test-drb

test-drb@ccmp.vtda.org

101090 discussions

by dbetz＠xlisper.com

I have a friend who has a number (10-20) of 8" RT-11 floppies he wants to archive to CD-ROM or some other modern media. Is there anyone in the Boston area (he lives in Medway) who could help with this? I believe these are RX01 media since I think they were created on a PDT-11/150 that I gave away to someone a few years ago. Can anyone here help? What would the fee be for such a service? Thanks! David Betz dbetz at xlisper.com

17 years, 3 months

visiting Seattle next week -- get together?

by legalize＠xmission.com

I'll be visiting Seattle next week for the Microsoft MVP Summit. The Summit wraps up on Wednesday around 5pm in downtown Seattle. I'd love to get together with other collectors for a beer, say at the Elephant and Castle? I'll be returning home on the weekend, so I have some time on Thursday during the day, Friday and Saturday. Last time I got to check out bear's collection (r.stricklin) and I'd love to see anyone's collection that's willing to share :-) Email me off-list and let's trade contact info and I'll give you a hollar! -- Richard -- "The Direct3D Graphics Pipeline" -- DirectX 9 draft available for download <http://www.xmission.com/~legalize/book/download/index.html> Legalize Adulthood! <http://blogs.xmission.com/legalize/>

17 years, 3 months

truck trip, space available

by mcguire＠neurotica.com

Hey folks. It looks like I'll be making a road trip from Port Charlotte, FL (just south of Tampa, Gulf coast) all the way up to Boston, and then back down, sometime next week. I'll be in a 24' truck with a lift gate. The southbound trip will be full, but the northbound trip will be at least half empty, so I may be able to move big and/or heavy stuff along that route. The requirements are that it be not too far off of Route 95, and that any stops not take too much time. I will need a few bucks for this. Be aware that the scheduling and other details of this trip are not yet set in stone. Any thoughts? I'll need to hear back soon. Please CC me on any replies, or email directly, as I'm only on cctech. -Dave -- Dave McGuire Port Charlotte, FL

17 years, 3 months

43 "classic" articles about our hobby

by evan＠snarc.net

>From the better-late-than-never department .... Tonight I posted 43 articles from the former Computer Collector Newsletter / Technology Rewind. Many of you will recall that I published this a a weekly e-newsletter from Jan. 2004 to March 2006, with the help of Sellam Ismail, Christine Finn, Erik Klein, Bill Loguidice, Michael Nadeau, and many others. The newsletter ran for 2 years and 3 months. Now it's been 2 years and 11 months since the end. So, I finally got "a round tuit". Read them at http://www.snarc.net/tr/newsletter.htm. - Evan

17 years, 3 months

Archiving 8" RT-11 floppies to CD-ROM?

by fjkraan＠xs4all.nl

Jan-Benedict Glaw <jbglaw at lug-owl.de> wrote: > On Tue, 2009-02-24 13:14:06 -0500, David Betz <dbetz at xlisper.com> wrote: > >> > I have a friend who has a number (10-20) of 8" RT-11 floppies he wants >> > to archive to CD-ROM or some other modern media. Is there anyone in >> > the Boston area (he lives in Medway) who could help with this? I >> > believe these are RX01 media since I think they were created on a >> > PDT-11/150 that I gave away to someone a few years ago. Can anyone >> > here help? What would the fee be for such a service? >> > > I obviously cannot help, but it would be nice if, once it is done, > describe the procedure for others. > Just recently I was able to read my MiniMINC (a PDT-150) floppies with an 8" drive connected to an AHA1542B (capable of single density) with Dave Dunfields ImageDisk. I didn't write them back yet (inverted write protect logic, but assume it will be no problem... Fred Jan Kraan

17 years, 3 months

sun HD 'sledges'

by silvercreekvalley＠yahoo.com

I'm looking for a sledge for the SPARCstation 1, I have a couple of loose HD at the moment and its not great :) Ian.

17 years, 3 months

Halted

by evan＠snarc.net

Roy said: >>> I've taken notice of them and have intentions of stopping in there one of these times I make a trip to The City... Consider making your trip in the second or third week of September. Then you combine it with a visit to VCF East in New Jersey!

17 years, 3 months

washing floppies

by legalize＠xmission.com

An interesting blog post... <http://www.classic-computers.org.nz/blog/2009-02-21-retrieving-data-using-s…> -- "The Direct3D Graphics Pipeline" -- DirectX 9 draft available for download <http://www.xmission.com/~legalize/book/download/index.html> Legalize Adulthood! <http://blogs.xmission.com/legalize/>

17 years, 3 months

1" paper tape buy ?

by henk.gooijen＠hotmail.com

Hi all, I was searching for a company that sells 1" unoiled paper tape, here in The Netherlands. No luck. After googling and many pages, I found a company in the USA: http://www.wncsupply.com/paper-tape-rolls.html I would like to buy one or two rolls of 1000 ft, order# 0400A, R-V-PU471 Unoiled / Printed Top Arrow yellowish color, but it comes in either a package of 28 rolls (1) and weighs 40 lbs, or in a quart package, 7 rolls, still a weight of 10 lbs. The 7 rolls package costs $80. That OK, but the shipping costs would make it quite expensive. My question is simple. Are there people on this list who also want to buy some rolls of 1" nice looking yellow paper tape? I would take 2 (or 3) rolls. Hint: Get a paper tape reader from an old CNC machine from eBay. (I bought one for $30 and another for $79 two weeks ago). You can interface such a reader to a computer, in my case the SBC6120 ! Think of it ... booting the SBC6120 from a paper tape. Is that cool? The site also sells nice reels (http://www.wncsupply.com/reels.html). I wanted to buy the 4" blue ones, but again shipping costs, aarggghh. However, a nice lady from the company emailed me that she is looking into the shipping costs, as the costs quoted on their site is a bit high. I hope to hear from one or two people also looking for a few paper tape rolls ... Please contact me off list. Links to other companies that sell 1" paper tape are also welcome! Thanks, - Henk, PA8PDP

17 years, 3 months

Fwd: Alpha in San Leandro, CA

by slawmaster＠gmail.com

If anyone is interested in this, send Rich an email. I already have too many VMS boxes; I'd hate to see this get tossed. John ---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Rich Asvitt <rasvitt at comcast.net> Date: Tue, Feb 24, 2009 at 6:13 PM Subject: Re: Alpha or VAX machine wanted (dublin / pleasanton / livermore) To: John Floren <slawmaster at gmail.com> John, I know it's been a while but are you still interested in getting a VMS machine? My wife has been asking me what I'm going to DO with my workstation. As I haven't cranked it up in over a year, I suppose it's time I find it a good home. ?So if you're still interested, let me know and we can work something out. What we have is a Alpha 3000 with an internal disk there is also an external disk drive. ?There is also a CD drive and a cartridge tape drive. ?I just cranked it up today and deleted all my junk on the disks, So it's running fine. ? So....... Lemme know Rich

17 years, 3 months

Halted

by christian_liendo＠yahoo.com

Yea... I remember that place...I was over at Silicon Graphics back in I think 97 and I would stop by there. In fact every time I was in Silicon Vally I stopped by there. There were other places as well, I guess they are all gone now I'm glad they are still around. --- On Wed, 2/25/09, Tom Uban <uban at ubanproductions.com> wrote: From: Tom Uban <uban at ubanproductions.com> Subject: Halted To: "On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts" <cctalk at classiccmp.org> Date: Wednesday, February 25, 2009, 9:13 AM Sorry if this has already gone around, but I only saw it yesterday after a friend sent me the link: http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2009/02/05/technology/personaltech/20090… It reminded me of ELI in Cambridge Massachusetts, which was a similar type of place back when I lived in the Boston area, but which is now gone. I can only imagine that Halted will not be around too much longer and I definitely want to stop there the next time I'm in the area... --tom

17 years, 3 months

8088 vs. 80c88

by les＠frii.com

>In emulation mode (V20) BP = (8080) SP. But I don't follow your >logic on how to avoid it. Why JRT chose to code things that way, >I'll never know, but it worked on 8080, 8085 and Z80 and not on V20, >so it's a bug. And a bug in commercial (i.e. you paid money for it) >software. The code snippet you showed seemed to indicate that either you couldn't preform a call to the same address contained in the stack pointer, or that you couldn't preform a call as the next instruction after a lxi sp instruction. Its not really clear which the problem is. I am assuming the problem relates to following a lxi sp instruction immediatly with a call instruction, I can see how pipelining instructions could cause this failure. I cant immagine how calling the address which happens to match the sp would be an issue. My thought was that most cp/m programs either left the sp alone, and used the stack provided by cp/m, or set up a local stack early on in the program. In either case this bug could be completly avoided. Am I wrong here? Is the bug related to calling the address which happens to be in the sp? >The instruction prefetch queue issue was well documented in the 386, >as was the use of an unconditional jump to void the queue. Although >it's lousy practice to use self-modifying code, I don't blame >MicroPro for it--they wrote their code to an earlier processor. >But claiming backward compatibility is a different game. Unless >something is 100% backward-compatible with the original, you'd best >not advertise it as being backward-compatible at all, unless you like >answering support calls. So as I understand your opinion, if NEC had stated in the V20 documentation, that you should not follow a lxi sp instuction immediatly with a stack operation, this would not have been a bug. In the case of the 386, they documented issues with the 386 queue, issues which crashed commercial software, but which are not a bug. In this case, it was just code written for an older processor. Les

17 years, 3 months

Plessy Core Stack Indentification

by fsmith＠ladylinux.com

Hi All, I am cleaning out my basement and came across a mystery Plessy core stack. Its 16k by 16 and is a full height Unibus slot card. Its one of those sandwiched controller/core stack type of card. Looks to be able to only take up one slot which is nice. Part number is PM 1116B I suspect its a compatible 11/05 or 11/10 memory card but I am not sure. I could plug it into one of my 11/05's but really don't want to do the old see if it smokes test as I think this lil baby is kinda hard to find and desirable to the right person/machine. -- Kindest Regards, "No Problems Only Solutions" L.B. Network Consultants LLC. Baltimore, Maryland

17 years, 3 months

DEC Computer Lab workbook

by mcguire＠neurotica.com

There's one on eBay right now, auction number 230326916375. (not affiliated with seller, etc etc) Too rich for my blood right now, but I'd love to hear that someone here grabs it and gets it scanned. -Dave -- Dave McGuire Port Charlotte, FL

17 years, 3 months

Nicolet 660

by aek＠bitsavers.org

> It continued to do this for > several reboots, but after running unattended for a few hours the hard > disk was again unreachable They took this opportunity to completely back up the contents of the disk, right?

17 years, 3 months

TS-11 tapedrive controller cards available

by quapla＠xs4all.nl

Hello All, I have available a set of controller cards from the internal backplane of a Dec TS-11 tapedrive. Contact me off list if interested. Ed --

17 years, 3 months

contact at cray-cyber.org or cyber1.org?

by legalize＠xmission.com

I've sent requests to join their mailing lists, which never get approved. I've tried to contact the owners directly, but never get a response. I suspect my email is being dumped into a spam folder. (I've been on the net so long and my email address has been so prominent, that spammers have often used my email address as the forged From address on their spam; as a result I've been placed on a bunch of filters and its hopeless to try and get removed from them, since they don't notify you that you've been put on a filter list.) Does anyone have any successful contact with these sites? <http://www.cray-cyber.org/general/start.php> <http://www.cyber1.org/> I've been trying to get in touch with them to get my PLATO terminals up and running. Thanks! -- "The Direct3D Graphics Pipeline" -- DirectX 9 draft available for download <http://www.xmission.com/~legalize/book/download/index.html> Legalize Adulthood! <http://blogs.xmission.com/legalize/>

17 years, 3 months

Sun 3/80 colour card?

by silvercreekvalley＠yahoo.com

Looking for a colour card for a Sun 3/80 if anyone has one spare? Will pay or trade. Part numbers are 501-1443 or 501-1505 Thanks Ian.

17 years, 3 months

washing floppies

by aek＠bitsavers.org

> On a related subject, have there ever been any non-contact (i.e. > flying head) tape drives brought to market? It looks like IBM filed a bunch of patents in the 70's on flying head helical tape http://www.google.com/patents?id=BZ4vAAAAEBAJ

17 years, 3 months

Archiving 8" RT-11 floppies to CD-ROM?

by ajp166＠bellatlantic.net

Read the headers, It's 8" floppies and likely RX02. For that you must have a PDP11 (maybe uVAX) and RX02. David, I have an 11 with RX02. I can copy them to RX50 or RX33 that can be read on PCs. Allison > >Subject: RE: Archiving 8" RT-11 floppies to CD-ROM? > From: Ian King <IanK at vulcan.com> > Date: Tue, 24 Feb 2009 11:57:30 -0800 > To: "'General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts'" <cctalk at classiccmp.org> > >I've developed a procedure for this. It's a bit roundabout but it uses easily available tools. > >Tools needed: >- PDP-11 running RT-11, with an extra serial line (SLUx) >- DOS PC with a serial port >- PUTR program from John Wilson >- TU58 emulator, which I found through Will Kranz' website > >At a high level the process looks like this: > >Install TU58 per its README file. Copy the contents of the floppy onto the emulated TU58 using the COPY/DEVICE command in RT-11. Some versions will gripe at you about the fact that the floppy may be bigger than the tape. RT-11 v4 seems perfectly happy with that, and the TU58 program doesn't care. :-) IIRC there are prompts from RT-11 v5, but you can provide answers that will direct it to do the full copy anyway. > >Use PUTR to copy from that tape image onto... whatever you want! PUTR will let you manipulate the individual files and copy them into DOS directories if you so choose. By using COPY/DEVICE, you can preserve "bootability" of bootable disks, as well. > >I've used the reverse of this process to create physical floppies from disk images as well as to restore floppies after disk failures. Of course, if you want to burn either the images or the individual files onto a CDROM, you'll have to have the files on a machine that supports that device, has burner software, etc. But at that point, they're just files in a DOS filesystem. > >Cheers -- Ian > >> -----Original Message----- >> From: cctalk-bounces at classiccmp.org [mailto:cctalk- >> bounces at classiccmp.org] On Behalf Of Jan-Benedict Glaw >> Sent: Tuesday, February 24, 2009 11:37 AM >> To: General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts >> Subject: Re: Archiving 8" RT-11 floppies to CD-ROM? >> >> On Tue, 2009-02-24 13:14:06 -0500, David Betz <dbetz at xlisper.com> >> wrote: >> > I have a friend who has a number (10-20) of 8" RT-11 floppies he >> wants >> > to archive to CD-ROM or some other modern media. Is there anyone in >> > the Boston area (he lives in Medway) who could help with this? I >> > believe these are RX01 media since I think they were created on a >> > PDT-11/150 that I gave away to someone a few years ago. Can anyone >> > here help? What would the fee be for such a service? >> >> I obviously cannot help, but it would be nice if, once it is done, >> describe the procedure for others. >> >> Backup is one thing, restoring the image another. A third thing would >> be to use that image on some simulator... >> >> MfG, JBG >> >> -- >> Jan-Benedict Glaw jbglaw at lug-owl.de +49-172- >> 7608481 >> Signature of: >> http://perl.plover.com/Questions.html >> the second : >

17 years, 3 months

Why do the OOP Seller's use RFQ?

by shoppa＠trailing-edge.com

On Tuesday 24 February 2009, Jeff Walther wrote: > And how is it more profitable to them to let this stuff sit in > (costly) storage somewhere, rather than selling fifty pieces to > someone who could use them? IMHO: They do not have them sitting in storage. What they have is a small hand-run chip-labeling machine and a bunch of random chips. They grind off the original part numbers and label them to whatever you wanted to buy. And they have a website with a bunch of part numbers culled from various databases. Google "counterfeit chips" and "counterfeit transistors". Tim.

17 years, 3 months

Powering up a 20-year old MicroVAX II (BA23/123 cables)

by tiggerlasv＠aim.com

On Monday, February 23rd, Charles H Dickman wrote: >> Robert Jarratt wrote: >> The harness in my system does not seem to match any of the descriptions I >> have seen so far. The wires are not equal in length, but it is not a ribbon >> cable with IDC connectors either. The connectors are black rather than >> white. The harness wires do not seem discoloured, but I believe that this >> particular system may have only had light use in its day. I have a picture >> of the harness but I am not sure if the rules of this list allow >> attachments. >> > The key point of your description is that the wires are not equal in > length. This COULD be a bad thing. On the BA23, the backplane and power supply connectors are at right-angles to each other, so the 5-volt (red) wires are shorter than the 12-volt (yellow) wires, as well as most of the grounds (black). The same is true on the BA123. As you can see in the ASCII art below, the 12v interconnect wires end up being longer than the 5V wires. This is normal. I have a side-by-side photo of the old style cables, as well as the FCO, however I don't have a convenient place to post it. If anyone wants it for reference, let me know. | 1 | 2 | V | | G | n | d | | 5 | V 5 V G n d 1 2 V _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ T

17 years, 3 months

Nicolet 660

by slawmaster＠gmail.com

Hi everyone A kind list member in my area has offered me a Nicolet 660 computer free if I can haul it off, so I'm hoping to see if anyone else has any information about it. Luckily all the documentation seems to still be there so it's not a total mystery machine, but Google doesn't really offer any info on it. The Nicolet is a hip-high (3'?) cabinet that acts like a mini rack (units slide in and out on rails). The disk unit sits on top and has two SCSI 3.5" floppy drives and an SMD hard disk. Under that is the CPU unit, which has (as I recall) a start/stop button, a program1 button, a program2 button, and a power switch. There is a VGA monitor and an AT keyboard to go with it, both Nicolet branded. The OS is called NICOS and apparently is FORTH-based. It also includes floppies for FORTRAN, PASCAL, and BASIC. There is also a lot of software for data collection and processing, as this was once hooked up to lab equipment. Apparently the hard drive has died. Is it easy to get replacement SMD disks, or are there adapters that would let me plug in a SCSI drive or something more common? This seems to be a very unique piece of equipment that I would like to try to get working. Thanks! John Floren -- "I've tried programming Ruby on Rails, following TechCrunch in my RSS reader, and drinking absinthe. It doesn't work. I'm going back to C, Hunter S. Thompson, and cheap whiskey." -- Ted Dziuba

17 years, 3 months

8088 vs. 80c88

by ajp166＠bellatlantic.net

> >Subject: Re: 8088 vs. 80c88 > From: "Chuck Guzis" <cclist at sydex.com> > Date: Sun, 22 Feb 2009 23:58:23 -0800 > To: "General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts" <cctalk at classiccmp.org> > >On 22 Feb 2009 at 22:17, Allison wrote: > >> Your kidding tight? ;) >> >> JRT pascal was fairly buggy itself and it was till arond V3 that it stopped being >> noticalbly so. > >Buggy or not, the V20 wouldn't run it. Rich Naro verified the bug >and published a MicroNote on it. And JRT was comparatively popular >for the time. It boils down to the V20 not being able to run a >commercially available 8080 product because of a fault in the CPU. That may be true, bought it too but found it buggy on both 8085 and Z80 too. Why did I buy it, $29.95 and I even got a copy, some didn't! However using a buggy suite to prove a bug is weak even if it got lucky. That it had bugs, can't argue that. They could have just as easily given it the base uCOM78 instruction set instead. But how many V20s were bought to run 8080 rather than as a faster varient of the 8088? >Suppose a customer used an application written and deployed with JRT >Pascal. What do we tell him? "JRT Pascal--ho, ho, ha, you must be >kidding...." > >Nope, serious business. Who knows what other product could have used >the same coding technique? That's a regression testing issue. Generally getting functional code out of it was at best luck till later versions. >In a way, this was deja vu of a much earlier problem with the NEC >version of the 8080, where NEC left the carry bit unaffected after a >boolean operation, where Intel reset it. Considering that many 8080 >programs cleared the carry bit with something like "ORA A", do you >think that CP/M would have run with the old NEC chip? Yep, I as working for NEC then. What's also forgotton is Intel changed the spec to match there part as it was deemed fine that way. Since NEC was ground up from spec, oops. They also fixed it and copied many other subtle timing bugs as well. Sometimes you get it wrong and other times you don't. In the industry the number of second source flubs are legion.. remember the 8251,2651, and friends. FYI at the time CP/M did run with the old chip. Allison > >--Chuck

17 years, 3 months

Powering up a 20-year old MicroVAX II

by RodSmallwood＠mail.ediconsulting.co.uk

Hi Sounds like capacitors. Alhough it's a switcher any high voltage/high value capacitors in the PSU might well need reforming. Quite often you will see caps with a pair if incised lines on top. This makes them go pop instead of bang. You would not want to see a PSU where they have gone bang. Rod Smallwood The DEC Collector -----Original Message----- From: cctech-bounces at classiccmp.org [mailto:cctech-bounces at classiccmp.org] On Behalf Of Robert Jarratt Sent: 21 February 2009 19:17 To: 'General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts' Subject: RE: Powering up a 20-year old MicroVAX II > -----Original Message----- > From: cctalk-bounces at classiccmp.org [mailto:cctalk- > bounces at classiccmp.org] On Behalf Of Robert Jarratt > Sent: 20 February 2009 22:45 > To: cctalk at classiccmp.org > Subject: Powering up a 20-year old MicroVAX II > > I have just collected a MicroVAX II which has been in storage and has > not been powered on for 20 years. This is my first machine of such an > age, unfortunately I am not particularly knowledgeable at the > electronics level (I studied circuits academically 25+ years ago and > can solder a bit, but that is as far as it goes). I know I will need > to treat it carefully in order to get it working again. I plan to open > it up and make sure I clear out any debris etc, but beyond that I need > advice from those with the experience and knowledge that I lack on how > to go about powering it up carefully. > > > > Thanks > > > > Rob After removing all the boards and leaving just the disk and tape drive for load I impetuously decided to try powering it up. I knew the PSU (model H7864) was set for 110V and made the switch to 240V (I am in the UK). When I connected the power cord, after a few moments there was a loud pop, followed by another before I could pull out the power cord, smoke rose from the PSU. This sounded just like when I had once accidentally made a 110/240 mix-up. The question is, could it be that I had not made the switch to 240 correctly, or could this just be down to the age of the PSU? Regards Rob

17 years, 3 months

Jump to page:

2026

2025

2024

2023

2022

2021

2020

2019

2018

2017

2016

2015

2014

2013

2012

2011

2010

2009

2008

2007

2006

2005

2004

2003

2002

2001

2000

1999

1998

1997

test-drb