I'm sure this is not even an original thought, but the Year 2000 presents
a special opportunity for collectors like us.
Think of all the companies who are right now weighing whether or not those
old mainframes that have been chugging away in their data centers for
years, perhaps even decades, are worth one more upgrade to support 4-digit
years or whether it would make more sense to finally take the painful
route of scrapping their old iron and moving on to PCs or AS400s or
whatnot. I predict a tremendous flood of old mainframe and mini hardware
coming to market like so many cattle which will only peak on December 31,
1999.
This is a once in a millennium opportunity! So make sure you've got
plenty of space and plenty of petty cash to throw around cuz its gonna be
easy pickins.
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: 04/23/98]
On 1998-04-24 classiccmp(a)u.washington.edu said to lisard(a)zetnet.co.uk
:> I have: 1802, SC/MP, 6800, 6809, NEC D78PG11, 8748/9, 8751,
:>8080/8085, z80, z180, z280, z8002, z8001, 808x, 8018x, 80286,
:>80386, 80486 and the micro version of minis 6100(pdp-8),
:>6120(PDP-8+EMA) TI9900, PDP11(T-11, F11, J-11).
:Showoff :-) No 8008? I always wanted a 4004 (anyone listening out
:there, that's a hint) and an SC/MP. Anybody remember Fairchild F8's?
remember, no. heard of, yes. the Great CPU list is a wonderful thing...
:> Now something with a MIPS chip, ARM, sparc or some such would be
:>a great addition of a real RISC processor.
:Well, I've got all of those, and my favourite is the ARM. I've had
:to write MIPS assembler, and it's not great fun.
most risc processors are not fun to program in assembler. some risc
chips - notably the novix and a few other forth cpus - look like murder
to program. however, one of the design criteria of the arm was that it
was to be easy to program in assembler - and the instruction set
certainly suggests that it should be.
(not having one, we can't say "it is", but hopefully that will be
remedied before too long.)
--
Communa (together) we remember... we'll see you falling
you know soft spoken changes nothing to sing within her...
There's a big difference between a NUL string and a NULL pointer.
----------
From: Pete Turnbull[SMTP:pete@dunnington.u-net.com]
Sent: Friday, April 24, 1998 5:22 AM
To: Discussion re-collecting of classic computers
Subject: Re: [getting old punched cards read]
On Apr 24, 1:35, Captain Napalm wrote:
> Well, I snagged a copy of it, compiled it, found a bug, and fixed it.
> strcpy() (at least on my compiler) will crash if any of the parameters
> are NULL pointers,
That's a compiler (or library, actually) bug. You should be able to copy a
null string.
--
Pete Peter Turnbull
Dept. of Computer Science
University of York
On Apr 24, 15:38, Hotze wrote:
> This is very off topic, but anyway: Write a letter to the government.
Writing to *my* government isn't likely to do much good against most spam,
which tends to originate from US sites. All the UK ISPs I know of have an
anti-spam policy anyway.
> Reply to the spammers,
Not often a good idea, since the consensus seems to be that responses
merely confirm that the address they used is (still) valid.
I hadn't thought about the free email account idea, but I'm not sure I want
yet another account.
--
Pete Peter Turnbull
Dept. of Computer Science
University of York
Does anyone know if Ebay is a publicly traded stock?
If so I would like to buy a few hundred shares. It
has to be one of the most enormously successful
phenomena on the net.
Bob
______________________________________________________
Get Your Private, Free Email at http://www.hotmail.com
On Apr 24, 1:35, Captain Napalm wrote:
> Well, I snagged a copy of it, compiled it, found a bug, and fixed it.
> strcpy() (at least on my compiler) will crash if any of the parameters
> are NULL pointers,
That's a compiler (or library, actually) bug. You should be able to copy a
null string.
--
Pete Peter Turnbull
Dept. of Computer Science
University of York
On 1998-04-23 classiccmp(a)u.washington.edu said to lisard(a)zetnet.co.uk
:The PDP-11 architecture has only 7 GP registers (since you can't
:really use the PC for just anything) but that's good for the times,
:and they really are interchangable, so I'd be willing to argue that
:it wins on that.
and having the PC as part of the general register set - even if it is a
bit limited in what you can do with it - is a huge design win; you can
lose an awful lot of PC-specific instructions that way. the SOAR used
such an idea, if memory serves.
:Similar, but in many ways quite different. I just had this
:argument (from a somewhat different point of view) on another
:mailing list. The 68K is much more like a PDP-11 than anything
:else, but it has a lot of clutter added.
what about the CP1600?
:That's my third of a tanner.
hey! some of us are post-decimalisation, you know!
--
Communa (together) we remember... we'll see you falling
you know soft spoken changes nothing to sing within her...
<I hadn't thought about the free email account idea, but I'm not sure I wa
<yet another account.
I haven't figured the use for that as an email account isn't want you need
to post to a USENET newsgroup or read from a newgroup.
Allison
>> This is very off topic, but anyway: Write a letter to the government.
>
>Writing to *my* government isn't likely to do much good against most spam,
>which tends to originate from US sites. All the UK ISPs I know of have an
>anti-spam policy anyway.
You're right, but still, if the UK could pass a law to make spam illegal, it
would at least cause ripples to the US and every where else in the world.
>Not often a good idea, since the consensus seems to be that responses
>merely confirm that the address they used is (still) valid.
Four letter words. They do wonders with spammers.
>I hadn't thought about the free email account idea, but I'm not sure I want
>yet another account.
Sorry... I've only got two right now. And usually, I have one, but I had to
get one at Geocities as it's not ISP-dependant, and I'm moving to Guyana, so
during travel, I'll be suffeirng withdrawel from the Internet.
Does anyone have a 386 portable somewhere stateside that I could buy?
Ciao,
Tim D. Hotze
>--
>
>Pete Peter Turnbull
> Dept. of Computer Science
> University of York
Tony Duell wrote:
>I'll stick to a card reader that outputs 12 TTL signals + a strobe for
>each column. I can understand that.
OK, Tony, send me a spare card reader and I'll stop foaming at the
mouth about this. :-) Leave the file formats to me; that's been
my speciality for the last fifteen years!
- John
Jefferson Computer Museum <http://www.threedee.com/jcm>
On Commodore Monitors for C128D.
If you can find one you would want to get a Commodore 1902/a, 1084, or 2002.
They support the RGBI (80 column video) as well as the split-composite (40
column video) the 128 produces. Magnavox produced much of the 1084 line and
had a Magnavox model available (something like professional 80 column monitor,
the front panel on mine is missing so I don't have the name). Regardless If
you want to use both 40 and 80 column video, best to get one of the
multi-function monitors, else you will need an RGBI and a composite montor
(which by the way the C= 128 can display to both simultaneously as they are
different video controllers at work.)
On CP/M 3.0+.
Really nice version; can read a variety of popular CP/M disk formats using
the 1571 disk drive. If you plan to use 3.5" disks I guggest you look for a
later version the the versoion supplied with the 128D, there are no support
drivers for the 1581 (can't boot of of it etc.)
Also "GO 64" gets you only to the Commodore 64 mode. you either place your
CP/M disk in the drive before power-up or after power-up type "BOOT" in 128
mode to boot the operating system disk. (note make sure the 40/80 column key
is down on power-up to ensure the 128 starts up in 80 column mode. :)
Larry Anderson
--
-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-
Larry Anderson - Sysop of Silicon Realms BBS (300-2400bd) (209) 754-1363
Visit my Commodore 8-Bit web page at:
http://www.goldrush.com/~foxnhare/commodore.html
-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-
Exactly. I have the KoalaPaint program, but only for the commodore.
>
>No, I need the paint program itself -- or any apple paint program.
>
>Manney
>
>>>Does anyone have the disks for the paint program that came with the
Apple
>>>Koala pad?
>
>
>
______________________________________________________
Get Your Private, Free Email at http://www.hotmail.com
>> <I received the same spam. And I did not know that this list was
>> <being archived (other than by interested members).
>
>> Ah foo! Everytime I think I've plugged the source for spam I find
>> something like this.
>
>> Any suggestions on how to stop it?
>
>I include a little bit of junk in my "From: " lines when I post to usenet
>from this account, and it seems to work. All the spam I get goes to an
>account I rarely use now, and it's tailing off. I didn't used to mung the
>address I use for this list, but perhaps I better start. Oh, spit, as they
>say.
This is very off topic, but anyway: Write a letter to the government. Reply
to the spammers, say that you don't care about the shit that they're sending
you, you're not reading it, and you think that they're very disreputable and
that it's a wrong way of doing business. 2) Get a free e-mail account, such
as http://www.hotmail.com , http://www.rocketmail.com or a free one that you
can get with a web site, from a business or ISP, etc. or Yahoo! or the like.
Us that for Usenet, and if you get a private message there, talk to 'em that
way.
>--
>
>Pete Peter Turnbull
> Dept. of Computer Science
> University of York
Tim D. Hotze
On Apr 24, 8:11, Allison J Parent wrote:
> <Uncle Roger wrote:
>
> <I received the same spam. And I did not know that this list was
> <being archived (other than by interested members).
> Ah foo! Everytime I think I've plugged the source for spam I find
> something like this.
> Any suggestions on how to stop it?
I include a little bit of junk in my "From: " lines when I post to usenet
>from this account, and it seems to work. All the spam I get goes to an
account I rarely use now, and it's tailing off. I didn't used to mung the
address I use for this list, but perhaps I better start. Oh, spit, as they
say.
--
Pete Peter Turnbull
Dept. of Computer Science
University of York
<Uncle Roger wrote:
<I received the same spam. And I did not know that this list was
<being archived (other than by interested members). Will the standard
<X-archive directive prevent this? (Some so-called "archive" systems
<ignore it). I get enough junkmail as it is, due to my outspokenness
Ah foo! Everytime I think I've plugged the source for spam I find
something like this. This explains where the porno sex spammers that
use @earthlink.com are getting the address from.
That bunch is annoys me as I get that garbage 5-6 times a day.
Any suggestions on how to stop it?
Allison
Ethan Dicks <erd(a)infinet.com> wrote:
>Been there, done that. There's a commercial program to convert .WAV
>files of C-64 data tapes back into usable files. It also works if
>you hook a real C-64 datassete to the parallel port.
I know these programs exist. There are some for the Spectrum and ZX-81,
too. However, I could generalize and say they were all DOS-based,
written in Pascal or assembler, don't come with source code, have
poor documentation, etc. and I want to roll my own in straight portable C.
I'd rather make it general to handle old S-100 tapes, C-64 tapes, etc.
instead of just hard-coding one flavor. It should be ready in
the year 2010.
Tony Duell wrote:
>I personally think I'll have more luck finding spares for my M200 card
>reader, my Trend UDR700 paper tape reader, etc in 20 year time than
>you'll have finding parts for a quickcam.
No, my point is that it's more useful to have generic tools to help
rescue old data. Sure, QuickCams are nearly disposable now. Cheap
$1,500 PCs include them these days. Five years from now, they'll be
embedded in cheap monitors. Ten years from now, they'll be in cereal
boxes. Unless the hobby of collecting computer junk is adopted by
Hollywood stars, I humbly suggest that it will be at least *more difficult*
for you to find spares for your original equipment than it will be
for me to find something that could deliver a bitmap by looking
at my punched card. :-)
- John
Jefferson Computer Museum <http://www.threedee.com/jcm>
At 11:56 AM 4/19/98 +0100, you wrote:
>this is odd - we got exactly the same message chez communa. we're just
>wondering which address list they used, for sam's name to be on it as
>well as ours...
Well, you're both on the ClassicCmp list, which is echoed to a web site...
And yes, there are spambots that comb web pages looking for e-mail
addresses. I know, because I have gotten Spam on my alphapager, and I
*know* I've never posted to a usenet newsgroup from my pager. 8^)
--------------------------------------------------------------------- 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/
As I was saying there was no clue to who owns Commodore *-Bit technology I
received this message from the CBM-Hackers maillist:
> Subject: Copyrights Commodore
> Date: Fri, 24 Apr 98 20:47:52 GMT
> From: rbaltiss(a)worldaccess.nl
> Reply-To: cbm-hackers(a)dot.tcm.hut.fi
> To: cbm-hackers(a)dot.tcm.hut.fi (c64-maillist)
>
> Hallo allemaal,
>
> I just got some interesting news from my friend Wim. We both are members of the
> border (???) of the Commodore GG (= User Group). As largest Commodore group
> here in Holland and due to other reasons as well, we have established close
> contacts with Tulip ie. Commodore.
> Wim got an official letter of Tulip saying that they own all the rights of all
> Commodores through out of the world with exception of the Amiga. So now we know.
>
> Next question is if we can get permission to continue the activities we employ
> like placing ROMs, sourcelistings etc. on the net. I already had an unofficial
> answer ("We don't mind as long it is not commercial") but an official one would
> be better.
>
> Groetjes, ruud
So I guess there is hope for us classic computing fans after all! :)
--
-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-
Larry Anderson - Sysop of Silicon Realms BBS (300-2400bd) (209) 754-1363
Visit my Commodore 8-Bit web page at:
http://www.goldrush.com/~foxnhare/commodore.html
-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-
> From: Julian Richardson <JRichardson(a)softwright.co.uk>
> Subject: Schematics sites?
> Message-ID: <c=GB%a=_%p=SSA_Softwright%l=EXCH001-980422114123Z-2323(a)exch001.softwright.co.uk>
>
> Hi all,
>
> are there any good sites out there containing collections of schematics
> for old machines? I occasionally come across sites with a few schematics
> / info for specific machines, but has anyone collected stuff together
> for several different machines into one place?
There is a growing one for Commodre 8-bit aficionados at:
http://www.funet.fi/pub/cbm/
This FTP site has various shematics ROM Images, etc.
Copyrights seem to be a mute issue for the 8-bits, as no one seems to really
know who holds the Copyrights on the 8-bit Commodores (Escom?, Tulip?,
Visicorp?, Gateway 2000?, the former MOS Technologies?) It is a popular
thread on comp.sys.cbm.
--
-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-
Larry Anderson - Sysop of Silicon Realms BBS (300-2400bd) (209) 754-1363
Visit my Commodore 8-Bit web page at:
http://www.goldrush.com/~foxnhare/commodore.html
-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-
Tony Duell said:
>BTW, does anyone know the position on reverse-engineered schematics? >Who
owns the copyright on those?
Check out BOMARC SERVICES (http://w3.trib.com/~rollo/bomcat.htm)
Their catalog has 3,000 devices that they have reversed engineered and
sell the schematics for. They usually advertise in Nuts and Volts.
I remember when I was at Tengen in 91 or 92 and we were just getting
started on the Sega Genesis, we sent them one and they sent back the
schematics. It came in real handy, the only programming manual was
xeroxed, handwritten and translated from Japanese (badly).
=========================================
Doug Coward dcoward(a)pressstart.com
Senior Software Engineer
Press Start Inc.
Sunnyvale,CA
Curator
Museum of Personal Computing Machinery
http://www.best.com/~dcoward/museum
=========================================
<> Compared to maybe 6800 or 6502, the 8080 had 4 16bit registers (bc, de,
<> hl, sp). The z80 added a second set and IX/IY. But that was only one
<> aspect.
<
<Oh come on. The 16 bit registers in the Z80 were hardly general-purpose
<in the PDP11 or RISC sense. HL was almost a 16 bit accumulator.
My comment was to point out that most of the micros were not register
poor like the 6800 or 6502 only that they really didn't use them well.
<The ARM was developed as a 32 bit replacement for the 6502 according to
<one rumour (from Acorn, BTW). They didn't like any of the existing 16 or
<32 bit chips, so they designed their own...
I've looked briefly at that chip and it's real simple and straightforward.
Never had a chance to play with one.
<The one instruction per clock cycle definition is daft IMHO. It shouldn't
<matter whether you take a 64MHz clock and have 8 cycles per instruction
<or take an 8MHz clock and derrive other timing signals from it using gate
<delays or a delay line. The throughput is the same. And the critical
<paths have the same timing.
I agree mostly save for at the time that notion was in vogue the maximum
clock rate was circuit limited in NMOS and CMOS devices so fewer clocks
for a cycle equaled greater speed. Most of the RISC proponents of the
time were talking lower transistor counts, clock frequencies, lower
silicon cost and higher testability than their CISC counterparts for the
same overall system performance. The concept was really applicable to
microprocessors as no engineer at the time could even conceive of
injecting clock at 100mhz in to a micro at a time when gate propagation
delays at the silicon level were greater than 10ns. The concept was
appealing when z80s were hitting the wall at 6mhz and 8086s were fast at
10mhz. Of course as Hmos-III and sub 1micron CMOS started to show signs
of going much faster...
Allison
<FWIW, it's been my experience that on problems small enough to be tackle
<by the J-11, an 18MHz J-11 eats the VAX-11/780 for lunch.
The PDP-11 is no slouch. I've used the T-11 part for some things and
even using the pokey 7.5mhz clock some tasks are faster than most
anything contemporary to it like the z80/8mhz even though the numbers
say slower. It's that CISC with superior addressing modes that put it
out ahead.
I've found the same but it's task dependant and also the 780 is always
doing more than the J-11 due to OS. I did get a chance to try that
once and the 780 was running nothing more than the usual background
tasks and it was close but then both are about 1mips. Same was true in
1978 when the 11/70 was put up against the 11/780. The 2vup and faster
VAXen made it a no contest in favor of the VAX though. As soon as the
task exceeds 64k or the user/task load gets up there the differences
start to stretch out with the vax ahead. A faster PDP-11 will always
have that disadvantage.
Allison
Tony Duell wrote:
>The problem with solutions like the quickcam is that, if you're not
>careful, in 10 years time the new version will not work with the hardware
>or OS that you've chosen to run
Just to flog the horse, my point was that my C code will deal with
a bitmap. It doesn't care which technology produces the bitmap:
today's QuickCam, tomorrow's Java Ring, 2010's 3D scanner.
A friend of mine has a joke that goes something like "In ten years
we'll have a wrist computer with the horsepower of today's $5,000
workstation, voice recognition, holographic memory, etc. but there
will still be an obscure way to get back to the C: prompt."
- John
Jefferson Computer Museum <http://www.threedee.com/jcm>
On Apr 23, 14:31, Captain Napalm wrote:
> Subject: Re: Re[2]: Replies to various threads
> It was thus said that the Great Allison J Parent once stated:
> > Now something with a MIPS chip, ARM, sparc or some such would be a
great
> > addition of a real RISC processor.
>
> I think it's the Nintendo-64 that has a MIPS chip in it, and with the
> right peripherals, would make for one killer computer (it's basically an
SGI
> sans keyboard, harddrive and network connection).
The MIPS chip in a Nintendo is a cut-down version of the versions used in
SGI and the Nintendo is a long way from an SGI sans keyboard, harddrive,
etc. I can't remember all the differences now, but I discussed it with SGI
last year when I was looking for a fast CPU for an embedded application.
We have lots of SGIs (of different types) here, so MIPS devices were one
of the obvious things to look at. It's definitely RISC, though :-) The
eventual choice was StrongARM, though the project never got built.
--
Pete Peter Turnbull
Dept. of Computer Science
University of York
