test-drb

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101090 discussions

by doug＠doughq.com

Hi everybody I'm the proud owner of a PDP11/05 system with a couple of 8" floppy drives. I believe they are likely to be RX01s. Does anybody on the list have some boot media that they could provide. I understand that the controller can't format the disks so I'm in a frustrating state where I don't know where to start. Doug Jackson Canberra Australia.

5 years, 11 months

HP 9817 Usage

by Anders.Gustafsson＠pedago.fi

You may want to have a peek at the sync separator I built for my 9000-340. The schematics are available over at VintHp I am also in the process of building a PS/2 and USB to HIL adapter: http://www.dalton.ax/hpkbd/hil/ As for disks. This is one option: http://www.dalton.ax/hpdisk/ Ansgar's HPDrive is another: https://www.hp9845.net/9845/projects/hpdrive/ -- Med v?nlig h?lsning Anders Gustafsson, ingenj?r anders.gustafsson at pedago.fi | Support +358 18 12060 | Direkt +358 9 315 45 121 | Mobil +358 40506 7099 Pedago interaktiv ab, Nygatan 6 (kontor), Nygatan 7 B (kurslokal), AX-22100 MARIEHAMN, ?LAND, FINLAND >>> <cctalk-request at classiccmp.org> 2020-05-26 20:00 >>> Should I look at buying a monitor that can support the composite video sync and get an HIL keyboard (or build an adapter)? Does the machine not support using a terminal over the serial port as a console at boot?

5 years, 11 months

HP 9817 Usage

by tangentdelta＠protonmail.com

Hello! I have an HP 9817 and its accompanying 9133D disk drive unit. The disk drive seems like a rather large can of worms, so I've been ignoring it. I re-capped the 9817's power supply. It powers up and it passes all of its diagnostics according to the LEDs on the motherboard. I can see that it is outputting a picture on the composite video connector, but I don't have any displays that will accept the weird sync frequency that it uses. I also do not have an HIL keyboard to use with the machine. I traced out the RS-232 TX and RX on the 50-pin serial connector on the back, and verified that it matched up with the hand-drawn schematics on the HP Museum website. Using that information, I build a serial cable. Unfortunately the machine does not appear to use this serial port as a "console" at power-up. I tried messing around with the DIPS switches according to the manual but none of the settings I tried resulted in the machine using the serial port at boot. I noticed that one of the DIP switches will enable/disable a "remote keyboard" feature. Enabling it causes the machine to fail the power-on test with a "device not found" error code. I didn't write down the exact error code. Should I look at buying a monitor that can support the composite video sync and get an HIL keyboard (or build an adapter)? Does the machine not support using a terminal over the serial port as a console at boot? Thanks

5 years, 11 months

History is hard

by sieler＠allegro.com

I accidentally attributed text from Liam as being from Fred C, ""MS-DOS 3.3 did not even come with a disk cache." Sorry Fred! Stan

5 years, 11 months

IBM 3178 keyboards available in MN

by chrise＠pobox.com

A friend has unearthed approximately (5) of these IBM keyboards in his dad's shed in MN. These are not PC keyboards but instead likely 3178 terminal keyboards. They probably came out of 3M a very long time ago. https://drive.google.com/file/d/1B8kw9xdaeikwzKzyL0ts3HZZg96K7Yov/view?usp=… I have persuaded my friend not to trash them until I see if there is interest in them here. They are dirty and their working status is completely unknown. Contact Gary: w0ghz(-at-)comcast.net if you are interested in them. Reference: IBM 6052101 https://deskthority.net/wiki/IBM_%22Blue_Switch%22_3178-C3_Terminal https://terminals-wiki.org/wiki/index.php/IBM_3178 Chris -- Chris Elmquist

5 years, 11 months

Updating the VAX GCC backend from cc0 to MODE_CC

by abs＠absd.org

The gcc VAX backend is in danger of being dropped if it doesn't get converted from the older cc0 to the newer MODE_CC implementation. John Paul Adrian Glaubitz <glaubitz at physik.fu-berlin.de> has started a bountysource entry https://www.bountysource.com/issues/91495157-vax-convert-the-backend-to-mod… and asked for people to post it anywhere it might be found interesting, in case anyone would like to add to the bounty, or collect it :) (I find it quite amusing to it mixed in between entries like "Optimize NumPy SIMD algorithms for Power VSX") You could easily argue that modern gcc is too big to be practical to run on a VAX anyway, but making practical a requirement for classiccmp.org would rule out _so_ much fun stuff :) Thanks David

5 years, 11 months

3 stylewriter printers available for pickup only, Fairfield, IA

by billdegnan＠gmail.com

Came in through vintagecomputer.net that I am passing along. Anyone out there near Fairfield, IA and looking for three Apple Stylewriter printers let me know and I will put you in contact with the woman who has them. I was told that there was a few other things, but no computers. They're pick up only. The woman asked that she be told 1) phone number 2) your location Please contact me ONLY through https://www.vintagecomputer.net/contact.cfm because this is the most reliable means of contacting me. I find Gmail sends a lot of group posts and replies straight to the spam folder. I do not know the donor nor do I know about the hardware. I don't know the deadline for retrieving them. I do not know nuthin. I will bundle together the persons who inquire and forward to her to decide whom to contact. Bill

5 years, 11 months

Microsoft open sources GWBASIC

by cisin＠xenosoft.com

On Sat, 23 May 2020, Boris Gimbarzevsky wrote: > Thanks for that really detailed review of microprocessor history! A post to > save. But, read carefully the corrections that others made! Such as Noel pointing out that I was mistaken in assuming that there was a direct progression in 4004 -> 8008 -> 8080, and Liam's discussion of the Commodore BASIC. I never had a Commodore 64. But, I had an MSD drive for a C64 connected to an IEEE-488 board in a PC. > After your detailed discussion of the bizarre variety of early Intel > microprocessors I now recall why I refused to have anything to do with PC's > in late 1980's. Well, there were advantages and disadvantages. The Motorola approach produced a better product. BUT, it meant that software was delayed for new products. It took a while before the good third party software showed up for the Mac. OTOH, the Intel processors were a series of little steps, so it was usually almost trivial to upgrade code to a new series of processors. It took Micropro less than a week to port their 8080 CP/M Wordstar to the 8088 PC. It then took them much longer than that to prepare new manuals. Some internal structures had patches on top of patches. Such as Segment:Offset memory addressing, and figuring out that the PC FDC could not do a DMA that straddled a physical (not Segment:Offset) 64K boundary, although Int13h didn't realize it and have a suitable error message - some later versions of DOS had occasional mysterious problems with FORMAT that were easily solved by adding or removing TSRs to move the location of its TPA. > I've never liked M$ software as it seems whenever they produce a good > product, they dump it and come up with something far worse and stop > supporting the old one. "Oh, but it is DANGEROUS to use a product past its [arbitrary, marketing chosen] SELL-BY date." >> All of my knowledge of the following is third hand, and probably mostly >> WRONG. If you are lucky, maybe some of the folk here who actually KNOW >> this stuff will step in and give the right information. >> Sequence is only approximate. And, the REAL history is much more interesting AND WEIRDER than the fictional variants. -- Grumpy Ol' Fred cisin at xenosoft.com

5 years, 11 months

Standard Cocktail Napkin Size [WAS: RE: history is hard (was: Microsoft open sources GWBASIC)}

by t.gardner＠computer.org

On Sunday, May 24, 2020 11:23 AM Fred Cisin via cctalk wrote in part: <snip> >> On Sun, 24 May 2020, Tom Gardner via cctalk wrote: >>The final media size was determined by Shugart Engineering led by Al >> Chou from the size of the 8-track tape drive that the 5?-inch FDD was >> to replace in Wang and other systems. As near as I can tell it was >> not the same size as a ?standard? cocktail napkin. >"standard"??!? >"I believe in standards. Everyone should have [a unique] one [of their own]." - George Morrow I have seen napkins that are about 5.25". I did attempt to see if there is a "standard" cocktail napkin size and as best I can tell it is today 5-inches square not 5?-inches square. A friend who is a veteran of the paper products industry provided me an actual cocktail napkin circa 1980 (a promotional give away for his business) that he recalls was procured to the then standard size which I measured as 5-inches square. Apparently cocktail napkins have not deflated over the intervening 40 years :-) This supports Adkisson's recollection that the customer wanted something about the size of a cocktail napkin and Chou's description of the development process that tried to maximize the size of the disk that could be received in a drive which in turn was designed to fit into the then existing 8-track tape drive slot. Tom

5 years, 11 months

cctalk Digest, Vol 68, Issue 25

by athornton＠gmail.com

> On May 25, 2020, at 10:00 AM, cctalk-request at classiccmp.org wrote: > > > The topic for my talk next week. Unix had virtualization in 74. The second > Unix port ran under OS/360's VM in 78. _Ahem_. It ran under VM/370. Most (all?) models of the IBM 370 had virtual memory, as had the (not widely-available) 360/67. OS/360 is one of several operating systems for the IBM 360 and successors. I grabbed the Princeton v7-to-370 port sources, and I have a VM/370 r6 machine set up on Hercules, but I have not yet made the attempt to combine the two. Many years after that, also at Princeton, I sysadminned PenguinVM, which as far as I know was the first publicly-available Linux/390 machine. Adam

5 years, 11 months

DECstation 220 Diagnostic "Test for Shutdown return"

by robert.jarratt＠ntlworld.com

According to a manual a friend has, the DECstation 220 outputs a diagnostic code on the parallel port. If I have interpreted it correctly the code being output by my machine is "Test for shutdown return". Does anyone know what that might mean? Regards Rob

5 years, 11 months

GWBASIC Source Code

by c.murray.mccullough＠gmail.com

GWBASIC- (Gee-Whiz BASIC) is a Microsoft product, designed much along the line of IBM?s BASICA, that did not need a ROM BASIC and was interpreted. Not necessarily basic in design or purpose as defined by Oxford English Dictionary & Wikipedia and Computer Desktop Encyclopedia, some(purists) say the latter two shouldn?t be used with the former, GWBASIC nevertheless was an important development in the early years of our hobby. Little has been mentioned about the source code: https://devblogs.microsoft.com/commandline/microsoft-open-sources-gw-basic/ It?s available on GitHub for download and use in WIN 7 to 10 as far as I know! At that time(1983) in micro-computing history it did what was intended, help microcomputer owners/users with limited processor and memory capabilities. Serving this purpose, was there a better BASIC? No doubt. I used ADAM-BASIC, much like APPLE BASIC, to write silly-little programs or more-sophisticated ones. Hobbyists, experimenters and early microcomputer lovers had another tool to master. It?s success may be attributed more to marketing than anything else but early microcomputer users were happy to get their hands on something new. And, Microsoft knew marketing, not as well as APPLE, but the game was capitalism and getting software out the door! Being first or second was not necessarily the primary reason for rising to the top. And today: Is LOGO or Python any better teaching tools than GWBASIC for beginners? I hardly doubt that. Happy computing. Murray ?

5 years, 11 months

13W3 to HDMI/DisplayPort

by aperry＠snowmoose.com

Anyone here know of a SVGA-to-HDMI (or DisplayPort) adapter that a 13W3-to-SVGA adapter so I can connect my Sun frame buffers to a HDMI display? I am hoping someone here has already figured this one out. alan

5 years, 11 months

looking for VME board manuals

by rp＠servium.ch

Hi all I acquired a "few" VME boards over the years, and I finally have time to deal with some of the less cooperative ones. I'm looking for the following VME board manuals (any information is welcome, especially pinouts for the front panel or P2 connectors, jumpers, how to re-create the nvram contents etc. ). * Themis Sparc 10MP (not 20MP which is an entirely different board with a different front panel) * Force SPARC CPU 10 * MVME3600 (user's or installation manual, I can only find the programmer's manual) also looking for manuals for some HP VXI boards (more for completeness than because they're necessary, the boards are pretty self-explanatory unless you need to recreate the cables): * HP E1499A (V/382) * HP E1498A (V/743) * HP E1480A (V/362) Also anything about the Mercury RACE MCH6 or MCV6 system that's more than a marketing brochure (actually, I'd even take a marketing brochure). I have some i860 and PowerPC boards but absolutely no idea where to start. And of course I'm also looking for software, but I'm not holding my breath... thanks! Rico

5 years, 11 months

The massive effort to rebuild an LK201

by sales＠elecplus.com

Yes, I know this will never again be used on a terminal, but the lengths to which he went are extraordinary to me! https://deskthority.net/viewtopic.php?f=7 <https://deskthority.net/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=23965> &t=23965 He could have bought several new in box LK201, with terminals, for what he spent on this project! Cindy Croxton Electronics Plus 1613 Water Street Kerrville, TX 78028 830-370-3239 cell sales at elecplus.com -- This email has been checked for viruses by Avast antivirus software. https://www.avast.com/antivirus

5 years, 11 months

DECstation 220/Olivetti M250E Documentation

by rob_j37＠hotmail.com

I have a DECstation 220 (an Olivetti M250E under the covers) that needs repair. I have a pocket service guide, but I have not found any other documentation. Is there any? Thanks Rob

5 years, 11 months

Alternative Monitor for VAXmate

by robert.jarratt＠ntlworld.com

As it looks like I am not going to be able to repair the monitor board for my VAXmate I am wondering if I can do anything with the outputs from the I/O board to drive an external monitor instead. The connector to the monitor board has RGB+Intensity outputs at TTL levels. The horizontal sync has a frequency of 26.6KHz, active low with the high voltage 3.7V, Vertical sync is 60Hz. I don't believe that corresponds to any known standard, does it? I had a go at building this http://www.dasarodesigns.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/pet-composite-video- adapter.jpg feeding its output to a composite to VGA device to see if it would convert it to VGA, but no luck. Any ideas? Thanks Rob

5 years, 11 months

13W3 to HDMI/DisplayPort

by cruff＠ruffspot.net

Just bought an Extron RGB-HDMI 300 (A) that handles VGA and other RGB type signals and has HDMI output. I've connected it to my VAXstation 4000/60 (very successfully), and my IIgs (reasonable but this is at the low end of what the unit can manage). Output on either my Sony 46" TV or Apple 1600x1050 monitor. Found one (pull from service) at surpluscrestron.com for $53 shipped. It didn't come with the power supply (12 V @ 1 A) and needed this connector (https://www.digikey.com/product-detail/en/molex/0395000002/WM7732-ND/1280583) to attach the power supply.

5 years, 11 months

2.11bsd unix resolver

by rshepprd＠gmail.com

On Solaris it?s the ?hosts? line in the /etc/nsswitch.conf/ file. Perhaps something similar in BSD. Sent from Mail for Windows 10

5 years, 11 months

Early Nubus history

by michael.99.thompson＠gmail.com

> > Date: Sat, 23 May 2020 07:07:52 -0700 > From: Al Kossow <aek at bitsavers.org> > Subject: Early Nubus history > > Did anyone ever do any research into the early history of Nubus, wrt > Western Digital, TI or Steve Ward/MIT/Numachine? > I was a member of the IEEE-1196 committee that wrote the NuBus standard and IEEE-1101 committee that wrote the mechanical standard for the NuBus. Eike Waltz and I did a lot of the mechanical standards work. The members of the IEEE-1196 committee were George White (Chairman) R. Gordon Cook, Mark Garetz(CompuPro and IEEE-696), Richard Greenblatt(MIT AI Lab, LMI Founder), Ron Hochsprung(Apple), Richard Kalish, Rikki Kirzner( Dataquest), Gerry Laws(TI), Rae Mclellan(Bell Labs), Gregory Papadopoulos(MIT), Dan Schneider, Dave Stewart, Michael Thompson(me), Jim Truchard(Founder National Instruments), Eike Waltz, *Steve Ward*(MIT), and Fritz Whittington. George White went from MIT->Computer Automation->Western Digital->TI->Corollary->Intel. Corollary's cache technology was licensed by DEC and many others. My memories of this committee are a little vague after 40 years, other than being very impressed with the other members. I will see if I kept any notes >from the meetings. -- Michael Thompson

5 years, 11 months

H960 repo stabiliser feet redux

by steven＠malikoff.com

Here's my conclusion to the H960 stabiliser feet thread from a while ago where I was after measurements of the originals. And thanks for all the help from cctalk (especially Noel) who supplied dimensions and photos. I finished these last year but moved on to other projects and hadn't returned to the list to discuss them, so I am doing that now. I made a pair each for my two H960's. The feet consist of welded steel load-bearing frames with a C-profile that fits snugly onto the H960 base, a lower leg from a shelf bracket and a support strut. The leg is located by a steel bolt. The bolt has the head machined to a disc, I was going to turn the taper and machine the slot but I lost the photo of the original bolt that a listmember had posted so I left them at that. They could do with nickel electroplating sometime. The frame is super strong, although I have not physically loaded them to any great extent. The outer end has a threaded adjustable pad the same size (AFAIK) as the originals, which are still available. I found some correct size el-cheapo ones at the hardware store that did the job just fine. The frame is threaded for the pad post and a nut on the pad then locks the pad from turning. The outside aesthetics are taken care of with a 3D printed hollow shell modelled from the measurements of the original casting. It slides onto the leg and is secured by the bolt. The shell CAD model still needs some work to get the fit and front holes right, and a few other things but overall they look fine and obey the 6 foot rule. A few coats of satin black enamel helps hide the print layering a bit. Photo showing the frame (spray finished in silver epoxy primer, what I had at hand), the other frame inside a shell, and some of the test shells: http://www.surfacezero.com/g503/data/500/Stabiliser_feet_01.png As attached to one of the H960s. (I have yet to do the kick panel, may laser cut that sometime): http://www.surfacezero.com/g503/data/500/Stabiliser_feet_02.png Steve.

5 years, 11 months

TK50 cleaning and unloading issues, new thought:

by cz＠alembic.crystel.com

With the 11/83 running pretty well I decided it was time to derack it and try putting in a TK50 tape drive. I have two and a TQK70 controller (which should work with a TK50) so I popped it in and started to test. On the first unit the tape was already loaded and "stuck". Cleaned the head by lifting it up, cleaning with isopropyl alcohol on clean no-lint swabs and it unloaded properly. Now loads and unloads with no issues on two tapes. Second unit was a bit more interesting, even with a clean head it would not unload. It would spin the tape, get to the point where the leader was on the way through the head system then it would blink endlessly. Took it out and moved the tape with a screwdriver through the hole and found the problem: The leader tongue had bent backwards a bit and as a result it was getting caught in the head slot when rewinding. The TK50 controller must be smart enough to detect the increased torque and stopped before ripping the tongue through. I took it off, bent it back to straight, put it in and now the tape loads and unloads properly. I wonder if later model LTO tape units have the same tongue and leader and can be swapped into a TK50. Another question: Under RT11 what device is a TK50? Is it MQ or something else? And is there a utility to allow a TK50 to be written >from a SIMh image to real tape like PDP11GUI? Thanks! Chris

5 years, 11 months

(V)HDL Toolsets

by cube1＠charter.net

As I wrote in my last post, but write here for use as a separate thread: I'd be interesting in hearing from folks what toolsets they have used for HDL (VHDL in particular). I started with Xilinx ISE and then graduated to Vivado for later chipsets - unfortunately, Vivado seems to be something of a dog, in terms of time to compile HDL and synthesize logic. JRJ

5 years, 11 months

Microsoft open sources GWBASIC

by jnc＠mercury.lcs.mit.edu

> From: Fred Cisin > we can start by considering the 4004. 1971. ... Then came the 8008, > with EIGHT bit data bus, and 14 bit address bus (16K of RAM) ... It is > important to note that each Intel chip consisted of "minor" modifications to > the previous one. I know you didn't _say_ the 8008 was based on the 4004, but your text can give that impression. "The [8008] was commissioned by Computer Terminal Corporation (CTC) to implement an instruction set of their design for their Datapoint 2200 programmable terminal. As the chip was delayed and did not meet CTC's performance goals, the 2200 ended up using CTC's own TTL-based CPU instead." The 8008 was started before the 4004, but wound up coming out after it. (See Lamont Wood, "Datapoint", pg. 73.) This is confirmed by its original name, 1201 - the 4004 was going to be named the 1202, until Faggin convinced Intel to name it the 4004. Noel

5 years, 11 months

Looking for old Suns

by silvercreekvalley＠yahoo.com

Hi, Every now and again I have a bit of time to mess with old computers - and usually for whatever reason - its Sun machines for me. I?ve had loads over the years, played with them and passed them on. Does anyone have anything old Sun wise available in the UK? I?d love to find an old VME bus machine but anything old or interesting. I can travel to pick stuff up etc, social distancing observed of course :D Anyway - PM me if you have anything that?s restorable :) Cheers Ian

5 years, 11 months

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