(box, 4k, acr and PIO) assembled it in early january 1975. Here in the US
the article was December 1974, I ordered as soon as I recieved the
magazine (Popular electronics), so it has a low serial number. Over time
It was extended with more ran and a VDM-1. Within a few months the NS*
MDS floppy was offered and I bought the kit, still have that too. The
Altair with it's noisy bus was not reliable and I was tiring of it's poor
power supply (despite mods), poor cooling and flimsy box. When NS
introduced the Horizon I ordered the s100 box kit (back then metal top was
optional!) and the CPU to get a z80 and transfered my ram, MDS floppy,
VDM-1, ACR, PIO to the NS* horizon case in early 1978. Less than a year
later I would add a Heath H19, Anadex dp800 printer and more ram.
Now twenty years later I still have the Horizon and the H19 in use nearly
daily with a softsector floppy and a teltek HDC. The MDS floppy, DP800
and VDM-1 are used with another system less freqently (installed in a
Netronics explorer 8085). I might add the three SA400s still work just
fine. Most of the altair stuff is stored, front pannel is good for debug
but otherwise too unreliable. I built the NS* Horizon as it was the first
system I'd seen in late '77 that looked like 24x7x365 was possible. Over
the years it would be altered, restored to original and hit by lightening
twice...and it's still ticking.
<only around 30,000 of these fine mechines where ever built so i would sa
<that they are very rare these days....
They are common enough in the USA being made in California.
Allison
-----Original Message-----
From: Tony Duell <ard(a)p850ug1.demon.co.uk>
To: Discussion re-collecting of classic computers
<classiccmp(a)u.washington.edu>
Date: Saturday, 16 May 1998 11:08
Subject: Re: Another EBay absurdity
>> >> IBM PC model 5150: $100 Please. Hundreds of thousands made.
Free.
>> Laugh it into the ground... Free is the only price. And if that's not
good
>> enough, I recently picked up a Compaq 386/20 with multisync VGA monitor
for
>> free...Too bad I can't get the &^$&$(@$%#& 3.5" floppy to work.
>
>Maybe that's why the 5150 is more desirable :-). After all, you can
>always fix those given the techref - no custom chips, full schematics,
>etc. No problem...
>
>> Now to add something new to the list... What are the best/worst for RFI?
>
>Well, my old Tandy model 1 radiates a bit.
>
>I would think some of the old DEC backplanes with no metal screening at
>all (like the RK11-C and DX11, and even machines in the BA11-F, like the
>PDP11/45) would not be trivial to get through EMC tests. I've never had
>problems running any of my machines with normal broadcast radio/TV in
>adjacent rooms, so it's not a big problem in that sense, but it may be a
>pain for amateur/SWL work.
>
>Worst problem I know is that the harmonics of both the TV line scan and
>the VGA line scan are close enough to our standard time service (Rugby
>MSF on 60kHz) to totally swamp the RF stage of any such receiver. I
>generally have to put the aerial/RF stage in another room at least.
>
>-tony
>
heh well on a more moden note my IBM monitor is terible for RF floating
around
when the monitor kicks in it makes all lights and other computers in the
room flicker....
oh yeah it dosent like to be in the room with any other computers ether or
thie IBM monitor
will start to play up as well.......
Oh well......I suppose IBM dosent like to other too many of these mechines
around......
The only problem I have with my rather conventional equipment in terms
of RFI is when my monitor changes modes, and I am using an AM
receiver right next to it. The sound flickers a bit. I would think
that the home computers and games systems like C64, PCjr, etc.
couldn't put out too much RFI, since they used TVs for monitors...
>
>Maybe that's why the 5150 is more desirable :-). After all, you can
>always fix those given the techref - no custom chips, full schematics,
>etc. No problem...
>
>> Now to add something new to the list... What are the best/worst for
RFI?
>
>Well, my old Tandy model 1 radiates a bit.
>
>I would think some of the old DEC backplanes with no metal screening at
>all (like the RK11-C and DX11, and even machines in the BA11-F, like
the
>PDP11/45) would not be trivial to get through EMC tests. I've never had
>problems running any of my machines with normal broadcast radio/TV in
>adjacent rooms, so it's not a big problem in that sense, but it may be
a
>pain for amateur/SWL work.
>
>Worst problem I know is that the harmonics of both the TV line scan and
>the VGA line scan are close enough to our standard time service (Rugby
>MSF on 60kHz) to totally swamp the RF stage of any such receiver. I
>generally have to put the aerial/RF stage in another room at least.
>
>-tony
>
>
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>I used to collect coins when I was a kid, and the Blue Book (wholesale
>values) and Red Book (retail values) were my bibles. Coins had a pretty
>good grading system, and you could find fairly reliable production data.
>I don't know of anybody that has tried to do anything close to this for
>computers.
I have "A Collector's Guide to Personal Computers and Pocket Calculators"
by Dr. Thomas F. Haddock that attempts to price old computers. They
don't do a very good job, though. According to the book, an Apple IIc is
worth $200 - $400 and a Lisa 1 is worth $50 - $150. To be fair, though,
the book is from 1993. Anybody know of anything more recent?
Tom Owad
In a message dated 98-05-15 21:07:04 EDT, you write:
<< > Now to add something new to the list... What are the best/worst for RFI?
>>
I had an apple ][+ which caused major tv interference. my particular apple
had a revision 6 motherboard i believe. later models had a different board and
had some metal shielding on the inside. earlier models had no provisions for
it.
david
Noone really cares about used-up silicon. My uncle works at a major
company that builds semiconductor factories (A meta-semiconductor
factory?), the name of whic escapes me. It is the major one, though.
Anyway, he has an bad wafer, of Pentium chips.
By the way, is it theoretically possible to make an IC with only
a prototype IC and an arbitrary amount of machinery?
>>into it within the first 5 or so hits.
>
>Yes, there's an image of the 4004 die on Coulson's site. But if
>collecting classic computers was only about finding GIFs on the
>web, we'd all have pretty big collections, wouldn't we? :-)
>
>Sad to say, but I'd like to get two 4004s - one to smash, one to
>keep as-is. I get the impression they're considerably less rare
>than many of the computers we collect, having been used in more
>popular computerized devices.
>
>For that matter, I'd like to get more rejected silicon dies.
>I have one three-inch wafer containing an HP CPU from the early
>80s, and I lusted at the eight-inch wafers I saw at a friend's
>office. Anyone know anyone at a foundry? Or do they religiously
>recycle the silicon after it's been contaminated with circuitry?
>
>- John
>Jefferson Computer Museum <http://www.threedee.com/jcm>
>
>
>
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In a message dated 98-05-13 10:41:03 EDT, you write:
<< Actually, David Greelish (of "historically brewed" and the "classic
computing society") is attempting just such an online price guide. His
efforts so far can be seen on:
http://members.aol.com/mtpro/ >>
what a joke! i just webbed there not long ago and checked his price guide. an
H89 for $400? wow, i got mine for free! a pcjr for $50? i cant even give one
away! a trs80 model 1 for $200? yea, right! from his "prices" i could sell
part of my collection for over $1500. the list is quite sparse though. what
about my osi or my portable pc or mac512k with a hyperdrive or my tandy 102 or
atari portfolio? i seldom take seriously anyone who attempts to put market
prices on old computers. for some light reading and humour goto the above url
and check for yourself.
david
<> NS* were setup with 16-62k of ram. There were three common OSs run on
<> them NS*dos(nothing like PC dos), CP/M-80, there was also UCSD pascal
<> P-system. I believe NS*dos reached at least V5.4. They didn't not use
<> a monitor or keyboard as a terminal was commonly used.
<
<While agreeing 100% with what you say, is there any reason why you
<couldn't put one of the many S100 video boards into an NS* and plug a
<monitor into that You'd probably still need a terminal for text I/O, but
<I can't see why you can't have a separate graphics display as well.
Typical NS* was set up that way. That was not to say they were configured
with an assortment of third party cards. Mine never had a NS* ram card
>from 1978 on, already had Seals and PT 8kx8 on hand. Also used a PT
VDM-1 until I got an H19 a few weeks later. No doubt over time most any
combination of cards made it in to a NS* crate. It was a good crate for
upgrading and mods.
Allison
