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101090 discussions

FS (a little OT): Telular Phonecell SX5 GSM Fixed Terminals (x2)

by spectre＠floodgap.com

I know that there's a few people on this list who mess around with homebrew GSM networks and OpenBTS, so I'll offer these here first. I am getting rid of my two Telular Phonecell SX5 fixed GSM terminals. These are 2G devices that present a phone line and a serial port. They have dial tone emulation and can allow a regular phone handset to send and receive calls. (There is some fax support but I've never used that functionality.) The serial port is directly connected to the GSM modem so that you can also use it for sending and receiving SMS text messages, which is the primary purpose it served here (so I could ping the house sensor network if the server line was down). The reason I'm getting rid of them is because 2G is being sunsetted in the USA and T-Mobile, the last 2G carrier, will dismantle its nationwide 2G network by the end of this year. DO NOT BUY THIS IF YOU WANT TO USE IT FOR THAT PURPOSE unless you are using a regional carrier you know will support it. On the other hand, if you want a fixed box (or both of them) for your own private GSM network, such as with an OpenBTS base station, then this will serve you hopefully as well as it has served me. Both units were purchased new and I have been their only owner. They include manuals, power supplies, spike antennae and power cords in the original boxes. SIM cards are not included and I have removed their old lead-acid battery backups for weight and because those died long ago. I'm asking $60 each, or $100 if you want them both, plus shipping. I'm open to other offers. Please E-mail me off list. -- ------------------------------------ personal: http://www.cameronkaiser.com/ -- Cameron Kaiser * Floodgap Systems * www.floodgap.com * ckaiser at floodgap.com -- FORTUNE: You're wise, but not wise enough not to read this sort of drivel. -

5 years, 10 months

Mac Performa 6214CD FTGH from San Antonio, TX (re-post; now tested)

by mark.tapley＠swri.org

All, Still trying to find a home for this system (re-post but with more information, testing) For the visually oriented, here are pictures showing the machine running: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/11j__mCYOFuBAil58hAdhmSK5GMaqmcUL?us… Things in the pictures but NOT included in the giveaway are: 1) ADB cable (Mini-DIN4) (the one in the photos was borrowed from another system for testing) 2) ?square? ADB mouse (also borrowed) 3) Power strip You get everything else. Mac Performa 6214CD, PowerPC CPU, 3.5? floppy and CD drive on front face Apple Extended Keyboard II (NO ADB CABLE) Apple Apple Desktop Bus Mouse II (round - not working) Apple Multiple Scan 15 Display (matching, includes cable) APS external SCSI hard drive enclosure and cable (Centronix on the hard drive end, DB-25 on the Mac end) Epson Stylus Color 740 ink-jet printer with a spare (unopened) cartridge UMAX Astra 1220S flat-bed SCSI scanner. ZIP drive with SCSI interface Cables Pile of accompanying software including at least: DeltaGraph Now Up-To-Date and Contact Sad Macs, Bombs and disasters Retrospect Backup Astra Scanner Driver All Free to a Good Home. You want this if: a) you can afford shipping or pickup from San Antonio, TX, 78254, and b) 15 years after ?Take this job and shove it? came out you finally acted on it, quit your job and set up your own home office and accounting business, and now you want to relive your glory days. All items tested May 23, 2020. Everything worked, with the following exceptions: 1) The round ADB mouse included does not work. The keyboard does work and the square ADB mouse worked when plugged into it, so the fault is probably in the round mouse. 2) The printer doesn?t move any ink to the page. The ink is dried out, so I?m not at all surprised. I expect it to work with new cartridges, but did not test that. There is an unopened replacement cartridge included, so you can test at least the black printing if you open that. Replacement cartridges available at: https://www.compandsave.com/Epson_Stylus_Color_740_Ink_Cartridges_s/1396.htm under $4 each. Everything else about the printer seems to work. I hooked up to it via USB using my MacBook and software from http://gimp-print.sourceforge.net and it responds as expected for an ink-jet with dried-up ink but otherwise functional. 3) I have no ZIP cartridge to test the ZIP drive. It is recognized on the SCSI bus as a removable-media drive, power light comes on, etc, but I don?t know that it reads or writes. 4) The Mac OS 8.5 on the drive will not allow me to set the year to 2020. 5) Backup battery is dead, so the unit won?t remember dates between shutdown and startup again. 5) The door to the monitor?s controls is broken, and just taped back into place. Things that do work include the floppy drive, the CD drive (plays audio CDs), all other aspects of the computer itself and the external drive, the keyboard, and the monitor. Driver software and media for scanner and printer are included. The scanner works, I scanned an image with it and it came up clear. The glass could use cleaning, though. Please, please, please take this as a group, I really don?t want to split it up. Shipping will be challenging; if you are out of driving range but want it, contact me and we can talk. If you are in driving range and want it, let me know and we can meet half-way. Not looking to make any money, I just don?t want to throw it away and don?t want to lose money giving it away. - Mark 210-522-6025 office 210-379-4635 cell

5 years, 11 months

Looking for Diablo 44m filters

by cz＠alembic.crystel.com

Hi all! More non-discussion, technical stuff: I'm starting to work on restoring some of the old Evecon-6 servers that I used to lug to conventions 30 years ago. Right now I just dragged out my Plessy 20mb disk drive which is a Diablo 44 Perkin Elmer monster. Yep, the one with the 10mb platter on the bottom and 10mb removable platter on the top that looks like an RL01 pack but of course is not. First up is powerup, oddly enough it is powering up which is good. Second is the filter: If the filter is plugged the heads will crash, and this filter does not look great. It's a Cambridge Filter Corp CFC 1246159GO which maps to a Perkin Elmer part number of 302709-001 Google isn't helping, anyone know where I can get another filter or how I can clean/purge this one (if possible) Thanks! C

5 years, 11 months

Living Computer Museum

by ggs＠shiresoft.com

I just received an email from the Living Computer Museum that they were suspending operations. It wasn't clear from the email what that actually means. TTFN - Guy

5 years, 11 months

Living Computer Museum

by c.murray.mccullough＠gmail.com

I was interested in computers from grade 11; that would have been in 1967. I got my first microcomputer in 1978, a Heathkit H8 - terribly priced here in Canada. From there I went to the Coleco ADAM. It was essentially an APPLE II clone, well the OS was. Not sure what has become of ADAM-user groups and whether any computer history museum mentions it or not! Happy computing! Murray ?

5 years, 11 months

Building an IBM 3270 terminal controller

by lproven＠gmail.com

https://ajk.me/building-an-ibm-3270-terminal-controller -- 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, 11 months

Anyone using RK06/07 drives?

by jnc＠mercury.lcs.mit.edu

> From: Bill Degnan ` >> I think I have a spare set of boards for the controller. > I might be interested if no one else wants this. You'll need a backplane too - and that's non-trivial. (I'm in the process of producing one for a KE11-A.) The RK611 is a 9-slot (although several slots are just SPC, and can be ignored). Hence the plaint on my 'PDP-11 Models' page: http://ana-3.lcs.mit.edu/~jnc/tech/pdp11/PDP-11_Models.html "DO NOT just keep the boards, and discard the box, bulkhead panels, cables, etc. Everyone does that, as a result of which we are now over-supplied with boards - but the cables, boxes etc are now rare (un-obtainium in some cases ..) These are all now worth a lot more than the cards are!" Noel

5 years, 11 months

SAIL (was ALGOL-W)

by mark.kahrs＠gmail.com

As a past occasional maintainer of SAIL, I'll add my version of history: I believe the compiler originated as a class assignment for Jerry Feldman's compiler writing class. As noted, Dan Swinehart was one of the principal contributors. The addition of LEAP to SAIL was a direct result of Feldman's past work at Lincoln Labs. SAIL was used by everyone for everything at the AI Lab because of it's "kitchen sink" philosophy including the link to assembly language inside the language. Eventually, a source language debugger called BAIL was written by John Reiser. With the slow and steady decline of the PDP-10 and the ascent of Unix, SAIL went off into the sunset. [MWK,AIL]

5 years, 11 months

Anyone using RK06/07 drives?

by cz＠alembic.crystel.com

I think I have a spare set of boards for the controller. C

5 years, 11 months

CHM software

by rdawson16＠hotmail.com

Follow up to the Living Computer Museum discussion... I can understand why CHM does not allow access to the hardware, But what about the software? It should all be downloadable. Randy

5 years, 11 months

Early Nubus history

by aek＠bitsavers.org

Did anyone ever do any research into the early history of Nubus, wrt Western Digital, TI or Steve Ward/MIT/Numachine?

5 years, 11 months

Algol W [was: Microsoft open sources GWBASIC]

by paul＠mcjones.org

On May 27, 2020, Lars Brinkhoff <lars at nocrew.org> wrote: > Al Kossow wrote: >>> Algol W was from Eroupe? >> Algol W was from Stanford, written by Wirth when he was there > > I wonder if there's any connection to Stanford's SAIL language? Good question. I believe the answer is ?Wirth was initially involved with both?. Here?s a bit of history in the Preface to a SAIL manual: HISTORY OF THE LANGUAGE The GOGOL III compiler, developed principally by Dan Swinehart at the Stanford Artificial Intelligence Project, was the basis for the non-LEAP portions of SAIL. Robert Sproull joined Swinehart in incorporating the features of LEAP The first version of the language was released in November, 1969. SAIL's intermediate development was the responsibility of Russell Taylor, Jim Low, and Hanan Samet, who introduced processes, procedure variables, interrupts, contexts, matching procedures, a new macro system, and other features. Most recently John Reiser, Robert Smith, and Russell Taylor maintained and extended SAIL. They added a high-level debugger, conversion to TENEX, a print statement, and records and references. http://pdp-10.trailing-edge.com/decuslib20-01/01/decus/20-0002/sail.man.html And here?s a 1964 Stanford TimeSharing Project Memo by McKeeman and Wirth on Gogol: Gogol is a simple, integer arithmetic language used under the PDP-1 time sharing system at Stanford. This memorandum includes the syntactical definition of the language and a number of sample programs as well as a brief description of the operational characteristics of the compiler. Gogol was designed to permit fast compilation of efficient machine code directly into memory. The speed of compilation together with the accessibility of the text editor make program de- bugging relatively rapid. The examples presented here plus the availability of the compiler should form an adequate basis for learning to use the language. More detailed information depends heavily on a knowledge of PDP-1 hardware. https://stacks.stanford.edu/file/druid:jy391jj5758/jy391jj5758.pdf

5 years, 11 months

Replacing cables sheaths?

by cruff＠ruffspot.net

Thanks for the suggestions. I currently have Rescue Tape brand self adhesive silicone tape on the cable, but it looks like it is causing corrosion of the spiral-wound metal shield wires. The wrap around heat shrink might cost more than just buying a new adapter! It looks like there is an 1/8" split wire loom that could work, or perhaps Plasti Dip spray would make a reasonable coating.

5 years, 11 months

Living Computer Museum

by jfoust＠threedee.com

At 09:25 AM 5/28/2020, Bill Gunshannon via cctalk wrote: >Nothing like asking people to jump thru hoops before you let them >do you a favor. :-) Much of the effort of running a thrift store is disposal of donated material that has no rapid resale value. - John

5 years, 11 months

Back to tech: TK50 restoration and thoughts

by cz＠alembic.crystel.com

Ok, so to get back to technology I have been working on fixing the TK50's I have here along with attempting to look at some old tapes from Bob's basement. It's been interesting. So far one of the units works well with one of my tapes (stored indoors for about 20 or so years) after a good cleaning with 95% isopropyl alcohol. From RT11 I was able to initialize the tape, write 40mb of .DSK image files, and consistently read the files back (to a VM: memory drive) and diff/bin them to make sure they are the same. Good. First test: A second TK50 drive I had banging around. This one will read the tape, but fail about half way through. May still be a bit dirty, will clean and check. Second test: Checking some of the tapes from Bob's basement. In addition to getting the PERQ tapes out of there I had a few TK50 tapes mixed in, most with degaussed stickers on them from long ago. These tapes appear to have been Vax 8650 load tapes of some sort, no idea if there is any value to the data but one was labelled Micro-pdp11 diagnostics and since I know those are backed up I started with that one. It loads, but fails with a DUP IO output error. It also messes up the tape head so I have to clean it after testing. Most of the dirt is at the bottom of the head. After cleaning the drive can load and read the "control" tape which has all of those image files on it, so it doesn't damage the drive. Still I see why taking the cage top off the TK50 is a good idea. :-) Took the cartridge apart and here is what I see: https://i.imgur.com/xHhiBAW.jpg This is... not good. Dirt or something on the bottom of the tape. Now these did spend the last 20 years in a pretty dank basement with an oil fired house heater so there is probably that. Still I used a Q tip on the tape with isopropyl alcohol and it came up dirty inside the cart and out: https://i.imgur.com/TB91gGx.jpg Also odd that the tape is wrapped in two different "levels" on the spindle. Maybe that's normal. So a question: Can one clean tape with isopropyl alcohol? In theory if I could get the controller to slowly run the tape onto the take-up real to the EOT marker I could soak some cotton swabs and use them to clean the tape before it hits the heads (to minimize head wear). Or I could just chuck these tapes and see how a couple I am buying from Ebay hold up. This is mostly an academic exercise: It gives me something to do. But I am wondering if the tapes were crudded by the environment or if this is just natural tape degradation. I do have one final tape that was in a closed tape holder so it might be better (it's clean on the outside). Will see.... C

5 years, 11 months

Replacing cables sheaths?

by matti.nummi＠hotmail.fi

You can use cable lacing. It does not make it pretty(er), but usable. If You don't want to remove the connectors or cut the cable You cannot add any new sheath? There may be some fabric/wowen expandable sheaths which have been used on power cables earlier but I have no precise knowledge. Something like when You push it, it bulges. BR Matti

5 years, 11 months

Living Computers: Museum + Labs

by RichA＠livingcomputers.org

Hello, everyone, As I'm sure all of you are aware, the COVID-19 pandemic has led to a crisis with devastating effects on many cultural organizations, and more especially on those which rely on public gatherings and special events to achieve their mission. Since before we opened to the public in 2012, our philosophy has been a simple one: To understand computing technology of any period, you need to experience that technology at first hand. The current global situation has made it difficult for us to serve our mission, and given so much uncertainty we have made the difficult decision to suspend all operations of LCM+L for now. We will spend the months ahead reassessing if, how, and when to reopen. Because that will not happen in any short time frame, the staff, including me, have been laid off. On a personal note, the last 17 years, since July 2003, have been a time of growth, excitement, and backbreaking labor which I would not trade for anything. The friendships I have formed, in the community at large (and it is international in scope) as well as among my colleagues here, are a comfort to me. I'll be subscribed from a personal address once that is moderator-approved. Thank you all for your interest in and support for Living Computers: Museum + Labs, and our previous incarnations. It means a great deal to us as we wind down the current implementation. Rich Rich Alderson Sr. Systems Engineer/Curator emeritus Living Computers: Museum + Labs 2245 1st Ave S Seattle, WA 98134 Cell: (206) 465-2916 Desk: (206) 342-2239 http://www.LivingComputers.org/

5 years, 11 months

In search of Apollo DN100 Technical Reference Manual

by ian.finder＠gmail.com

Hi folks, I've recently acquired an Apollo DN100 I'd like to restore to former glory. Sadly, there are no schematics anywhere that I can find. I have seen this alluded to, but do not have a part number- anyone got a lead? Even better would be to find anything describing the PALs in the system. Separately, there is a 14" Priam DISKOS hard drive in here- not with the Priam interface used by the later SAU2 Apollos (DN300, etc.) but something else- perhaps the early ANSI interface option provided by Priam. If anyone has leads on - 1) The failure modes of these drives and 2) A replacement ? advice would be much appreciated. Thanks, - Ian

5 years, 11 months

In search of SGI IRIS 1400 / 2000 era technical reference manuals & schematics

by ian.finder＠gmail.com

Title says all. Thanks, - Ian

5 years, 11 months

Replacing cables sheaths?

by cruff＠ruffspot.net

Does anyone know of an effective technique to replace the sheath of a cable without needing to reterminate the ends? On all of the Apple power adapter cables I've used the plastic sheath starts to fall apart, but the adapter itself and the cable conductors are still useable. Something that results in a reasonably flexible coating that doesn't look like a horrible accident happened to the cable? :-)

5 years, 11 months

Last MSV11-P question: Using them as Q bus memories

by cz＠alembic.crystel.com

Ok, so we banged the MSV11-P revision B/C memory issues into the ground (looks like the problem is burst mode DMA on Q Bus can cause random failures that corrupt disks) however does anyone know if the bug will affect the board if you use it as a normal Q bus memory board? In other words, if you put the board *below* an 11/73 or 11/83 so it reports as a non-PMI memory will it still have the same problem? I'd like to run my system with a full 4mb of memory, using my normal parity 2mb board and a 2mb MSV11-P board that was from an 11/83? Inquiring minds want to know :-) C

5 years, 11 months

Algol W [was: Microsoft open sources GWBASIC]

by paul＠mcjones.org

> On May 26, 2020, Al Kossow <aek at bitsavers.org> wrote: > > On 5/26/20 6:39 PM, Al Kossow via cctalk wrote: >> >> >>> Algol W was from Eroupe? >> >> Algol W was from Stanford, written by Wirth when he was there > > Actually, by Dick Sites > > http://bitsavers.org/pdf/stanford/cs_techReports/STAN-CS-71-230_Algol_W_Ref… <http://bitsavers.org/pdf/stanford/cs_techReports/STAN-CS-71-230_Algol_W_Ref…> Dick must have done a lot of work on that version, but an earlier manual by Henry R. Bauer, Sheldon Becker, and Susan L . Graham says: The project was initiated and directed by Professor Niklaus Wirth, who proposed many of the ideas incorporated in the compiler and suggested ways to bring them about. Joseph W. Wells, Jr. and Edwin H. Satterthwaite, Jr. wrote the PL/360 System in which the compiler is embedded, the linkages to the compiler, and the loader. Although the authors did the bulk of the programming for the compiler, valuable contributions were made by Larry L, Bumgarner, Jean-Paul Rossiensky, Joyce B. Keckler, Patricia V. Koenig, John Perine, and Elizabeth Fong. http://i.stanford.edu/pub/cstr/reports/cs/tr/68/98/CS-TR-68-98.pdf And Ed Satthertwaite wrote a source-level debugger for the system. More on Algol W here: http://www.softwarepreservation.org/projects/ALGOL/algol60impl/#ALGOL_W and more on the designs that led up to it here (search for the names Wirth and Hoare): http://www.softwarepreservation.org/projects/ALGOL/standards/ in particular: N. Wirth and C. A. R. Hoare. A contribution to the development of ALGOL. Communications of the ACM, Volume 9, Number 6 (June 1966), pages 413-432. ACM Digital Library <https://doi.org/10.1145/365696.365702> "Euler caught the attention of the IFIP Working Group that was engaged in planning the future of ALGOL. The language ALGOL 60, designed by and for numerical mathematicians, had a systematic structure and a concise definition that were appreciated by mathematically trained people but lacked compilers and support by industry. To gain acceptance, its range of application had to be widened. The Working Group assumed the task of proposing a successor and soon split into two camps. On one side were the ambitious who wanted to erect another milestone in language design, and, on the other, those who felt that time was pressing and that an adequately extended ALGOL 60 would be a productive endeavor. I belonged to this second party and submitted a proposal that lost the election. Thereafter, the proposal was improved with contributions from Tony Hoare (a member of the same group) and implemented on Stanford University's first IBM 360. The language later became known as ALGOL W and was used in several universities for teaching purposes." [Wirth 1985 <http://www.softwarepreservation.org/projects/ALGOL/standards/history/#Wirth…>]

5 years, 11 months

history is hard

by sieler＠allegro.com

Fred writes: ..."MS-DOS 3.3 did not even come with a disk cache." and discusses problems with SMARTDRV (in MS DOS 4.01 and later). I'm not sure if it was technically a form of caching, but the AmigaDOS delayed floppy write (well before MS-DOS cache) caused enormous problems for Amiga users. (It may well have contributed significantly to the lack of market success.) Basic problem: you save something to a floppy, and pull it out. You now have a corrupted floppy. You needed to wait a few seconds for the OS to decide "well, looks like I better flush the last few dirty sectors out to that floppy". (I contend it was a form of write caching, designed to speed writing to floppies where writing tended to occur in nearby places.) Stan

5 years, 11 months

Microsoft open sources GWBASIC

by jwsmail＠jwsss.com

Seems of interest.? Will be interesting to play with. https://devblogs.microsoft.com/commandline/microsoft-open-sources-gw-basic/

5 years, 11 months

Looking for docs, software for Lomac DAVID

by camiel＠camicom.com

I?ve received a Logical Machine Corporation (Lomac) DAVID system, which appears to be successor to the Lomac ADAM. The system consists of the main box with an 8? floppy drive (labeled ?DAVID PROCESSOR?), a keyboard/monitor box (labeled ?DAVID DISPLAY?), and a printer. I am looking for both documentation and software for this system. The first thing I need to sort out is how to connect the display and processor. The display has a single cable with a male DB-25 connector; the processor has a connector labeled ?DISPLAY?, but it?s a female DC-37 connector. If anyone ever had or worked with one of these, perhaps they remember if there was some kind of adapter in between. Camiel

5 years, 11 months

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