test-drb

test-drb@ccmp.vtda.org

101090 discussions

by tomas＠basun.net

And one more thing, Am wondering about the possibility of setting up an interface between modern Unix email and the embedded client for cc:Mail on the HP 200LX. Various versions of cc:Mail are available from archive.org and vetusware.com, but the missing link seems to be the "client" type connection from the cc:Mail post office to the internet, i.e. for the PO machine to connect periodically and collect mail, rather than just acting as a server. Have not been able to find much technical information about cc:Mail. I did see a Lotus development kit for sale somwhere but seems to have lost the link. Does anybody here know anything about this? Are there any books or technical documents on cc:Mail available anywhere? /Tomas

5 years, 4 months

Tape baking page by Wendy Carlos

by jwsmail＠jwsss.com

I ran across a reference to this on FB.? It appears to be from 2008, so may be well known or obsolete material. The other interesting info at the end of the article is the contact name and info about someone who restores or works on tape heads. Might be interesting to at least contact and ask if he's still around http://www.wendycarlos.com/bake%20a%20tape/baketape.html Contact John French, at JRF Magnetic Sciences (973-579-5773) for further details on magnetic tape head restoration and storage, and other related services and products. FB page with the info. https://www.facebook.com/ReelToReelTapeRecorders/photos/a.532104240183459/3… The fellow who does a lot of tape recorder (reel to reel) repair has a FB group worth dropping in on.? This is the link to a photo with a pretty bad Ampex head. thanks Jim

5 years, 4 months

IBM lamps required

by athornton＠gmail.com

> > On 12/16/2020 05:40 PM, robinson--- via cctalk wrote: >> Hi all, >> >> I am setting up an IBM 2803 and 2804 INTEFACE test panel. >> I need some lamps and lamp holders for it, >> lamp voltage not important, >> lamp color not important. >> >> Does anyone have any for sale >> or know where I can get some please. >> >> > These are going to be VERY hard to find. Some people have > saved 360 front panels, but are not likely to part with the > bulbs. What you might need to do, if function is not > required, is to get a single lamp from somebody, and 3D > print some pieces to assemble into a facsimile. Last time I was at the Living Computer Museum, I talked to the guy restoring their 370 panel, who was using LEDs, because the original bulbs are all but unobtainable and do not lave a long service life. This is likely to be something you end up needing to approximate with modern components. Adam

5 years, 4 months

IBM lamps required

by robinson＠tuberadio.com

Hi all, I am setting up an IBM 2803 and 2804 INTEFACE test panel. I need some lamps and lamp holders for it, lamp voltage not important, lamp color not important. Does anyone have any for sale or know where I can get some please. 17 lamps required 5 lamp holders required Pictures here.... www.tuberadio.com/robinson/Swaps/Wanted/panel.JPG www.tuberadio.com/robinson/Swaps/Wanted/Lamp1.JPG www.tuberadio.com/robinson/Swaps/Wanted/Lamp2.JPG www.tuberadio.com/robinson/Swaps/Wanted/Lamp3.JPG www.tuberadio.com/robinson/Swaps/Wanted/lampholder1.JPG www.tuberadio.com/robinson/Swaps/Wanted/lampholder2.JPG Regards Ray

5 years, 4 months

misc stuff - free

by dstalk＠execulink.com

I'm listing this stuff just in case someone is desperate for any of it. All items are as-is and free. Pickup only here in London, ON. I'm too old and too tired to run around shipping things. I'll hold on to this stuff for a couple of weeks; after that it's the recycling bin. Softech microsystems UCSD p-System 8" floppy disks: CPM40D CPMDISK (BOOTER) UG84AT.C UPGRADE IV.03 Jun 16 1982 N8P4AT 8080 NATIVE CODE GENERATOR Jun 16 1982 LXP4BT UCSD Pascal Compiler Jan 1983 LXP4AT.B UCSD Pascal Compiler Jun 16 1982 UGC4AT.A UPGRADE Jun 16 1982 OII40D ADAP ORIENTER Jan 5 1983 IZP4BT.B Interpreter Jan 26 1983 CZP4BT.B CPM ADAPTABLE Jan 26 1983 SAP4BT.A SYSTEM Jan 26 1983 CPM4BD CPM READABLE Jan 26 1983 N8P4BT 8086 Native Code Genator (sic) Jan 26 1983 Hayes V-series Smartmodem 9600 (in box) XT parallel port card Apple mouse A2M4015 2 x Tandem binders 1 x GA binder General Automation GA-16/220/330 microconsole and system console reference card Raytheon PTS-100 reference card Interdata model 70 and 80 programmer's guide reference card (1971) Databooks: M6800 Microcomputer Family - a 79 page Motorola pamphlet containing specs etc. AMD Am29800 Family High Performance Bus Interface 1981 AMD MOS/LSI Data Book 1976 Synertek 1979 Data Catalog Microprocessor Data Package - International Electronics Unlimited booklet on IMP MM5750, MM5751 CPU set Data Sheets: CR-112 4K MOS RAMs from Texas Instruments - reliability report for TMS 4030, 4050, 4060 IMS2620 High Performance 16Kx4 Dynanic RAM - inmos #110 May 1983 IMS2630 High Performance 8Kx4 Dynanic RAM - inmos #111 November 1983 IMS2600 High Performance 64Kx1 Dynanic RAM - inmos #101 November 1983 GTE 8104/8114 Static RAMs 1024x8 N-MOS April 1980 Texas Instruments MOS/LSI Memory and Microprocessor Products June 1976 Books: The SNOBOL4 Programming Language - Griswold et al Manuals: Courier 270 Information Display System Operator's Manual pub # 30-0002-00-00 Jun 1975 ICC 40+ Data Display System Installation and Operation GA 16/220 prints - this is a very complete set: CUP NO. I, CPU NO. II, SYS. CNSL. INTF. W/IPL, 8K RAM, MEMORY SERVICE MODULE, TTY/with PS, RS-232/TTY, COMPACT MIB, COMPACT PS

5 years, 4 months

WTD - Jupiter Ace plastic rivets

by classiccmp＠philpem.me.uk

Has anyone got a couple of the white plastic rivets which are used to hold the Jupiter Ace case together? They consist of a 4-point clawed rivet of about 5mm long, and a pin which pushes down the centre to open it out. I need five of them ideally - but even two or three would get the case buttoned up, if not perfectly. I've checked the local plastic supplier catalogues and haven't found anything which quite matches up. Cheers, -- Phil. philpem at philpem.me.uk https://www.philpem.me.uk/

5 years, 4 months

found it: first speech synthesizer (at least, for S-100 systems)

by sieler＠allegro.com

Hi, Some years back, I was asking if anyone had information about the speech synthesizer developed for the Altair 8080 by Wirt Atmar of AICS (in New Mexico). No "hits". Most places on the web claimed the Computalker was first, given the date as 1976 or 1977. (Earlier speech synthesizes existed, but they were external boxes that one interfaced to, or were standalone (often with a large/weird keyboard).) Today, I stumbled over a fairly bad OCR of Byte magazine from August, 1976 at https://archive.org/stream/byte-magazine-1976-08/1976_08_BYTE_00-12_Speech_… It has two articles about speech synthesizers for S-100 bus systems. The first is by the Computalker people, who say: At the time this article goes to press, a synthesizer module incorporating several detail refinements and im- provements over the circuits of this article is being de- veloped by the author and associates. and A detailed user's guide will be supplied with the Computalker module Note the future tense! The second is by Wirt Atmar, whose product *was already shipping*. Near the end of his Byte article, Wirt lists currently available products: At the present time, two speech synthesizers are both commercially available and affordable by the hobbyist. One is the Votrax produced by: Vocal Interface Division Federal Screw Works 500 Stephenson Dr Troy Ml 48084 Price, approximately $2,000 Interfacing: Parallel or Serial (RS-232) The second is the Model 1000 manufactured by: Ai Cybernetic Systems PO Box 4691 University Park NM 88003 Price, $425 Wirt had told me (twenty years ago or so) that he thought his was the first for microcomputers (e.g., a user installed card, not an external box). Now, I'm sure ... but it was realllly close! Wirt demonstrated his product at the earlier MITS World Altair Computer Conven- tion, where it won first prize. He advertised it poorly/infrequently, since it was mostly a side business. And, that shows, since history doesn't remember it. Stan

5 years, 4 months

misc stuff - free

by jnc＠mercury.lcs.mit.edu

> I can't pick up in ON, unfortunately, but if someone who is in the area > could please pick up this "Microprocessor Data Package" and ship it to > me, I'd be willing to pay anything reasonable, or maybe slightly > unreasonable. You probably know this already, but if you're willing to pay, there are 'pack and ship' services who will show up at a location, take the stuff to be shipped, go pack it up, and ship it. I have used PakMail: http://www.pakmailcanada.com/ several times to retrieve things in this way (they shipped my PDP-11/45 from Ontario, although the seller did a lot of the packaging in that particular case), and have generally been happy with them. I don't see a London location, but maybe one of their other Ontario locations: http://www.pakmailcanada.com/pakmail-canada-locations is close enough to be useable? Noel

5 years, 4 months

WTB: CompuPro / Godbout RAM 17

by deramp5113＠yahoo.com

Were you the winner of the eBay auction? It went for a very reasonable price. It was very difficult for me to not bid on it - those are great boards for use with early S100 systems :) Mike

5 years, 4 months

found it: first speech synthesizer (at least, for S-100 systems)

by sieler＠allegro.com

Hi, I'd like to apologize for referring to the OCR of the Byte article as a "fairly bad OCR". I was thinking of the garbled sections that may be the result of trying to OCR graphics. The vast majority of the text comes across clearly, and I don't want to insult whoever volunteered their time to do the OCR'ing ... I know how tedious it can be! I've been spoiled by OCR programs that produce their output as pdfs with searchable text, and should have remembered the results I get when I look at just their text! Stan

5 years, 4 months

tty and video displays

by sieler＠allegro.com

Paul writes: > General overstrike requires a bitmap display, or some sort of persistent display. Although he carefully specified 'general overstrike', I'll still mention how the HP 2641A (an APL terminal) did it. When about to enter a newly received character into memory, the terminal checked if a non-blank was already in that spot ... if yes, it looked up the pair in an internal ROM table and replaced the existing character code with a new character code designed for APL\3000 (a code that, when received, would display as the appropriate overstrike). That meant that we couldn't use the terminal at Burroughs, because our APL had a few overstrikes that weren't in the table. Stan

5 years, 4 months

Apple Investment

by c.murray.mccullough＠gmail.com

Apple went public Dec. 12, 1980 at $22.00/share over 40 years ago. Where has the time gone! A $1000 investment would be ~45 shares. Today that would be 5040 shares after 5 splits. Its price today is $121/share. That would be $609,840. Here in Canada that?s $939,153! Quite the nest egg. It has certainly paid quite handsomely to have invested in Classic Computers or in one company back then. Happy computing. Stay safe. Murray ? <http://www.avg.com/email-signature?utm_medium=email&utm_source=link&utm_cam…> Virus-free. www.avg.com <http://www.avg.com/email-signature?utm_medium=email&utm_source=link&utm_cam…> <#DAB4FAD8-2DD7-40BB-A1B8-4E2AA1F9FDF2>

5 years, 4 months

Macro-10 humour

by dstalk＠execulink.com

I came across this among some junk I had. Don .TY NEMON.DOC LEVEL 5 MACRO-10 MNEMONICS ============================= COINCIDENT WITH THE RELEASE OF THE LEVEL 5 MONITOR SERIES, THE MNEMONICS FOR THE HARDWARE INSTRUCTIONS USED IN THE MACRO-10 ASSEMBLER HAVE BEEN UPDATED TO REFLECT CHANGES TO THE MONITOR, AND NEW OPERATING PROCEDURES. ALTHOUGH THEY HAVE NOT ALL BEEN IMPLEMENTED AS YET, A PARTIAL LISTING FOLLOWS: TRCE TRANSLATE REDUNDANT CODE TO ETHIOPIAN ROTC REQUEST OPERATOR TAKE OFF CLOTHES TDCE TRY TO DUMP CORE EVERYWHERE HRR HASH RELOCATION REGISTERS XCT EXTEND CYCLE TIME ANDCMB ALLOW NO DIRECT CURRENT IN MEMORY BANKS AOSE ALERT ONE SYSTEMS ENGINEER SETNM START EJECTING TRANSISTORS AT NEAREST MACHINE SETCM STOP EVERYTHING TO CRASH MONITOR SETAM START EATING TAPE ON ALTERNATE MONDAYS TLCN THROW LIFEPRESERVER INTO CHANNEL FOR NON-SWIMMER MULM MONITOR UPDATE FROM LUNAR MODULE MOVMS MAINTAIN ONLY VARIABLE MAGTAPE SPEED FSBRI FIVE SONIC BOOMS OVER REMOTE INTERFACE HRRES HIJACK REMOTE READER TO ENGINEERING SCIENCE HRREM HALT AND REVERSE ROTATION ON EVERY MAGTAPE JUMPE JUMBLE USERS' MEMORY ON PARITY ERROR IDPB IMMEDIATELY DROP PARITY BIT SETCAI SUDDENLY ELECTRIFY TERMINAL ON CRUDELY ARTICULATED INPUT JFFO JAIL AND FINGERPRINT FLIPPANT OPERATOR ORCMB OPERATOR REQUEST TO CHANGE MAIN BATTERIES SKIP SEARCH FOR KNOT IN INPUT STRING SKIPL SKIP ON KNOT IN POWER LINE ORCBI ORDER REDUNDANT CHANNELS TO THE BACK OF THE I/O BUS SUBI START UNLOADING BAGGAGE FROM THE I/O BUS PUSH PUNCH USING SEMI-CIRCULAR HOLES JUMPL JUMP AND UNRAVEL MAIN POWER LINE SOSL SMEAR OUTPUT ON SLOW LINE PRINTERS TRON TRY TO REWIND OPERATORS' NECKTIE SOSN SEND OUTPUT TO SUPERVISORS' NECKTIE AOBJN ADD ONE BIT TO JOB NUMBER IMULM INSIST THAT MALICIOUS USERS BE LOCKED IN MEMORY FMPR FORGET MEMORY PROTECTION AND RELOCATION FMPRB FAKE MONITOR PROBLEMS AND RESET BRIEFLY CAIE CHANGE ADDRESSING TO INEFFECTIVE FROM EFFECTIVE TRN TRANSLATE TO ROMAN NUMERALS DPB DETACH PROCESSOR BRIEFLY DIVB DECODE INTEGERS TO VERIFIED BRAILLE SETCAI SNICKER ON ERRONEOUS TYPEIN FOR CAI DIVMB DESTROY INDIVIDUAL MEMORY BANK ORCB OUTPUT A RECORD CODED IN BRAILLE TRCE TRANSFER ON ROMAN CATHOLIC ENGINEER TLNE TRANSFER ON LUTHERAN ENGINEER TROA TRANSFER ON ATHEIST SOS SERVICE ONLY STUDENTS SOJG SERVICE ONLY JEWISH GRAD STUDENTS TDC TAKE DISK TO CHIROPRACTER TSCA TURN SYSTEM CLOCK AHEAD FADRB FILTER AIR ON DETECTING ROPE BURNING FADM FILTER AIR ON DETECTING MOUNTIE PUSHJ PROCESS USER'S SHORTHAND JOB TDCA TYPE DOCUMENTATION, CENSORING ANECDOTES MOVEM MONITOR OUTPUTS A VULGAR ERROR MESSAGE ADDM ALLEVIATE DELAYS IN DECTAPE MOUNTING AOSL AWAKEN OPERATOR IF SNORING LOUDLY CAIE CENSOR ALL INPUT FROM ENGINEERING DPB DISPLAY PASSWORDS FROM BATCH FSBM FAST SPLICE OF BROKEN MAGTAPE BLT BEGIN LOSING TIME S0JG STACK OPERATOR (JUST GIRLS) TSON TIME SLICE OF ONE NANOSECOND JRST JOG 'ROUND SEVEN TRACK TAPE TSC TRANSFER SWAPPING TO CARDS

5 years, 4 months

DEC stuff - free

by dstalk＠execulink.com

I'm listing this stuff just in case someone is desperate for any of it. All items are as-is and free. Pickup only here in London, ON. I'm too old and too tired to run around shipping things. I'll hold on to this stuff for a couple of weeks; after that it's the recycling bin. Hardware: 12 x M594 2 x M971 M970 R002 BC08R-01 H8611 VT-52 coils (flyback, etc) VT-100 current loop interface card VAX PASCAL manuals: AA-D030A-TE VAX/VMS Primer (VMS V01) SPD 25.11.4 VAX-11 PASCAL 1.1 AA-H484A-TE VAX-11 PASCAL Language Reference Manual AA-H485A-TE VAX-11 PASCAL User's Guide AA-J181A-TE VAX-11 PASCAL Installation GUide/Release Notes AA-J180A-TE VAX-11 PASCAL Primer 3" DEC binder for the PASCAL manuals single package of prints: PC11 M7810-C-1 "11/25/74" Asynchronous Line Interface M7800-0-1 "75" DL11-0-2 Installation Procedure "4-75" LP11 Interface M7930-0-1 RK05-0-2 "72" RK11-D-1 "73" individual prints: DUV11-DA-1 Field Maintenance Print Set "12-13-76" PC11-0 engineering drawings "70" H720-E Fiche: 2 x DECUS PDP-11 Catalog 1977 DECUS PDP-11 Catalog 1978 Logic Handbook 1970 Logic Handbook 1973-74 Control handbook 1969 Manuals: VT100 User Guide EK-VT100-UG-002 VT52 DECscope Maintenance Manual EK-VT52-MM-001 (1976) RTM Register Transfer Modules (1973) Media: EC-N4783-48 ManageWORKS Workgroup Administrator & SDK March 1995 (trial software) DECdirect CD Catalog Winter 1995 ONYX Electronic Systems and Options Catalog V1.0 (floppies) Listings: MAINDEC-11-DEFPB-A-D Feb 21, 1976 PDP11-45/55/70 FP11C part 2 MAINDEC-11-DEFPA-A-D Feb 21, 1976 PDP11-45/55/70 FP11C part 1 MAINDEC-11-DCKBA to DCKBE-C-D March 21, 1975 PDP11/45-11/40 BASIC CP TESTS

5 years, 4 months

when was memory "above" the terminal screen invented?

by sieler＠allegro.com

Hi, First, apologies if I asked this years ago (I've searched my archives, no hits :) When was the concept of memory "above" the screen invented for terminals? I.e., previously displayed data that had scrolled up and off the screen ... but could be retrieved (usually by scrolling down). (Sometimes called "scrollback", or "offscreen memory".) (BTW, I'm talking about terminal-local memory, not a scrollback implemented by the computer to which the terminal is connected.) The HP 2640A, 1974, had (IIRC) several pages of memory available ... the user could scroll backwards and see what had been on the screen before it scrolled off (as long as it hadn't been lost by having too much subsequent output). I suspect the DEV VT100, 1978, had it, but I can't find definitive proof online (sure, I can find VT102 emulators that have scrollback, but reading an old VT102 manual doesn't make it clear that it has it.) thanks, Stan

5 years, 4 months

Help needed identifying old MFM drives from the excavation

by cz＠alembic.crystel.com

As the excavation of Bob's junkpile continues I have finally hit the MFM layer. Specifically about 10 5.25 hard disks that look to be old style MFM drives. Vertex V150 Miniscribe 6085 ST 4038M Seagate Franklin telecom AT-40 Miniscribe 3650 HH Seagate ST4096 Priam ID45-H Rodime RO203E RD54 Real ST506 Pair of ST412's. Anyone recognize what kinds of systems may have used these? The RD54 is of course DEC, and I'm guessing the ST506 and 412's were from either a Rainbow or a Professional/350. But the rest are weird. Maybe Convergent miniframes? Probably not PC's as Bob had a lot of weird stuff. Thoughts? I'll see if I can get a mfm reader and suck data into files I can post for others to read/try/giggle at. But as there isn't much labelling I have no idea what is on them. Also did find Wordperfect and speller for what I think is Rainbow on 5.25 floppies. Let me know if you need a copy, or if a copy exists in archives (also two DEC disks for Learning the Rainbow or something like that) Chris

5 years, 4 months

Ok, Perqs are stowed away

by cz＠alembic.crystel.com

1 Perq 1, one chassis without motherboards of another Perq1, sides, lids, 1.5 sets of ends, pair of Perq2 endpanels, two keyboards (1 and 2 style) and a portrait monitor. Pictures of all the stuff at https://www.crystel.com/bob/perq4 Not many pictures of this stuff from all angles, so feel free to copy and put on real sites. Anyone need more of these Sun3/4 VME boards? Need to make more space. CZ

5 years, 4 months

Perkins-Elmer 3600 and PETOS

by lproven＠gmail.com

Does anyone know anything much about this early desktop computer and its OS? Example: https://www.ebay.com/itm/Perkin-Elmer-3600-PETOS-Like-Microsoft-BASIC-Compu… Although it predated the PC, MS supplied the BASIC and apparently the CLI resembles early DOS. I ask because there is someone in the Free Pascal Compiler fora looking for help getting data off one -- they're still using it for data monitoring! https://forum.lazarus.freepascal.org/index.php/topic,52458.0.html -- Liam Proven ? Profile: https://about.me/liamproven Email: lproven at cix.co.uk ? gMail/gTalk/gHangouts: lproven at gmail.com Twitter/Facebook/LinkedIn/Flickr: lproven ? Skype: liamproven UK: +44 7939-087884 ? ?R (+ WhatsApp/Telegram/Signal): +420 702 829 053

5 years, 4 months

WTB: CompuPro / Godbout RAM 17

by deramp5113＠yahoo.com

I assume you saw the RAM 17 on eBay right now? Mike

5 years, 4 months

e: Gateway Electronics Sale this Saturday from 9am to 4pm

by athornton＠gmail.com

If anyone goes to the Gateway sale, please, please tell Doug that Adam Thornton is doing fine in Tucson but misses him and the store greatly. Thanks, Adam

5 years, 4 months

Apple 1 and memorabilia up for auction in Boston (NOT on Epay)

by robert.stek＠gmail.com

I really don't need another one. Bob Saver of lost Sols

5 years, 4 months

Fire-Sale PDP-11 update (and request for parts)

by derschjo＠gmail.com

Thought you folks might be interested in a quick update on my folly here. At the beginning of November I drove down to the bay area to pick up the two fire-damaged PDP-11 systems -- a PDP-11/70 and a PDP-11/45. (I also made a few other stops and got a few other items, but that's not what I'm here to talk about...) Over the past few weeks I've gone over the two systems and my assessment is that the 11/70, while completely filthy, is completely restorable. The fire/heat damaged the front panel enough to discolor the plexi and start melting a few switches (http://yahozna.dyndns.org/scratch/1170/1170.jpg) but that's the extent of the damage. My only fear is that the fingers on the backplanes might possibly have some corrosion here and there, but I've started going through and cleaning the boards and the backplane slots and so far I haven't run into anything that looks troubling. The 11/45 is considerably further gone. It took a serious amount of heat, enough for the pig iron frame for the front panel to start melting ( http://yahozna.dyndns.org/scratch/1170/1145.jpg). The front panel is completely destroyed, as is the wiring harness for the power distribution. But... the metal of the chassis and the power supplies seems to have protected the boards and the backplane. There are no melted or even discolored wire-wrap wires on the backplane, and the boards look fine. As an experiment I took the non-11/45-specific boards out of the backplane (a Plessey memory board, an RL11 controller, and an M9301 bootstrap terminator -- this one was right up front where things were the hottest and the handles had started to melt) and tested them in my PDP-11/40. They all work fine. So I think that, maybe, with a LOT of effort, the 11/45 could live again. I'm tackling the 11/70 first (Al kindly sold me a new front panel for a very reasonable price so it already looks 100% better) and once I'm done with that I hope to move on to the 11/45. In the meantime I'm hoping to keep my eyes peeled for parts for the /45. I found a seller on eBay with "restored" H7420a power supplies for $68, with free shipping so I grabbed a pair. I realize this is unlikely, but I was curious if anyone has 1) any parts of the 11/45 power wiring harness, or 2) (really unlikely) an 11/45 front panel in any condition. Well, any condition better than "melted into slag," I suppose. I can build my own wiring harness, but if I can save myself the trouble, that'd be nice. - Josh

5 years, 4 months

Problems with FORT and ALGOL in TSS/8

by kej＠kyrafre.com

Hi everyone, The Nostalgic Computing Center <http://www.nostalgiccomputing.org/> has a virtual PDP-8 running TSS/8 <http://www.nostalgiccomputing.org:8080/aterm.html?m=pdp8&t=PDP-8&r=24&c=80> in its collection. We use the SIMH PDP-8e emulator to support the machine, and we recently updated the machine to run the TSS/8 distribution created by LCM+L, found here on GitHub <https://github.com/livingcomputermuseum/cpus-pdp8>. The LCM+L distribution is slightly different from other TSS/8 distributions available on the web in that it provides some additional goodies such as ALGOL and LISP. The NCC demonstrates how various classic computers worked by providing automated scripts that interact with the machines in the collection. For example, to demonstrate each of the programming languages supported by a machine, scripts are provided to create, compile, and run a simple Fibonacci sequence generator. We've done this for the TSS/8 system, but the scripts aren't working for FORTRAN or ALGOL, and we're wondering if anyone on this list might know why. Specifically, in the case of FORTRAN, the compiler exits with an error code 6204. This occurs even when trying to compile trivial "hello world" programs, and it appears to occur in all other TSS/8 distributions we've tried as well (i.e., this particular problem is not unique to the LCM+L distribution). We haven't found error code 6204 specifically documented in the TSS/8 user/admin manuals, but the manuals do document other error codes in the 62xx range. Documented error codes in the 62xx range appear to reflect file I/O errors, so we're wondering if perhaps one of the files supporting the FORTRAN compiler is corrupt in all of these distributions. For example, here is a transcription of a simple session demonstrating the problem: .R EDIT INPUT: OUTPUT:FTEST A WRITE(1,10) 10 FORMAT(5HHELLO,/) END E ^BS .R FORT INPUT:FTEST OUTPUT: 6204^BS . We tried enabling the floating point processor to see if lack of FPP might cause FORT to abort, but enabling the FPP did not solve the problem. The SIMH configuration file for the machine currently looks like: set throttle 800K set df disabled set rf disabled set rk enabled set dt enabled att rk0 tss8_rk_lcm.dsk set cpu 32k attach ttix 4000 load boot.bin run 200 Note that BASIC, FOCAL, and LISP all seem to run very nicely on the machine. The problem we're experiencing with ALGOL appears to be a glaring compiler bug, but the compiler was distributed widely through DECUS, and it is difficult to imagine that it would have been released with an obvious bug, so we are wondering if perhaps we're not interpreting the user manual <http://svn.so-much-stuff.com/svn/trunk/pdp8/src/decus/8-213/decus-8-213.pdf> correctly. Here is a transcription of a session that exhibits the problem: .R EDIT INPUT: OUTPUT:ATEST A 'BEGIN' 'INTEGER' I; I := 1; WRITE(1, I); SKIP 'END' $ E ^BS .R ALGOL INPUT:ATEST OUTPUT: *TOO MANY UNDEFINED [UEXPRESSION* ^BS . The compiler seems to be complaining that the simple assignment statement on line 3 of the program is somehow incorrect. If we change the statement to "I := 1 + 0;", the error message goes away, and the program runs, but it prints "0" instead of the expected "1". Also, if we change the program to: 'BEGIN' 'INTEGER' I; 'FOR' I := 1 'STEP' 1 'UNTIL' 10 'DO' 'BEGIN' WRITE(1, I); SKIP 'END' 'END' $ it compiles successfully and it prints what is expected, the numbers 1 through 10. Does anyone have experience with the ALGOL/8 compiler? If so, does this behavior make sense, and can you let us know what we're doing wrong? Note that the same ALGOL60 program compiles and runs as expected on the CDC mainframes and the TOPS-20 system at the NCC. thanks! Kevin

5 years, 4 months

Atari ST diskettes

by van.snyder＠sbcglobal.net

I found a box of 45 Atari ST diskettes in my basement, from my 1980's 520 ST (or maybe my brother's 1040 ST). I don't have a floppy drive, so I can't tell whether they're readable. Some are originals, for example for 1St Word, the word processor, and Regent Base, a relational database program. Others are copies. If you send a PDF of a USPS media rate shipping label, 4"x5"x6", 3lb, they're yours. Coordinate with me so you don't send a label after somebody else has already sent one. Van Snyder

5 years, 4 months

WTB: CompuPro / Godbout RAM 17

by ethan＠757.org

Looking for a RAM 17 for my IMSAI 8080 to replace 6 x 8K boards. -- : Ethan O'Toole

5 years, 4 months

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test-drb