- test-drb@ccmp.vtda.org - classiccmp.org

by cmurillo＠emtelsa.multi.net.co

Hi; Jarkko Teppo wrote: >Hello, >Some background: I was going through my computers last weekend, trying to >get their operational status changed from "mothballed" to something else. >I found a couple of HP 9153C & 9153s from the storage and in an act of >desperation decided to connect them to a 9000/382 running HP-UX. Imagine my >surprise when the 382 started booting HP BASIC! Actually, the '200 and '300 series started as instrument controllers using BASIC (though PASCAL and LISP systems were also available). Then came HPUX. >After that I went searching for another machine (found a 340, 310 and an SRM >server). First I tried to boot basic on the SRM server, but that failed due >to not having enough memory (512KB). I eventually got it working with the >310 + HP composite video card + Phillips monitor. > >A couple of questions: > What can I do with it and where do I find more info ? I don't know much about the SRM server; I always used stand-alone BASIC systems, then went straight to networked HPUX systems. HP Basic is optimized for instrument control via HPIB. That's about the best use for these machines; many test systems used these little guys as controllers. I had to get rid of my 236, 310's, 320's and 340 before I moved, and my 380 won't run BASIC for some reason, so now I can only run HP BASIC in one of my BASIC Language Processors (aka "viper" card). I do have most of the DOCS for BASIC 5.0/5.1 . > I've never used HP BASIC so the only commands I got > working were PRINT and a mysterious LIST BIN, which gave > me more than a screenfull of stuff like this: > "CLOCK 5.0". I assume this is HP BASIC 5.0 ? That is a list of the BIN modules that are built into your particular BASIC system. You'll typically find the CS80 disk driver, the HFS (hyerarchical file system) module, the complex arithmetic module, the HPIB, keyboard, console, video, serial drivers .... stuff like that. > I guess I can use this with the SRM server ? > Do I need extra software to go from HP-UX to SRM ? (I've go extra cards) > >I don't even know how the access the disk drives :) some commands to get you started: CAT ":, 700" will list the contents of the drive at HPIB address 0 CAT ":, 700, 1" will list the contents of the floppy if the device at HPIB address 0 is an HP9153C INITIALIZE ":, 700, 1" will format the floppy with default parameters MSI ":,701" will make the drive at address 1 the default "mass storage is" device. COPY ":,700" TO ":,701" will duplicate the volume at adress 0 again at adress 1 COPY "MYFILE:,700" TO "NEWFILE:,701" Carlos.

25 years, 4 months

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Dejanews

by xds_sigma7＠hotmail.com

If you need news now, you can always use mailgate.org... Will J _________________________________________________________________ Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com

25 years, 4 months

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Holy Crap! IMSAI's weren't this expensive when new!

by dhquebbeman＠theestopinalgroup.com

I wish I'd have known... how much did your TOG'L blocks cost (I got a well-worn set)...? -dq > -----Original Message----- > From: John Foust [mailto:jfoust@threedee.com] > Sent: Tuesday, February 13, 2001 8:54 AM > To: classiccmp(a)classiccmp.org > Subject: Re: Holy Crap! IMSAI's weren't this expensive when new! > > > At 08:54 PM 2/12/01 -0800, Chuck McManis wrote: > >This is very true. I tell people this all the time, for > things that are less than 20 yrs old (and thus have a very > good chance of still being in the original owner's > possession) you can trade money for time. > > Three cheers for eBay's ability to fulfill wishes held since early > in life. Lately I've been acquiring toys I miss from childhood: > latest acquisition, a TOG'L building-block set. > > - John >

25 years, 4 months

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Tek XD88

by rigdonj＠intellistar.net

At 11:50 AM 2/13/01 -0000, you wrote: >Well, it seems like I have posting access to the list again, so I'll dig out >this little question that I keep on asking occasionally... > >I've got the remains of a Tektronix XD88/10 Unix workstation from the late >80's. I've only got the system unit and the keyboard - no mouse or monitor. >I do have a 16" sony monitor that I know works fine with it though, so that >leaves a mouse to find from somewhere, or to make one from something else >(no idea what protocol or type of mouse the system needs though) What kind of connector does your mouse use? I have some Tektronix mice. These have a DB-9M plug. I THINK I have some that use another connector also but I'd have to dig around to be sure. > >The hard disk is almost dead though, starting to give read errors all over >the place - from memory the system won't boot any more. I expect I can get a >replacement disk easily enough - probably even a modern 3.5" SCSI drive >would work I expect to replace the 5.25" full-height drive. The machine's >got a SCSI-1 drive, around 400MB, but I think SCSI-2 drives will work in >the old SCSI modes won't they? (I have a 400MB 3.5" drive which could >replace it if so) > >What I don't have though is the OS tapes (a common problem for 80's hardware >I expect!). I'm waiting to hear back from Tek but they couldn't provide any >help last time I tried a couple of years ago. Does anyone on the list have >such a machine or know someone who has? I don't know where they went to but there were several machines like that at an auction at Patrick AFB a couple of years ago. I'd suggest that you check with Dean Kidd or some of the other guys that supply parts and manuals for Tektronix test equipment. Also check with Rick Bensene (sp?). He used to work for Tek and may be able to tell you more about the machine. > >Is it worth me trying to do a raw backup of the disk before it fails >completely? Absolutely! I can put it in my main PC at home which has SCSI and read raw >data from it under linux (not sure what filesystem Tek used, proprietary I >expect) but don't know if I'm wasting my time there - I don't know if >that'll give me anything useful at the end of the day anyway. Even assuming >I could find an identical working drive and do a raw copy of the failing >disk onto it (at the block level), would that work - or is there always >going to be some sector translation at a lower level which meant that the >contents of the "new" disk wouldn't make any sense when put into the system? > >Thanks for any help, > >Jules > >ps. I don't know how many of these machines Tek sold, but it feels like >about 5 given the amount of information there is around about them! :-) If so then thats about 3 more than 8170s! I've looked high and low and found almost nothing on them. I did find one guy in Australia that used to have one. The hard drive in my 8170 seems to be completely dead. I can't get any response from it. Luckily I did get one floppy disk that has most of the OS. Joe >-- >

25 years, 4 months

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parts needed

by RCini＠congressfinancial.com

Russ: Digi-Key is one of my favorite suppliers. They do have SMDs, but not these. As far as the IO chip and the microprocessor, these are unfortunately too specific for them to carry. DK does not carry SMSC at all, and the Zilog line is represented only by the Z8 series. I never thought of MCM. Thanks for that one. Rich -----Original Message----- From: Russ Blakeman [mailto:russ@rbcs.8m.com] Sent: Monday, February 12, 2001 6:49 PM To: classiccmp(a)classiccmp.org Subject: RE: parts needed Have you tried DigiKey. I haven't looked through my catalog as it's buried in a box right now but they sshould have many of these parts. MCM Electronics in Ohio also has many items and even if not in their catalog they can outsorce them many times. -----Original Message----- From: owner-classiccmp(a)classiccmp.org [mailto:owner-classiccmp@classiccmp.org]On Behalf Of Cini, Richard Sent: Monday, February 12, 2001 3:15 PM To: 'ClassCompList' Subject: OT: parts needed Hello, all: Well, I'm going to embark on another project--to build the P112 Z80182 SBC. As you may recall, this is a nifty Z80-based SBC that's the size of a 3.5" floppy drive and uses a standard PC I/O controller for disk support. Dave Brooks no longer makes the machines, but I was able to purchase a bare board from him for $25. Anyway, it requires a few SMD components which I can locate at Arrow and Pioneer Standard, but there are purchase minimums that I can't meet. I can probably order the chips in one-offs but not the SMDs. So, I'm looking for the following: BAR43C Schottky diode SOT23, common cathode ; has odd pin configuration BAR43 {same} BCW71 transistor, NPN SOT23 SMSC FDC37C665GT SuperIO chip, QFP100 Zilog Z8018216FSC1932 Microprocessor, QFP100 Anyway, if anyone has a source for these in hobbiest contact me off-list. Thanks. Rich ========================== Richard A. Cini, Jr. Congress Financial Corporation 1133 Avenue of the Americas 30th Floor New York, NY 10036 (212) 545-4402 (212) 840-6259 (facsimile)

25 years, 4 months

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Holy Crap! IMSAI's weren't this expensive when new!

by r.stek＠snet.net

RE: the Sol on eBay ... Yeah, the guy apparently knows little about what he is selling. He attributes its name to "Solomon Libes - an editor at Popular Electronics," rather than Les Solomon. Even the quickest search on the web would have turned up more accurate info than what he presents. Given the bidding is up to $1400+, I may start considering a trade for an Altair for one of mine! Bob Stek Saver of Lost Sols

25 years, 4 months

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Tek XD88

by JRichardson＠softwright.co.uk

Well, it seems like I have posting access to the list again, so I'll dig out this little question that I keep on asking occasionally... I've got the remains of a Tektronix XD88/10 Unix workstation from the late 80's. I've only got the system unit and the keyboard - no mouse or monitor. I do have a 16" sony monitor that I know works fine with it though, so that leaves a mouse to find from somewhere, or to make one from something else (no idea what protocol or type of mouse the system needs though) The hard disk is almost dead though, starting to give read errors all over the place - from memory the system won't boot any more. I expect I can get a replacement disk easily enough - probably even a modern 3.5" SCSI drive would work I expect to replace the 5.25" full-height drive. The machine's got a SCSI-1 drive, around 400MB, but I think SCSI-2 drives will work in the old SCSI modes won't they? (I have a 400MB 3.5" drive which could replace it if so) What I don't have though is the OS tapes (a common problem for 80's hardware I expect!). I'm waiting to hear back from Tek but they couldn't provide any help last time I tried a couple of years ago. Does anyone on the list have such a machine or know someone who has? Is it worth me trying to do a raw backup of the disk before it fails completely? I can put it in my main PC at home which has SCSI and read raw data from it under linux (not sure what filesystem Tek used, proprietary I expect) but don't know if I'm wasting my time there - I don't know if that'll give me anything useful at the end of the day anyway. Even assuming I could find an identical working drive and do a raw copy of the failing disk onto it (at the block level), would that work - or is there always going to be some sector translation at a lower level which meant that the contents of the "new" disk wouldn't make any sense when put into the system? Thanks for any help, Jules ps. I don't know how many of these machines Tek sold, but it feels like about 5 given the amount of information there is around about them! :-) --

25 years, 4 months

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Dejanews

by JRichardson＠softwright.co.uk

> They've promised exactly that; they bought the whole thing, and > <URL:http://www.google.com/press/pressrel/pressrelease48.html> notes > that they're bringing the whole thing online, in the first couple of > paragraphs. Indexing a few terabytes of data seems an excusable reason > to not have it ready right away :-) Deja didn't have the older archives available for a while now. Every time I emailed their support service I got an automated reply back saying that it was temporarily unavailable - I suppose that if this takeover was looming then that explains a lot. Oh, I don't know about them having the last 6 months up at the moment by the way - yesterday afternoon they didn't have some of my posts and follow-ups >from less than a week ago. Hopefully there'll be a way of grabbing group archives to local storage - that'll be handy. I hope they put some serious work into the UI too and actually make it look like a piece of newsreader software rather than a bad web front-end (as dejanews was and as the site is currently) cheers Jules --

25 years, 4 months

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Epson Action Laser II

by cfandt＠netsync.net

Anybody have a manual for the subject laser printer? I think it's barely on topic (at least ten years old) as I recall it being bought sometime before I moved to the new offices at my old employer in early 1992. I'm attempting to fire it up after having shelved it for several years. I bought it in a company surplus auction. Naturally, the VP who used it in his office misplaced the manual. He's a pure non-techie and he admitted to me often that he doesn't keep track of such things. I can't for the life of me recall the term for the electrostatically charged image transfer belt which picks up the toner and transfers it to the paper. But the one in this unit is physically damaged such that two black blotches prints on each page along with a very fine line all along the length of the page -just off center. Anybody have or otherwise knows of a junker Action Laser II from which I could buy that part? It's the easily removable assembly positioned right in front of the fuser assembly. Next, I have to research whether anybody sells replacement toner carts at a civilized price -that will tell me whether it's actually worthwile restoring and using this printer :-/ It'll certainly save ink cartrige$ on our HP DeskJet we have in the house when printing larger quantities of text or some monochrome graphics for my schoolwork. Thanks for your help on this. -Chris -- -- Christian Fandt, Electronic/Electrical Historian Jamestown, NY USA cfandt(a)netsync.net Member of Antique Wireless Association URL: http://www.antiquewireless.org/

25 years, 4 months

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Dejanews

by JRichardson＠softwright.co.uk

OK, what on earth happened to the Dejanews archive? Seems like they've been taken over by Google (leading us one step closer to a single corporation controlling the entire world, no doubt! :-) I didn't see any advance warning of this, nor can I see any date for when the archives will be back online on the site. Are there any other usenet archive sites out there? (preferably ones that aren't web based, or have a better interface than the awful Dejanews one - or the even poorer Google search result format!) cheers Jules. ps. this is serving somewhat as a test message - someone let me know if they can see it! :) --

25 years, 4 months

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More VAX troubles

by ajp166＠bellatlantic.net

From: Iggy Drougge <optimus(a)canit.se> >The only problem now, is that the computer crashes whenever IP traffic goes >beyond simple pinging or a few lines of telnet. The NIC is a DECNA (DEQNA?), >and reseating it doesn't seem to solve anything. It is possible to ping it Must be running netbsd. The DEQNA is the older of the Qbus NICs and it's ok if working. If you can find a DELQA which was a newer version that would be better. Both can be found as networked vaxen were not unusual. >What could be wrong this time? Should the card or the OS be replaced, and how >uncommon are these NICs? I could need another one for the plain MicroVAX II. If the OS is Netbsd then look into the version your running. If VMS theres something going on, hard to guess what. Allison

25 years, 4 months

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CPC/IP

by jfoust＠threedee.com

At 02:30 AM 2/10/01 +0100, Iggy Drougge wrote: >Here's something interesting: yet another 8-bit TCP/IP stack, this time for >the Amstrad/Schneider CPC. Judging from the web page, http://www.nenie.org/cpcip/, it seems like quite a hack. People have fit minimal web servers (via SLIP?) in PIC-based gizmos. Search for "world's smallest web server" for all the contenders. You're right, thouh - it would be nice if there was a minimal TCP/IP / http server with source code, so it could be ported to other systems. Or maybe there is, somewhere out there... - John

25 years, 4 months

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CPU and OS

by reyes＠orion.ae.utexas.edu

What type of CPU and OS does this system have? http://cgi.ebay.com/aw-cgi/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=553614951

25 years, 4 months

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OT: parts needed

by RCini＠congressfinancial.com

Hello, all: Well, I'm going to embark on another project--to build the P112 Z80182 SBC. As you may recall, this is a nifty Z80-based SBC that's the size of a 3.5" floppy drive and uses a standard PC I/O controller for disk support. Dave Brooks no longer makes the machines, but I was able to purchase a bare board from him for $25. Anyway, it requires a few SMD components which I can locate at Arrow and Pioneer Standard, but there are purchase minimums that I can't meet. I can probably order the chips in one-offs but not the SMDs. So, I'm looking for the following: BAR43C Schottky diode SOT23, common cathode ; has odd pin configuration BAR43 {same} BCW71 transistor, NPN SOT23 SMSC FDC37C665GT SuperIO chip, QFP100 Zilog Z8018216FSC1932 Microprocessor, QFP100 Anyway, if anyone has a source for these in hobbiest contact me off-list. Thanks. Rich ========================== Richard A. Cini, Jr. Congress Financial Corporation 1133 Avenue of the Americas 30th Floor New York, NY 10036 (212) 545-4402 (212) 840-6259 (facsimile)

25 years, 4 months

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Weekend finds @ Orlando hamfest

by rigdonj＠intellistar.net

What a weekend!!! day -1: Thursday. Helped a friend dig out and load stuff to take to the hamfest. Found and bought two Osborne computers. One turns out to be an early Osborne 1, NOT an OCC-1. It has a display but appears to have a bad capacitor in the power supply judging from the ripple. It got all the original manuals and software with it. The other machine is an OCC-1. I had previously found the software and manuals for this one so now it's intact again. This one works great! day 0: Friday. Hamfest starts but opened earlier than on previous years so I get there after they open. Eveything is picked over but I still manage to find a new in box Survey ROM for the HP-41. Also included is a 41 battery holder, one manual and some other bits and pieces. Later I find a new in box HP 71B. Also in the box was a brand new HP-71 ROM from Pratt and Whitney that is used to determine where to place weights to balance an H-60 helicopter engine. Also got the instructions for the ROM. The odd thing about this 71 is that the box has a label that says that it is a "Computer, Fire Control". That's the name that the US Army calls the HP-71s that are used as a backup system for computing artillery fire. I have the manuals for that system along with a bunch of the ROMs and several (badly) used HP-71s. This is the first time that I've seen one of these 71s NIB. This one is in PERFECT condition. Day 1: Saturday. LOADS of good finds this day! Frist, a dealer friend of mine says that he has a surprise for me and to come back after he unloads. I return later and find that he has two HP-41 CV calculators for me (Yippie!). Both are in the cases and have all the accessories. They're also the later half-nut models. One even has a survey ROM in it. Go to another stand and find that the guy has a VAN LOAD of books from the estate of a farily well known author in electronis, J.A. (Sam) Wilson. I spent SEVERAL hours going through all the books. I eneded up with TWEVLE large boxs of physics, mathematics, computer and engineering books. Too many GREAT books to describe some some of the highlights include Mick and Brick's book on Bit-Slice CPUs, loads of OLD DEC manuals, loads of '70s data books, a Heathkit ET-3400 with ALL the manuals, Intel manuals for the MDS systems and lots more! Check another stand and found a manual for a Tektronix 4596 Graphics tablet for use with the Tektronix 4051 computer. Then I really find a a goodie! A Zenith Z-100 computer in great condition and with the built in hard drive for $10! Later I find a brand new in the box HP Thinkjet printer with the HP-IL inteface. I also picked up a "Intext" model XK-300 Microprocessor Trainer made by Elenco Electronics Inc. Does anyone know anything about these? It looks similar to the Heathkit ET-3400 but has a Motorola 6802 CPU. Day 2: Sunday. Things are slow today but I still manage to score a nice RS-232 analyzer for $1. Also found another boxfull of books! One in the great finds is a copy of "The Complete Motorola MicroComputer Data Library" printed by Motorola in 1978. This is a THICK book and it describes ALL of their EXOR-bus cards and systems along with all the other EXOR-TERM systems and other items including all of the cards that they made for the DEC systems. It also has data sheets for all of their digital ICs. It also lists all the software that they sell and all their Developement systems! This a great reference manual! I also find two HP Electro-Optics catalogs >from the early '70s. One lists and describes the displays used in the HP Spice series of calculators. I've never found that before. The second one describes in detail the display system used in the HP 35 and other classic HP calculators. Both of these are going to be very handy! The only other sgnificant find is a Remote Relay Actuator and sensor control box that's operated by RS-232. Well that's the highlights. Now I have to go clean out the car. AND my truck. AND my buddy's van! They're all full! Joe

25 years, 4 months

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Dejanews

by steven_j_robertson＠hotmail.com

Musta happened this weekend. I just did a search and the results came back EXTREMELY fast, with fewer advertisment and a lot less BS on the page. I've always been a fan of DEJANEWS but, This might not be a bad thing. Steve >From: Julian Richardson <JRichardson(a)softwright.co.uk> >Reply-To: classiccmp(a)classiccmp.org >To: "'classiccmp(a)classiccmp.org'" <classiccmp(a)classiccmp.org> >Subject: Dejanews >Date: Mon, 12 Feb 2001 17:33:44 -0000 > > >OK, what on earth happened to the Dejanews archive? Seems like they've been >taken over by Google (leading us one step closer to a single corporation >controlling the entire world, no doubt! :-) > >I didn't see any advance warning of this, nor can I see any date for when >the archives will be back online on the site. Are there any other usenet >archive sites out there? (preferably ones that aren't web based, or have a >better interface than the awful Dejanews one - or the even poorer Google >search result format!) > >cheers > >Jules. > >ps. this is serving somewhat as a test message - someone let me know if >they >can see it! :) >-- _________________________________________________________________ Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com

25 years, 4 months

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HPUX backup (now it's working)

by steven_j_robertson＠hotmail.com

OK... It took me awhile but, I finally figured out which "section" ISL resides on. If I'd only looked at /etc/disktab first, I probably coulda saved myself a bunch of work :-) It seems older versions of HPUX use disk section "6" for boot. Once I found that info, I did: "dd if=/dev/dsk/c1000d0s6 of=/dev/dsk/c1008d0s6 bs=1024k" and now everything is working just fine. Now that I have a complete copy of the system, I can screw around with the box all I want and not worry about loosing the OS. In the next day or two, I'll copy all the files to a WINNT box and burn a CD (an adventure unto itsself). That way, I'll have a "permanent" backup. Thanks to everyone for the help. Steve > >ISL lives in the LIF volume which is not part of a partition. >You can probably make your exact image if you use the device for the whole >disk rather than backing up by partitions. The whole disk device should >get all the partitions. > >A man lif on your 10.20 system should provide some info. > >Paul _________________________________________________________________ Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com

25 years, 4 months

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Colossus code-breaking machine: seminar, Bristol, UK

by John.Honniball＠uwe.ac.uk

Just thought this might be of interest to UK readers. At least it's more than 10 years old! See Web URL at the bottom of the message. --- Begin Forwarded Message --- SEMINAR THE COLOSSUS CODE BREAKING COMPUTER - Its influence on World War II and its rebuild Presented by : Tony Sale (Hon FBCS, ex Museums Director, Bletchley Park) Venue: University of Bristol/Queen's Building/PLT Date/Time: 20th February 2001 at 5pm The Colossus was the world's first electronic computer and was built at Bletchley Park during World War II to break the German Lorenz cipher. Tony Sale has spent the last few years rebuilding the Colossus working from remaining plans, photos and the recollections of people who worked at Bletchley. The talk will begin with a discussion of the historical context of the Colossus and the part it played in shortening World War II. Tony will then move on to discuss how the Colossus is being rebuilt and report on the current status of the rebuilding project. This talk is suitable for a general audience and all are welcome. More information can be found at: http://www.cs.bris.ac.uk/Research/Seminars/Crypto --- End Forwarded Message --- -- John Honniball Email: John.Honniball(a)uwe.ac.uk University of the West of England

25 years, 4 months

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HPUX backup (sorta working)

by steven_j_robertson＠hotmail.com

Thanks to all that replied before, I have been able to MOSTLY create a working backup of my HPUX 8.0 system. Still have a glitch to work out but, I'm getting a lot closer. Originally, I was using two different size disks and that wasn't working out so, now I'm using identical disks for the source and target. I am using the "dd" command to copy the data from the existing root disk partitions to the target. dd if=/dev/dsk/c1000t0d13 of=/dev/dsk/c1008t0d13 bs=1024k dd if=/dev/dsk/c1000t0d2 of=/dev/dsk/c1008t0d2 bs=1024 Now I can boot hpux on the backup disk but only if I boot ISL on the original disk. When I load ISL from the original 8.0 disk, it shows a different version than when I load ISL from the backup disk. The backup disk was previously loaded with 10.20 and it appears that dd did not overwrite that portion of the disk. Unfortunately, the 10.20 version of ISL will not boot the 8.0 version of HPUX. It reports a funky out of memory error or some such. I realize in this case that the dd command is only moving the "13" and "2" partitions of the disk and ISL is probably not on either of those partitions. "ioscan -fn -C disk" reports about 50 different special files for each drive and I really don't to wade through all of them to find the right combination. I have tried a few of the obvious like "c1000t0d0 ---> c1008t0d0" but still haven't found the right combination to copy the ISL sectors. So... the question(s) is: What partition is ISL on? Will dd copy ISL or do I have to use a different utility? Thanks, Steve _________________________________________________________________ Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com

25 years, 4 months

2
1
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Amiga development (was: uVAX II Memory Board)

by rachael_＠gmx.net

Hi >To actually install Amiga UNIX requires a Commodore A2091 or A3000 SCSI >controller. Apparently someone made patches to allow AMIX to be used with GVP >controllers, but I have never seen them. (I would really like to get hold of >that, since maybe it will be possible to install AMIX on my A2000 then. But >you probably have to install AMIX before being able to incorporate the >patches...) I have a 3000 here, with superkickstart and a 250mb wangdat 6250 tape, It might be able to install it. Regards Jacob Dahl Pind -------------------------------------------------- = IF this computer is with us now... = =...It must have been meant to come live with us.= = (Belldandy - Goddess First class) = --------------------------------------------------

25 years, 4 months

1
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HP BASIC & SRM newbie

by jate＠uwasa.fi

Hello, Some background: I was going through my computers last weekend, trying to get their operational status changed from "mothballed" to something else. I found a couple of HP 9153C & 9153s from the storage and in an act of desperation decided to connect them to a 9000/382 running HP-UX. Imagine my surprise when the 382 started booting HP BASIC! After that I went searching for another machine (found a 340, 310 and an SRM server). First I tried to boot basic on the SRM server, but that failed due to not having enough memory (512KB). I eventually got it working with the 310 + HP composite video card + Phillips monitor. A couple of questions: What can I do with it and where do I find more info ? I've never used HP BASIC so the only commands I got working were PRINT and a mysterious LIST BIN, which gave me more than a screenfull of stuff like this: "CLOCK 5.0". I assume this is HP BASIC 5.0 ? I guess I can use this with the SRM server ? Do I need extra software to go from HP-UX to SRM ? (I've go extra cards) I don't even know how the access the disk drives :) So any help is appreciated, thanks. -- jht

25 years, 4 months

1
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GG2 bus

by optimus＠canit.se

A while ago, there was someone on this list withan overwhelming stock of Goldengate bridgeboards. Could that person please get in touch with me? -- En ligne avec Thor 2.6. "I believe OS/2 is destined to be the most important operating system, and possibly program, of all time..." Bill Gates 1988

25 years, 4 months

2
1
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(no subject)

by william.webb＠juno.com

>Date: Fri, 9 Feb 2001 20:41:17 -0500 >From: "ajp166" <ajp166(a)bellatlantic.net> > Subject: Re: SCSI trouble on a MicroVAX IIGPX >>From: Iggy Drougge <optimus(a)canit.se> >>Thanks, are there any good VAX references on the WWW? All manuals I've > >been >>able to find are ULTRIX manuals, no hardware references. Iggy- Compaq has OpenVMS documentation online: http://www.openvms.compaq.com:8000/index.html I've put the VAXstation 3100 Model 76 Owner's Guide online: http://www.whiteice.com/~williamwebb/intro/DOC-i.html Jim Agnew keeps the MicroVAX/VAXstation FAQ at: http://anacin.nsc.vcu.edu/~jim/mvax/mvax_faq.html William W. Webb (for whom VMS has provided food and shelter for over a decade) >There may be but, I have real ones so I've never looked to see. >In the case of booting even the ultrix manuals apply as it's the same >booter in rom. Of course once ultrix is in mem the differences are >obvious. >Allison ________________________________________________________________ GET INTERNET ACCESS FROM JUNO! Juno offers FREE or PREMIUM Internet access for less! Join Juno today! For your FREE software, visit: http://dl.www.juno.com/get/tagj.

25 years, 4 months

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Tandys/Apple ][e FCOS

by Marion.Bates＠dartmouth.edu

Hey all, I was in one of my watering holes today and saw a Tandy 600 for sale. Looked fairly complete (power supply and a manual I think). Didn't check the price but this guy's usually pretty reasonable and he's got a sale going on electronics for the next couple days. Let me know if you're interested and I'll find out the price and snag it for ya. He also has a bunch of random video game controllers so if you need ANOTHER Atari joystick... ;) Also of possible interest: I have a Tandy 1000 with some software that needs a home. Don't know for sure that it works but odds are that it does. Welcome to it for the price of shipping or for trade -- anything Apple/Mac/Lisa/Commodore/Atari/videogame-related. I've decided that I need to focus a little with the collecting, and the Tandys don't really turn me on. Last item, an Apple ][e with Apple /// monitor. Both work. I don't need _another_ one and doubt anyone else does either...but yours for shipping. I live in NH. Thanks, -- MB

25 years, 4 months

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Tandys/Apple ][e FCOS

by Marion.Bates＠dartmouth.edu

Hey all, I was in one of my watering holes today and saw a Tandy 600 for sale. Looked fairly complete (power supply and a manual I think). Didn't check the price but this guy's usually pretty reasonable and he's got a sale going on electronics for the next couple days. Let me know if you're interested and I'll find out the price and snag it for ya. He also has a bunch of random video game controllers so if you need ANOTHER Atari joystick... ;) Also of possible interest: I have a Tandy 1000 with some software that needs a home. Don't know for sure that it works but odds are that it does. Welcome to it for the price of shipping or for trade -- anything Apple/Mac/Lisa/Commodore/Atari/videogame-related. I've decided that I need to focus a little with the collecting, and the Tandys don't really turn me on. Last item, an Apple ][e with Apple /// monitor. Both work. I don't need _another_ one and doubt anyone else does either...but yours for shipping. I live in NH. Thanks, -- MB

25 years, 4 months

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More VAX troubles

by optimus＠canit.se

First of all, thanks to Allison and William Webb for the help with the IIGPX. I visited it today, and found a whole lot of QBUS cards in a box, a lot of which seemed like SCSI. I proceeded to replace the present card with the new one, but no success nevertheless. Then I decided to remove the RZ55 once again. That was a bad mistake, since the power connector was wedged very firmly into the drive, and when I tried to remove it, I removed the female connector on the drive as well. Luckily a friend soldered it back again for me, and I tried once again with the old card. No great success, but then we decided to try a lot of odd drive names (odd if you're a non-DEC person), and found out something about a DUA0. The drive span up and started to boot NetBSD, but things seemed to fail due to memory error. We then proceeded to reseat all the cards, and now it would boot fine. What an odd problem. Could it be that I hadn't seated the card firmly enough? The only problem now, is that the computer crashes whenever IP traffic goes beyond simple pinging or a few lines of telnet. The NIC is a DECNA (DEQNA?), and reseating it doesn't seem to solve anything. It is possible to ping it successfully, albeit with long response times. Running ftp on the VAX and downloading small files from other hosts quickly lands you in the debugger, though, with a system shutdown as next step, and the same thing happens when telnetting to it and running a few short commands. What could be wrong this time? Should the card or the OS be replaced, and how uncommon are these NICs? I could need another one for the plain MicroVAX II. -- En ligne avec Thor 2.6. Age is a high price to pay for maturity.

25 years, 4 months

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Sorry Folks

by milton＠sciti.com

> > > Subject: Re: Apple discs and doc offer, etc. > Date: Sat, 10 Feb 2001 18:25:04 -0800 > From: Milton Blackstone <milton(a)sciti.com> > > o: "S. Ring" <sring(a)uslink.net>, donm(a)cts.com, classiccmp@classiccmp/org > > References: <018e01c090cd$b3496140$9357ddcc@sring> > > Hello All: > I appreciate the help my frienn Maslin offered by advising you folks > that I had a bunch of Apple, Kaypro and early IBM stuff to d, > Dodispose of and I apologize to the 5 or 6 people who contacted me > requesting specific items they were interested in - but - I have all > of this stuff packed in 3 heavy cartons and can not re-open them to > check out your requests..or shlep them to a shipper. If there is > anyone in the San Diego area who would be interested in doing same > or want them for your archives - I would be pleased to make it > available for pick-up. > > Sorry if you were misled but the intention was honorable. > > Milton Blackstone > > "S. Ring" wrote: > >> I am interested in what you have for theApple II series machines. >> sring(a)uslink.net >

25 years, 4 months

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Helk with a Kontron EPP-80 EPROM Burner

by grant＠AcceLight.com

I just acquired an EPROM burner/eraser by Kontron, model EPP-80, and although most of the functionality is intuitive enough, the use of the serial port is not. In particular, I want to download an image from a file on my PC to the Kontron's local memory. There's an IN and OUT key, and the OUT key _does_ output something to the serial port, but in addition to a start and end address, the command seems to take a format code (eg. 23 outputs the memory in ASCII Hex notation, in bytes, separated by commas). Anyone with knowledge/documentation on these units? I'd appreciate any help, especially access to some documentation. Please email me directly, as I'm not currently subscribed. Thanks. grant..

25 years, 4 months

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Adopted -- PC Convertible 5140

by rcini＠optonline.net

Hello, all: Well, another successful minor adoption -- a PC Convertible 5140 with printer and monitor. It also appears to have a parallel port snap-on and a video board snap-on. It also seems that the battery is shorted, because the power supply goes into shutdown mode with the battery connected. The computer works without the battery installed. Does anyone have any info on the specs, like OS version, options, and the like? Thanks. Rich Rich Cini Collector of Classic Computers Build Master for the Altair32 Emulator Project Web site: http://highgate.comm.sfu.ca/~rcini/classiccmp/ /*****************************************/

25 years, 4 months

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Memorex 2374-81R

by xds_sigma7＠hotmail.com

Umm the only way Telex is related would be in the company name, e.g. Memorex-Telex... It's an IBM 3270-compatible controller, probably compatible with a 3274, guessing from the model number.. If you don't have an IBM minicomputer or mainframe, it really isn't useful for much of anything. _________________________________________________________________ Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com

25 years, 4 months

5
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Toshiba 420 CDT help

by jpl15＠panix.com

One last post... anyone on The List have any detailed tech info on the Toshiba 420CDT laptop? I managed to fry the PSU in mine, and I'd like to see if it's worth buying a replacement [$45 +%65 duty +shipping]. If I just could get the actual output voltage/current that would be of help. Here in Southern India, most computer 'service' is module replacement. When things made from Unobtainium break, one warms up the soldering iron and 'does the needful' as they say... Cheerz and Thanks John

25 years, 4 months

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New find : hacked and modified Hyperion computer

by claudew＠videotron.ca

Hi Well, it was $35 and someone had used a hack saw (or similar) to make a rough hole and install a 360K half height floppy in place of the original bottom one but I guess I could not pass it up for some odd reason. But what I found inside was a bit more interesting: Someone had made a small rack to fit 2 ISA 8 bit cards and managed to install a memory card, HD controller card, another fan and a MFM HD...so the machine now has 640k ram. Obviously not Hyperion installed (unless thats the way they worked) and kinda smart in the way the person used the minimal space in there to fit all of that... There is a small card that soldered to the expansion connector port of the hyperion (from the inside) I cant remember the name of the company now but it was not Hyperion...there is a ribbon cable that goes to over the monitor and the 2 isa slot are there... The original (320k IIRC) drives are missing, it gives a memory error on post (already fixed now bad ram chip...), CRT could be a bit more bright but has no burn (cranked up brightness preset it was at minimum - nice now) , but I am still glad I found one of these...they look a bit more common around here since they were built in Canada....seem quite rare everywhere else... Guy said he would give me money back if I could not fix it and decided to bring it back...within a week... If anybody has parts -front panel and original drive(s)?- I might be interested to bring this thing back to original shape or close to...If not, well I will probably fix the rough hole by making a nice platic plate to fix that terrrible hack job that defaces the poor thing...the hole that was made there is so rough its a shame.... Might put up pics on my web site of this hacked thing (inside and out) before I redo everything and make it nice...if anybody sounds interested... Claude Canuk Computer Collector

25 years, 4 months

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Great HP Finds

by jrkeys＠concentric.net

With back down to the warehouse today and found a Intel 286 and 8088 CPU emulation units. I got both for very little money. Got a IBM 370 Plasma flat screen Type 3290-2 very cheap. On the HP side I got the following items: - 10277B General Purpose Probe Interface unit, with manuals - board wired for OPT 001 configuration - 1615A Logic Analyzer - 10066A HP-IB Probe Interface unit with doc's - A box of probes and cables, have not looked into it yet. Also got some Burroughs items. Three large boxes full of manuals and software. Also some early Mac stuff. Will get a fuller list later. John Keys

25 years, 4 months

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Holy Crap! IMSAI's weren't this expensive when new!

by ajp166＠bellatlantic.net

>You need to get your timing straight, Allison. If you take 1976 as a timing >reference, there wasn't any sort of 'C' compiler on the horizon for CP/M or, Right C wasn't 1976 then again I never said it was. The assertion was that in 1976 you could do better. Could you? I asserted that using the 1976 design for many years later I did run C, pascal, Cbasic, Mbasic, multiplan and even dbase. This still runs counter to the idea that that the NS design could not do useful work. It's not me hacking the design, others did it with minimal effort on stock hardware. It makes little difference that those may not have existed in 1976 (very little did) it's the idea that the design did work and a 56k TPA was easily done. >for that matter, for NDOS. I don't think 5-1/4" disk drives were cheap >enough for NorthStar in '76 either. There weren't many of them around. In November 1976, $599, Mastercharge Card, LI Computer in Manhassett Li. For that I got a MDS-A controller, 1 SA400 and their DOS and BASIC. At that time another SA400 was about 400$ and 8" drive was $699 plus the then typical 8" drive required a bigger more complex power supply. The NS Horizon machine (complete S100 crate) was later. I did over the years run every thing under the CP/M sun on it. >fact, I don't think anybody I knew at the time had a CP/M version beyond >1.4. The NorthStar stuff was pretty common by late '77, but the >compiler-generated software I'm referring to was released in '77-'78. Not news to me. >However, much more basic is the absolute fact that you can't have a 56K TPA >if the available addressable memory space below the FDC is limited to 56K >because the FDC sits there. Even if the BIOS were of zero length, the BDOS >isn't, and even if the BDOS were of zero length as well, you'd still have to >allow for the bottom 256 bytes, which don't figure into the TPA. The FDC resides at 0xE800!!!!! Faulty math! 64k minus the 4k (f000h) is 60k and then minus 2k (e800 to efff) is 58k. Single density bios of 2k is was no big deal. so with 8k in use or unavailable your down to 56k... or is 64-8 not 56k? >You're right about the cost of memory in 1976, and, in fact, I'd say it cost >quite a bit more than what you suggest in '76, since the 4116's cost about >$80 per chip in '76. Getting eight of them wasn't easy either since they >weren't in full production until late '77. I know I'm right, I was there buying it. I had 56k of seals and PT static (2102) 8kx8 ram cards in the crate. My first 64k dynamic card was 1980 paid $199 for the board sans ram (I had a source). >Several competitors did! Now, you picked this 1976 timeline, so please >stick to it! What you did in '78 isn't relevant because it was a wholly >different world then. The 76 timeline is the design date of the FDC. The point to repeat it was can you using 1976 technology do better than 600$ for a minifloppy SYSTEM with dos and basic? No it was I was doing by 1978 based on my 1976 hardware. >The TRS-80 Model 1 came out in late '77 didn't it? First significant quantities were september 1977. >> in 48k. The only one that wanted a larger TPA then 48k was SMALLC V2 >> compiler as the optimizer wanted more space. >> >SmallC didn't exist then ... The date is not important as I ran it later on the same hardware. Your trying to weasel your way to a different place. You have asserted that NS MDS-A system was a dog. I assert your full of faulty data and that by 1976 hardware standards it was it was a good design that would held up well for many years. By then NS* had replaced it with a double density version that interoperated with older version well yet extended the useable storage. I'd also assert that the ICOM FDOS system I have (same timeframe) using the venerable 1771 was a true dog as it was slow, with rom at B800 and even less software (barely a dos). It was also only good for 71kb of storage on a SA400. The NS MDS-A did much better at 82k of space on the same drive. Anyhow I still have he ICOM junker in the collection to remind me of a real dog. >> >in '81, 64K of 4116's cost much less than $100. Mostly useless as they were loose parts and not a board or kit. I can pull down catalogs, Byte, Interface age and all for prices. S100 cards complete, of reliable design were not $100 for 64k until the sell out days of the mid to late 80s. >> Psystem with Pascal for $50 (bargan in my eyes). >> >UCSD Pascal, while a decent system, wouldn't run standard CP/M applications. Unimportant. At the time it represented a non CP/M system and a real HLL for peanuts that did run on small hardware. At the time that was pretty radical. Also there was a version of Psystem that ram using CP/M (not NS*). >The NorthStar controllers I saw were all shipped at 0xE000 with a boot rom >that didn't find them anywhere else. Nope that was nonstandard then. Standard was E800h I've never seen one even nonstandard that low most of the custom roms version were F000 or F800. I'd attribute that to error or bad memory. >That's not exactly what I'm saying, but, in 1976, you couldn't run >TurboPascal because it didn't exist, nor did BDS-C. Well certainly your opinion. Like I said earlier I ran them when they became available on that old useless, as you say, hardware with a real 56k TPA I ram them. I STILL RUN IT, I ahve the docs, I dont have to rely on memory >That's not relevant, >though, because those compilers and interpreters don't represent useful >work. Again your opinion. For many those did represent useful tools for building business apps. >People who bought a computer in 1976 generally justified it on the basis >that they would use it to perform useful work. Programming was overhead to >everyone except the .001% of the folks out there who were engaged in >creating software. Save for in 1976 there was very little software at the applications level. so many apps were home grown. What year was Visicalc introduced? >Useful work involved running Word Processing, Accounting, Payroll, and >Inventory Control software, Order Entry, printing reports, checks, billing, >cost tracking, shipping label/mailing list processing, etc. That sort of >work required you have some memory available since you had to sort and >search quite a bit. I know, it's how I make a living. I was using my altair to run a daprtment payroll and all back then. It's where my appreciation for reliable hardware came from. >> Prior to about 1982 that was not only not an issue it was irrelevent. >> Back in that era running softsector was often not much help as >> everyone ran something different format wise. >> >How about an example, referenced to your 1976 timeline? I don't believe I >even saw a 5-1/4" drive until '77. They were probably out there, but not of >any particular interest. On the other hand, 8" drives, priced around $350, >were everywhere, and controllers that used them were not expensive. They were of no interest as they were bare. Without a controller to make it work it was not an attraction. However NS*, ICOM, and a few others were by were by fall of 1976 selling product FDC and Drives. Then again finding a 8" drive in 1976 for $350 would ahve been a windfall and non of my Bytes or old catalogs support it. >> support. >> >I don't see how you did that when the FDC lived at 0xE000. Simple, it doesnt. It's standard address, E800h. >> would have been more convenient but E800 was not a significant handicap. >> Actually if you wanted to burn your own roms it was easy to do. >> >That certainly wasn't an option in 1976. Yes it was. The parts used were not mask parts, they are AIM and fuse link low density stuff. The most complex part on the board was a 256x4 (74S287) prom. The address was set by a one 74S287 prom as an address decoder. >> An SA801 and controller was easily $400 more expensive in late 76! >> >That's why you built the Northstar in '78. Try sticking with your timeline. >You picked it after all ... I bought the MDS-A and SA400 in 76!, NS* Z80 board in march 1977. I used it in the flaky Altair till the NS* Horizon chassis was available to me '78. Your trying to duck out of the issue. >> as big as the S100 crate above it. I also have a HZ-207 box with two 1/2 >> height 8" 2sided DC motor drives and it's still big and weighs a ton. >> >My Integrand box has the two drives in it, together with the carcdage and >power supply. Most of the noise is from the fans. I gave one of those away. The AC motors of the SA801s tend to be loud too. >What you did or were able to do in '78 had no effect on what was going on in >'76, yet you keep making these forward references. The fact that the N* What I did with the 1976 reference was to say this... could you do a better fdc design using 1976 technology then they did. After that you adotped the date to justify anything that doesnt suit your assertion of facts that have no support. I have the hardware multiple examples plus original docs and my notebooks to fall on. Oh yes, I'm hardcore engineer. That translates too if you didn't write it down it never existed. So as a result even my hobby hacking is documented in scores of quad ruled notbooks. What I was doing in 1978 was using 1976 hardware, it is the point. Your trying to find a way to justify your arguement that something was not good at the time because you didn't understand it or didn't bother to. Your comment that in the early 80s the Boy Scouts couldnt use them runs counter to my comment that in that exact same time frame I did {as did others} run them with loads of heavy apps. >couldn't use them because they were shipped in an inadequate configuration >in '76. If you'll draw yourself a timeline of the various events that are >involved here, you'll see why the 56K memory map was inadequate for the >"serious" business software of the mid-late 70's. That was ultimately fixed >with a compiler release that suppported smaller MID 70s is 1975, Altair (introduction was january 1975 Pop tronics) was still very new and disks were limited to the PDP-8 and PDP-11 folks that were paying lots more than Altair prices. As to 56k not being enough in the 70s... even the average PDP-11 then was huge at 128k. Most people I know were quite happy to have 56k in the late 70s on any hardware. What was truely important to business users was adaquate relaible mass storage and floppies were barely it. Serious users wanted and paid dearly for hard disks. Now if you wanted to be pandantic in 1976 you likely paid $295 (that would be mid year) per 8k of ram, 56k represented ~$2100!!! late 70s, say 1978-79 was when the microcomputer folks were discovering disks and trying to make them work for a living. Floppies were seen as important tot his but any business user will tellyou that a real hard disk was the killer hardware. Just like Visicalc was a killer app. Allison

25 years, 4 months

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Holy Crap! IMSAI's weren't this expensive when new!

by r.stek＠snet.net

Date: Fri, 9 Feb 2001 22:12:50 -0700 >From: "Richard Erlacher" <edick(a)idcomm.com> >Subject: Re: Holy Crap! IMSAI's weren't this expensive when new! > >Well, hopefully he recognizes what a DOG this system is, with its NorthStar >controller. There you go, needlessly trashing N*'s again! You must have been bitten by a hard-sectored disk when you were small. NorthStar responded when hobbyists who couldn't afford 8" drives wanted a disk drive for their Imsai's and Altairs. They were VERY popular and well supported. Their boards and systems were well done and reliable. They even provided a hardware floating point board for number crunchers long before other vendors. NorthStar's own DOS and BASIC were probably initially brought up on more Altairs and Imsai's than CP/M was as a first OS. It was a very usable BASIC with BCD arithmetic and cleaner random access file handling than Microsoft BASIC ever had. Sure, CP/M became THE OS of the day, but N* DOS was there first. The Horizon supported CP/M 1.4 and later 2.2 was distributed by NorthStar. And take a look at Walnut Creek's CP/M CD-ROM - just figure out the percentage of the CD-ROM that concerns itself with NorthStar, CP/M or otherwise, and compare it with the support for other computers which supported an OS other than CP/M. It will never have a decent-sized TPA thanks to the >memory-mapped controller, Pure nonsense! Even without moving the boot-prom, (an option supported by NorthStar or a simple mod for users of the day which would give you a 62k CP/M system), NorthStar's and Lifeboat's and SAIL Systems's CP/M would give you a 56k or 58k system with the standard boot ROM. I NEVER found a CP/M program I couldn't run in 56k, and I ran ALL the popular CP/M programs - dBASE, WordStar, BDS C, SuperCalc, FORTRAN, various Pascals (including N*'s own version of UCSD Pascal, though not under CP/M), SpellGuard, etc. and it will never read soft sectored diskettes >either. Fortunately, he can probably afford to put up with the associated >problems. Never had any problems - just perceived that way by folks too rigid to take other than the soft-sectored path! And NorthStar was popular enough that when George Morrow designed his DJ-DMA controller, he supplied a BIOS for it that could read and write both N*'s hard-sectored format as well as other soft-sector formats. That was the main reason I got a Morrow Decision I. It wasn't until late in the CP/M game that utilities began to appear for reading other manufacturer's formats. I added a Morrow Disk Jockey 2 board to add my 8" drives to my Horizon in order to transfer the standard SSSD 8" CP/M formatted disks - the ONLY standard for CP/M. Even soft-sectored 5" formats were specific to their manufacturer. > >I advised Tom Bassi to dump the NorthStar stuff any way he could, and, since >he had several IMSAI's at the time, this was how he chose to do it. I'm >really glad he did so well. I am glad he did well, too, despite your advice. (hi, Tom!) You can see from the pictures that he does >clean work and keeps things looking good. > >Dick Bob Stek Saver of Lost Sols

25 years, 4 months

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Available: Rackmount SCSI Drive Enclosures

by kyrrin＠bluefeathertech.com

CC'd to CLASSICCMP and port-sparc: I have available two rackmount enclosures for SCSI drives. They're built very robustly, can accomodate two drives each (5.25" full-height, or 3.5" with mounting adapters), have built-in power, cooling, and ID switches for each socket, and they include mounting sleds for the drives. Asking $10 each, original drives included. The original drives are Seagate ST4706ND (differential SCSI), and I believe the enclosures were once part of a Control Data storage subsystem of some kind. In any case, I need to move them out of here. If I don't get any responses >from either mailing list, they'll go to the Puyallup swap meet with me. Thanks much. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- Bruce Lane, Owner and head honcho, Blue Feather Technologies http://www.bluefeathertech.com // E-mail: kyrrin(a)bluefeathertech.com Amateur Radio: WD6EOS since Dec. '77 (Extra class as of June-2K) "I'll get a life when someone demonstrates to me that it would be superior to what I have now..." (Gym Z. Quirk, aka Taki Kogoma).

25 years, 4 months

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Memorex 2374-81R

by yoda＠isr.ist.utl.pt

Hi. I've just bought this box, Memorex 2374-81R, at a local junkyard, without having the faintest idea of what it was. A white box, with a 3.5in floppy, several BNC connectors at the back, and two RS-232 DB25 connectors. Well, at that time I suspected it was some kind of networking device, e.g. ethernet router? (<-- wishful thinking) hub? switch? After a google search I found out it is some kind of TELEX machine. It came with a floppy (damaged) with a label on it saying "CORREEIROS SYSTEM-EDS" (correeiros is a mispelling of "correios" which means the main snail-mail enterprise in portugal). It makes sense to me that post-offices could use telex. I want all information I can get about this machine, and telex technology in general. I'd be much appreciated for any links anyone could send me. Thank you. Cheers, -- *** Rodrigo Martins de Matos Ventura <yoda(a)isr.ist.utl.pt> *** Web page: http://www.isr.ist.utl.pt/~yoda *** Teaching Assistant and PhD Student at ISR: *** Instituto de Sistemas e Robotica, Polo de Lisboa *** Instituto Superior Tecnico, Lisboa, PORTUGAL *** PGP fingerprint = 0119 AD13 9EEE 264A 3F10 31D3 89B3 C6C4 60C6 4585

25 years, 4 months

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Holy Crap! IMSAI's weren't this expensive when new!

by ajp166＠bellatlantic.net

From: Richard Erlacher <edick(a)idcomm.com> >0xE000 that puts an upper limit on the TPA. Memory mapping the FDC was, >from what I observed back when it was relevant, just about the most stupid, >Stupid, STUPID thing one using a Z80 could do. It helped nothing, save >perhaps some wiredosity of their equally silly choice to use hard-sectoring, Your applying 2001 logic to a design that was complete in 1976. In 1976 do you think you could do better and cheaper? If you say yes remember I have icom fdos and also worked with TRS80 and NONE in 1977 had anything near that for the same or similar bucks. >them, AND, considering when they came out with it, it prevented the average >user from utilizing the more popular software packages, which, because of >the timing, were too large to run in the small TPA. Remember, they wanted Never prevented me from running ANY of them with a 56k tpa. Most ran well in 48k. The only one that wanted a larger TPA then 48k was SMALLC V2 compiler as the optimizer wanted more space. Lessee by 1981 64k of ram was still around $499 for dynamic and static was about $600 so there were people that weren't into the must have a full box to do things. >their customers to run NDOS, not CP/M, and CP/M required a contiguous memory No they would later support and implement CPM. They also had in 1978 UCSD Psystem with Pascal for $50 (bargan in my eyes). NSDOS was a far lower cost (both in footprint and $$$) OS than cpm and unlike cp/m came with a decent interpreted disk basic. The closest thing to that cost 150$ for CP/M and $$350 >from MS (disk basic, compiler was $500). >span up to the BIOS. The BIOS itself, of course, could use memory ABOVE the >controller and EPROM if there was any. Of course, NorthStar didn't support >that solution. At the time, if you had an application that was coded in They didn't have to support it and for many that was not a requirement. >MT+, which was VERY popular at the time, it required at least a 56K TPA. >Now, the TPA was the part of memory that lay BELOW the BDOS. If you load TPA was the space BELOW THE BIOS and E7FFh is 59k into a possible 64k! >something at 0100 and run it up to 0xE000, there's no room for BDOS or BIOS. >That's why, at that point in time, until later when the popular compilers >were rewritten to support overlays, machines like the NorthStar and some >from Vector Graphics, both of which were famous for their small TPA's, were >pretty much useless. Your saying I didn't run MS basic-80 compiler, smallc, TurboPascal, BDS-C Cbasic, Multiplan, Dbase then? Oh thats right it was not doable. Most of that stuff only wanted 48k though it ran well on my 56k system. >Well. not exactly. If you didn't mind that you couldn't use anything but >NorthStar-formatted media, you could survive, but there was no chance at all >of having any media interchange with anyone without a NorthStar controller. Prior to about 1982 that was not only not an issue it was irrelevent. Back in that era running softsector was often not much help as everyone ran something different format wise. >I bought three NorthStar systems for $1 each and donated them to the Boy >Scout troop a friend of mine was running back in '80. The complaint with >which I got them was that there was no way to use them because the TPA was >too small and because you could not read standard media. Thats your fault not the system. Like I said I was running 56-58k TPA off an unmodded copy of LIFEBOAT CP/MV1.4. When I moved to using 2.2 I put the bios above the controller for a very nice 59k TPA with hard disk support. I'll agree that putting the FDC at F800 (NS offered roms for that, I have them) would have been more convenient but E800 was not a significant handicap. Actually if you wanted to burn your own roms it was easy to do. The media problem in the early 80s was not so much standard media but the idea there was even such a thing. That would persist until PCs wiped evrything else out now we only had 360k, 1.2m, 720k, 1.44, ZIP disk and Cdrom to confuse the issue. >Rememver, Allison, >the CP/M diskette standard, and there is only one, is 8" IBM 3740-formatted >SOFT sectored single-sided ... Well, since I have the NS horizon I built in 1978 I dont need to remember. I know! Yes, 8" SSSD was the standard save for it was expensive, large, noisy, hot and only gave you 256k. I know, I supported it and still do. An SA801 and controller was easily $400 more expensive in late 76! Even if you had softsector 5.25" that didn't mean you did support 8" though many could. In 1977 NS* it allowed people with on 16 or 32k to run Basic and a disk OS which was a mostly useless config for CP/M. Then again in 1977(late) 32k of ram was around $800(kit, 900-1000 assembled and tested). I still have a Intergrand dual 8" full height box. it's loud, noisy and nearly as big as the S100 crate above it. I also have a HZ-207 box with two 1/2 height 8" 2sided DC motor drives and it's still big and weighs a ton. >> Irrelevent. He may also know that there is also very good support for >> ^ Have you ever considered using a spell-checker? Here we go again. if opinion doesnt work then attack the spelling. Sorry, just like your editor doesnt support clipping off unwanted text mine does not support a decent spell checker (if there were one for PCs). >really? Where? Good support is: few of the historical systems are as to easy to find docs, software and working hardware for. Also if the hardware doesnt work it's easy to repair with common ttl. It's one of the few configs that exists 20 years later as can be made to work easily. Allison

25 years, 5 months

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Holy Crap! IMSAI's weren't this expensive when new!

by ajp166＠bellatlantic.net

From: Richard Erlacher <edick(a)idcomm.com> >Well, hopefully he recognizes what a DOG this system is, Since he knows the NS horizon and altair with MDS-A (mine back in the 70s) he may just have an appreciation for how good it was compared to it's contemporary peers. >with its NorthStar >controller. It will never have a decent-sized TPA thanks to the >memory-mapped controller, and it will never read soft sectored diskettes First your comments on the lack of TPA are unfounded and incorrect. Even with the poor implmentation of V1.4 (Lifeboat) the TPA was 52k and with the later V2.2 version 58k was easily done. For most CP/M apps of the time 48-56k was plenty. As to reading soft sector, Irrelevant. >either. Fortunately, he can probably afford to put up with the associated >problems. Irrelevent. He may also know that there is also very good support for that configuration, still. Allison

25 years, 5 months

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SCSI trouble on a MicroVAX IIGPX

by ajp166＠bellatlantic.net

From: Iggy Drougge <optimus(a)canit.se> >In what way? The PC could be considered a simple architecture, too. Not >out a user's perspective, but the hardware design is simple, at least if >kept at a 1981 level. What makes PCs complex is the standards creep, since most PC standards were ignored or poorly implemented things that should work often didn't or did only after a fashon. For vaxen especally the Qbus models the ruls were very narrow and it was enforced internal to DEC and Protocals like MSCP were patented if a third party wanted to do it it's implementation was generally good. Now the likely thing is you either did an ESD hit to something or while pushing/pulling something you may have altered a switch, jumper or maybe puped a chip loose. Allison

25 years, 5 months

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[OT] SCSI termination trouble?

by pete＠dunnington.u-net.com

On Feb 10, 1:06, Iggy Drougge wrote: > Richard Erlacher skrev: > > >The boot drive normally IS at ID=0, however. That's a real convention > >throughout the SCSI usage. I don't recall ever seeing a system that would > >boot, say, from ID=4. Most PC's will promote the ID=1 device to the boot > >rank, but not if ID=0 is present but manlfunctioning. YMMV, of course. > > IBM, OTOH, goes according to the SCSI standard and boots from the highest ID > and downwards. The standard doesn't require or suggest that. What it does say is that the highest numbered ID has highest priority, but it means that in terms of which device has highest priority in getting the controller's attention. So it's sensible to put devices that mustn't be kept waiting, like some CD writers or tapes, at high IDs, though it's less important with many modern, smarter devices with bufferring. I've never understood why PCs put the controller at ID 7 (highest priority) since it makes no difference to a controller. Unless you have a system with more than one controller, where one has to catch the other's attention, like a couple of multihost SCSI systems I've seen. > Besides, everything I've heard about PC SCSI seems utterly ridiculous and > stone-age. :-) -- Pete Peter Turnbull Network Manager Dept. of Computer Science University of York

25 years, 5 months

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A2024/Viking Moniterm (was Re: Amiga Unix (was: Amiga develop ment))

by dhquebbeman＠theestopinalgroup.com

> You are both right: the Viking Moniterm was a Sun-style 19" mono monitor > and a card for the video slot, and the A2024 was a monitor with a 23-pin > Amiga video connection and all the necessary goodies inside. I had an > A2024 once, I still have the Moniterm. I have a Viking Moniterm, and no interface card. Anyone have an extra? -dq

25 years, 5 months

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OT? PS2<->USB

by mcguire＠neurotica.com

On February 9, Richard Erlacher wrote: > There are many dozens of USB-dedicated microcontrollers by now. Intel has a > bunch, Cypress has a bunch ... Siemens has a bunch ... Philips has a bunch > ... I could go on ... Microchip recently announced a PIC with a USB interface. I really like PICs...now I'm gonna put USB in EVERYTHING! Muahhahahaaa!! 8-) > These devices swap larger intelligence, bought at the price of silicon > (about $3/lbincluding packaging, etc.), for interconnection uniformity. > There's enough intelligence at the computer end to figure out what it is and > how to talk to it, and there's enough intelligence at the device end to > communicate in a regular way so that the system to which it's attached will > be able to figure out who/what it is. This is what they're giving us in > place of those expansion slots that newer PC's haven't got anymore. Well put. -Dave McGuire

25 years, 5 months

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Stuff available in Arnhem, The Netherlands

by hofmanwb＠worldonline.nl

People, The stuff below belongs to a charity and they are willing to part from it for a small fee - Brother WP-1 text processing system in working condition. Screen, single floppy drive and printer all in one. - Toshiba 5 1/4" external floppy disk drive Model PA 7225E. The external 18V DC 0.6A power supply is missing. Available free - Qume daisywheel printer from Decmate III system with spare wheels and ink ribbons. - Wang system unit PC-S5-3 with the following cards: PM101 IBM Mono Emulation PM029 Winch.CNTR-2 - Wang display Mon-1240 - RSX11M manuals Version 4.1 - Dec VT1200 (system unit) - VXT 2000+ (system unit) Wim

25 years, 5 months

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Holy Crap! IMSAI's weren't this expensive when new!

by ajp166＠bellatlantic.net

From: Chandra Bajpai <cbajpai(a)mediaone.net> >George Cacioppo > >George Cacioppo is Vice President and General Manager of the Enterprise >Product Division at Adobe Systems Incorporated in San Jose, California. Small world. I helped George build his first Altair. I have the backplane and a few cards from his H-11 and he got me into programming in Pascal. We go back a bit. Allison

25 years, 5 months

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SCSI trouble on a MicroVAX IIGPX

by ajp166＠bellatlantic.net

From: Iggy Drougge <optimus(a)canit.se> >> of the interface to the media. It allows a MFM , EIDE or SCSI disk >> to look and work the same to the OS. > >Doesn't it on all platforms? I'm not certain about PC circumstances, >though. =) Compared MSCP IDE is primitive. >I inserted the card in the same slot it was in before removal, but could >it have been inserted the wrong way? Well if the componenets are oriented like the rest of the boards you have it right. you sure it's pushed all the way in? Are you sure you didn't move it down one or over (across)? Did you insure you didn't accidently pull another card out and not insert it all the way? Did you move and jumpers, switches inadvertantly? It you flipped it over the all important smoke will escape and then you have problems. It's pretty hard to do that. >I don't suppose it would matter on which connector on the SCSI cable that >the RZ55 was connected? Not likely, assuming all the connectors were in good shape. >Hm, that depends on your background. ^_^;; As non PC minicomputers and workstations go it is. Allison

25 years, 5 months

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SCSI trouble on a MicroVAX IIGPX

by ajp166＠bellatlantic.net

From: Iggy Drougge <optimus(a)canit.se> >First of all, what the hell is MSCP? =) MSCP, Mass Storage Control Protocal. Unlike PCs VAX storage controllers are very smart and do part of the work independant of the interface to the media. It allows a MFM , EIDE or SCSI disk to look and work the same to the OS. >And why does it suddenly boot from the network, when it previously booted from >the hard drive at the sole mention of "boot"? Well, there is nothing to forget in the MVII, no cmos like PCs. The boot sequence is look on the bus for MSCP disk(s) and try to boot each, if that fails try to boot via network, if that fails look for a rom board and try to boot that. If it's failing to find the SCSI board/drive (likely if it tried the net) then you either put the card in the wrong place or the cables on wrong. Q-bus, unlike PCs, has a serial ordered bus grant and interrupt structure. That means if the chain is broken all the devices down the line from the break will not be seen. The only critical devices are disks, NIC and serial ports. >Could it be the lacking AUI transceiver that's causing trouble? No. >BTW, does this mean that the II GPX could boot over MOP, or even TFTP? MOP, yes. TFTP no. Actually MVII is a fairly simple machine. Allison

25 years, 5 months

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SCSI trouble on a MicroVAX IIGPX

by ajp166＠bellatlantic.net

From: Iggy Drougge <optimus(a)canit.se> >Thanks, are there any good VAX references on the WWW? All manuals I've been >able to find are ULTRIX manuals, no hardware references. There may be but, I have real ones so I've never looked to see. In the case of booting even the ultrix manuals apply as it's the same booter in rom. Of course once ultrix is in mem the differences are obvious. Allison

25 years, 5 months

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CPC/IP

by optimus＠canit.se

Here's something interesting: yet another 8-bit TCP/IP stack, this time for the Amstrad/Schneider CPC. CPC/IP is an implementation of the PPP, SLIP, IP, ICMP, UDP, TCP, DNS, TFTP, HTTP, ping, finger and telnet protocols for Amstrad CPC computers with an Amstrad, Pace or CPC Amstrad International serial interface. The code occupies about 14K, excluding the serial, filing system and IP buffers. Look at it, it's even got a TFTP server! I could boot my DECstation off it! Add to that an HTTP d?mon, and this seems like the most impressive, non-UNIX- clone 8-bit TCP/IP stack I've seen. =) -- En ligne avec Thor 2.6. "LART is an acronym for Luser Attitude Readjustment Tool, and is generally a piece of heavy hard material such as a cricket or baseball bat, hunk of pipe, or 2x4 for the fine tuning of a luser's atitude. This is a noun that can be used as a verb. If I say I lart someone, I mean that I am performing delicate tuning procedures upon that persons head utilizing a LART. An ICBM would be considered an agressive LART."

25 years, 5 months

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SCSI trouble on a MicroVAX IIGPX

by ajp166＠bellatlantic.net

From: Iggy Drougge <optimus(a)canit.se> >I know nothing about the VAX prompt, but I know that "b" or "boot" has caused >it to boot before, so I did thus: > >>>b >2... >?4F SCBINT, XQA0 >?06 HLT INST > PC=00000EE6 >Fel. > >What could have caused this? Have I inserted the QBUS card incorrectly? Or Not specifying the correct device. " >>> b du" would have been enough to get it to search the DU (any MSCP complient disk) for an active drive and attempt to boot it. XQAn is eithernet DUxn {dua, dub...} is the MSCP disk MUxn is tape typically tk50 Allison

25 years, 5 months

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