test-drb

test-drb@ccmp.vtda.org

101090 discussions

by allisonp＠world.std.com

<Bingo! They are a single head version of the FD55F which was their <'quad' density drive - 96tpi and 250k data rate. < <What other info would you like? Thanks Don, that conformed what I thought. They are used in Visual 1050 CPM3 systems as 400kb drives. I'm looking at fitting them with a 3.5" drive to be compatable with my other CPM systems at 720/780/1.44. Allison

28 years, 1 month

I guess RSTS doesn't like RA92s...

by DSEAGRAV＠toad.xkl.com

I dragged the RA92 up here, plugged it in as DU1, and started RSTS, but RSTS says DU1 doesn't exist. This is RSTS/E v8.0-07. Is there some trick to do to make the RA92 work, or am I up a creek? I'll play with it to make sure it's not my cabling, but I have it the same way as the RA81, so I doubt it... -------

28 years, 1 month

Wang PC XC3-2

by dastar＠wco.com

Ok, what do you all know about the Wang PC XC3-2 circa 1984? I got one today. Unfortunately it was just the system itself with no documentation, but I did get some software. This one has a 5.25" disk drive and a half-height hard drive. I haven't dug into it yet so don't know many more details but from the labels on the interface cards on the back it has an IBM Monochrome emulator board among all the basic stuff (winchester disk controller, serial, parallel, etc.) Sam Alternate e-mail: dastar(a)siconic.com ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Don't blame me...I voted for Satan. Coming in September...Vintage Computer Festival 2.0 See http://www.siconic.com/vcf for details! [Last web page update: 04/25/98]

28 years, 1 month

FD55E drives...

by allisonp＠world.std.com

Anyone have or know where I can find specs for TEAC FD55E drives? I know they are single sided half height but I suspect they are 96tpi 80track drives. Allison

28 years, 1 month

HDD ...

by maxeskin＠hotmail.com

With all this talk of hard drives slicing themselves and adjacent walls to pieces, how is it that the motor can spin up to such a high speed when it's not supposed to, and why doesn't the head dragging on the disk surface cause it to stop? Can any of these stories happen to a modern drive? ______________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free Email at http://www.hotmail.com

28 years, 1 month

Backing up to videotape

by maxeskin＠hotmail.com

I have seen, on this list and otherwise, comments about cards that allow a VCR to be plugged in and data to be written to them. I was wondering if a) this is a good idea b) why these things cost so much - shouldn't a simple D/A converter and serial port do? ______________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free Email at http://www.hotmail.com

28 years, 1 month

HDD ...

by pete＠dunnington.u-net.com

On May 3, 23:30, Tony Duell wrote: > On (almost) all hard disks, the head doesn't drag on the disk - it floats > on a film of air. Even if the head crashes, the intertia of a stack of > 14" aluminium platters is considerable, and the most likely result is > that the head/mounting is ripped off the arm and flung into the HDA > housing/across the room. That's what happened to my Seagate, as far as I could see. > > > Can any of these stories happen to a modern drive? > > Unlikely. The platters are a lot smaller for one thing, so they can > probably rotate faster without breaking up. And there's likely to be more > complex speed control of the spindle motor, so it may not be able to > overspeed significantly. > > I'm not worried about my PC drive suddenly spreading bits of platter > through the front of the case. No, but the load bang I described was from a 3.5" winnie. -- Pete Peter Turnbull Dept. of Computer Science University of York

28 years, 1 month

HDD died in a spectacular way

by pete＠dunnington.u-net.com

On May 3, 23:38, Tony Duell wrote: > Tim wrote: > > Same goes for the RL01/RL02 (which will spin about 3000 RPM instead > > of nominal if you convince them to spin up without a pack). > > Yes, but with no pack there's no platter to break up :-) > > I'm not going to try it, but what does an RL0x do if you get it to > overspeed with a pack in place, I wonder? Probably not a lot. Not much, it just goes rather faster than normal. I've seen it happen when a servo circuit failed (actually, a field servoid had removed a vital component from a drive that he thought wouldn't be used again). -- Pete Peter Turnbull Dept. of Computer Science University of York

28 years, 1 month

HDD died in a spectacular way

by pete＠dunnington.u-net.com

On May 3, 23:23, Tony Duell wrote: > Pete Turnbull wrote: > > I have a couple of 14" Fujitsus (a massive 135MB apiece) similar to that. > > Well, that Shugart I mentioned is either 12Mbytes or 24Mbytes depending > on how many disks/heads were fitted at the factory. > > > They're the predecessors to the Eagles, which have heavy cast metal HDA > > enclosures. Much more fun to watch (and listen to). > > I remember the Eagle... I've got the service manual somewhere (given to > me along with some other manuals) and I once had to repair a later drive > (2361???) that was somewhat similar to the Eagle (maybe it was called a > Double Eagle or something - I forget). The HDAs in those drives certainly > look impressive. Super Eagle. Impressive? Yes, those fins really are there to cool it. -- Pete Peter Turnbull Dept. of Computer Science University of York

28 years, 1 month

FD55E drives...

by pete＠dunnington.u-net.com

On May 3, 19:16, Allison J Parent wrote: > Anyone have or know where I can find specs for TEAC FD55E drives? > > I know they are single sided half height but I suspect they are 96tpi > 80track drives. Easy way to find out is to try it :-) There's a small amount of data on TEAC's web site, http://www.teac.com/dsp/fd/fd_55.html but that's really for the -R series which are newer. I've got jumper and setting info for the GFR (similar to RX33) and a little info on the FD55-FB and FD55-BVU (40 trk DS) and FD55-GFV-17 (HD 80 trk). TEAC also have a faxback service, and there's a catalogue of the faxback documents at http://www.teac.com/dsp/catalog.html You could try http://www.psyber.com/~tcj as well. -- Pete Peter Turnbull Dept. of Computer Science University of York

28 years, 1 month

HDD ...

by allisonp＠world.std.com

<With all this talk of hard drives slicing themselves and adjacent <walls to pieces, how is it that the motor can spin up to such a <high speed when it's not supposed to, and why doesn't the head <dragging on the disk surface cause it to stop? Head draging...? only if it's crashed even then the motors on those old drives were huge. <Can any of these stories happen to a modern drive? Less likely as smaller platters, less mass and more exotic speed control servos. The big difference is that you would need som really amazing RPM to make a 3.5" plater fracture and fail where a 14" platter has a far higher speed at the perimeter at a lower RPM. Without running the numbers a 14" platter goes transsonic at the perimeter at something like 14,000 RPM however before you get to that speed the forces working on the metal are high enough that it will exceed the tensile strength. Also small imbalances show up with increasing rotational speed and the platter start to develop vibratory waves which if allow to go to destructive extremes make for good stories. I know as I have an operating Morrow (thinkertoys) DISCUS with a 10mb memorex(m101) 8" drive. Allison

28 years, 1 month

HDD died in a spectacular way

by pete＠dunnington.u-net.com

On May 3, 18:19, Tony Duell wrote: > > Well, seen after the fact when I was called in to 'repair' it... > > > > Probably over 15 years ago, NorthStar offered a 14 inch hard drive in an > > external cabinet for use with the 'Horizon' microcomputers. It was > > amusing to watch with the top of the enclosure off as the entire unit > > was enclosed in a slightly smoked brown Plexiglass 'bubble'. > > That description matches a number of 14" hard disks available at that > time. I still have a Shugart SA4000 (on a PERQ 1) which has a similar > design of HDA. But that one uses a synchronous mains motor to turn the > disks (and produces the write clock from a special head on one of the > disks, thus synchronising the whole thing to the disk rotation). I have a couple of 14" Fujitsus (a massive 135MB apiece) similar to that. They're the predecessors to the Eagles, which have heavy cast metal HDA enclosures. Much more fun to watch (and listen to). -- Pete Peter Turnbull Dept. of Computer Science University of York

28 years, 1 month

HDD died in a spectacular way

by maxeskin＠hotmail.com

Truly incredible. The official explanation sounds like something >from a book on Chernobyl. What the heck did the thing use for a motor? Diesel or Gasoline? > >At 04:53 PM 5/2/98 -0400, you wrote: >> >>Anyone ever seen a worse failure? > >Well, seen after the fact when I was called in to 'repair' it... And >actually, quite a good thing that no one was there to witness it! (you >will see why in a moment) > >Probably over 15 years ago, NorthStar offered a 14 inch hard drive in an >external cabinet for use with the 'Horizon' microcomputers. It was amusing >to watch with the top of the enclosure off as the entire unit was enclosed >in a slightly smoked brown Plexiglass 'bubble'. > >The down side was that the sector wheel/transducer/tachometer assembly was >external to the sealed housing and frequently caused "sector not found" >errors as dust collected on it. This required regular (monthly or so) >cleaning which required removal of the HDA from the external enclosure in >order to access the bottom of the assembly. (quickly rectified by our >staff after a couple of calls by using a 'nibbler' tool to add a 2"x3" >opening on the bottom of the external enclosure that we could access the >assembly through) > >It was also noted in one of the service bulletins that since this assembly >also served as the tachometer for the spindle drive, that you could tell if >the wheel was becoming dirty by a "surging" sound coming from the unit even >if you did not experience sector errors. Little did we know... > >We had one customer who tended to keep his system up 24x7 since he had an >external sales staff that used the system to file orders and he liked to >work from home. (dial-in lines) He also liked to run the HD with the upper >part of the external enclosure removed so that he could show off to >customers and clients just how advanced their operation was. (ignoring our >warnings that this would allow the unit to attract dust and dirt more rapidly) > >Well... One Monday morning I get to the shop and we have a number of >messages on the answering machine (in increasing levels of agitation). He >starts off by explaining that Friday evening he started getting frequend >'sector' errors reported from the system. Over the course of the day >Saturday the errors increased and the system response degraded. Sunday >morning the system would not answer a call at all. Sunday evening he got a >call from the Alarm Monitoring company that something had tripped the >offive alarms. When he went in to check the building, he noted that there >"appeared to be a problem with the hard drive" and wanted us out there >first thing to make sure he did not lose any data. > >So... a couple of us went out expecting to have to clean out the wheel >assembly (yet again) and perhaps correct a couple of glitched sectors... >WRONG! > >When we entered the computer room, it was quite obvious that there was a >bit more than a "problem with the hard drive"! > >The room looked like someone had stood in the center of the room with an >M-16, and used it to try to cut the room in half. Clear around the room at >about table top level were pieces of plastic and metal stuck into the wall >boards. The plexiglas 'bubble' from the HDA was gone (obviously shattered) >and the platters had large chunks missing from them. No need to even look >for the head/arm assemblies. > >After an extended discussion with the customer, of which most of the time >was spent explaining that we would NOT be able to recover any data from the >drive, we set about collecting the wreckage and installing a new drive and >software. > >Once back at the shop, a call to NorthStar brought a visit a few days later >from one of their technical support staff as well as an engineer from the >manufacturer of the HDA (Micropolis if I recall correctly). > >The "official" explaination went something like this: > >Due to the design of the (rather basic) tachometer circuit in this unit, a >missing sector pulse was intrepreted by the tach as a loss of spindle >speed. (start-up mode mentality, if you are starting the drive and don't >see a pulse, speed up (or start-up) the motor until the required pulse rate >is achieved) This was the cause of the "surging" sound noted in previous >service bulletins. > >In "theory" (now apparently proven) if the sector/tach wheel became >sufficiently dirty the tachometer circuit could attempt to keep increasing >spindle speed up to such a point where a failure of the unit might be >induced either by overload failure of the spindle motor or by excess >vibration caused by excess rotational speed. > >Apparently, no one ever considered a 'fail-safe' for the tachometer circuit... > >While they never did detail just exactly what failed first, whatever it was >apparently caused a head crash severe enough to fracture one or more of the >platters, and from that point it was all downhill... > >Without the cover of the external enclosure to contain it, (a metal >enclosure by the way) when things started to come apart there was nothing >to stop it! And the results were indeed quite spectacular. > >Made everyone a good deal more serious about keeping those sensor wheels >clean... (and the covers on!) > >BTW: NorthStar did replace the drive for us... > >-jim > >--- >jimw(a)agora.rdrop.com >The Computer Garage - http://www.rdrop.com/~jimw >Computer Garage Fax - (503) 646-0174 > > > ______________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free Email at http://www.hotmail.com

28 years, 1 month

'Classic' typewriter?

by kyrrin＠jps.net

Yes, you read correctly. One of the local thrift stores turned up a Xerox 'MemoryWriter 630' for all of $8.00. Since I was in the market for something to fill out forms with, and curious about the MW series in any case, I picked it up (with a grunt -- these are not light!). It's built very robustly inside, and appears to be based heavily on the 8085 chip. The design and layout resemble (no surprise) the Diablo 630 series daisywheel terminals. A good vacuuming and a little oiling later and it works just great. Original manufacture date is around 1984 (based on the date codes I found on the components). No CRT on this one, though I understand that was one option. If anyone happens to have a user's guide, accessories, options, or diskettes for this beast, please let me know. Thanks in advance. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- Bruce Lane, Sysop, The Dragon's Cave BBS (Fidonet 1:343/272) (Hamateur: WD6EOS) (E-mail: kyrrin(a)jps.net) "Our science can only describe an object, event, or living thing in our own human terms. It cannot, in any way, define any of them..."

28 years, 1 month

TI99: Anyone reading this with a TI-99/4A?

by allisonp＠world.std.com

<To my knowledge no flavor of unix runs on anything less than a 32-bit <processor. There's a unix-workalike for the C-64/128, but that's not Your knowledge is limited. Unix was started and lived for years on PDP-11s (a 16 bit machine) in the form of V5, V6, V7 and 2.9BSD and 2.11BSD. I may add it was on other machines like the Interdatas. <quite the same thing. Anyway, it's called Lunix. I haven't tried it yet, There is also ELKS embedded kernal linux aimed at XT class(16bit) and other small machines. <but it's possible that Lunix could become fairly popular amongst the <8-bitters. The point I was trying to make about running Minix (since you Linux is is one form of popular free unix and was launched on PC hardware that happens to be 32bit(386 and later). Fitting unix on most 8bitter means a minikernal and swapping as most 8bitters have only a 64k address space unless some banking logic was added or the CPU is only of the later z80 varients with MMU(z180 1mb, z280 16mb). <generally run that on a PC anyway) is that it just simply makes more <sense to run Linux or FreeBSD or some other supported operating system. Minix is supported exactly the same way LINUX is. <It's possible to run those operating systems with 8MB comfortably <(provided you're not running XFree86)...all the text-based stuff runs <just fine. Besides 8MB RAM doesn't exactly break the bank nowadays. :) Well, my 386 is running it in 8mb with xfree86 and while not blindingly fast it does run well. Not everyone has bundles of cash for their computer. I find the idea of not less than 32bits, 200mhz cpus and large memory being a must to be patently retrorevisionist to the history of what was done before those things were available. Allison

28 years, 1 month

A British piece

by allisonp＠world.std.com

<> Today I picked up a G.R. Electronics Ltd "Pocket Terminal" and I am <> looking for some user information on it. I have two of them, it's a mini terminal. I have no data even though I know mine work. Allison

28 years, 1 month

'Classic' typewriter?

by maxeskin＠hotmail.com

I once saw one of these w/CRT and two floppy drives at a thrift store. It looked quite old ;) I tried it out, coudn't really tell how to use it, and didn't bother to take it. The thing on the screen looked a bit vi-like. Another thing that's more complicated than it should be... > Yes, you read correctly. One of the local thrift stores turned up a Xerox >'MemoryWriter 630' for all of $8.00. Since I was in the market for >something to fill out forms with, and curious about the MW series in any >case, I picked it up (with a grunt -- these are not light!). > > It's built very robustly inside, and appears to be based heavily on the >8085 chip. The design and layout resemble (no surprise) the Diablo 630 >series daisywheel terminals. A good vacuuming and a little oiling later and >it works just great. Original manufacture date is around 1984 (based on the >date codes I found on the components). > > No CRT on this one, though I understand that was one option. If anyone >happens to have a user's guide, accessories, options, or diskettes for this >beast, please let me know. > > Thanks in advance. > > >-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- >Bruce Lane, Sysop, The Dragon's Cave BBS (Fidonet 1:343/272) >(Hamateur: WD6EOS) (E-mail: kyrrin(a)jps.net) >"Our science can only describe an object, event, or living thing in our own >human terms. It cannot, in any way, define any of them..." > ______________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free Email at http://www.hotmail.com

28 years, 1 month

Seagate info

by scottk5＠ibm.net

-----Original Message----- From: Joe [SMTP:rigdonj@intellistar.net] Sent: Saturday, May 02, 1998 2:44 PM To: Discussion re-collecting of classic computers Subject: Seagate info I just picked up a couple of old Seagate SCSI drives and I'm looking for jumper information. (YES, these DO have jumpers.) I can't find a Seagate site. Does anyone know of a site that has this kind of information? [Kirk Scott] Try: http://www.blue-planet.com/tech/no-frames.html I've gotten a lot of information help on older drives from them. Kirk scottk5(a)ibm.net

28 years, 1 month

Another IBM S/

by william＠ans.net

At first I thought it was some sort of typo, but now I have another reference... What the heck is an IBM System/7? William Donzelli william(a)ans.net

28 years, 1 month

HDD died in a spectacular way

by pete＠dunnington.u-net.com

On May 2, 16:53, PG Manney wrote: > The head had gouged its way through the entire thickness of the platter; > > Anyone ever seen a worse failure? Not seen, but heard... Some time ago, I had a little Seagate 50MB drive on running on the shelf above a workstation. I knew it had a stiction problem, so I tended to leave it running most of the time. So there I was, minding my own business, as they say, and suddenly there was a very loud BANG. I couldn't see anything amiss, but I shut things down anyway. Then I realised any damage that was going to be done by whatever went bang had presumably already happened. I wasn't going to find much out by staring at a blank screen, so I powered everything up again. All came to life, but the Seagate just reported disk errors. Tried reformatting; no joy. So I took it apart. Every platter had huge circular gouges, and two of the heads were in bits, mostly embedded in the walls of the disk chamber. -- Pete Peter Turnbull Dept. of Computer Science University of York

28 years, 1 month

Seagate info

by pete＠dunnington.u-net.com

On May 2, 22:20, Joe wrote: > Yes, I tried that URL. It said that that webpage was not available!?!?!?!? > I don't know about Impris but Seagate just bought Conner (who had already > bought Maynard, who had already bought Irwin.) There goes a lot of their > competion! > >Uh, did you try www.seagate.com? They have information on even their > >oldest SCSI drives, Conner drives, and Imprimis too. They also have an ftp site (ftp.seagate.com, I think) which has all the jumper info in text files. They also have zip files giving the info for griups of drives, eg all the scsi drives, all mfm, etc. I use them so often that I always have a reasonably up-to-date version on my server. BTW, I find seagate's site and similar sites much more useful than TheRef. -- Pete Peter Turnbull Dept. of Computer Science University of York

28 years, 1 month

Artistic Computers (was: Re: Lost Treasures (was: Cray-1))

by allisonp＠world.std.com

For direct to ugly... Commodore PET netronics explorer-85 intel mds800 minutman missle computer (lots of ways ugly!) I can think of others but those were pretty ugly on an esthetic basis and a few were ugly from a human factors standpoint (pet chicklet keys). Programming the serial disk computer of the MMC was really nasty. Allison

28 years, 1 month

Apologies... Was Re: Anyone know where to find a Setup disk for Epson Equity II+?

by lfb107＠psu.edu

I am truly sorry for sending that huge file to the mailing list. I had intended it for Daniel only. Sorry for any inconveniences it may have caused. Les

28 years, 1 month

Artistic Computers (was: Re: Lost Treasures (was: Cray-1))

by maxeskin＠hotmail.com

I believe KISS tends to apply in these cases. In general, I find that I like blockier ones more. I won't get myself started on modern case design, but I will say that I do not find any of the "home computers" by Compaq, Toshiba, Acer, and Sony to be very nice-looking. Of classic computers, the TI 99/4a probably is in that vicinity... >On Sat, 2 May 1998, R. Stricklin (kjaeros) wrote: > >> On Fri, 1 May 1998, William Donzelli wrote: >> >> > Speaking of which, what are the ugliest machines? >> >> Apollo DOMAIN computers and every last intel based PC manufactured since >> 1993 and _especially_ since 1995. Except the new IBM GL machines which are >> actually kind of nice. > >I'm actually keen on the contemporary Compaq designs and the cool Acer >designs with the neon colors and artistically drilled venting holes in the >dense pattern. > >Sam Alternate e-mail: dastar(a)siconic.com >------------------------------------------------------------------------------- >Don't blame me...I voted for Satan. > > Coming in September...Vintage Computer Festival 2.0 > See http://www.siconic.com/vcf for details! > [Last web page update: 04/25/98] > > ______________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free Email at http://www.hotmail.com

28 years, 1 month

Auction crap

by aaron＠wfi-inc.com

In case anyone cares, I put another Sun 3/50 and a Sparcstation 1+ on www.haggle.com. The 3/50 is a 12meg flat-top, and the 1+ has 36megs and a 205meg HD. I started them at something like $5 so they'll probably go for just enough to cover packaging tape. The impetus? The space is now being hogged by the System 36 I just dragged in here.... By the way, does anyone want that Sperry IT I got awhile back? It is sitting in the garage looking forlorn. It has that nifty Genoa video card, a memory board, an ethernet card, an unknown size HD, keyboard, optical mouse and pad, complete manual set (system installation guide, Basic user's guide, and MS-DOS user's guide), and original disk set. I haven't had the chance to even power it on yet, so I don't know the operational status (worked when removed). It's heavy (duh), so if someone just wanted the cards/HD/etc, I could disassemble and ship what you wanted and leave the carcass at the local thrift. Oh yeah, I am in the L.A. vicinity, so if someone wanted to pick it up.... Aaron

28 years, 1 month

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test-drb