test-drb

test-drb@ccmp.vtda.org

101090 discussions

by SUPRDAVE＠aol.com

In a message dated 97-11-14 23:20:56 EST, you write: > > I was using a WD Caviar 2.0 GB, and it was > > LOUD!!! > > If you think that was loud, you've never heard a RP05 spinning up :-). > > The most amazing thing is being in a real computer room (i.e. dozens > of 14" drives) when the power suddenly goes *off*. The silence is > astonishing. > > Tim. (shoppa(a)triumf.ca) > off-topic again: speaking of loud, i worked in a small computer room back in 1992 and when i came in one afternoon, it was quieter than normal. turns out the ac units werent running so those units themselves make plenty of noise. even louder was the IBM 3380/3880 (cant remember which) DASD units of which there were 4 rows of them. quite impressive for their size and noisy, probably due to the belt drive mechanism. later they were replaced with one small row of hitachi drives which were mcuh quieter and had almost 2x the capacity, I was told. david

28 years, 5 months

Classic Computer Accumulation Squad

by sinasohn＠ricochet.net

At 10:29 AM 11/15/97 -0800, you wrote: >I mean, we have a house rule of "No computers in the living room or >dining room, unless they're laptops or they're leaving," Hmmm... What a silly rule! 8^) (As for me, there is currently (at least before I left for a weekend holiday) a Data General One & a Mac Plus in the dining room, At least an Apple IIe, M100, Dash 030, and probably a couple of others in the living room, Atari Falcon in the laundry room... Nothing (yet) in the kitchen or bathroom... --------------------------------------------------------------------- O- Uncle Roger "There is pleasure pure in being mad sinasohn(a)ricochet.net that none but madmen know." Roger Louis Sinasohn & Associates San Francisco, California http://www.crl.com/~sinasohn/

28 years, 5 months

New Definiton REQUIRED

by allisonp＠world.std.com

<years old machines now. Rainbow machine is very quirky demanding <weird hardware and quirky disks in both format and hardsectored. :( Huh? Rainbot uses the somewhat unique format for the hard disk but sos did many other of the time. The floppy is a soft sector single sided 96tpi at 10 sectors per track that can be formatted on a PC with a good 1.2m drive in 360k speed and with the correct formatter. OR a system with an RX50 drive and a 1793 floppy controller (CP/M-80 boxen). <> acceptable OS. Although CP/M running native on a Pentium 133 is pretty <> cool, and fast! By collecting Non-PC's there a tons of OS's to play with CP/M-80 running on a 16mhz z180 is far more interesting. ;-) Allison

28 years, 5 months

One from the 'believe it or not' file...

by allisonp＠world.std.com

<And so, the dilemma... do I open the disks and crank this critter up? Or <just pack it all away as another classic 'artifact'? (or leave it until I <have a fair amount of time to spend with it) Open it and crak it up. make full copies and backups. Save all packaging by sliting the edges or whatever so that any making is preserved. Exploit and document the machine to the world as I have no clue what a 3b1 is or the cpu it used. Though I do remember the ads. Allison

28 years, 5 months

New Definiton REQUIRED

by kroma＠worldnet.att.net

>But the 10 year rule is simple and not without precedent (it's roughly >the way other things are judged "antique" -- if I remember correctly >the "magic number" is 100 years for furniture and housewares and 20 >years for automobiles). That's why we have it, we know it's not >perfect but it does provide a clear cutoff. > Actually after 20 years an automobile is considered a Classic, I think it's 40 - 50 years to be considered an Antique. With the frequency that new computers are introduced 10 - 15 years is probably a good definition for classic and 20 - 25 for antique. -- Kirk

28 years, 5 months

I've asked it once, I'll ask it a million times....

by photze＠batelco.com.bh

Hello. Does anyone have any systems that are not "high" on the price list of classics that they could give me? (I could have my relatives in the states get them via UPS, then they could mail 'em to me as a Christmas present..... it would make me very happy!) Thanks, Tim D. Hotze

28 years, 5 months

New Definiton REQUIRED

by allisonp＠world.std.com

<there is no doubt that the early mass-produced CD-ROM drives (not the <origionals of 1984, but the ones that were made to be put into PCs, not <servers) are classic componets, even though many are of this decade. <In my opinion, the first 486 PCs (not servers) are classics... ones that <are still used, but classics... even though most of 'em were made in Classic, like the 14 year old washing machine I have. Most post 286 PCs are appliances just like a washer dryer only built worse. <said that it was hard to state the definiton of a classic... but 10 <years or older would do. I do not wish to offend the owner, but they <are one person, and they can make mistakes... and together, as a group, <the chances of making an accurate definiton are smaller with us. <Possibly (out for MUCH revision...) is the definition "Any computer <which has aged sufficently to be considered "outdated" by the computer <market and has historic signifiance, OR is 10 years old or older." The <one evedeint place that requires revsion is the "historical signifiacne" To me most VAXen are still used and sold for commercial use, though many are still over 10. Try and buy some of the PDP-8s that are in commercial service. Age does not make a computer significant alone though, it's a distinct factor. Another factor is unique design in a technical sense or esthetic (or the lack of) style. Rarity is an impact too. I can name several machines of the altair imsai time frame that are far more scarce. For example, I still have not found or seen an IMSAI IMP48 other than my own. <but I'm not sure how to include that while still acknowledging the <presence of many of the best machines and componets that did indeed fail <in the process... but at least Wang's did eventually fall.... I can't <even rememeber all of the problems that they had... Wang played to to narrow a market (word processing and document management) that was invaded by all the micros at far lower price and in some cases a product that was more stylish or appealed to the user more. With shrinking market space and a but if empire building by Ahn Wang the business costs exceeded revenue... then rest is not news or unexpected. The layoffs were amoung the most brutal in the industry. Allison

28 years, 5 months

DECwindows, and the MicroVAX 3100

by carl.friend＠stoneweb.com

On Sat, 15 Nov 1997, Mr. Seagraves inquired of the assembled masses thusly: > I've noticed all this time that DECwindows is on this MV3100. > What is it? It it like Macro$oft's windows, or Xwindows? > And when it says "display device", what is it expecting, a Tek > terminal, or VT of some sort, or some special adapter? DECwindows is an X-window system workalike that runs on both VAXen and DEC's RISC platforms. It's merely a way for a client program running on one machine to display its graphics on a server running on another machine (Warning: in X terminology, "server" and "client" seem reversed - you sit in front of the server while the client shoves graphics data at you; the "client" does the applications processing). The two are somewhat compatible. I have a pal in Providence who has a VAX-11/750 and DECwindows, I have a Linux box at home running an X server. We were able to get an X session set up with a client running on his VAX to display on my machine; the network transport was CMU/IP for the VAX, standard TCP/IP at the Linux end. Yes, it was slow as a dog, especially as I have a 14.4 kbps modem, but it _did_ work. Fun stuff. Cheers. ______________________________________________________________________ | | | | Carl Richard Friend (UNIX Sysadmin) | West Boylston | | Minicomputer Collector / Enthusiast | Massachusetts, USA | | mailto:carl.friend@stoneweb.com | | | http://www.ultranet.com/~engelbrt/carl/museum | ICBM: N42:22 W71:47 | |________________________________________________|_____________________|

28 years, 5 months

What's an apple //GS worth?

by SUPRDAVE＠aol.com

Ive found a guy locally who has a GS for sale, but hasnt set a price. ( i hate that) what does everything think it's worth? details are sketchy, but here's what he said its a woz version coupla megs of memory. (exp card?) external cms hard drive (scsi?) has a sound card. he says it's not the ensoniq sound chip, but an adaptor card. 3.5 drive. also has some books and sw. what would be a decent price for this? he may be interested in a basic 486 i have to barter with. david

28 years, 5 months

Info? HP1000 F series

by fmc＠reanimators.org

James Willing <jimw(a)agora.rdrop.com> wrote: > While wandering around one of my favourite surplus gear haunts today, I cam > across a couple of HP 1000 F series minicomputers. While they look neat, I > know just about nothing about them. Anyone out there familiar enough with > them to give me the 'infamous 25 words or less' speech on their significance? They're real-time control systems, based around the 21MX processor family (which succeeded the 2100 (ca. 1972) and 211[456] (ca. 1967)) and running one of several flavors of HP's RTE operating system. I've never actually used them. > It might take a few $$ to break one or more of them loose, so I'd like to > have a bit of info before I make a concerted effort to procure them... If you have HP Measurement/Computation catalogs from 1980 or 1981 or so, you could look in there. Else pester me and I'll try to FAX a few relevant pages to you. -Frank McConnell

28 years, 5 months

DECwindows, and the MicroVAX 3100.

by dseagrav＠bsdserver.tek-star.net

I've noticed all this time that DECwindows is on this MV3100. What is it? It it like Macro$oft's windows, or Xwindows? And when it says "display device", what is it expecting, a Tek terminal, or VT of some sort, or some special adapter?

28 years, 5 months

What's an apple //GS worth?

by engine＠chac.org

At 23:03 11/15/97 -0500, you wrote: >Ive found a guy locally who has a GS for sale, but hasnt set a price.... If the 486 has decent RAM and disk I would trade him level, but only if you really want the IIGS. >its a woz version This is not the Good Thing it may sound like, apart from cool appearance. The Woz sig on the front of the case implies Rev 00 ( = earliest) ROMs and very limited expandability. AFAIK the released ROM versions were 00, 01, and 03; 00 could be upgraded to 01 with a chipset, but 03 was a logic board swap. There never was an 02; 04 existed, but the GS was killed before 04 went into production. Some of the 04 ROM code was written into GS/OS instead, but beyond this I yield gracefully (I hope) since others here surely know more than I do. >coupla megs of memory. (exp card?) >external cms hard drive (scsi?) >has a sound card. he says it's not the ensoniq sound chip, but an adaptor >card. >3.5 drive. >also has some books and sw. oh....like I said, how bad do you want it? __________________________________________ Kip Crosby engine(a)chac.org http://www.chac.org/index.html Computer History Association of California

28 years, 5 months

What's an apple //GS worth?

by jrkeys＠concentric.net

I have seen them go from free to $30 with less extra's them the one you are looking at. At 11:03 PM 11/15/97 -0500, you wrote: >Ive found a guy locally who has a GS for sale, but hasnt set a price. ( i >hate that) what does everything think it's worth? >details are sketchy, but here's what he said > >its a woz version >coupla megs of memory. (exp card?) >external cms hard drive (scsi?) >has a sound card. he says it's not the ensoniq sound chip, but an adaptor >card. >3.5 drive. >also has some books and sw. > >what would be a decent price for this? he may be interested in a basic 486 i >have to barter with. > >david > >

28 years, 5 months

Software needed

by jrkeys＠concentric.net

Can anyone tell me if Linux will run on the IBM Powerstation 7012/300 and 7011/200, these are both rs6000 machines. I got them at auction and the aix/unix operating systems and everything else was removed from the harddrives. I'm looking for some low cost operating system software to run these machines with. Thanks in advance. John Keep on computing !!!

28 years, 5 months

Tape backup unit: Any clues?

by SUPRDAVE＠aol.com

I dont have the exact same thing, but an old IBMer gave me something called a videotrax, which is an 8bit isa board that connects to a vcr for backup purposes. I got the complete thing, with box and sw. of course, this one only holds 80meg per vcr tape. david In a message dated 97-11-15 12:53:59 EST, Bruce Lane put forth: > Came across an interesting find recently. Manufactured by Digi-Data > Corporation, out of Maryland (yes, they are still around), it's a > Pertec-interface TBU that uses, of all things, a VHS cassette mechanism to > back up as much as 2 gigabytes to a normal T120 VHS tape. > > Darndest thing I've seen this year! I've spoken to Digi-Data already, and > it is still possible to get a manual for the thing (you better believe I'll > be doing so!), so I intend to put it to good use. > > I'm just curious if anyone else has crossed paths with this unit. It's > called a 'Gigastore.'

28 years, 5 months

Classic Computer Rescue Squad

by carl.friend＠stoneweb.com

On Fri, 14 Nov 1997, Mr. Donzelli mentioned: > Quite a few years ago, I scrapped out a big drive that had an arm > with very fine brushes that would sweep the platters just after the > thing came to speed. DEC RP04s (Sperry drives, IIRC) had that as a feature. It was later found that the brushes did more damage than good, and the brushes were subsequently all tied back with wire-ties as per an ECO. ______________________________________________________________________ | | | | Carl Richard Friend (UNIX Sysadmin) | West Boylston | | Minicomputer Collector / Enthusiast | Massachusetts, USA | | mailto:carl.friend@stoneweb.com | | | http://www.ultranet.com/~engelbrt/carl/museum | ICBM: N42:22 W71:47 | |________________________________________________|_____________________|

28 years, 5 months

Classic Computer Rescue Squad

by carl.friend＠stoneweb.com

On Fri, 14 Nov 1997, Mr. Shoppa made this observation: > The most amazing thing is being in a real computer room (i.e. dozens > of 14" drives) when the power suddenly goes *off*. The silence is > astonishing. In an installation that size, the environmental A/C makes a sub- stantial amount of noise as well. The eeriest moments I've even encountered were at my first employer who had a _monster_ UPS supplying a pair of 5000 sq. ft. computer rooms and the power failed. The UPS held the computers up, but the A/C spun down and the lights all went off (save the battery-operated ones). It was, shall we say, strange. The backup generator (a big old V-16 diesel in the parking lot) came on about 20 seconds later and the A/C and lights came back on. Oddly enough, the A/C made more noise than the computer gear. ______________________________________________________________________ | | | | Carl Richard Friend (UNIX Sysadmin) | West Boylston | | Minicomputer Collector / Enthusiast | Massachusetts, USA | | mailto:carl.friend@stoneweb.com | | | http://www.ultranet.com/~engelbrt/carl/museum | ICBM: N42:22 W71:47 | |________________________________________________|_____________________|

28 years, 5 months

Info? HP1000 F series

by jimw＠agora.rdrop.com

While wandering around one of my favourite surplus gear haunts today, I cam across a couple of HP 1000 F series minicomputers. While they look neat, I know just about nothing about them. Anyone out there familiar enough with them to give me the 'infamous 25 words or less' speech on their significance? It might take a few $$ to break one or more of them loose, so I'd like to have a bit of info before I make a concerted effort to procure them... -jim --- jimw(a)agora.rdrop.com The Computer Garage - http://www.rdrop.com/~jimw Computer Garage Fax - (503) 646-0174

28 years, 5 months

by chesster＠pcl.net

28 years, 5 months

Software needed

by jrkeys＠concentric.net

Thanks for the input John At 02:05 PM 11/15/97 -0500, you wrote: >John R. Keys Jr. wrote: >> >> Can anyone tell me if Linux will run on the IBM Powerstation 7012/300 and >> 7011/200, these are both rs6000 machines. I got them at auction and the >> aix/unix operating systems and everything else was removed from the >> harddrives. I'm looking for some low cost operating system software to run >> these machines with. Thanks in advance. John Keep on computing !!! > >To the best of my knowledge, probably not now and likely not soon. As I >recall, those machines are old Power (or maybe Power2) architecture (Bill >Donzelli knows which models are which better than I do) and the closest >Linux porting project is for the PowerPC, which is less closely related >than the similar names might imply. >-- >Ward Griffiths >"Men will never be free until the last king is strangled with the entrails >of the last priest." [Denis Diderot, "Dithyrambe sur la fete de rois"] > >

28 years, 5 months

Who Was Looking for the RSX-11/M Manual??? Please Respond!

by mcquiggi＠sfu.ca

Hi: I was in contact with someone through the group who was looking for an intro manual to RSX-11. I lost your street address (and email message)!!! Please repeat, and reply to me directly! Kevin --- Kevin McQuiggin VE7ZD mcquiggi(a)sfu.ca

28 years, 5 months

[RANT] I hate life, I wish this was simple, like the PDP...

by dseagrav＠bsdserver.tek-star.net

I have been sitting here for the past 3 hours trying to make **** BSDi see a Digiboard that MS-DOG swears is there and BSD swears is not. If this were my PDP I could just drop in another DZ11, but no, Intel has to make the machines, and they have to use some bass-ackwards IBM BIOS which limits the normal amount of serials to 4... And, since this is work, I can't leave at 5 because the CUSTOMERS are down, and they get to call me with their whiny little voices and say "The Internet is down, and it's your fault I didn't read the mail saying this was scheduled...", and worst of all I'll be here till 6 because this doesn't work, and I could be getting an RL02, controller, and terminator for $20 at 5:00, but no, the CUSTOMERS are down, so I have to put myself last *AGAIN*... Oh, that feels better. Now, off to rebuild BSD again...

28 years, 5 months

Caution!

by yakowenk＠cs.unc.edu

I just noticed in poking around this goverment auction stuff, a lot of the computer stuff is marked with codes F# or H#, which can mean it is radioactive. Yikes! Read the fine print before bidding! But that Encore system is listed as A1 - in good working order, etc. And another list showed it's original list price as something like 2.4 megabucks. Pretty picture, too. Bill.

28 years, 5 months

Tape backup unit: Any clues?

by engine＠chac.org

At 09:52 11/15/97 -0800, you wrote: >Came across an interesting find recently....a >Pertec-interface TBU that uses, of all things, a VHS cassette mechanism to >back up as much as 2 gigabytes to a normal T120 VHS tape. > > I'm just curious if anyone else has crossed paths with this unit. It's >called a 'Gigastore.' Such a device, maybe not this particular make, was the standard OEM backup for Alpha Micro minicomputers. Mid-eighties. Not madly reliable. __________________________________________ Kip Crosby engine(a)chac.org http://www.chac.org/index.html Computer History Association of California

28 years, 5 months

Software preservation

by kyrrin2＠wizards.net

OK... now that I've -finally- gotten hold of a CD burner, I can start thinking about preserving all the old software I have. What I'd like from the group is some pointers on ways that I can preserve things like RX50 floppies on CD. EPROMs and PROMs I can already deal with. What kind (if any) of binary or bit-copy utilities are available to help me in this regard? FTP sites, anyone? My primary workstation is Windoof NT, though I will be setting up an ESIX (Unix) system in the near future, or possibly Linux (haven't decided yet). I know about CoComp's SCSI Toolkit, but I'm not quite ready to spend another $500 just yet! ;-) -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- Bruce Lane, Sysop, The Dragon's Cave BBS (Fidonet 1:343/272) (Hamateur: WD6EOS) (E-mail: kyrrin2(a)wizards.net) http://www.wizards.net/technoid "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, 5 months

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