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101090 discussions

Kryoflux - a reaction from a potential new customer

by dave12＠dunfield.com

>On another mailing list that I am on, someone was expressing the >desire to retrieve data off some old BBC Micro floppies to see if it >would be possible to get some of the software running on a Raspberry >Pi. They do not own any machine with a floppy interface. My BBC's don't have drives, and I don't have any software disks - so I don't have a way to test this ... but ... According to the all-knowing google, the BBC disk system used an Intel 8271 and later an WD 177x controller - the 8271 does IBM 3740, and the WD is certainly capable of it (so hopefully they kept the format the same). So it seems to me that there is a reasonable chance that these disks could be read with ImageDisk - granted he'll need a DOS/floppy capable PC (or a friend with one), but it might be worth a try. Dave PS: If anyone does read BBC disks, I'd love copies for the archive. -- dave12 (at) Dave Dunfield dunfield Firmware development services & tools: www.dunfield.com (dot) com Classic computers: http://www.classiccmp.org/dunfield/

14 years, 1 month

Seemingly complete DG S/230 16 bit Eclipse system

by chris＠mainecoon.com

On ebay, item 230754098992. The seller is somewhat clueless about what he has (it's an 80s machine, not 60s) and is probably missing a zero from his estimate of what the thing weighs, but otherwise it looks complete and in good condition save for a couple of rack filler panels that look like someone drove into them. From the photos it looks like two 1600BPI drives, a couple of 8" Fuji SMD drives with some sort of emulating controller and three IAC-16s or equivalent. No affiliation with the seller, save for the fact that I'd be bidding on the thing if I could figure out how to get it from VA to CA. -- Dr. Christian Kennedy chris at mainecoon.com AF6AP http://www.mainecoon.com PGP KeyID 108DAB97 PGP fingerprint: 4E99 10B6 7253 B048 6685 6CBC 55E1 20A3 108D AB97 "Mr. McKittrick, after careful consideration..."

14 years, 1 month

HP 9000 Pascal sources

by aek＠bitsavers.org

I just uploaded the 9000/200 300 source product floppies to http://bitsavers.org/bits/HP/HP_9000/pascal/B3466A/ They are part of the HP donation to CHM of Apollo and 68000 HP 9000 software and may be redistributed for non-commercial educational use.

14 years, 1 month

Dilog DQ619 - PDP11 Floppy SA450 interface

by shadoooo＠gmail.com

Hello. I acquired a Dilog DQ619 Qbus card for PDP11. It is a Floppy SA450 interface with RX02 emulation. I'm searching for a manual, or for some info about jumper configuration and general usage. Anybody has this board? Thanks Andrea

14 years, 1 month

SPS licence

by cb＠kryoflux.com

> The licence I read (on the Kryoflux website llast week, probably in the > PC distribution) seemed to define 'Technology' as includign the > documentation. And I feel that this could well include the file format. > That's why I sent the link along to the file format description that's on Jean's site in France. It's for sure not covered by the licence and it's even endorsed by us (we gave Jean the info needed). Apart from that, I will make sure the licence will exclude the format in the future. > I accept it's not your intetnion to limit the file format in this way, > but I think the licence needs work... > Indeed. I jumped aboard in 2009, and many things have happened since then. You can't change things in a day. But it's on the list. > In any case there are many things I can download and read on your website > that I can't just use as I like. You licnese specifically prohibts me > from revers-engineerign the program, it prevents me using any part of in > in a competing product, and so on. I do not have to sign any agreenment > or NDA to get that material either. > > While I may be in favour of 'open' solutions, I am happy to accept that > you have the legal and moral right to distribute your work (or not) under > whatever licence you choose, and that if I don;t agree to the terms than > I don't use your work. Nowehre is it clear to me that the file format > does not come under this As said earlier, no one here wants ownership in data ingested with the device. You can take my word for that and it will be addressed. I am not making this claim to sell anything to you, but because it matters to me.

14 years, 1 month

Things available in Minneapolis?

by jules.richardson99＠gmail.com

Hi all, Just wondering if anyone knows of any vintage equipment available in the Minneapolis area? I'll be heading down to Bloomington this coming Saturday for a few days, and - for once - will have a van with me which will have a bit of free space inside (normally on such trips it ends up full to the gills with other stuff :-), so I could potentially pick something up on the Sunday or Monday to bring back with me. I am actually picking up a QX-10 on the way down there, but I think I'll have a bit more room for something else so long as it wasn't too big/heavy. cheers Jules

14 years, 1 month

SPS licence

by cb＠kryoflux.com

> Howeve, I am sure tht could be taken to be a derriveative work, and as > such covered in parrt by the licence in question. I know you don't intend > that, but it is not at all clear how a future owner of your technology > could react. I';d certainly want things a lot clearer before I made use > of the STRAM formet. Hey Tony, no it can't. Jean did not use "the technology". He got the information from us and never signed an agreement, NDA or whatever. If you look at the current rel. 2 of KF 2.0 b9 for the Mac you will find that I already made a quick fix to the definition of derivative works (threw out the formats). This will be refined even further.

14 years, 1 month

Alternate display technologies (was Re: COSMAC Elf 2000 - TIL311 displays)

by ethan.dicks＠gmail.com

On Mon, Mar 12, 2012 at 9:02 PM, Shoppa, Tim <tshoppa at wmata.com> wrote: > My faves: > > Flip-dots http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flip-disc_display Love those. Never found a way to make them affordably and never ran across a panel to re-use. > Edge illuminated numeric displays (link shows a modern version... the old ones used grain of wheat lamps): http://blog.makezine.com/2012/02/18/edge-lit-led-nixie-tube-display/ Those are really fun. I did some experiments with acrylic and a mill a while back, but now, I'd probably try it with a small table-top CNC. -ethan

14 years, 1 month

Apple 1 programs

by sellam＠vintagetech.com

I just re-discovered a directory on my server that has Apple 1 or at least 6502 programs in hex dumps and also object code that was apparently "assembled" using a PHP script I guess I wrote at some point in the past that I also found in the directory. I've long forgotten from where they came, and what they are doing there, but while they are there I figure other people should download them, especially Apple-1 tinkerers. Have at it and have fun. http://siconic.com/a1/ NOTE: the files that have a .xxx extension are binary files. -- Sellam Ismail VintageTech ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ International Man of Intrigue and Danger http://www.vintagetech.com Whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap...The truth is always simple.

14 years, 2 months

Discferret broken?

by cb＠kryoflux.com

> I will answer in brief. Hi Dave, so do I. now I think I understand the issue. It's about the (old) open source discussion and daring to ask for money. I really don't feel like arguing against that. What I know is that people deliver good work when they are motivated. I see no evil in the fact that people get paid because this can be a very good motivation. It also enables you to spend money for things that make the product better.You also can spend the money to train programmers so they use latest techniques and don't do beginners faults. I don't speak for everyone involved, but: I scan artefacts with a commercial scanner software, I process images with Photoshop, and I use TotalCommander to organise files and put them up on the FTP. This does not mean the images scanned and archived are less preserved. I would not want to exchange a single tool. I enjoy using them every single day.

14 years, 2 months

gopher help

by dgriffi＠cs.csubak.edu

Does anyone here know where the pygopherd mailing list lives now? I tried gopher-request at complete.org and it bounced back. I'm trying to figure out how to make it such that the entire filename is shown, extension included. -- 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?

14 years, 2 months

SPS licence (was: Re:Discferret broken?)

by cb＠kryoflux.com

Hi David, > The best (and probably the only effective) way to prevent distribution > of forged images are signing them with GnuPG, or providing a list of > SHA-1 (or better, MD5 can be forged too easily) checksums of known > good images. Otherwise, anyone can tamper with images, even with a > simple hex editor. > Yes, that's something that's on the list for some time now. The official lib will come with the hashes for all 4,000 releases "out in the wild", new ones will be signed. Back in the day simply keeping it closed was easier, quicker, and also did the job. I understand that being open has to do with trust, hence the lib was opened as promised. > > In this field of data preservation, the only way we'll actually be > able to get things done successfully and actually preserve the most > history is by working together. Sure this might cut into the profits > of some, but if the goal is profits (or even amassing a large private > collection), then you're in the wrong business. > To give you a brief sum up of what has happened since 2001: The project / org was founded by a programmer (Istv?n F?bi?n) that was so upset about only pirated, obfuscated copies of his games being in circulation that he tried to submit the games to some project that would care about storing true and unmodified original mastering data. There was none, so CAPS (The Classic Amiga Preservation Society) was born. F?bi?n developed a toolchain that would allow for using an Amiga 1200 (which has a special floppy controller; actually none) as the ingestion device. This data would then be processed and stored as IPF files. Over the years the toolchain and the number games preserved grew. The project was renamed to SPS (The Software Preservation Society) as it became evident that other platforms had the same (no mastering data being preserved) problem. It also became evident that the Amiga as the ingestion device won't be around forever. It is a dying platform. Hence other technology was inspected but no solution satisfied our needs (capturing unprocessed flux changes as delivered by the drive). By 2008 the project had spent more than EUR 50.000 on buying games; most of this money was donated by project members. Please consider: There are a few games you care about personally, but you pretty quickly reach the point where you have acquired all games that matter to you? In 2009 we picked up the Cyclone20 project by Rich Aplin. Rich and me worked for Cachet back in the day and Rich was the inventor of the original Cyclone (a duplication tool that would force feed data read to the target drive). Rich had lost interest so we decided to develop the proof of concept to something usable. It took us about 1,5 years to redesign everything and to move from prototype to production status. Just for the record? until then we only had gotten very few donations for SPS which were spent on - you might have guessed it - buying and preserving games. The digital assets produced are given to libraries, museums and back to the original contributors. Some of these also share the images. Something we can't do ourselves without jeopardising the project. When KryoFlux was ready we decided to sell it trough a company, to protect ourselves (things can go wrong, people can try to sue, etc. - you don't want to risk your personal life for a hobby) and to give this thing a legal basis to build upon. When you sell hundreds of boards, regardless of your margin, you better are registered for electronics recycling and you better pay tax. The money earned is intended to pay for the expenses, but also help establish SPS as an NPO, and of course? help buying more games. In Japan, gamepres, run by one of our members, was already accepted as an NPO. Because of this, KryoFlux was never made because we thought it was a cool thing to sell, it was and still is the tool we needed and we made it happen after several others said they could / would, but never did. I have no idea when I really spent an evening on playing a classic game? > Concerning SPS, I think the fact that only game dumps are accepting is > rather telling. There is a load of software, for Amiga and other > platforms, which is at least as important to preserve. The other day I > talked to a former Amiga game developer, who mentioned that Digi-Paint > was used heavily in game development. I managed to locate a copy, but > it appears that software like this, which may be important to play > around with art assets included in games, does not fall into the kind > of materials that SPS is interested in. > It for sure does. But when you are a group of five or less, you have to focus on something. Games came with high profile protection techniques. These can't be stored by standard sector dumps. It was therefore decided to focus on the most precious stuff and hope that others would do the more easy part. But we always took dumps of apps when we could get them, and we still do. We e.g. have various versions of DPaint. A quick look in the archive shows we have 2-5, physically and digitally. > I may be wrong about this, but in regards to preserving this stuff, > personally I'd trust an open, helpful group like BitSavers much more > than a private group interested in selling their products. Maybe the above helps explain things? It's odd, but things become really complicated once money is in the game.

14 years, 2 months

Displays (Was: COSMAC Elf 2000 - TIL311 displays)

by rickb＠bensene.com

I love the TIL-311's. I used them to make a display for a microcode ROM dump fixture for Wang 700-series calculators. Having the latch, decoder, and LED display all in one package made the whole thing a lot easier to build. Plus, the display just look cool. Desktop electronic calculators used just about every kind of display technology there was beginning with the Burroughs (and licensees) Nixie tube. Here I list some of them, and some examples (some of which can be found on the Old Calculator Museum website, http://oldcalculatormuseum.com). Nixie tubes were extremely popular in the early days, beginning with the first electronic calculator (Sumlock/Anita Mk 7 & 8), and lasting into the mid-1970's. The SCM Marchant-I "handheld" electronic calculator used Nixie tubes...the only "portable" electronic calculator that I know of that did this. There were also the unusual Nixie-like displays, where a number of digits worth of Nixies were combined into a single tube (Lago Calc LC-816). Small vector CRT displays were used on some early desktop calculators (like Friden 130/132, Friden 1160-series, SCM Cogito 240SR, Victor 14-32x series, and HP 9100A/B, with a few others) , and were very cool. Canon's early electronic calculators (Canon 130, 161, 130S) used edge-lit plastic panels with grain-of-wheat incandescent lamps to light the plastic panel from the edge. The panels had dots etched into them in the shape of digits to catch the light and project it out as numerals to the user. These were abandoned when Canon switched to Nixie tubes, as the edge-lit panel displays were simply too expensive, and tedious to repair when the lamps burned out. As Nixies started to wane in favor of less-expensive display technologies, lots of manufactures went to Burroughs Panaplex panels, which were less expensive, and easier to interface. Lots of machines (of few of which are Wang 600, Commodore US*1/US*8/US*10, Victor 1800-series, Friden 1203) used these panels. A few machines also used tube-type versions of 7-segment gas-discharge displays, such as the Passport CA-850(clone of APF Mark I), and Sperry-made multi-digit gas-discharge modules (Commodore US*14, Tektronix 31). LEDs came on board on some desktop machines (MITS 1440, HP 9800-series), but ended up really being the display of choice for the new up-and coming handheld machines, until VF, and later, LCD displays usurped them. There weren't all that many desktop calculators that ended up using LED displays. VF-style tube displays also took over in desktop and some handheld machines as the reign of gas-discharge tubes and panels came to an end. There was some interesting VF tubes, most notably, the Japanese Iseden-made Itron tubes that had a unique segment rendition to make digits look more "handwritten". These were first used on Sharp's QT-8D calculator, which was the second (though the first successful) electronic calculator to use a MOS/LSI chipset for all of the calculating logic (with the much earlier Victor 3900 actually claiming the title of first, but there were some major problems with the machine that led to low production figures, and many of the machines being recalled). These displays were different enough to make them engaging. Sharp used them on quite a number of desktop and "handheld" (EL-8, EL-8M) machines. Alas, the days of these displays is pretty much gone. LCD and VF panels have replaced them all in calculators, as well as all kinds of other stuff like kitchen appliances, gas pumps (for a long time gas pumps used really large Beckman gas-discharge displays), instrumentation, copiers, audio equipment, and just about everything else that needs a display. Though not used in any calculator that I'm aware of, the Burroughs "Self-Scan" displays, which were gas-discharge dot-matrix displays that used fancy manufacturing techniques to build the shift register that held the state of the dots into the display elements themselves (essentially a planar version of an old Dekatron tube). Data would be clocked into the display and it automatically shifted as the dots were being shifted in, and when static, no refreshing was required. These were used for in displays for early electronic point-of-sale cash registers that would display information about the item as well as the price. They were also used a lot in some early portable data terminals (with a few lines of perhaps 20 characters each). They were also quite popular in Computer Numerical Control (CNC) controllers for displays showing the status of the machine. They significantly reduced the complexity of making a device with a flexible alphanumeric (or even simple graphic) display. These, too, met their end when VF and later, LCD dot matrix displays replaced them. Displays have always been an interest for me, and dovetails well into my calculator fixation. Rick Bensene

14 years, 2 months

COSMAC Elf 2000 - TIL311 displays

by tshoppa＠wmata.com

>> What about the Panaplex 7-segemnt gas discharge displays? >> >> Or the gas discharge dot-matrix displays that include their own 'sift >> register)? You know how you can step a discharge round a dekatron tub, > > I liked the mechanical project-type display, where a stepping > arrangement moved a strip of film. Probably a bit large for an Elf, > though. My faves: Flip-dots http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flip-disc_display Edge illuminated numeric displays (link shows a modern version... the old ones used grain of wheat lamps): http://blog.makezine.com/2012/02/18/edge-lit-led-nixie-tube-display/

14 years, 2 months

COSMAC Elf 2000 - TIL311 displays

by henk.gooijen＠hotmail.com

Hi, with all this talking about the COSMAC and the gizmo from STG, I went searching through my boxes for some TIL311 displays. My rusty memory has still some good spots :-) I have 8 TIL311 displays which I can list on eBay, but I offer them here first, so I know they land in a good home. Asking $35 (for all 8) plus shipping (from The Netherlands). First responder to pa8pdp AT amsat DOT org gets them. I only have 8 of them. - Henk.

14 years, 2 months

Tychon Board

by wheagy＠gmail.com

Can anyone identify this board? I got it with a bunch of old TRS-80 hardware, but it's not necessarily related. It says "Designed by the Blacksburg Group Copyright 1979 TYCHON". Any ideas? http://www.flickr.com/photos/wheagy/6977334853/in/photostream Thanks, Win

14 years, 2 months

SPS licence

by cb＠kryoflux.com

> So you're making the claim that the file formats are fully open, > fully documented, and anyone can extract the data at any time, > regardless of the status of KryoFlux Ltd? Hi Dave, yes - that was the intention of putting the source up there. The old licence will be tidied up more and more, but again, to make something available now, the IPF source was released with a very short and permissive licence. I would also like to point out that there's a very informative third-party website around that's run by Jean Louis-Guerin. He's helping with seeing things from the user side. You tend to become blind for the obvious when you do things for a long time. http://info-coach.fr/atari/hardware/devices/kryoflux.php There's much free info there, and it also has another document on the STREAM format produced by KryoFlux. Someone mentioned he'd regard the file format as documentation (which would then be covered by the licence), so here's an independent source: http://info-coach.fr/atari/hardware/devices/kryoflux/kryoflux_stream_protoc… You might want to take note of the fact that this is independent stuff and we've encouraged Jean to release whatever he wants to release.

14 years, 2 months

Wanted: HP 13232C cable

by mloewen＠cpumagic.scol.pa.us

Does anyone have a spare 13232C (02640-60059) cable to sell? I can build one, but thought I'd check here, first. Mike Loewen mloewen at cpumagic.scol.pa.us Old Technology http://sturgeon.css.psu.edu/~mloewen/Oldtech/

14 years, 2 months

SPS licence (was: Re:Discferret broken?)

by cb＠kryoflux.com

> No, the problem is the redefinition of Derivative Works to include any > images produced by the device using the KF binary software > distribution. Since the binary blob falls under this license, this > means all IPFs (and STREAM dumps too) that were dumped with the KF. Although not intentional, this is the heritage of the library when there was nothing else to be covered. We don't claim ownership in any data dumped with KryoFlux, and this will be addressed in the next release. For now all I can offer is that people in doubt will get written (email) confirmation. This applies to all data ever read with the unit. Thanks for pointing this out. > If all you wanted to do is prevent compilation CDs of IPFs, > prohibiting the IPF library from being redistributed should have been > enough. Such a prohibition is in the licenses. I don't see why such a > redefinition of derivative works, and restriction on what you can do > with these "derivative works", was ever necessary. > There was a time when such companies would just feed whatever they could into extended ADFs, which would have caused more trouble than fun. Again, this was when the Amiga was still in the commercial marketplace and the idea was to stop people from forging things.

14 years, 2 months

Tychon Board, Take 2

by wheagy＠gmail.com

Ok, let's try this again. Nothing is easy.... Can anyone identify this board? I got it with a bunch of old TRS-80 hardware, but it's not necessarily related. It says "Designed by the Blacksburg Group Copyright 1979 TYCHON". Any ideas? http://i.imgur.com/cDncC.jpg Thanks, Win

14 years, 2 months

Intel development process

by jws＠jwsss.com

If you go to epay and put in "intel development confidential" (minus the quotes) you will get a glimpse into Intel's development methods. Looks like bondout versions of their chips with everything on the chip run out to pads for testing. The seller is in Israel, where a lot of the design work is done for Intel. Jim

14 years, 2 months

Fwd: Query Any TI-961 experts?

by jfoust＠threedee.com

The guy at Comco, the tape drive repair place, is looking for an expert on 21-track TI-961 drives who can set up a drive in Cairo. - John

14 years, 2 months

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