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101090 discussions

by maxeskin＠hotmail.com

I'm sorry that this is OT, but I thought everyone should know that Apple has announced that upcoming laptops will NOT support SCSI or floppy drives (according to MSNBC). It's nice to know that now that Steve Jobs is back, Apple's gotten back to innovationg and changing stuff. I doubt the market cares, however. ______________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free Email at http://www.hotmail.com

28 years, 1 month

FS: Panasonic JR-200U

by manney＠lrbcg.com

Anyone interested in one? Excellent condition (still with packaging) and manuals. manney(a)lrbcg.com "Un sot trouve toujours un plus sot qui l'admire."

28 years, 1 month

strange z-80 / CP/M box

by rigdonj＠intellistar.net

Hmmm. Never heard of that but I don't think that's what he has. I had the impression that his drives are part of the main unit. Dammed shame your drives were scrapped out. I'd love to have one for my 5100. Joe At 08:49 PM 5/12/98 -0400, you wrote: >> It's not a 5100! They only had a single tape drive. > >No, IBM did have MASSIVE 8 inch drives for the 5100 (5108?). My system had >two of the small file cabinet sized things, but they were scrapped out. > >William Donzelli >william(a)ans.net > >

28 years, 1 month

strange z-80 / CP/M box

by rigdonj＠intellistar.net

At 02:22 PM 5/12/98 -0500, you wrote: > >I think we also acquired an IBM 5100. >This animal was without docs, but it boots to basic and has >a small mono screen and twin 8 inch drives. All the logic is >in one housing with the screen. I know someone was asking >around about such a computer recently. It's not a 5100! They only had a single tape drive. Joe

28 years, 1 month

Hello - I'm a new reader / STUDENTS

by COAKLEY＠AC.GRIN.EDU

> Are there any students besides Derek on the list? Oh, what the heck. I'm a third-year Russian major at Grinnell College. And, just to keep this minimally on-topic, I have a minor Kaypro problem. My Kaypro 4 had one of its original floppy drives replaced with a half-height drive before I got it, leaving a gaping hole in the front. I wasn't thrilled about this even when the drive worked, but it's stopped working, so I want to get rid of it. Anybody have a source for full-height double-sided 5-1/4" floppy drives? Thanks, -- Ben Coakley http://www.math.grin.edu/~coakley coakley(a)ac.grin.edu Station Manager, KDIC 88.5 FM CBEL: Xavier OH Wow, this is global. -Mtn Goats

28 years, 1 month

Commodore 128 cabling

by red＠bears.org

Hi. I picked up a C=128 with a pair of 1571 drives and a 1902 monitor at a thrift shop the other day. I'm a bit of a Commodore gumby---I only ever knew one guy who had one, and it was a C=64. I couldn't find any of the cables when I bought it. I actually did go back this morning and found a few of them, so I have a few questions. The 1902 monitor has 5- and 8-pin DIN connectors. The C=128 has 5- and 8-pin DIN connectors for video, along with a DE9f for 'RGBI'. The video cable I found has a 5-pin connection labelled 'Computer' and an 8-pin connection labelled 'Monitor'. This sounds pretty straightforward. So my question is, which jacks are used for what? Will I not be able to use 80 column mode with this cable? Should I wire a straight-through DIN-8 cable and use that instead of the one I have? What do I gain by using the RGBI connector? Would one of the Tandy RGB monitors work with it? The thrift has one, either a CM-3 or CM-5. I forget which. Also, I was unable to locate the power supply. I notice it has the same connection as my A500 supply, except the switch is on the CPU instead of the PS. Could I use the A500 supply on the C=128 until I can dig up a C=128 (or even C=64?) supply? ok r. PS; I'm still trying to find info on that TI-99/4A video cable. (:

28 years, 1 month

Fun at lunch

by dlw＠trailingedge.com

My wife informed me today that she couldn't join me for lunch so I decided to take the time and spend it visiting a couple of thrifts here. Glad I did. I picked up a Commodore C64 (in the shorten C128 style case, sans power supply) just for the heck of it, it was only $0.80 along with a C2N Cassette drive and 2 Kraft KC3 PC/Apple 2 joysticks. Those are nice ones. But what really caught my eye was a small box in the back of the top shelf. It was a Radio Shack MC-10 Micro Color Computer, missing the power supply of course. I brought it back to the office and asked our sysadmin if he could load Office 98 on my new portable for me. He didn't know what to say. :-) Anyone have anything for the MC-10? Doc, software, etc. The other big find, to me anyway, was a book for $0.50, INTRODUCTION TO DEC SYSTEM-10: TIME-SHARING AND BATCH. This book is great! Now I just need a system to play with. More books and computers, that'll teach my wife to skip out on lunch. :-) ----- David Williams - Computer Packrat dlw(a)trailingedge.com http://www.trailingedge.com

28 years, 1 month

More Kaypro problems

by scottk5＠ibm.net

Re: More Kaypro problems On Mon, 11 May 1998, Cliff Boyer wrote: > Hello, > > My my name is Cliff Boyer and I too have a Kaypro 10 problem. > Sounds a little like a 12-Step meeting....hello, my name is Kirk and I have a Xerox 16/8 problem..:-) I'm having the same sort of problem with my Xerox, with a Shugart 512 10MB HDD. I can put the drive on another MFM controller and it will initialize and format just fine with no errors, but on the WD controller in the Xerox under CPM it takes hours and hours to initialize and verify...then when I try to make partititons, CPM reports an error, that there is data on the disk, and dumps me back to the initialization routine. Could this possibly be the controller and is there any alternative to spending $75.00 to get another one? Kirk Scott scottk5(a)ibm.net

28 years, 1 month

Forward: Free Sun386i in Chelmsford MA [gwr@mc.com: Free Sun 386i]

by maynard＠jmg.com

Saw this on the 'current-users' netbsd list and figured some folks here might be interested. I cannot vouge for this gentleman, though I know he is one of the Sun-3 port maintainers for NetBSD and strongly suspect he's a 'nice guy.' ;-) - - --jmg - - ------- Start of forwarded message ------- Date: Tue, 12 May 1998 10:29:00 -0400 From: "Gordon W. Ross" <gwr(a)mc.com> To: current-users(a)NetBSD.ORG Subject: Free Sun 386i Delivered-To: current-users(a)NetBSD.ORG Anyone want a free Sun386i? It's the bigger one (server) model /25 or something like that. I forget. Color tube. It works, and has SunOS 4.0.3 as I recall, and DOSmerge. Way too heavy to ship. You pick it up in Chelmsford, MA. Pass this along. It goes to the scrap yard in a week. Apologies for the noise... Gordon

28 years, 1 month

UNIVAC Core Memory Cards (Screens) Available

by drfcline＠netw.com

Re: Loren's Everly's question on May 11th concerning IBM 1500. About 20 years ago, against my wife's admonitions, I bought an old IBM 1500. I paid a bunch of kids to open core memory modules so that I could find and mount a core board and a controller card on the wall. I have a friend, Jack Harper, on the list who asked for a core card, and said he thought there might be others of you interested in this unique piece of history. I have pictures of them on my website at: www.netw.com/~DrFCline/ For those of you interested have a look, and contact me if you wish. Foster

28 years, 1 month

Calculator displays

by allisonp＠world.std.com

<Gas discharge has the cathode suspended in the gas, and it is the gas <around it that glows, not the surface of the cathode. I have never seen <a blue one, but I imagine argon is more likely than mercury vapour <(which radiates mostly UV). Argon and mercury vapor are both UV emitters. Mercury vapor actually requires a heater to insure there is enough vapor. They have higher ignition voltages makeing them less suitable for semiconductor drive. Vacuum florescent was predominent with LEDs before LCDs displaced them. Vfs had low power, good brightness, suitable for multiplexing (nixies didn't) and operating voltages suitable for PMOS, CMOS and other semiconductor drives. The standard blue green VF would filter well to yellow, green or blue and with other phosphors red and a distinct deep blue were also done. The actual visible elemets of VF tubes could be a dot matrix, 7, 9 12, 15, 16 or more segments or even arbitrary shapes and complete words like "door open" or "overrange" as a single element. Nixie required far to much power for handheld and even the smallest were quite tall. There were variations of the nixie theme using bars but all of the high voltage needs remain and the classic neon orange color. Of the non crt display technologies I have that are in use and working: incandesent: Numitron 7segment flatface in my first freqcounter (1974). VF: alpha numeric with complete words, the loran used in my plane. VF: alpha dot matrix 40 char by 2 lines display system (C 1980) NIXIE: Yasu 355D 350mhz frequency counter. Nixie alpha: Burroughs 32 char selfscan as ascii right entry display. LED numeric: SR11 calc, various small frequency counters, DVMs and pannel meters. LED alpha: A display system using HP6508 15segment leds, 32 chars long. Allison

28 years, 1 month

Grundy Newbrain Computer wont power up.

by Andy.Keeble＠Royal-London-ins.co.uk

Can anyone help me bring an old British Computer back to life. Last night I bought a early 1980's Grundy Systems Newbrain "AD" computer >from an advert in the local newspaper. (See http://www.ndirect.co.uk/~e.tedeschi/picts/newbrain.jpg) The machine is in good condition, with original manuals, cables, psu, and even some software. Unfortunately it wont power up. Turning on, the LED display flickers and goes blank (although the manual says it should do this, although I don't get a test pattern which I think I should) On the Television/video output I just get a white screen. Does anybody know if these machines suffered from any common faults? There doesn't seem to be much information in any of the newsgroups, and apart from brief descriptions on web based computer museums, there is very little information available about this strange little computer. Any help or information, would be much appreciated. Andy

28 years, 1 month

Calculator displays

by Philip.Belben＠powertech.co.uk

Many thanks to all who replied about calculator displays. The general consensus seems to be that it was probably a Sharp EL9, an early and large hand-held calc (I'm sure it was larger than my hand, but never mind) from the early 1970s. To clear up a few misconceptions: It was not a Nixie tube machine. I have a nixie tube calc and a nixie tube voltmeter, so I know what those are. Apart from the trademark issues, I regard Nixie tubes as being ones in which you have an electrode for each _character_ rather than each segment. Usually digits, but as Tim pointed out, other symbols were available. It was not a starburst display. I have seen 14 segment and 16 segment versions, but these are still based on straight lines, not curves, and the numerals are still the good old 7-segment ugly ones. It was also not the display I have in my other digital voltmeter (Dynamco, I think) which has as digits a multilayer Perspex sandwich. Each perspex layer has a dot pattern for a character drilled in it; you light up a character by illuminating the edge of the appropriate perspex wafer, and total internal reflection confines the light to that wafer, thus lighting up the dot pattern of only the one character. Neat. I shall have a look at the website someone mentioned - thanks. But meanwhile, can someone who has a Sharp please e-mail me with a brief description of the segments of this 8-or-9-segment display and which ones light up for which digits. Many thanks. (A bit of background: Talking to my mother about watches, she said she never liked digital watches because she found 7-segment characters hard to read. I remembered this Sharp system and decided to try and find out a bit more. I wonder if it would be possible to revive it for LCDs and things - I still think it is much more readable than 7 seg.) Philip.

28 years, 1 month

Curious

by rhblake＠bbtel.com

Anyone had problems lately with the list setting you to POSTPONE? -------------------------------------------------------------------- Russ Blakeman RB Custom Services / Rt. 1 Box 62E / Harned, KY USA 40144 Phone: (502) 756-1749 Data/Fax:(502) 756-6991 Email: rhblake(a)bbtel.com or rhblake(a)bigfoot.com Website: http://members.tripod.com/~RHBLAKE/ ICQ UIN #1714857 AOL Instant Messenger "RHBLAKEMAN" * Parts/Service/Upgrades and more for MOST Computers* --------------------------------------------------------------------

28 years, 1 month

Crosspost - Osborne help needed

by rhblake＠bbtel.com

If anyone on the list can help this guy, please email him directly ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- David Dal Bianco <centenni(a)npiec.on.ca> Welland, ONT Canada - Tuesday, May 12, 1998 at 11:30:41 I have an Osborne Portable computer, Model OCC 1. I would like to get it up and running, but lack information on it such as operating system, start-up procedure and available memory. If anyone knows about this model of computer, please contact me. -------------------------------------------------------------------- Russ Blakeman RB Custom Services / Rt. 1 Box 62E / Harned, KY USA 40144 Phone: (502) 756-1749 Data/Fax:(502) 756-6991 Email: rhblake(a)bbtel.com or rhblake(a)bigfoot.com Website: http://members.tripod.com/~RHBLAKE/ ICQ UIN #1714857 AOL Instant Messenger "RHBLAKEMAN" * Parts/Service/Upgrades and more for MOST Computers* --------------------------------------------------------------------

28 years, 1 month

PPP and seriel connection

by allisonp＠world.std.com

<Now it is possible that the modems I had available then were different <from current ones, this was in 1993 and I was working with 1200 or 2400 <baud modems. No difference. DC on the line was used to sense off hook. It's possible to ignore the associated line status bit, standard software(dialers, terminal emulators" would likely look at it and indicate an error. Most modems use this to indicate a live line and not already in use. Carrier tone (dial tone) is the next level up to indicating a live line and dialing is possible. In any case if these are worked around one modem must be originate and the other answer so the signal sense is correct. While it could be handy and made for a real simple two wire interconnect it's slower than serial direct. <If you can give me references to documents describing modem and phone lin <electrical standards I would appreciate it. Not handy, I'm sure it's on the net. Allison

28 years, 1 month

Help Needed: Kaypro 10 HDD Problems

by allisonp＠world.std.com

< If all else fails you may want to try a low level format on the hard < drive. Boot with a MS-Dos ver 2.10 or later, run debug. At the '_' < prompt type in g=c800:5 which should access the controller rom and < enable you to low level format (it is <crudely> menu driven). Your < Tandon has 306 cylinders, 4 heads and 17 sectors per track. After the < low level format procede with the high level partitioning and < formatting. < Marty That would work if it were a dos box. It's a kaypro CP/M machine with hard disk via host adaptor. However, in all likelyhood there are bad sectors on the drive and a FORMAT of the drive may clear the errors. The problem is that you need the floppies with the disk utilities to do that and restore the OS back to the disk (never minding all the other stuff on it). Unlike dos when I say FORMAT I mean literally a low level format of the media. This unlike the dos initializing of the media to dos file system. Formattig the media will erase all the data and files so if you didn't backup, you loose. How do the bad sectors arise? Heat, age and centrifical force assuming there were no mechanical or electrical events to munge the media. The older ST506/412 and similar drives tended to need a low level format from time to time over their mechanical life. Allison

28 years, 1 month

Amiga 600HD questions

by jfoust＠threedee.com

"Zane H. Healy" <healyzh(a)ix.netcom.com> wrote: >If you have access to USENET the Amiga newsgroups are some of the best left >(man has USENET gone down hill since I first started using it). (Insert sound of crusty old man voice) "I was on the fricking net before they even called it the Internet!" >Just beware the euphoria is running extremally high with everyone waiting for >the big announcement from Amiga, Inc. at "World of Amiga" in London this >weekend. The hype is this announcement will change the face of computing, >PERIOD, and will feature some BIG names. (Insert sound of Monty Python "Black Knight" sketch, appropriate to Amigoids who hop around on one leg shouting "It's not dead yet.") - John Jefferson Computer Museum <http://www.threedee.com/jcm>

28 years, 1 month

What's an HP A900?

by DSEAGRAV＠toad.xkl.com

I found one in (probably) nonoperating condition. Just the CPU box, nothing else. What is it? -------

28 years, 1 month

Calculator displays

by Philip.Belben＠powertech.co.uk

>>> By your later e-mail, you have that image form some website. Good, as it >>> would be almost impossible to make a reasonable ascii sketch of it. They >>> glow blue (what gas is that? argon?) and are viewed through a green filter. >> >> Is it a gas discharge or a fluorescent anode? The latter are often green/blue > > I think gas discharge, as they have the mesh anode that you referred to > in another message. Hmmm. I'm not convinced. IIRC, vacuum fluorescent displays have a hot wire cathode (thin, hard to spot) at the front, a mesh electrode near the back (anode?) and targets with greyish paint on them at the back. These targets usually glow blue-greenish when hit by electrons. But it is the paint that glows. Gas discharge has the cathode suspended in the gas, and it is the gas around it that glows, not the surface of the cathode. I have never seen a blue one, but I imagine argon is more likely than mercury vapour (which radiates mostly UV). Philip.

28 years, 1 month

Calculator displays

by Philip.Belben＠powertech.co.uk

>> It was also not the display I have in my other digital voltmeter >> (Dynamco, I think) which has as digits a multilayer Perspex sandwich. >> Each perspex layer has a dot pattern for a character drilled in it; you >> light up a character by illuminating the edge of the appropriate perspex >> wafer, and total internal reflection confines the light to that wafer, >> thus lighting up the dot pattern of only the one character. Neat. > > I've seem those used with a 2-colour (black, or illuminated red) > background for +ve or -ve results. Problem is, I can never remember if > red is +ve (as an engineer would use) or -ve (as an accountant would > use)... Actually, didn't Dynamco do that on some of their voltmeters? IIRC my Dynamco uses red for negative. Philip.

28 years, 1 month

question - how to test DMA on peecees right way?

by JRichardson＠softwright.co.uk

Hmm, did you say that you had checkit? I thought that did test the DMA controllers... maybe not, been a long time since I've used it... cheers Jules >

28 years, 1 month

TRS80 Model I Equipment

by gkatz001＠umaryland.edu

Alas, I have accepted a job offer that will take my family and me across the country into a home smaller than one we are currently renting. The Wife says that the Classic Computer Collection is NOT travelling with us. To be fair, if it DID move, I would have to store the equipment in a garage or something equally undesirable. The following equipment is in need of rescue: 3 TRS80 Model I CPU's two have keypads, one does not all are LEVEL II, 16K two have R/S lowercase mods, one has a non-R/S lc mod 2 Expansion Interface's both have 32K of RAM neither have functioning RS232 boards one has a buffered cable and SD controller one has non-buffered cable and R/S DD controller a single R/S RS232 board with a blown line driver chip might still be with us 4 R/S Shugart or Tandon Diskette Drives Two are Drive 0 designates with terminating resistors Two are Drive 1,2,3? without terminating resistors 1 VOXBOX - screws missing but functional at last test 1 TRS80 Voice Synthesizer - barely functioning at last test 1 TRS80 Line Printer 7 Box of Cassette-based tapes Unfortunately, three TRS80 Model I Monitors got tossed accidentally in a prior move, so I don't have any of these. The computers are currently located in central New Jersey. I am hoping that there is a local collector who would be interested in providing these guys with a loving home. I am currently located in Baltimore, so I can't ship them easily. Please reply via EMAIL if you are interested in retrieving these pieces of computing history. -Gary Katz

28 years, 1 month

VCF2 dates & venue

by sinasohn＠ricochet.net

At 01:18 AM 5/11/98 -0700, you wrote: > >Its now official...the Second Annual Vintage Computer Festival will be >held on September 26-27 at the Santa Clara Convention Center in Santa >Clara, California. On a similar note, there's going to be a World of Atari show in Las Vegas in August. Kinda like MacWorld, only for Atari's. (And much, much, bigger. 8^) Anyway, sounds like a lot of fun; unfortunately I won't be able to make it. However, the guy from Sacto said that if WoA is successful, he'll think about doing another Sacramento Atari Expo... So go, make it a big success... P.S., Sam, I forgot to mention that I'll be happy to bring over anything in my collection (except the big Symbolics machines or the HP3000 8^) to put on display, and I'll be after a table too, I think, to unload some of the Mac stuff Rachel's not using at school. Thanks! --------------------------------------------------------------------- O- Uncle Roger "There is pleasure pure in being mad roger(a)sinasohn.com that none but madmen know." Roger Louis Sinasohn & Associates San Francisco, California http://www.sinasohn.com/

28 years, 1 month

PLease ID CD-ROM unit

by maxeskin＠hotmail.com

This card also has some RAM-like chips. IF one were to assume that those are buffers, could one say that this is just a customized parallel port card? >> single female socket,37 pin. It is labelled CD-IFI3, and has an NEC >> D8255AC-5 chip on it. It is a standard 8-bit ISA. Could someone tell > >It's not much help but I can tell you that an 8255 is a pretty dumb 24 >line parallel I/O chip. It has the interesting feature that any write to >the mode control register (even if it doesn't change it) sets all output >lines to logic 0. That can make life interesting... > > >-tony > > ______________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free Email at http://www.hotmail.com

28 years, 1 month

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