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101090 discussions

Microsoft ICE for compositing scans: a success story

by legalize＠xmission.com

On my final trip to The Black Hole, I picked up some more Tektronix documentation. One of these was a photocopy of the manual for the 4953/4954 Graphics Tablet. This manual combines the instruction and service manual in one with circuit diagrams and descriptions in the back of the manual. However, since this was a photocopy and not an original, the circuit diagrams were not available in their original size. The person who photocopied the manual had attempted to cover the diagrams with multiple photocopies of different parts of the oversize page. It was difficult to manually match up the different pages, if only just to identify the order in which they should appear in a scanned PDF of the manual. Instead I just fed the scans into Microsoft ICE, available as a free download: Microsoft ICE (Image Composite Editor) <http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/um/redmond/groups/ivm/ice/> The results speak for themselves. See the last three pages of the resulting PDF: <http://bitsavers.trailing-edge.com/pdf/tektronix/49xx/070-1791-01_4953_4954…> You can see that the person who photocopied the manual did miss a few bits of the schematics, but for the most part the schematic is now legible as a single diagram. Due to the blending that occurs at the edges of the individual images, Microsoft ICE will sometimes produce a grayscale image from the bilevel scans I use for making PDFs of manuals. So a little post processing in ImageMagick reduced the bit depth back down to 1 bit per pixel and converted the image to PDF for combining with the rest of the pages via pdftk. The command stream went roughly like this: convert composite.tif -monochrome -compression Group4 page.tif convert page.tif -density 600x600 page.pdf The -density argument tells the PDF file that the image was scanned at 600 dpi so that the composite page is shown at the same relative size to the other pages in a PDF viewer. It may be possible to combine these two commands into a single invocation of ImageMagick with identical results; I haven't tried that. I had previously used hugin, an open source image compositing program that has tutorials for compositing multiple scans like this. However, using hugin to do the same job was a very tedious, laborious and lengthy process. With MS ICE, it was a simple matter of drag-n-drop of the image files onto the application which it processed automatically to find the resulting composite. -- "The Direct3D Graphics Pipeline" free book <http://tinyurl.com/d3d-pipeline> The Computer Graphics Museum <http://computergraphicsmuseum.org> The Terminals Wiki <http://terminals.classiccmp.org> Legalize Adulthood! (my blog) <http://legalizeadulthood.wordpress.com>

13 years, 6 months

Microsoft ICE for compositing scans: a success story

by legalize＠xmission.com

On my final trip to The Black Hole, I picked up some more Tektronix documentation. One of these was a photocopy of the manual for the 4953/4954 Graphics Tablet. This manual combines the instruction and service manual in one with circuit diagrams and descriptions in the back of the manual. However, since this was a photocopy and not an original, the circuit diagrams were not available in their original size. The person who photocopied the manual had attempted to cover the diagrams with multiple photocopies of different parts of the oversize page. It was difficult to manually match up the different pages, if only just to identify the order in which they should appear in a scanned PDF of the manual. Instead I just fed the scans into Microsoft ICE, available as a free download: Microsoft ICE (Image Composite Editor) <http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/um/redmond/groups/ivm/ice/> The results speak for themselves. See the last three pages of the resulting PDF: <http://bitsavers.trailing-edge.com/pdf/tektronix/49xx/070-1791-01_4953_4954…> You can see that the person who photocopied the manual did miss a few bits of the schematics, but for the most part the schematic is now legible as a single diagram. Due to the blending that occurs at the edges of the individual images, Microsoft ICE will sometimes produce a grayscale image from the bilevel scans I use for making PDFs of manuals. So a little post processing in ImageMagick reduced the bit depth back down to 1 bit per pixel and converted the image to PDF for combining with the rest of the pages via pdftk. The command stream went roughly like this: convert composite.tif -monochrome -compression Group4 -density 600x600 page.pdf The -density argument tells the PDF file that the image was scanned at 600 dpi so that the composite page is shown at the same relative size to the other pages in a PDF viewer. I had previously used hugin, an open source image compositing program that has tutorials for compositing multiple scans like this. However, using hugin to do the same job was a very tedious, laborious and lengthy process. With MS ICE, it was a simple matter of drag-n-drop of the image files onto the application which it processed automatically to find the resulting composite. -- "The Direct3D Graphics Pipeline" free book <http://tinyurl.com/d3d-pipeline> The Computer Graphics Museum <http://computergraphicsmuseum.org> The Terminals Wiki <http://terminals.classiccmp.org> Legalize Adulthood! (my blog) <http://legalizeadulthood.wordpress.com>

13 years, 6 months

Ebay Cray T94

by saquinn624＠aol.com

>Date: Thu, 11 Oct 2012 21:25:24 -0700 (PDT) >From: Fred Cisin <cisin at xenosoft.com> >To: "General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts" > <cctalk at classiccmp.org> >Subject: Re: Ebay Cray T94 >Message-ID: <20121011212438.J78683 at shell.lmi.net> >Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII > >On Thu, 11 Oct 2012, jim s wrote: >> As to whether it is touchup paint, > >before buying a Cray, rap on each of the panels to check for Bondo? Crays are fast machines, so I suppose a system crash could be more destructive for them. Have you checked out CompFax? Maybe it was totaled after a particularly nasty segfault.

13 years, 6 months

Missing footnotes [was RE: Our Museum Need a special help..]

by RichA＠vulcan.com

From: Rich Alderson Sent: Wednesday, October 10, 2012 11:40 AM > The earliest Buddhist texts are written in a Middle Indic[2] language Oh, crap. There was only going to be 1 footnote anyway, which I forgot to include: [1] "Middle Indic" is a designation for the Indo-Aryan[2] languages of the period roughly between 500 BCE and 800 CE, descended from Old Indic languages contemporaneous with Vedic, Epic Sanskrit, and Classical Sanskrit. The Modern Indic languages are descended from various of the Middle Indic languages. [2] This is a linguistic classification, prior to the racialist adoption of the word "Aryan" to mean something entirely different. I decided in composing the 1st note that the 2nd was needed. Rich Alderson Vintage Computing Sr. Systems Engineer Vulcan, Inc. 505 5th Avenue S, Suite 900 Seattle, WA 98104 mailto:RichA at vulcan.com mailto:RichA at LivingComputerMuseum.org http://www.LivingComputerMuseum.org/

13 years, 6 months

Our Museum Need a special help..

by rampaginggreenhulk＠yahoo.com

what?? Top posted because its sent from my stupid phone Doc. When did I ever blame google for anything?? ------------------------------ On Wed, Oct 10, 2012 5:29 PM PDT Doc Shipley wrote: > <Top posting to preserve the prior top posting> > > Chris, you are SO busted. This post absolutely puts the lie to your >"Google made me do it" quoting defense. > > Color me trolled. > > > Doc > > >On 10/10/12 4:18 PM, Chris Tofu wrote: >> >> You werent aware that the expression simply represents a persons >> inability to decipher, and the inability to care? The second part >> doesnt apply entirely to me though, I am very interested in some >> languages, namely German, ancient Hebrew, koine Greek, Russian, >> Japanese, Chinese...roughly in that order (wish me luck!). Not loads >> of interest in Romance languages, but did take Latin and French in >> h.s. No I didnt pay very good attention either. Il es, tu es, je >> suis, la fanetre, le pupitre. Look right? >> ------------------------------ On Wed, Oct 10, 2012 8:42 AM PDT Kevin >> Monceaux wrote: >> >> On Tue, Oct 09, 2012 at 05:01:38PM -0700, Chris Tofu wrote: >> >>> C: It's all Greek to me! >> >> Greek looks more like: >> >> ? ??????????? ???????? ?????? ????? ?? ? ??????????? ??? ?? ???? >> ??????? ???? ?? ???? ??????? ????????? ??? ?????. >> >> Well, ancient Greek at least. :-) >> >> >> >> -- >> >> Kevin http://www.RawFedDogs.net http://Lassie.RawFedDogs.net >> http://www.WacoAgilityGroup.org Bruceville, TX >> >> What's the definition of a legacy system? One that works! Errare >> humanum est, ignoscere caninum. >> >

13 years, 6 months

cluelessness, Re: Our Museum Need a special help..

by dm561＠torfree.net

----- Original Message ----- > Message: 1 > Date: Wed, 10 Oct 2012 23:25:01 -0400 > From: Dave McGuire <mcguire at neurotica.com> > > On 10/10/2012 11:06 PM, Ian King wrote: >> >> Dave, please don't color "most of us" as "clueless". This sort of >> self-flagellation feeds a tired stereotype that serves no one. -- Ian > > > ...except that, in the general public outside of academia, it's damn > accurate. I'm sorry if I offended you, in any case. There is a REASON > that many people in other countries have the opinions they do about us. > > -Dave -----Reply -------- Lots of folks like you also believe that there are REASONS why people have the opinions they do about Jews, Mexicans, Muslims, people with black skins or blond hair, etc. etc... Precious irony... ;-) m

13 years, 6 months

8 bits and change

by dgriffi＠cs.csubak.edu

Does anyone remember a zine from the early 1990s called "8 Bit and Change"? I found several issues of it in my heap-o-stuff and was wondering if I should pass it on or archive it myself. -- David Griffith dgriffi at cs.csubak.edu A: Because it fouls the order in which people normally read text. Q: Why is top-posting such a bad thing? A: Top-posting. Q: What is the most annoying thing in e-mail?

13 years, 6 months

cluelessness, Re: Our Museum Need a special help..

by dm561＠torfree.net

----- Original Message ----- > Message: 16 > Date: Thu, 11 Oct 2012 07:00:53 -0700 (PDT) > From: geneb <geneb at deltasoft.com> > > On Thu, 11 Oct 2012, Ian King wrote: > >> I get really tired of such meaningless generalizations. >> > Ian, the problem is that the dumbest of us is also the loudest of us and > the smartest of us can't be bothered to spend the energy required to shut > them up. :) > > g. ----- Reply ----- Well, if "loudest" = 'number of posts per day/week not related to CCs' you may have a point... ;-)

13 years, 6 months

datasheetarchive.com weirdness

by dgriffi＠cs.csubak.edu

Has anyone recently tried to download data sheets from datasheetarchive.com? I keep getting sent round and round in circles. -- David Griffith dgriffi at cs.csubak.edu A: Because it fouls the order in which people normally read text. Q: Why is top-posting such a bad thing? A: Top-posting. Q: What is the most annoying thing in e-mail?

13 years, 6 months

Our Museum Need a special help..

by tshoppa＠wmata.com

> QUINZE MIL FLOPPIES??? Que voces vao fazer com tanto disquete assim?! He's obviously building a 21.6 Gigabyte RAID Array using a proven storage medium with a long track record, rather than these modern hocus-pocus terabyte drives that use pure magic to record anything and you never know where on the media it will actually land. Won't hold all of bitsavers by any means, but will hold like an eighth of it. 15000 floppies, times 1.44 Mbyte each, gives 21.6 Gigabytes. Oh, wait, he needs at least one drive for redundancy. Actual capacity = 14999 * 1.44 Mbytes. The 15000th drive carries the parity stripe, just in case any of the other drives ever fail. Tim.

13 years, 6 months

WATFOR for IBM 7040

by spedraja＠gmail.com

Hello. Im' playing actually with diverse emulators for the IBM 709x and the software available for them (IBSYS and CTSS). Fun and instructive (I'm using it to play with COBOL and FORTRAN at present). Now I should like to go one step beyond. I have doubts about the compatibility but I should like to know if exists some request for the WATFOR compiler for the IBM 7040 to the Waterloo University or whoever would be the owner of the rights of this software.. -- Gracias | Regards Saludos - Greetings - Freundliche Gr??e - Salutations -- Sergio Pedraja twitter: @sergio_pedraja ----- No crea todo lo que ve, ni crea que est? vi?ndolo todo

13 years, 6 months

Burroughs System/V Series emulator

by stevew＠ka6s.com

-------------- Written by MikeSdm561 at torfree.net > > >Hi Steve, > >wrong Mike, but that's OK. > >What I have is the main nixie and indicator display and control console on >the front of the CPU cabinet, under the clock at the very right of the >picture below; I even still have a picture somewhere of me standing in front >of it compiling one of my programs. > >I think the SPO you're talking about is the teleprinter on >the desk to the left of it: > >http://www.smecc.org/burroughs-images/burrou4.jpg > >(The other) mike. I stand embarrassingly corrected TWICE! The "wrong" Mike part is explainable in that I get cctalk as a digest and messed up in the Copy & Paste. The second part was me reading "control console" and assuming you meant the teleprinter. So Sorry! I spent a lot of time with a B2700 learning Fortran. The Glendale, CA Board of Ed had a B2700 that was used by the Junior college for Cobol/Fortran classes back in the mid-70s. A buddy from High School got a job there as a Sys Admin so got to spend a fair amount of time around it. Eventually they upgraded to a B6800 system. Eventually I went to work in Goleta on the Small systems, then got transferred to Pasadena where the Medium systems were built. I was there as they were debugging the B2900. ;-) Very fond memories. Steve

13 years, 6 months

disk flaws, classic vs. modern

by saquinn624＠aol.com

Message: 19 Date: Sun, 07 Oct 2012 03:51:12 -0600 From: Eric Smith <eric at brouhaha.com> To: General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts <cctalk at classiccmp.org> Subject: Re: disk flaws, classic vs. modern Message-ID: <50715090.2020207 at brouhaha.com> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed On 10/07/2012 01:38 AM, jim s wrote: > recently I had a system with a 1.5tb seagate grow a count of > "uncorrectable offline sector count" errors. [...] To complicate > things a bit this was part of a LVM raid ext3 raid 5 set, When you have a drive go bad in a RAID 5, it's best to pull the drive, put a new one in its place, and start a rebuild. That's the point of using RAID 5. Trying to recover data from the failing drive is mostly a waste of time. Of course, if the drive wasn't in a RAID 5, mirror, etc., you wouldn't have that option. My experience is that once it starts it just gets worse, especially with the newer drives (>100 or so GB) - junk the drive and put a new one in. In fact, based on what I've seen and heard I'd replace more of the drives once you get the bad drive replaced and the array rebuilt, especially if the drives are from the same batch. Marginal drives can and do go out during rebuilds. Of course, if the data on the array isn't critical then this becomes much more flexible- but if it is then you don't want to have your second drive go at some point in the near future, then the third give up while you're attempting to rebuild the array after the second disk's failure. Any reason you're recovering data from the drive rather than rebuilding? I'd go along with Eric here - if you rebuild then you're starting with a known-good array, rather than potentially having errors in your replacement drive. This isn't just anecdotes, either - I've seen numbers. That's one reason I've gone to mirrors on my few critical installations.

13 years, 6 months

Our Museum Need a special help..

by rampaginggreenhulk＠yahoo.com

You werent aware that the expression simply represents a persons inability to decipher, and the inability to care? The second part doesnt apply entirely to me though, I am very interested in some languages, namely German, ancient Hebrew, koine Greek, Russian, Japanese, Chinese...roughly in that order (wish me luck!). Not loads of interest in Romance languages, but did take Latin and French in h.s. No I didnt pay very good attention either. Il es, tu es, je suis, la fanetre, le pupitre. Look right? ------------------------------ On Wed, Oct 10, 2012 8:42 AM PDT Kevin Monceaux wrote: >On Tue, Oct 09, 2012 at 05:01:38PM -0700, Chris Tofu wrote: > >> C: It's all Greek to me! > >Greek looks more like: > > ? ??????????? ???????? ?????? ????? ?? ? ??????????? ??? ?? ???? ??????? > ???? ?? ???? ??????? ????????? ??? ?????. > >Well, ancient Greek at least. :-) > > > >-- > >Kevin >http://www.RawFedDogs.net >http://Lassie.RawFedDogs.net >http://www.WacoAgilityGroup.org >Bruceville, TX > >What's the definition of a legacy system? One that works! >Errare humanum est, ignoscere caninum.

13 years, 6 months

Protext

by rampaginggreenhulk＠yahoo.com

why not archive those floppies prior to or instead of mailing them out. ------------------------------ On Wed, Oct 10, 2012 2:56 AM PDT David Cantrell wrote: >While having a clear-out at the weekend I found a set of install >floppies for the DOS version of Arnor's Protext. Anyone want? > >I also extracted and threw out a *dozen* wall warts that were still >plugged in to the power but not connected to any devices, and found a >dead mouse that must have somehow wormed its way into the tangled >rat's-nest of cables but been unable to find a way out. > >-- >David Cantrell | Godless Liberal Elitist > >comparative and superlative explained: > ><Huhn> worse, worser, worsest, worsted, wasted

13 years, 6 months

Protext

by david＠cantrell.org.uk

While having a clear-out at the weekend I found a set of install floppies for the DOS version of Arnor's Protext. Anyone want? I also extracted and threw out a *dozen* wall warts that were still plugged in to the power but not connected to any devices, and found a dead mouse that must have somehow wormed its way into the tangled rat's-nest of cables but been unable to find a way out. -- David Cantrell | Godless Liberal Elitist comparative and superlative explained: <Huhn> worse, worser, worsest, worsted, wasted

13 years, 6 months

FFS: MSDOS 3.10 docs, CCS S100 docs, and bubble memory data

by dgriffi＠cs.csubak.edu

I have three things to get rid of. Free For Shipping. 1) Original copy of MSDOS 3.10 (docs only) in slipcase 2) Three documentation booklets for S100 cards from California Computer Systems (two DRAM boards and one M2422 multimode floppy controller) 3) "Tentative" data book from Texas Instruments dated 1977 for "Magnetic Bubble Memories and System Interface Circuits". It weighs about 3 pounds and will ship as media mail for three or four dollars from 93306 in the US. -- David Griffith dgriffi at cs.csubak.edu A: Because it fouls the order in which people normally read text. Q: Why is top-posting such a bad thing? A: Top-posting. Q: What is the most annoying thing in e-mail?

13 years, 6 months

Cables runs at home

by saquinn624＠aol.com

David wrote: >A friend of mine described a time when he found a cable tech in the >basement of a new building using what was essentially a shotgun to run >cable through ducts. I think it was a blank firing straight into the duct >with the cable coming in through a wye. Gives new meaning to "pull".

13 years, 6 months

power consumption

by rampaginggreenhulk＠yahoo.com

it's hopeless to suspect that a vintage 80s computer w/a built in monitor is color (not green mono) if it only draws 70 watts?

13 years, 6 months

belated apolgoy for attacks on nefarious individual known as HAATA

by rampaginggreenhulk＠yahoo.com

He's not a bad guy. I must have been cranky. I'm protective of my keytops, what can I say (and that dag nab NEC APC k/b SOLD! Curses! That's wasn't according to plan!).

13 years, 6 months

sharp eyes on another list saw an XT-370 system on epay.

by jws＠jwsss.com

http://www.ebay.com/itm/380481590039 As a side beg, I'd love any copies of the microcode that anyone might have to share for the PC/370 or XT/370 cards. They are 5 1/4" floppies, probably a few with the microcode, cp and cms for setting up the system, not much else. thanks Jim

13 years, 6 months

Burroughs System/V Series emulator

by dm561＠torfree.net

----- Original Message ----- > Message: 8 > Date: Tue, 09 Oct 2012 06:47:37 -0700 > From: Steven Wilson <stevew at ka6s.com> > From: Michael Kerpan<madcrow.maxwell at gmail.com> > "...I also have the operator's console from a B2700 but it's promised to a > fellow list member." > > Mike - you gotta get it right. You have a "SPO" from a B2700 ;-) > > Steve (Small Systems & Medium Systems enthusiast ;-) -------------- Hi Steve, wrong Mike, but that's OK. What I have is the main nixie and indicator display and control console on the front of the CPU cabinet, under the clock at the very right of the picture below; I even still have a picture somewhere of me standing in front of it compiling one of my programs. I think the SPO you're talking about is the teleprinter on the desk to the left of it: http://www.smecc.org/burroughs-images/burrou4.jpg (The other) mike.

13 years, 6 months

Cables runs at home (was Re: Redundant Array of Inexpensive Sysadmins - Re: disk flaws, classic vs. modern)

by ethan.dicks＠gmail.com

On Mon, Oct 8, 2012 at 1:17 PM, David Riley <fraveydank at gmail.com> wrote: > Well, I wanted it to remain straight in the end; it just needed to > go straight up through the walls. The problem was one of simple > geometry, specifically inserting a 10-foot pipe vertically into the > wall-ceiling junction of a 6-foot basement. I didn't particularly > want to cut it, and the pipe resumed its previous shape fairly > quickly once I got it into the wall. Gotcha. That's part of why I went with Innerduct - I'd worked with it in a commercial setting and was able to buy 100' off the reel at a local Granger's supply. If I were trying large PVC conduit in a short basement, I'd also consider a joint in the middle, but it seems that you worked it all out. > I was just lucky enough that the folks who had rehabbed the house > back in the '80s and added an HVAC system had left extra space > around the old chimney when they put in the duct work (and also > lucky that said space intersected my office). I ended up with > a built-in channel running straight from the basement to the > top floor for free; all I needed was to put a pipe in there so > the wires had some guidance going down. I had the same advantage in my 85-yro house (now 98-yro!) - next to the stackpipe is a laundry chute from the bathroom to the basement. The back bedroom shared a wall with that, and there was room around it to run the innerduct. I did have to rip a large hole in the bedroom wall to mount the various duplex boxes since it wasn't easy to find larger low-voltage boxes. Now, I can goe to Lowe's and get the big orange plastic wall boxes that even directly accept (with concentric breakouts) 1" and larger conduit. If I ever build a house, I'm going to run innerduct all over the place. The stuff is really handy to work with (and comes with pull-rope/tape already installed). It's specifically designed for fiber, but there's no problem sharing the space with twisted pair low-voltage cables. -ethan

13 years, 6 months

Is your old hardware made of gold, or just DIRT?

by lproven＠gmail.com

Why it's not worth much, unless it's really old http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/11/02/recycling_your_high_tech_gear/ -- Liam Proven ? Profile: http://lproven.livejournal.com/profile Email: lproven at cix.co.uk ? GMail/G+/Twitter/Flickr/Facebook: lproven MSN: lproven at hotmail.com ? Skype/AIM/Yahoo/LinkedIn: liamproven Tel: +44 20-8685-0498 ? Cell: +44 7939-087884

13 years, 6 months

Burroughs System/V Series emulator

by stevew＠ka6s.com

From: Michael Kerpan<madcrow.maxwell at gmail.com> "...I also have the operator's console from a B2700 but it's promised to a fellow list member." Mike - you gotta get it right. You have a "SPO" from a B2700 ;-) Steve (Small Systems & Medium Systems enthusiast ;-)

13 years, 6 months

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test-drb