There's no bids on it because its not worth $300... they make no mention of
having any software or docs, which would make it damn hard to use.. Not to
mention that they don't say what the hell kind of computer it has an
interface for on it... could be set up for a lot for a lot of different
things.. and it's also a huge beast of a thing to ship. That things been on
ebay like 3 or 4 times now
Will J
________________________________________________________________________
Get Your Private, Free E-mail from MSN Hotmail at http://www.hotmail.com
> Jason McBrien wrote:
>
> > How come all the cool stuff is on the west coast?
>
> Huh? How come all the unused Floating Point Systems stuff is
> in the midwest and all the Sequents are in Florida? :-)
Speaking of which, I see no one bid on this one:
: At any rate, the system is a Floating Point Systems model 164
: vector processor. It is currently for sale on the E-Bay auction site.
:
: The URL to the item on E-Bay is:
:
: http://cgi.ebay.com/aw-cgi/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=333251248
:
: The page includes photos of the unit, and if you are an E-bay
: registered user, you can contact the seller to ask questions.
FWIW, it's still in E-Bay's database, and the photos still
download.
-doug q
I'm running a contest on the VCF website right now. If you add a link to
your website pointing to the VCF and you garner the most referals between
now and VCF 4.0, you'll win $50!
Check out http://www.vintage.org/contests/link.html for complete details.
Sellam International Man of Intrigue and Danger
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Looking for a six in a pile of nines...
Coming soon: VCF 4.0!
VCF East: Planning in Progress
See http://www.vintage.org for details!
Hi,
This isn't strictly on-topic, but I guess it could be applied to maintaining
classic stuff, so...
Can anyone recommend a way of removing surface-mounted ICs (specifically SOJ
package DRAM chips) from a board? It's not critical to keep the board
undamaged, but the chips must be kept intact since I want to solder them into
another device.
I read of a technique involving turning the board upside-down and heating the
board area opposite the ICs in question with a blowtorch. The ICs drop off
when the solder melts. I don't have a blowtorch, but do have a gas stove.
Heating the board over the stove will probably not be a good idea, since the
ICs would need to be lifted off when the solder melts. Since I want to
recover several chips, they are likely to get too hot doing it this way.
I do have an electric grill. The element is at the top of the oven. What about
putting the board component side down in the oven (near the heating element),
and heating until the solder melts?
It will be important to get the temperature profile right here, I think.
Putting the board straight into a hot oven might not be a good idea, but on
the other hand having it in the oven as it warms up from cold may be too
long.
In a way, doing this would be similar to IR reflow soldering.
What is a typical melting temperature for solder used on surface-mount
components? The oven control goes up to 260 Celsius (from memory), which I
hope is high enough.
Has anyone else attempted something like this? Do you have any advice?
I guess the same technique could also be used for soldering surface-mount
components (with board component side up, and solder paste applied to the
pads).
-- Mark
Hi All,
One the nice things about this list is the variety of
first hand experience that can be called upon to clear
up those nagging second hand rumors that you keep dragging
around for years, unable to track down a definitive answer.
Up for review:
1. "The person that designed the Mindset PC later designed
the Amiga." I realize that computers like the Amiga are not
designed by just one person, but does anyone know anything
about the people that helped design these computers?
2. About 1982 I started hearing that it was possible to
build a camera for your pc by "cooking" an EPROM under
UV light for an extended period until the memory cells
were still light sensitive but would no long hold a
charge. Then by placing a len over the EPROM's window,
you had a real time low-res video image mapped right into
memory. Again this is one that quite a few people had
heard about but no one knew anyone that had ever done it.
3. This has probably been discussed here before, but ....
I've heard that the old 8 inch 32 sector hard sector floppy
diskettes, the ones with the sector holes around the outside
edge of the diskette, and the big notch in one corner, is
is an early version of the 8 inch floppy - maybe the first
form the 8 inch floppies from IBM took.
4. I've heard somewhere, and the source is lost to age,
that - the Altair for the January 1975 article was just
a empty case and that no regular orders for the Altair
8800 where filled until April 1, 1975.
(Sure, I drooled on the magazine at the time, but it
might as well costs a million dollars, I was a single
sailor collecting $151.00 every two weeks, saving to
get married at the end of April.)
Comments welcome, I would like to deallocate the space
for the ones that have no real basis in fact.
Regards,
--Doug
=========================================
Doug Coward
Press Start Inc.
Sunnyvale,CA
=========================================
>> This is a good start. The header should include a byte that contains a
>> flag indicating the status of the sector (good, bad, etc).
>Other things that are 'missing' from that header are whether the sector
>is single or double density, what sort of Data Marker came before it
>(some TRS-80 disks use strange data markers, and just about all TRS-80
>M1/M3/M4 OSes use deleted data markers on the directory track).
Then there are some *real* oddballs, such as disks with 18 or 12 or 9
bits per byte.
It's very, very common for double-density CP/M disks to have the boot
sector - and in some cases the first few tracks - in single density.
For these odd formats, I just record the waveform from the head
for each track for a couple of revolutions, just to make real
sure that I'm not missing anything :-).
Tim.
I visited the Computer Parts Barn yesterday and found some neat stuff.
Much of it was used by the Air Force for Missile testing etcetera. Here
is a partial list:
1ea Harris 600 - fully outfitted mini. Model H600-2 Serial # 252
1ea Dec H7204 expansion chassis with several cards
16ea DEC Vax 4000 minis with 40mb ram, hard drives were pulled by Boeing
and scrapped but CPB has lots of scsi hard disks. CPU is KA46. Model
is V546K-AD
Monitors for the DEC 4000 machines are VR-19HA (Sony GDM1961)
1ea DEC RL02 disk unit in rack
1ea DEC TA78-BF R-B1 Rack-mount tape unit in rack
3ea RA-81 disk units in 19" rack
3ea HP7920 hdd
1ea HP1000 mini with 7970 tape unit in rack
1ea hdd7906 (HP disk) in rack
You can contact Ed Kirby of CPB at EDCPB(a)email.com
Hope you found something you wanted!
Hi David!
I had offered you some software but didn't have your address and the dog ate
my e-mail . . .
Please send me your address. Also, I'd appreciate it if you'd send me $3.20
for postage.
Most of the programs I can send you have no documentation, not even a readme,
so you're going to have to poke and hope . . .
Stay in touch,
Glen Goodwin
ACME Enterprises
5511 W. Colonial Drive
Orlando, FL 32808
I am putting out a call once again to anybody who has any DOS software (and
I mean anything at all: Word processors, games, scientific programs, etc.)
that will work on a Sharp PC-7000 lunchbox portable.
I think it has 384K, or so, of memory, but programs that run in 256K should
be enough for the job. I also runs DOS Ver. 3.2
I *do not* want to have to sell or scrap this somewhat rare (well, for a PC,
anyway) machine because I have no software for it aside from the boot disk.
____________________________________________________________
David Vohs, Digital Archaeologist & Computer Historian.
Home page: http://www.geocities.com/netsurfer_x1/
Computer Collection:
"Triumph": Commodore 64C, 1802, 1541, FSD-1, GeoRAM 512, Okimate 20.
"Leela": Macintosh 128 (Plus upgrade), Nova SCSI HDD, Imagewriter II.
"Delorean": TI-99/4A.
"Monolith": Apple Macintosh Portable.
"Spectrum": Tandy Color Computer 3.
"Boombox": Sharp PC-7000.
____________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________
Get Your Private, Free E-mail from MSN Hotmail at http://www.hotmail.com
> Has _anyone_ heard from John? He hasn't replied to my last three emails
and
> his eBay activity stopped around the first week of May.
>
> Bill
I bought from (them) 13&23-March and recieved both items on 4-May.
There were some problems with a core memory board that was shipped
in a (padded) envelope and arrived crushed. They replaced the whole item.
General positive feeling though they ahould be encouraged to wrap things
better. Note that the 5 1/2 week span is a long one.
Communications were from one "Heather" B.
John A.
> ..it was not a single point event like having the magnetron
> but also the perpiheral technologies like selsyn motors,
> and video(wideband) amplifier design skills to complete the
> package....
>
> Allison
BTW I have some GE SelSyn motors in the garage that a good friend gave
me. A few would be FSOT or even just go for postage to interested parties
on the list. eMail if interested.
John A.
> Blame the marketing idiots and those Dogbert-brained money-grubbers
I hate to be such a bleedin' mindless dittohead, but Mr. Davis, I
agree with each and every point you made in this lengthy missive.
Right on!
-dq
From: Sellam Ismail <foo(a)siconic.com>
To: classiccmp(a)classiccmp.org <classiccmp(a)classiccmp.org>
>There was a great documentary on The History Channel a few nights ago
>about the role radar played in WWII, and made a compelling case that it is
>the one thing that won the war.
At a different time the said same history channel said it was the VT fuse...
I suspect a broader view would say many things did have significance
to the outcome and duration of the war. No one development was
alone in winning the war.
Allison
Ok, I'm cobbling together a PDP-11 and I ran out of slots on my BA11 so I
put a bus extender into it and plugged that into a BA23. The system works
fine (thank you micronotes!) but I'd like to figure out how I could set it
up so that powering up the 11 powered up both the BA11 and the BA23. Now I
know the little 3 plug do-hickey (I think it is a mate-n-lock) normally
connects to a power sequencer in the rack, but I don't have one of those.
Is there any way to make it work otherwise?
--Chuck
A while back, when I turned on the power to my Tektronix 4014
terminal, nothing appeared on the screen, but I smelled an acrid odor.
Upon closer examination, the smell came from the terminal's HV PSU
board around the HV transformer for the CRT circuitry. Is this a
common problem with these terminals? I'm hoping that the CRT hasn't
shorted out, but I haven't had a chance to check that yet.
--
R. D. Davis
rdd(a)perqlogic.com
http://www.perqlogic.com/rdd
410-744-4900
While checking out the contents of some 8" floppies on my PDP-11/73, I
spotted a couple of circuit boards sitting on top of my LA-120 (that
reminds me, I've got to get another box of greenbar... hopefully
Office Depot still stocks it; can you believe that I've had quite a
few co-workers who had no idea what greenbar paper is?). One of these
boards is an S-100 bus board, a Compu-Das model 696-33 made by Random
Factors, Inc. of Durango, Colorado. The board is partially populated
by chips (it came out of a repackaged Dynabyte 5200 system made by a
company Computermotor Corp.), two of which are a Burr Brown ADC76KG
A/D converter, and another Burr Brown chip: an SHC80KP (not sure what
this one is), in addition to various TTL logic.
What's interesting about this circuit board is that the chips are all
socketed in little copper sockets made into the blue circuit board,
and, apparently, to add D/A functionality to this board as well, one
just plugs in some (or all?) of the missing chips.
Does anyone know anything about this board?
--
R. D. Davis
rdd(a)perqlogic.com
http://www.perqlogic.com/rdd
410-744-4900
On Jun 2, 0:48, Tony Duell wrote:
> > {Apple
][<00>soft<00>trks:<40><00>rpm:<15><255><00>{trk:<00><00>logical<00>
> >
length:<12><34><00>sectors:<10>{sector:<00><00>{sync{bytes:<16><00>value:<255><00>}{header:GCR<00>trk:<00><00>sec:<00><00>physsec:<00><00>head:<00><00>size:<00><01><00>}{data:<
> > ---256 binary bytes---- >crc:<xx><xx><00>}}sector: [repeat as reqd]
> > }}{track: [repeat as reqd] }}
>
> Actually, that seems to give you the worst of all worlds....
>
> The 'tags' are in ascii, so they're long, hard to search for, etc. And
> yet the data is in binary, so the file is not printable. You can't cat it
> to the screen to read the header information.
No, but you can easily see it in any sensible editor (my definition of
"sensible" has always included the ability to show binary or at least
control characters :-))...
> I must admit that I find files containing printable text information
> mixed up with binary data to be _very_ annoying unless there's a good
> reason for doing it.
>
> If you must use some kind of markup language, at least encode the data as
> strings of hex digits, or base-64 encoding or something like that.
I don't have any objection to that, in fact I'm inclined to agree, but I
felt others don't want to take up more space than necessary. If encoded,
I'd go for base64. It's the most efficient of the common schemes (hex,
uuencoded, base64), has none of the ambiguities of uuencode (there are some
very broken uu..code implementations around, because it's not fully
specified), and if anyone does want to read it manually, a decoder is only
a few lines of <language of choice>.
On the other hand, hex has some advantages: easy to read, very easy to
{en,de}code, and it would be more appropriate, perhaps, for binary values
in tags (assuming the values weren't just written in ASCII in the first
place).
--
Pete Peter Turnbull
Dept. of Computer Science
University of York
Can anyone help Yuval out?
Reply-to: yuval(a)iapl.net.au
---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Tue, 6 Jun 2000 11:05:09 +1000
From: Yuval Avrahami - IAPL <Yuval(a)iapl.net.au>
To: "'vcf(a)vintage.org'" <vcf(a)vintage.org>
Subject: Altos 1000
hello,
I am desperately looking for a manual for the Altos 1000. Will you be able
to refer me to a source where I can find the manual?
thanks and regards,
Yuval Avrahami, CCA
Consultant
INFOTECH Associates Pty Ltd (ANC 081 288 539)
3/7a, Gibbes Street, Chatswood NSW 2067
Sydney, Australia
Phone +612 9882 1022, Facsimile +612 9882 1134
Mobile (0408) 691 566
Sellam International Man of Intrigue and Danger
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Looking for a six in a pile of nines...
Coming soon: VCF 4.0!
VCF East: Planning in Progress
See http://www.vintage.org for details!
I have been contacted by a person who was an Amiga developer and
who wishes a rather large stash of Amiga Stuff to disappear from his
garage, thus precluding the onset of domestic disharmony.
And, as conscientious collectors, it behooves us to maintain
harmonious domesticity, if in our power to do so...
Please contact Don Jenkins at wa6ogh(a)msn.com for more info.
I am posting this for Don, so please contact him directly.
Cheers
John
Hi!
I just picked up a Rolm 1602 system at a local hamfest. It
looks like an interesting toy (and a way to expand my horizons
beyond the Sun/SGI/Dec arena. It even has a front panel
interface :-)
The unit seems to be in pretty decent shape (apparently it did not
go through "Military" (i.e. sledgehammer) decommissioning,
as the party I bought it from indicated that he obtained it from a
NASA surplus auction). Unfortunately, there were no docs
whatsoever with this critter. I seem to vaguely remember that
some of the Rolm systems were just repackaged and beefed-up
Data General Novas, but I could be wrong. Can anyone provide
me with info/pointers/tech docs on this critter? I've done a
web search and a dejanews search, but haven't had any luck.
I even checked through some of the classiccmp archives, since
I remembered seeing something on a Rolm system here a few
months back, but I was unable to locate anything.
Some of the things I'd like to know (or find pointers to):
Hardware interface pinouts/docs:
i.e. where do I connect an ASCII
terminal... (There is no obvious serial connector,
i.e. DB25, etc. All the connectors are some
sort of mil-std twist-lock jobs)
Does this critter have a disk interface of
some sort, etc.
Power requirements and pinouts:
The previous owner had an AC line cord
attached to a connector on the back,
but I don't necessarily trust that he knew what
he was doing. Is this really capable of running
at 117V@60Hz, or did it need something oddball
like 400Hz?
Instruction set documentation:
So I can play with the front panel :-)
Software:
i.e. Did this thing have a simple executive program of some
sort? I downloaded Bob Supnik's Nova emulator in the hope that
it might provide me with some hints as to Nova architecture,
but there wasn't much documentation there. Will a Rolm 1602 run
DG Nova code? If so, is there an archive of DG Nova
software somewhere?
The back of this critter uses a bunch of what looks like mil-std
twist-lock connectors. Does anyone know an (affordable)
source for these? I'm going to try pulling it apart tonight
(It appears to be held together by about 17,000 screws :-).
Any info would be greatly appreciated....
-Thanks in advance...
-al-
-acorda(a)geocities.com
On Jun 5, 20:55, Hans Franke wrote:
> Well, back to our theme:
> Pete, I realy agree to your idea about a sensible editor, just
> we are living in a real world, where real software is to be used.
> And since this is supposed to be an open standard, a sensible
> editior can't be assumed... Even if we would try, I doubt that
> such a thing is available on every obscure home computer system.
> Even chances for a simple text editor can be bad. So including
> binary as default is a bad idea
:-) I only included it because there appeared to some strong opposition to
"wasted" bytes. What I did was bolt tags onto the binary, deliberately
producing what Tony accurately described as the worst of both worlds.
Actually, if you look at the examples, the ASCII form in the tags, at
least, typically takes just about the same space as the binary would, so
there's absolutely no reason to use anything but ASCII.
> - I would even go further and
> restrict all markup specific parts for only using the characters
> A-Z, 0-9 and some well defined (read only the absolute necersary
> minimum) characters.
Thereby avoiding 99.9% of the problems raised by incompatible character set
representations. Agreed.
> Let'S just assume we would need three times - oh, well lets
> say four times the space to encode so an Apple Disk will
> need a whooping 600 kb
That's only a thousand on a CD ;-)
--
Pete Peter Turnbull
Dept. of Computer Science
University of York
Can anybody help her out? Respond to CTI(a)ncentral.com, not me.
Tom
---------------- Begin Forwarded Message ----------------
Date: 6/5/00 7:08 AM
Received: 6/5/00 2:20 PM
From: Kimberly Bauer, CTI(a)ncentral.com
To: owad(a)applefritter.com
Tom,
Browsed your information and thought maybe you could direct us to a parts
center for HX-20. In need of the optional mini cassette recorder.
Please reply to:
Kim Bauer
Contact Technologies, Inc
CTI(a)ncentral.com
----------------- End Forwarded Message -----------------
------------------------------Applefritter------------------------------
Apple Prototypes, Clones, & Hacks - The obscure, unusual, & exceptional.
---------------------<http://www.applefritter.com/>---------------------
> >Don't tell tell any of my CD's that! I have quite a few oldies - first
> >generation pressings from the mid-1980s - and they work just as well
> >today as they did when pressed. To add to that, my CD player is also a
> >old type (remember the Index feature on CDs? I've only run across two CDs
> >that use them)
>
> I've got several CD's that uses the Index feature, but they're all
> Bach CD's. (OK, one of them is Wendy Carlos playing,
> but that counts, right?)
>
> For old-music-CD's, who here remembers the "Preemphasis" bit? I've got
> a player that indicates that status on the display, though the only CD
> I have that uses it is a special test disk.
Here's another one for those with long memories. Who remembers
subcode graphics? I have one audio CD that contains subcode
graphics that I've never been able to view (they're encoded in
something like the Euro Teletext format).
Anyone know how to read and display subcode graphics?
-doug q
Hi Leo,
bad news, I'm afraid. When I went back to my local thrift shop on the
weekend, the Hyperion that had been there for a few weeks was gone. I asked
the clerk if she knew whether it had sold or been dumpstered, but she had
no clue. A quick check of the dumpster didn't turn up anything either : v
(
Still, I'll keep my eyes open. They do seem to turn up every now and again
around here. They must have been popular with the oilpatch guys, who were
on the road a lot.
Regards,
Mark Gregory
I'm trying to find some info about the LK-3000, an early hand-held
"computer". I think it was made by Nixdorf around 1979, but it was also
sold under other labels (I think I've got a "Lexicon" labeled instance
someplace).
Can anybody tell me what modules were available? Was there a module that
made the thing user programmable, for example?
Is anybody aware of a pre-1979 programable handheld? I suppose something
like the HP-65 is a candidate, but an alpha-numeric keyboard and display
would be more compelling.
Assuming the LK-3000 isn't user programmable, would anybody take offense
at somebody calling it the first PDA?
(No, I'm not selling one on eBay. There is one for sale there now -- it's
overpriced, though. These things aren't exactly rare.)
Thanks,
Doug
Greetings,
Would any list members happen to be familiar with a terminal
server sold by BlackBox that was oroginally manufactured by
Racal-Datacomm, model No. BTS-100?
A while back, I obtained one of these, but I can't seem to get it to
work by connecting a terminal to the console port; I've tried data
rates between 300 and 19,200, and nothing; also tried a few other
ports. Something tells me that the best thing to do is reset the
server to the default settings, but I'm not sure how to do this; no
reset switch inside, but there is is a jumper inside that I'm going to
try changing next. Any ideas for sources of documentation? The
manufacturer and black box consider it ancient and can't help.
Also, is anyone her familiar with the apparently not-so-rare defect in
Emulex Performance 4000 terminal servers that causes a short circuit?
I'm told by Emulex that they have an idea what the problem is, as a
certain something is known to go bad in these units, but they refuse
to tell me as I'm not an authorized repair center. Short of
unsoldering surface mount ICs, I've disconnected and removed
everything that I can find to disconnect and remove, and the short on
the circuit board remains. The PSU seems ok when I apply other loads
to it.
--
R. D. Davis
rdd(a)perqlogic.com
http://www.perqlogic.com/rdd
410-744-4900
Don't forget the fact that LP's and 7 inches (45's) are still being pressed
today... I ought to know, since I buy some of em... I have about 80
something records of all types, and about 50-60 of them were pressed in the
last 5-7 years. Now if only they made blank recordable 8-tracks still, I
want to record some music from CD on 8 track so I can listen to it in my
car..
Will J
________________________________________________________________________
Get Your Private, Free E-mail from MSN Hotmail at http://www.hotmail.com
(I first posted this a while back, and was talking with someone about a
trade, but I havent heard from him in almost two weeks now... Dave,if
you're still interested, please get in touch with me ASAP)
I've got the following assortment of PDP-11 boards and CPUs that have
been sitting around for a few months; I'd like to see them go to a good
home. Trades preferred; I'm looking for a small VAX to play with
VMS on (MicroVAX 3100 or so), or other DEC parts (TKZ30, RRD42 cdrom
drive, any VT3xx/VT4xx terminals...). Will consider any offers;
I hate to have these lying around unused.
Marked on handle: Other markings/desc:
-----------------------------------------------
M7270 KD11-H LSI-11 CPU 18-bit
M7270 KD11-H LSI-11 CPU 18-bit
M7270 KD11-H LSI-11 CPU 18-bit
M8186 KDF11-AA 11/23 single board with MMU
M8186 KDF11-AA 11/23 single board with MMU
M9400-YE REV11-C 240ohm terminator, cable connector
M9401 (connected to M9400 with ribbon cable)
M8013 RLV11 RL01 disk drive controller (1 of 2)
M8014 RLV11 RL01 disk drive controller (2 of 2)
I've got some other cards as well, but this is all I can find for now. If
anybody's interested in these, please let me know.
Bill (maintainer of www.pdp11.org / www.decvax.org)
--
+--------------------+-------------------+
| Bill Bradford | Austin, Texas |
+--------------------+-------------------+
| mrbill(a)sunhelp.org | mrbill(a)mrbill.net |
+--------------------+-------------------+
>Don't tell tell any of my CD's that! I have quite a few oldies - first
>generation pressings from the mid-1980s - and they work just as well
>today as they did when pressed. To add to that, my CD player is also a
>old type (remember the Index feature on CDs? I've only run across two CDs
>that use them)
I've got several CD's that uses the Index feature, but they're all
Bach CD's. (OK, one of them is Wendy Carlos playing,
but that counts, right?)
For old-music-CD's, who here remembers the "Preemphasis" bit? I've got
a player that indicates that status on the display, though the only CD
I have that uses it is a special test disk.
--
Tim Shoppa Email: shoppa(a)trailing-edge.com
Trailing Edge Technology WWW: http://www.trailing-edge.com/
7328 Bradley Blvd Voice: 301-767-5917
Bethesda, MD, USA 20817 Fax: 301-767-5927
>This actually matters for chain printers (where you can choose a subset
>of letters that go on the print chain and get better performance), but it's
>not such a big deal for dot-matrix or laser printers which tend to print
>at the same speed (until something overheats, at least) no matter what.
LQP02/3 being daisy wheel and obeying the rules of inerta and acceleration
are like band printers in that some sequences will print slower (less than
max speed). The is especially true if the carriage positioning commands
are used. So speed specs used a standard text and line width so that
comparison could be made.
Allison
Allison
>I don't know about PDP's, but when I was at UCSB, a "computer
Sounds like I need to drag out my Gigolo package which is a
soundboard and some fo the software for Qbus. It would work for
microvax but I dont have any drivers for that. The basic board is
a pair of AY-mumble sounds chips from GI.
What I need now (or to do) is a composition to performance compiler
that would allow editing input and running it for the ear.
Allison
>While I'm on the subject, I see that the Terminals and Printers Handbook
>1983-84 entry for the LQP02 says that it prints "32 char/s
>(letter-quality, Shannon text)". Does "Shannon text" mean anything to
>anyone?
Maybe this just shows that I'm too much of a crypto geek, but anyway:
"Shannon text" means that the letters are distributed in a way typical
for English-language plain text. i.e. the typical ETAOIN... distribution.
Depending on the context, it may also imply a "typical" distribution of
word lengths too.
This actually matters for chain printers (where you can choose a subset
of letters that go on the print chain and get better performance), but it's
not such a big deal for dot-matrix or laser printers which tend to print
at the same speed (until something overheats, at least) no matter what.
--
Tim Shoppa Email: shoppa(a)trailing-edge.com
Trailing Edge Technology WWW: http://www.trailing-edge.com/
7328 Bradley Blvd Voice: 301-767-5917
Bethesda, MD, USA 20817 Fax: 301-767-5927
-----Original Message-----
From: Paul Williams <flo(a)rdel.co.uk>
To: classiccmp(a)classiccmp.org <classiccmp(a)classiccmp.org>
Date: Sunday, June 04, 2000 8:21 AM
Subject: Programming DEC LQP02/LQP03 printers
>Could anyone help me out by looking up some programming information for
>a DEC LQP02 or LQP03, please? I'm working from an LN03 manual that
>happens to mention that the following control sequences exist on
>letter-quality printers, but it doesn't give details.
Because the LQP 02/03 use different sequences from the later
LA series dotmatrix printer that can do them.
You will need manuals for LQP02 and 03 for a detailed descritption as
by time the ln03 was sold those old LQPs were gone.
Allison
Could anyone help me out by looking up some programming information for
a DEC LQP02 or LQP03, please? I'm working from an LN03 manual that
happens to mention that the following control sequences exist on
letter-quality printers, but it doesn't give details.
I'd like to know how to invoke:
DECFIL (Right Justification)
DECFPP (Positioning)
DECPSPP (Print Specified Printwheel Position)
DECPTS (Printwheel Table Select)
DECSS (Set Space Size)
DECUND (Programmable Underline Character)
While I'm on the subject, I see that the Terminals and Printers Handbook
1983-84 entry for the LQP02 says that it prints "32 char/s
(letter-quality, Shannon text)". Does "Shannon text" mean anything to
anyone?
Cheers,
Paul
>Why is AppleSoft BASIC called "AppleSoft" BASIC?
> ^^^^
>Does this have something to do with the fact that Microsoft designed it?
>I can't think offhand of any other Apple software product that fell
>under the designation of "AppleSoft".
"AppleSoft"" was Apple's software division.
As in the Apple T-Shirt of fame bearing the dialog box:
__________________________________________________
| |
| Sorry the AppleSoft engineer "unknown" |
| has unexpectedly quit |
| |
| [Who Cares] [Do Something] |
| \ |
|__________________________________________________|
Tom
------------------------------Applefritter------------------------------
Apple Prototypes, Clones, & Hacks - The obscure, unusual, & exceptional.
---------------------<http://www.applefritter.com/>---------------------
>Hey, that's all the more on-topic here, as (s)he performed music using
>a PDP-11! Is anyone else here (John W., does this still interest
>you?) interested in using PDP-11s for music/sound synthesis.
I'm interested... I have a couple of Casio CZ-101s that I would love
to drive using the pdp-11. Allison modified a DLV11-J for me years
ago so that I could control some devices... but as I am moving my entire
collection to storage (my partner and I are looking into getting
a house with a garage and basement so I can have a real museum), I'm
not sure where it is right now.
Also, years ago I built a device with several of the TI Sound
Generation Controllers on it, controlled by a DL11-C. I had
some software which played the music files produced by the
music compliler written at Stanford.
I still have the device, though I've misplaced the schematics
for it...
Megan Gentry
Former RT-11 Developer
+--------------------------------+-------------------------------------+
| Megan Gentry, EMT/B, PP-ASEL | Internet (work): gentry!zk3.dec.com |
| Unix Support Engineering Group | (home): mbg!world.std.com |
| Compaq Computer Corporation | addresses need '@' in place of '!' |
| 110 Spitbrook Rd. ZK03-2/T43 | URL: http://world.std.com/~mbg/ |
| Nashua, NH 03062 | "pdp-11 programmer - some assembler |
| (603) 884 1055 | required." - mbg KB1FCA |
+--------------------------------+-------------------------------------+
FYI, Woz even talked about how he thought that his 6-chip design was one of
his most brilliant ideas, in an interview in Byte in 1984...
Will J
________________________________________________________________________
Get Your Private, Free E-mail from MSN Hotmail at http://www.hotmail.com
>up so that powering up the 11 powered up both the BA11 and the BA23. Now I
>know the little 3 plug do-hickey (I think it is a mate-n-lock) normally
>connects to a power sequencer in the rack, but I don't have one of those.
>Is there any way to make it work otherwise?
No, you need a 871A power distribution or similar. Lacking that a box with
a small DC power, relay and outlets will do as those connectors are simply
switches on the BA11 (verify with meter).
That why ba-11 has a switch on the front and also on the back.
Allison
Maybe this is just a sign of how much I mess with computers/don't clean my
car, but I've been known to discover 9-track tapes that slid down there in
transport a long time back under my seat... Not to mention that there are
assorted IBM System/36 parts under my passenger seat as we speak... The last
time I cleaned my car, I found an Apollo Pascal manual I didn't even know I
owned, heh.. So I dunno, for me, media would have to be around 36-48 inches
across to not disappear sometimes..
Will J
________________________________________________________________________
Get Your Private, Free E-mail from MSN Hotmail at http://www.hotmail.com
John,
I would really like a copy of any ASCII art files you might have, especially
if they are the ones with the embedded overstrike control codes for a
Dataproducts band printer. We used to have some files for our Wang system
that used a DP printer.. they were really great. They went out the door when
the systems were retired about 12 years ago. I now have a MicroVAX II and
the DEC version of the B200 DP band printer, so I should be able to run off
some good copies on greenbar paper (back side, of course) of any files I can
locate. This has been an interest of mine back to the early 70's when a few
punch card decks would get passed around that you could run on the IBM that
would generate some pretty fair posters for dorm room walls.
Thanks to you and the list,
Mark Honeycutt
mfhoneycutt(a)earthlink.net
-----Original Message-----
From: John Foust <jfoust(a)threedee.com>
To: classiccmp(a)classiccmp.org <classiccmp(a)classiccmp.org>
Date: Friday, June 02, 2000 3:45 PM
Subject: Re: ASCII Art Golden Gate Bridge & Plane
>At 09:26 AM 6/2/00 -0700, Sellam Ismail wrote:
>>I took a photo of an ASCII art poster I have featuring the Golden Gate
>>bridge and an airplane flying over it:
>>It's made of up roughly 7 x 8 squares of wide carriage printer paper and
is
>>roughly 9 feet wide by 7 feet high.
>
>I think this is on an RSX ASCII collection tape I got from
>someone or somewhere. In the "readme" FILENN.IDX, it's the
>largest file:
>
>FILE14.LST 12,405 * Golden Gate Bridge
>
>where 12,405 records translated to 1,659,857 bytes. I'd be
>glad to send a zipped version to anyone who wants it.
>
>By comparison, the popular Moon picture is 950,283 bytes, and
>the Einstein is 348,400 bytes.
>
>- John
>
> I'm also looking
> for the October 1971 issue of Esquire magazine that featured the article
> with John Draper talking about the "blue box".
I know it said email directly but this topic is a little too interesting to
do that with.
The article mentioned is in Esquire, October 1971.
It can be viewed at http://www.webcrunchers.com/crunch/esq-art.html
John D. was recently featured in the New York Times: 26-March-2000
which was a near full page covering none other than the
Homebrew Computer Club's 25th anniversary. Immensely on-topic, I believe!
The books "Digital Deli" and "Hackers" are good references also.
The former features an article on John D. written by Steve Wozniak.
John A.
>Ok, I'm cobbling together a PDP-11 and I ran out of slots on my BA11 so I
>put a bus extender into it and plugged that into a BA23. The system works
>fine (thank you micronotes!) but I'd like to figure out how I could set it
>up so that powering up the 11 powered up both the BA11 and the BA23. Now I
>know the little 3 plug do-hickey (I think it is a mate-n-lock) normally
>connects to a power sequencer in the rack, but I don't have one of those.
>Is there any way to make it work otherwise?
Am I correct, that you don't have a "Power Controller"? A DEC Power
Controller is a metal box with one line cord in and many jacks for plugging
in accessories, and a contactor (big relay) inside for switching many
of the jacks on/off under remote control of the 3-pin plugs/cables.
Without a Power Controller, you have no contactor, and no way of remotely
switching things on and off.
With such a small system, you can probably go to Radio Shack and get one
of their power controllers, that works by sensing current draw to one
of your boxes and turns the rest on when that one comes on. No, it's not
as fancy or as configurable as a DEC power controller, and Radio Shack
certainly doesn't have any versions that do 3-Phase at 60 Amps per phase,
but it ought to work fine for a small system like yours.
--
Tim Shoppa Email: shoppa(a)trailing-edge.com
Trailing Edge Technology WWW: http://www.trailing-edge.com/
7328 Bradley Blvd Voice: 301-767-5917
Bethesda, MD, USA 20817 Fax: 301-767-5927
Sellam wrote:
>On Fri, 2 Jun 2000, William Donzelli wrote:
>> There is evidence of this already. There are lots of people today that are
>> keeping "record players" alive simply because many of the things they want
>> to hear are only available on vinyl. The same is true with Edison
>> cylinders, 78s, 16' transcription disks , 2 inch Quad video, slow 16 mm
>> film, and scores of other dead media. Yes, CD-ROMS are far more complex
>See:
>
>The Dead Media Project
>http://www.wps.com/dead-media/index.html
I've looked at their pages, and tried to figure out what they do. They
seem to just write about dead media, and they don't actually do anything
with it. Is that true?
To paraphrase some comedian whose name I forgot, isn't that a lot like
writing about dancing but never going dancing?
Tim.
One of the Community Memory archives is sprinkled with messages about
ASCII art scanning techniques, among other interesting topics:
http://memex.org/cm-archive4.html
Sellam International Man of Intrigue and Danger
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Looking for a six in a pile of nines...
Coming soon: VCF 4.0!
VCF East: Planning in Progress
See http://www.vintage.org for details!
Hello,
Finally got a tape for this thing and it is DOA -- doesn't seem to do
anything. The lower green LED on the tape drive flashes slow then fast.
Interesting thing though -- when I interrogated the SCSI buss, it came back
as a DEC RZ24L. thought you DEC fans might know what that is, and if it is
a proprietary model that I can't use on my Amiga.
Kind regards
--
Gary Hildebrand
ghldbrd(a)ccp.com
--- allisonp <allisonp(a)world.std.com> wrote:
> >[ Its the chip used in the Apple Lisa and Mac and LOTS of other devices. ]
>
> You sure of this?? It's not really friendly to the 68k buses.
>
> Allison
I'm sure. It's in the Mac from day one, in Sun workstations since at least
the Sun3 era (and still in one form or another in various sun4c boxes) and
in every 68K-based product Software Results made after the Unibus products
(the original boards used the COM5025 like the DEC DPV11? DUV11?)
I will admit that it is not friendly to the MC68K bus. We used one or two
dedicated PALs to handle the interfacing. Additionally, we had an 8Mhz CPU
(10Mhz for the VAXBI model), but back when the Z8530 was new, 4Mhz parts
were available and later some 6Mhz, but 8Mhz parts didn't come along until
way later, long after our designs were done. There's lots of notes in the
COMBOARD source code about not wacking on the Z8530 too fast. Eventually,
we developed a kind of serial driver to handle swabbing registers, but the
first products just used macros to always space out the time between telling
the Z8530 which internal register to select and reading/writing that register.
Personally, I think it's a cool chip, much cooler than the 8250/16450/16550
family. In addition to an async console for debugging, we pumped 3780, HASP
and SNA traffic over them up to 128Kbps (our fastest modem eliminator speed).
We only ever sold products for use at 56Kbps (64Kbps in Europe).
-ethan
=====
Even though my old e-mail address is no longer going to
vanish, please note my new public address: erd(a)iname.com
The original webpage address is still going away. The
permanent home is: http://penguincentral.com/
See http://ohio.voyager.net/ for details.
__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Photos -- now, 100 FREE prints!
http://photos.yahoo.com
Need this for my emulator, and nobody can explain to me how it works, and
I can't find any documentation that's useful to me. Specifically, I need stuff
like "you shift left and then check the last bit" etc. etc. Basically, I have
a bunch of ones and zeroes and I have to know how to add/subtract/multiply/
divide with them.
-------