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

by steve＠tronola.com

> For anyone that cares, my vintage computer sites have moved: > My personal collection: >http://q7.neurotica.com/Oldtech/ > The AN/FSQ-7 on TV and in the Movies: >http://q7.neurotica.com/Q7/ > Please update your bookmarks. --- Very cool websites, Mike. Many thanks. Steve Lafferty

11 years, 1 month

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Vintage computer web site move

by mloewen＠cpumagic.scol.pa.us

For anyone that cares, my vintage computer sites have moved: My personal collection: http://q7.neurotica.com/Oldtech/ The AN/FSQ-7 on TV and in the Movies: http://q7.neurotica.com/Q7/ Please update your bookmarks. Mike Loewen mloewen at cpumagic.scol.pa.us Old Technology http://sturgeon.css.psu.edu/~mloewen/Oldtech/

11 years, 1 month

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5 Lear Siegler ADM-3/3A in Novato, CA (ebay)

by legalize＠xmission.com

Not affiliated with seller. 5 baby blue ADM-3/3A terms, local pickup only <http://www.ebay.com/itm/291197498815> It's a steal at $99 opening bid for the lot of 5. -- "The Direct3D Graphics Pipeline" free book <http://tinyurl.com/d3d-pipeline> The Computer Graphics Museum <http://ComputerGraphicsMuseum.org> The Terminals Wiki <http://terminals.classiccmp.org> Legalize Adulthood! (my blog) <http://LegalizeAdulthood.wordpress.com>

11 years, 1 month

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Tektronix VT220 compatible keyboard - information needed

by mark＠wickensonline.co.uk

I have a Tektronix VT220 compatible keyboard as pictured here: http://deskthority.net/resources/image/12676 Can anyone provide any information/links/technical specs? I suspect it is off either a character terminal or an X-terminal. If I can't find anything about the protocol the plan will be to replace the controller, an Intel p8049ah with an Arduino to do the row/column scanning. The keyboard was made by NMB and contains Hi-Tek 'space invader' key switches. The cable ends in a 6 pin mini-din connector. The pins of the cable are labelled as follows: 1. Clock 2. Data 3. N.C. 4. IG GND 5. +5V 6. CHASSIS GND I didn't think this would be PS/2 compatible, and it doesn't look like it as the signals don't tie up with a 6 pin MINI-DIN PS/2 pin out. Thanks! Mark.

11 years, 1 month

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Perkin-Elmer 68k Micro Model 7350

by pechter＠gmail.com

They also had a version of SystemV for them called MicroXelos System V. UniPlus did their System III. Perhaps the SysV as well. They also had idris available. They were standard Multibus chassis, IIRC,.b I had a 16 port version in a tower called an XF200 running a news feed for a while. There was a 16 port card... I found an old post on them. http://marc.info/?l=classiccmp&m=104957799225097&w=2 I had a crap pile of them at one time. Dumped them all at Trenton Computer Festival's dumpster and my trash cans in Lakewood since no one wanted them. The MFM drives were fairly slow and their screen handling was lousy. They did emulate a Perkin-Elmer 1251 terminal IIRC on their screen with full blockmode. Sorry about the top post... pulled these both out of gmail and attempted to reformat and quote. I think they were a Perkin-Elmer product that was merged into the Interdata/Concurrent manufacturing. Perkin-Elmer eventually stopped paying for Concurrent to build them. One of the few computers made in New Jersey. It was in dhrystone outputs back in the day, * CCC 7350A 68000-8MHz UniSoft V.2 cc 821 875 Trident (3rd party maintenanve place) showed they had the XF200 power supply... 8-) Bill > Yes, these only have two serial ports on the back but they do have$ > blanks in the panel for two more. $ > > Now I'm hoping the drives weren't wiped (but they probably were considering $ > the defense contractor it came from.)$ > $ > Todd$ -- d|i|g|i|t|a|l had it THEN. Don't you wish you could still buy it now! pechter-at-gmail.com

11 years, 1 month

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PDP-11/34 available in Edmonton, Alberta

by andreww591＠gmail.com

My hackerspace (ENTS; http://ents.ca/) recently got a large donation of equipment and components from an automation company. Most of it was test equipment but there was also a PDP-11/34 with two RL01 drives. An LP11 and a DZ11 are also installed. Several RL cartridges are included, although some are RL02 cartridges, and one is a VMS 3.0 distribution cartridge. There are also a few boxes of documentation that we haven't gone through yet (although I'd be surprised if there were anything there that's not on Bitsavers). It draws a bit too much power for us to run it there, so we are looking to sell it. I am not quite sure what is a reasonable price is, but I'm thinking somewhere around $200-$300. However, we are open to offers. I just don't want to see it scrapped. The buyer would have to either pick it up or pay for shipping themselves. Labels of included RL cartridges: BC-M951G-BC (RSX-1M+ pregenned dist kit) (RL02) BC-V981E-BC (RSX-11M+ 2.1 MPU21E dist kit; has note saying it has errors) (RL02) AX-D820B-BC (BSC-11/IAS-RSX V2 bin) (RL01) AX-J624A-BC (KED/RSX 1.0 bin) (RL01) VAX/VMS 3.0 required (RL02) Northwest Digital Sales - CTOS - Version 4.0 RSX Demonstration Disk (RL01) (not quite sure what this is) "Scratch Disk" (RL01) "Editors" (RL01) one more disk may be in one of the drives since there is a spare cover, but I'm not sure Next time I go there I should really go through the documentation and see if there are cartridges in either of the drives.

11 years, 1 month

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Does Anyone Have the Source Code for PDP-8 Disassembler DCP16.BN?

by bobvines00＠gmail.com

Does anyone have the source code for the PDP-8 disassembler "dcp16.bn" or know where it can be found? One place where dcp16.bn can be found is at http://www.dbit.com/pub/pdp8/nickel/utils/dcp/os8/. John's "from" directory says that the files came from "DECTAPE/DT42" -- does that mean anything to anyone? Thanks, Bov

11 years, 1 month

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IBM 5150, 5160, AST, Compac, AT&T, Allen Bradley, Cuttler Hammer

by useddec＠gmail.com

5150 sys board 5160 64/256K old style sys board 5160 async com card The IBM boards are sealed in static bags and boxed. The boxes had a description but not an IBM number on them. These could be unused, possibly refurbed. I probably picked up everything on this page from a 3ed party maintenance company over 10 years ago as surplus inventory. Only a few boxes were open and what I did look at looked like new. I'm not an IBM person, but I can look for actual part numbers upon request although I might have to open the sealed bags. I have quantity mostly on the 64/256 board. I should have a qty of power supplies, PS2 and other parts here yet. AST Megaplus MG-064-P new in box AT&T Z3A Async Data unit new in box Compac async card boxes of nib Allen Bradley and Cutler Hammer parts Feel free to contact me off list if you are interested. Shipping from 61853. Thanks, Paul

11 years, 1 month

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microcode store (was Re: Looking to get into a Mini Computer...)

by spacewar＠gmail.com

On Thu, Jul 24, 2014 at 4:21 PM, Tony Duell <ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk> wrote: > [1] The VAX11/730 also loads the CPU microcode at power-up, but from what > I rememebr, ther eare some hardware features that optimise it for the VAX > instruction set. While it is possible to give it a differnet instruciton > set, I think it wopuld be a lot less efficient. All of the microcoded processors DEC designed, whether they had loadable microcode or only ROM, had hardware that was substantially oriented toward the normal DEC macroinstruction set(s), and would have been very inefficient at implementing other instruction sets. The VAX-11/7xx series hardware was designed for efficient execution of both VAX and PDP-11 instruction sets, but the other machines were designed for a single instruction set only. Even the machines that officially supported user-written microcode (PDP-11/03, PDP-11/60, some VAXen) were generally unsuited to implementing entirely different instruction sets, and user-added instructions were expected to have similar structure to standard instructions. The Western Digital chip set used in the PDP-11/03 was used for at least two other instruction sets, the WD16 used by Alpha Micro, which was very similar to the PDP-11, and the Pascal Microengine, which executed UCSD p-System p-code. The latter was not a very efficient use of the microarchitecture, and consequently the Pascal Microengine was not much faster than the UCSD p-System running on the fastest general-purpose microprocessors available at its introduction. Since general-purpose microprocessors were evolving quickly, soon it was too slow to be taken seriously. Early on, it was very expensive to use fast RAM chips for a microcode store, so DEC used bipolar PROMs except on relatively high-priced machines (e.g., KL10 and KS10), and if serious bugs were found, the microcode PROMs had to be replaced. For the KS10, it was considered that the RAM chips used in the control store were unreliable, so they did parity checking on the control store, and if there was an error, the CPU would halt and the console processor would reload the control store. They patented that: http://www.google.co.in/patents/US4231089 The VAX-11/780 introduced the concept of patchable control store, where most of the control store was PROM but there was a small amount of patch RAM. Costs of high speed RAM declined quickly enough that most later non-microprocessor VAXen used entirely RAM control store. With the advent of VAX microprocessors, the larger die area required for RAM vs ROM shifted the economics shifted back to favor ROM with a small RAM patch area.

11 years, 1 month

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Fwd: Free Sun 3/470 (sun3x) stuff []Northern SF Bay area]

by toby＠telegraphics.com.au

Forwarding. This is very nice hardware, I hope someone can rescue it. --Toby -------- Original Message -------- Subject: Free Sun 3/470 (sun3x) stuff Date: Sat, 26 Jul 2014 09:17:00 -0700 (PDT) From: Jeremy Cooper <jeremy at baymoo.org> To: port-sun3 at netbsd.org, port-mvme68k at netbsd.org I have the parts to a full 3/470 "Pegasus" machine ready to give away or it will have to be recycled. I never got a chance to learn all the names of these pieces, nor their exact part numbers. They include: * A 12-slot desk-side 9U (three connector) VME chasis. It is not the original Sun chasis, it's a clone. * About five memory boards. * 3/470 "3400" main CPU board * A couple of SCSI boards * A color framebuffer board. There are a couple of interesting feature on this sun3x machine that never made it into NetBSD: the block copy accelerator and the page-zeroing accelerator. It would be great if some kind NetBSD developer could take this machine and use it to incorporate support for these devices into NetBSD/sun3x, but I will gladly give the machine, or parts, to anyone who asks. The machine is located in the Northern San Francisco Bay Area. I can drive the chasis around the Bay Area (but no further). The boards, which are perhaps more rare, still have their most recent shipping boxes and packaging. These I will ship to anywhere in the US or Canada for free. If you aren't interested in this hardware but know someone who might be, please forward this message to them. Thanks! -Jeremy

11 years, 1 month

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Z80 CPU bugs?

by thrashbarg＠kaput.homeunix.org

Hello List, I've been developing my own Z80 SBC kit computer (who hasn't?) and have been debugging CP/M 3 on it. I seem to have come across an interesting problem with the LDIR instruction which appears on some 10MHz Z80 CPU's I bought from Farnell, but not on what are probably Chinese fakes which are supposed to be 20MHz. I'm running the system at 6.75MHz. The problem is when I execute the LDIR instruction, it writes an additional zero to memory. Say if I transfer 16 bytes, it'll transfer them correctly but overwrite the 17th address with a zero. Does anyone know anything about this? I've looked for a list of revisions or bug fixes from Zilog but haven't come up with anything. The Z80's in question are marked: zilog Z84C0010PEG Z80 CPU 1209 Thanks, Alexis K.

11 years, 1 month

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cctalk Digest, Vol 131, Issue 40

by elson＠pico-systems.com

On Thu, Jul 24, 2014 at 10:22 PM, Eric Smith <spacewar at gmail.com> wrote: >> >... >> >The VAX-11/780 introduced the concept of patchable control store, >> >where most of the control store was PROM but there was a small amount >> >of patch RAM. Costs of high speed RAM declined quickly enough that >> >most later non-microprocessor VAXen used entirely RAM control store. >> >With the advent of VAX microprocessors, the larger die area required >> >for RAM vs ROM shifted the economics shifted back to favor ROM with a >> >small RAM patch area. >> > > The 370/145 had entirely writable control store, loaded from a floppy every time the machine was powered on. I'm pretty sure the 370/15x and 370/16x also had at least partially writable control store that could also be loaded from floppy, for diagnostic purposes, and to have firmware emulation of older machines. Some models of the 360 family had alterable control store in the form of patterned cards. The 360/30 had mylar cards that could actually be punched on a keypunch to create custom microcode. These cards had one plate of a capacitor plus the dielectric material, and by punching out the plate, you made a zero at that location. The 360/50 and 360/65 had a scheme where there was a word line board and a bit line board with traces at right angles, and a solid mylar sheet between them. The bit line board traces had wide flags on either a 1 line or a zero line, depending on what the bit at that position was to be. So, the board etch pattern was changed to alter the firmware. I think most modern, high performance CPUs do not use microcode, as the two-stage instruction execution would be slower than just doing the decode in pure logic. Also, modern CPUs are so massively pipelined, and most microcode implementations are pretty much uniprocessor-like, I don't know how you'd handle all the pipelining with microcode. They may use some microcoded functions to handle special cases, though. My main point to respond to was that alterable microcode predates the VAX 11/780 by quite a bit. I'm pretty sure Burroughs also had machines with writable control store earlier. Jon

11 years, 1 month

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microcode store (was Re: Looking to get into a Mini Computer...)

by spacewar＠gmail.com

On Fri, Jul 25, 2014 at 7:38 PM, jwsmobile <jws at jwsss.com> wrote: > Also, the NSA is likely to just sign a contract with Intel to get the > patches and pay for them. I think that's unlikely. They don't want their to be a paper trail that people could find. They're more likely to steal the necessary technical information and private key. There are a lot of ways that they could do that, depending on how many Intel employees they're willing to have "in the know" about it. > I don't believe they could or would bother trying > to crack the encryption. It's 2048-bit RSA, which is probably beyond their ability to crack. They'd steal it. > The surprise is that people are shocked this is going on. Agreed!

11 years, 1 month

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Malicious microcode patches (was Re: microcode store)

by spacewar＠gmail.com

On Fri, Jul 25, 2014 at 11:24 AM, Rob Doyle <radioengr at gmail.com> wrote: > It has been widely speculated (and supported by the Snowden documents) that > the NSA can defeat the Intel random number generator - and therefore any > crypto based on that RNG) with a microcode patch. Based on what's been leaked so far, the NSA seems to prefer to modify products after they leave the manufacturer's control, rather that have the manufacturer complicit, presumably in order to reduce the number of people who are aware of the alteration. It's certainly possible that the NSA installs custom microcode updates in the BIOS of machines they modify. In the case of x86 CPUs, they might have sufficient motivation to get their modifications into the standard vendor microcode update releases. I would expect that if they do that at all, they put in modifications far beyond just compromising the RNG. A huge percentage of x86 CPUs are used to run a relatively limited number of NT, MacOS, or RHEL kernels, so it seems possible that malicious microcode could recognize certain kernel addresses or instruction sequences and introduce exploitable bugs that can never be found in the kernel source code or even by disassembly of the object code. This might be a point in favor of RISC processors, which typically don't have any microcode, let alone a microcode patch area. It's not impossible that such a back door might be present in a RISC processor, but it would have to be designed in from the outset, not installed after manufacture. I'm going to go put on my tin foil hat [*] now, and watch the new Weird Al video "FOIL" again. Eric * I have it on good authority that only true tin foil is usable to block the mind control rays, and that's why you can't buy actual tin foil at the supermarket, only aluminum foil.

11 years, 1 month

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microcode store (was Re: Looking to get into a Mini Computer...)

by rickb＠bensene.com

A similar ROM was used in Wang Laboratories' 700-series calculators (as well as later 500 and 600-series) as the microcode store. Also, quite a bit earlier, another electronic calculator, the Wanderer Werke Conti calculator (designed by Nixdorf) used a wire rope ROM as a microsequencer store. Rick Bensene The Old Calculator Museum http://oldcalculatormuseum.com -----Original Message----- From: Eric Smith [spacewar at gmail.com] Received: Friday, 25 Jul 2014, 10:45AM To: General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts [cctalk at classiccmp.org] Subject: Re: microcode store (was Re: Looking to get into a Mini Computer...) On Fri, Jul 25, 2014 at 6:04 AM, Michael Thompson <michael.99.thompson at gmail.com> wrote: > The PDP-9 uses transformers to store it's microcode. > You can change the microcode by changing the routing of the wires > through the transformers. DEC also made that available as one of the building blocks of the PDP-16 family. The technology is commonly known as "core rope memory" or "wire braid memory". It is also used for the control store of the Apollo Guidance Computer (AGC) and one level of the control store of the HP-9100 desktop programmable calculator (the other level being an inductively-coupled PC board memory). It can be viewed as a smaller-scale, simplified version of IBM Transformer Read-Only Store (TROS), as used in the System/360 Models 20 and 40 and the 2841 DASD (disk) control unit. TROS was designed for better manufacturability.

11 years, 1 month

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microcode store (was Re: Looking to get into a Mini Computer...)

by seefriek＠gmail.com

> > From: Paul Birkel <pbirkel at gmail.com> > > Intel started supporting a RAM patch area, I believe, after the Pentium bug > so that they could field-update during the low-level boot process to > (quietly!) overcome any similar problem in the future. Does anyone have > more specifics on this feature, and does this capability currently exist in > any of their more modern CPU architectures? > Intel still has the microcode patch functionality in (at least) their mainline processors (Celeron, Pentium, Core, i-series and Xeon) and Atom. The process is documented in section 9.11 of the Intel 64 and IA-32 Architectures Developer's Manual, Vol. 3A. Tl;dr: The patch can be loaded at boot time by the BIOS, or later by the operating system, via writing the updates virtual address to a privileged MSR called IA32_UCODE_WRITE. BTW...as I recall (it's been a while), the big problem with the Pentium DIV bug was that the error was in the hard-wired logic and couldn't be patched by a microcode update. KJ

11 years, 1 month

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microcode store (was Re: Looking to get into a Mini Computer...)

by michael.99.thompson＠gmail.com

> From: Eric Smith <spacewar at gmail.com> > Date: Thu, 24 Jul 2014 20:22:30 -0600 > Subject: microcode store (was Re: Looking to get into a Mini Computer...) > > Early on, it was very expensive to use fast RAM chips for a microcode > store, so DEC used bipolar PROMs except on relatively high-priced > machines (e.g., KL10 and KS10), and if serious bugs were found, the > microcode PROMs had to be replaced. The PDP-9 uses transformers to store it's microcode. You can change the microcode by changing the routing of the wires through the transformers. http://www.ricomputermuseum.org/Home/equipment/dec-pdp-9/pdp-9-restoration/… -- Michael Thompson

11 years, 1 month

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ZoomFloppy and HPIB Interfacing

by fozztexx＠fozztexx.com

I just got one of the ZoomFloppy USB converters with the HPIB interface included. I decided to get that one because of all the open source USB to HPIB converters, it was the cheapest. However so far I can't find any information that anyone has used one to talk to anything except Commodore GPIB devices. Right now I'd like to see if it's possible to use the ZoomFloppy to read from my old HP 9133. After that it would be nice to see if I can use it to diagnose the 7958 where the fault light comes on. My ultimate goal is to be able to use the ZoomFloppy to emulate an HPIB disk drive, either with the HPDrive project or something else. I don't have the time at the moment to try to write any software and I'm hoping someone else has tried it and can give me some pointers. If there's really nothing out there I will probably try to write my own software, but I don't know how soon I can get to it.

11 years, 1 month

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cctalk Digest, Vol 131, Issue 39

by jonsmg＠gmail.com

I actually have one of those Alpha Micros with the WD16. My dad bought it new to run his accounting firm off of, then retired it several years later when the hard drive died, and it turned out to be rather expensive to replace. It's stored in an attic right now, and hasn't been fired up since the 80s. Guess it's time to bring it down. Jon > Date: Thu, 24 Jul 2014 20:22:30 -0600 > From: Eric Smith <spacewar at gmail.com> > To: "General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts" > <cctalk at classiccmp.org> > Subject: microcode store (was Re: Looking to get into a Mini > Computer...) > Message-ID: > < > CAFrGgTRxyPb6QG+c0WtQM2M5018WkOwK1Cq-0azN8Nert0J9WQ at mail.gmail.com> > Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8 > > On Thu, Jul 24, 2014 at 4:21 PM, Tony Duell <ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk> > wrote: > > [1] The VAX11/730 also loads the CPU microcode at power-up, but from what > > I rememebr, ther eare some hardware features that optimise it for the VAX > > instruction set. While it is possible to give it a differnet instruciton > > set, I think it wopuld be a lot less efficient. > > All of the microcoded processors DEC designed, whether they had > loadable microcode or only ROM, had hardware that was substantially > oriented toward the normal DEC macroinstruction set(s), and would have > been very inefficient at implementing other instruction sets. The > VAX-11/7xx series hardware was designed for efficient execution of > both VAX and PDP-11 instruction sets, but the other machines were > designed for a single instruction set only. Even the machines that > officially supported user-written microcode (PDP-11/03, PDP-11/60, > some VAXen) were generally unsuited to implementing entirely different > instruction sets, and user-added instructions were expected to have > similar structure to standard instructions. The Western Digital chip > set used in the PDP-11/03 was used for at least two other instruction > sets, the WD16 used by Alpha Micro, which was very similar to the > PDP-11, and the Pascal Microengine, which executed UCSD p-System > p-code. The latter was not a very efficient use of the > microarchitecture, and consequently the Pascal Microengine was not > much faster than the UCSD p-System running on the fastest > general-purpose microprocessors available at its introduction. Since > general-purpose microprocessors were evolving quickly, soon it was too > slow to be taken seriously. > > Early on, it was very expensive to use fast RAM chips for a microcode > store, so DEC used bipolar PROMs except on relatively high-priced > machines (e.g., KL10 and KS10), and if serious bugs were found, the > microcode PROMs had to be replaced. > > For the KS10, it was considered that the RAM chips used in the control > store were unreliable, so they did parity checking on the control > store, and if there was an error, the CPU would halt and the console > processor would reload the control store. They patented that: > http://www.google.co.in/patents/US4231089 > > The VAX-11/780 introduced the concept of patchable control store, > where most of the control store was PROM but there was a small amount > of patch RAM. Costs of high speed RAM declined quickly enough that > most later non-microprocessor VAXen used entirely RAM control store. > With the advent of VAX microprocessors, the larger die area required > for RAM vs ROM shifted the economics shifted back to favor ROM with a > small RAM patch area. > > >

11 years, 1 month

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PDP-11/34 & RL01 slide rail release

by iamvirtual＠gmail.com

Does anyone have a reference to how to release the slide rails on an RL01 drive that is in a DECSystem corporate cabinet? At the same time, I also need to remove the PDP-11/34 from the rack as well. I am trying to remove the entire drive from the rack. I can extend the drive all of the way out to the maintenance position, but I just cannot figure out what I need to do to release the slide so that I can remove the drive entirely out of the rack. I need to move the system into my basement, so I want to remove the drives to make the move manageable. Thanks! --barrym

11 years, 1 month

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IBM 5170 : BIOS question

by enrico.lazzerini＠email.it

Thanks to Jim, a world was opened for me. Using the original BIOS of my IBM AT type1 motherboard that consists of 2 PROM each with 32KB I used BIOSUTIL to add the geometry of my hard disk to position 15 (the 1st free position) by recalculating the checksum with BIOSUTIL (this time understanding how it works) . The difference between the original BIOS and the BIOS modified compared with WinHex is as follows: Offsets: hexadec.    E4F1:       00        68        0368h=872cylinders  E4F2:       00        03  E4F3:       00        10        Head=16  E4F6:       00        FF  E4F7:       00        FF  E4FD:       00        68        0368h=872landing zone  E4FE:       00        03  E4FF:       00        24        36 sector/track  FFFF:       AD      A5   9 difference (s) found.   The table with the disk’s descriptions begins with disk 1 from E400 ending with the disc 47 to E6EF while from E4F1 to E4FF were inserted the values of the new Hard Disk. BIOSUTIL has taken steps to change just only the byte FFFF from AD (1010 0101) to A5 (1010 1101) so that the checksum of the file with the modified bios is identical  (?) to the contents of the original file of the PROM.     All to means: BIOSUTUL works fine with original IBM BIOS bun NOT with AMI BIOS.   The problem seems to be solved for the table discs, but as with the original BIOS to power had always the same datas: date, time, type drive A, 512KB DRAM, now all these values vary at each switch on (eg, the base memory is to 0KB instead 512KB).     How can I insert data into the BIOS for to have the correct ones stable for final configuration of the machine that I have?   Enrico -- Z-Light e Z-Pro: servizi zimbra per caselle con dominio email.it, per tutti i dettagli Clicca qui http://posta.email.it/caselle-di-posta-email-it/?utm_campaign=email_Zlight_… Sponsor: Idee regalo classiche o alternative? Trova l'offerta migliore in un click Clicca qui: http://adv.email.it/cgi-bin/foclick.cgi?mid=13327&d=23-7

11 years, 1 month

2
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More detail teletype parts and GE Terminet 1200

by billdeg＠buzz1.com

A few weeks ago I sent some photos of teletype parts units and a GE Terminet 1200 that I had available, so I could get an idea of interest/pricing. I have added paypal links to parts, with better pictures so people can order whatever they want. The pricing is based on offers I received privately. First come first served. I will mark items as SOLD but leave them online. http://vintagecomputer.net/itemsavailable/2014/ Directions on this site. Bill

11 years, 1 month

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curious to know if anyone knows what computer this is

by Wayne.Smith＠warnerbros.com

Date: Tue, 22 Jul 2014 06:36:32 -0700 From: Al Kossow <aek at bitsavers.org> To: cctalk at classiccmp.org Subject: Re: curious to know if anyone knows what computer this is Message-ID: <53CE68E0.4020007 at bitsavers.org> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8; format=flowed On 7/21/14 7:34 PM, Lori Emerson wrote: > Hi all, you might have seen this going around online today - but I can't > for the life of me figure out what kind of computer Mickey is posing with. > Anyone know? > > http://parksandresorts.wdpromedia.com/media/disneyparks/blog/wp-content/upl… > > Lori > Below is a link to an article from the 11/1/82 issue of ComputerWorld about "Epcot Computer Central" and Sperry Univac's sponsorship of the exhibit. The story indicates that they had four Univac V77 minicomputers there, in various configurations, as well as six VAXes. I imagine your photo relates to that. http://books.google.com/books?id=OrmcqtZUTMoC&pg=PA19&dq=%22mickey+mouse%22… You can also watch a video of the opening ceremony of Epcot Computer Central (10/18/82) here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U3lZW39D1pQ - featuring what was known as "The Computer Song" There is a photo looking into the processing center at Epcot here: http://www.solarius.com/dvp/wdw/communicore.htm - I think you can see some Sperry terminals on the right.

11 years, 1 month

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VCFMW Modem Demo

by slandon110＠gmail.com

Yes I will have a MacroPlexus 16 Extension PBX there, itll also have a google voice interconnect so you can call out as well. Ill also be bringing a 1A2 Key System tied in with the MacroPlexus. Time to play some Dial Up DOOM or some other dial up games :)

11 years, 1 month

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Looking to get into a Mini Computer, PDP or something like that

by slandon110＠gmail.com

I just want something I can learn, I do love the blinkenlights and switches, something about actually flipping a switch instead of a keyboard I love. One of my dream machines is an Altair or an IMSAI 8080, but those are out of reach. I really dont know what I want to do on it yet, looks like there is so much to learn. My son is 9 and starting to learn unix and old nix. So something that could run an old version of unix would be really cool :). Something perhaps I could tie into our vintage telephone system as well. Im a total noob at mini's, but the thrill of the regular stuff has kind of waned, Ive put my amiga online, my c64, my IIGS, everythign I got goes online and games. and thats all I do with it. Most of it has sat in storage. Thanks for all the input guys

11 years, 1 month

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DOS disk read test program

by djg＠pdp8online.com

I'm looking for a program that runs under DOS 3.1 and will tell me CHS for all unreadable hard disk sectors. Anybody know where one is I can download? I can't find search keywords that filters out the modern stuff. A read write test would also be useful.

11 years, 1 month

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IEEE commemorates Kildall and CP/M

by c.murray.mccullough＠gmail.com

Hello all, I remember quite well CP/M days. It is indeed good news to hear that Gary Kildall has been given the recognition due. His contribution to 8-bit/16-bit world of computing was seminal. Murray :)

11 years, 1 month

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RKV11-D, loaded MINC

by useddec＠gmail.com

We just found a MICE and about 10 or 12 MINC boards for it, and a RKV11-D, no front panel yet. Any interest, please contact me off list. Shipping from 61853. Thanks, Paul

11 years, 1 month

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VCFMW Modem Demo

by slandon110＠gmail.com

Hey Guys Im bringing a Modem Demo this year, so for those of you who want to bring out machines with modems and call eachother you can. I am going to have a dial up linux box too so you can connect your machines to the internet. Lets make some modem noise.

11 years, 1 month

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curious to know if anyone knows what computer this is

by earl＠baugh.org

> > Date: Mon, 21 Jul 2014 21:13:28 -0600 > From: Lori Emerson <lori.emerson at gmail.com> > Subject: Re: curious to know if anyone knows what computer this is > > thanks everyone!! much appreciated. you have much better eyes than I do. > And, I gather, maybe model UTS 400. > > yrs, Lori > > Ok, if nobody else is going to take it, I will... Whatever type of terminal it is, it sure has a LARGE mouse :-) Earl

11 years, 1 month

4
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Yet Another FPGA VAX Discussion

by krfkeith＠gmail.com

Basically, my question is what are the major obstacles (besides the breadth of the project) to implementing the VAX in an FPGA, as compared to any other ISA?

11 years, 1 month

17
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curious to know if anyone knows what computer this is

by lori.emerson＠gmail.com

Hi all, you might have seen this going around online today - but I can't for the life of me figure out what kind of computer Mickey is posing with. Anyone know? http://parksandresorts.wdpromedia.com/media/disneyparks/blog/wp-content/upl… Lori -- Lori Emerson Assistant Professor | Director, Media Archaeology Lab Department of English, University of Colorado at Boulder Hellems 101, 226 UCB, Boulder, CO 80309-0226 loriemerson.net | mediaarchaeologylab.com

11 years, 1 month

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IEEE commemorates Kildall and CP/M

by joachim.thiemann＠gmail.com

I figure this article in the IEEE Institute Online might be of interest to others: http://theinstitute.ieee.org/technology-focus/technology-history/groundbrea… Basically, a plaque was unveiled in Pacific Grove to honour Gary Kildall marking CP/M as a milestone in the development of computing. Cheers, Joachim. -- Joachim Thiemann :: http://jthiem.bitbucket.org :: http://signalsprocessed.blogspot.com

11 years, 1 month

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TI Silent 700 model 725 service/maint manual?

by chrise＠pobox.com

Is anyone aware of the existance of a maintanance / service manual for the old TI "portable" data terminal, model 725? Note that is is one of the very early (and very large) thermal printing terminals from TI, http://terminals.classiccmp.org/wiki/index.php/File:Silent700_725ad.jpg I have several here that I am trying to keep running but have never had technical information that would include schematics or other parts information. Chris -- Chris Elmquist

11 years, 1 month

5
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IBM 5170 AT 286 bios: how to add a new HARD disk

by fritz_chwolka＠t-online.de

Am 19.07.2014 23:08, schrieb Enrico Lazzerini: > I managed to find a bios for an IBM 5170 AT 286 Type1 Mainboard. It is > here: 30aprile1989 (list here: > http://ibm-pc.org/firmware/ibm/5170/5170.htm) > In practice I have manually added the number of cylinders, heads, and sect > / trk that allow the machine to recognise a disk IBM 250MB. At this point > regularly boots DOS. > But I wish to program these data permanently in the bios. Does anyone know > what program to use and give me the procedure? I tried with BIOSUTL, but > the new EPROM do not boot the machine. > With BIOSUTL i made what follow: read actual BIOS, you can add new disk > geometry parameters at free 47 position, then you have to recalculate bios > checsum, then BIOSUTIL devides BIOS into EVEN and ODD file so i can finally > program them into two 27256 150nS eprom. > Thank you > Enrico > > Hi.. the biosutil maybe one way. The version I use told me: Biosutil V1.1 InfoMatrix Bios utilities for the AT BIOS. Brad Gibson Copyright (C) 1990 by Secret Software and I believe there's no other version. *----------------------------------------* Other idea It maybee better to add a enhanced bios to your PC. There is the xtide bios at https://code.google.com/p/xtideuniversalbios/ The xtide bios works on most xt/at. You can easily ad an enhanced bios if you have an free rom place in a network card like a ISA 3com etherlink. As Im from germany and my english isn't as good as it should be here is an explanation from http://flint.cs.yale.edu/feng/research/BIOS/BIOS-report.pdf The IBM BIOS gains much of its versatility by being an extendable BIOS. That is, the full extent of the BIOS is not cast forever in the silicon of the single PROM chip holding the firmware. The IBM BIOS can accept additional code as its own into one integrated whole. Hence additional PROM chips containing BIOS routines can be added to the PC. The BIOS will incorporate these new routines. The key for making BIOS extendable is a Firmware routine that enables the BIOS to look for add-in code. During the boot up, BIOS code reads through the address range that is set aside for firmware looking for codes stored on add-in boards. If a valid section of code is found, the instructions are added to the BIOS repertory. For instance a new interrupt routine can be added or the functions of existing routines can be changed. During POST after interrupt vectors have been loaded into RAM, the resident BIOS code instructs the computer to check its ROM memory for the occurrence of the special preamble bytes, that mark the beginning of add-in BIOS routines. The BIOS searches for these preamble bytes in the absolute address range 0C8000 - 0F4000. Here the XTIDE BIOS is found and added so you can use it. Greetings fritz

11 years, 1 month

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DEC Y and W series boards

by useddec＠gmail.com

Anybody out there older than me whose memory works better than mine or younger but smart enough to figure out what these were used in? More digging... Any interest? Y048 Bell tape controller with cable Y051 Bell Binary to ASCII converter Y064 Card reader Y185 Stare 3 ??? Y197 DMA interface W742 Universal digital input W743 Universal digital input W950 Wire wrap module- unused W968 Collage mounting board- unused Thanks, Paul

11 years, 1 month

3
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PDP-8 VT8-E

by rick＠rickmurphy.net

At 12:00 AM 7/21/2014, Eric Smith wrote: >On Sun, Jul 20, 2014 at 8:10 PM, Rick Murphy <rick at rickmurphy.net> wrote: > > I don't know anyting about a PDP-14, > >The machine is question is a VT14, not a PDP-14. The VT14 is a >specialized terminal used to develop ladder logic programs for a >PDP-14. > > > but it it used a VT8-E, > >It didn't. Full circle. There seem to be two sets of assertions here. One that a VT14 used the VT8-E board set, and another that it used a different set for video. You're asserting that it's not a VT8-E, which means that many of my assumptions were wrong. In one of it's modes, which would allow it to be a good display device, the VT8-E uses DMA from main memory to drive a bitmap display. That memory has to be on the Omnibus, and has to be read/write to be of any value. That causes the following assumption: > > it had to be an Omnibus machine with Omnibus memory, > >It was. > > > so it could easily be turned into a PDP-8/E > >That doesn't necessarily follow, any more than it would follow that >because some sort of embedded device contains a Z80 CPU chip, it can >easily be turned into a CP/M system. You have a KK8-E cpu and the standard Omnibus which can accept a range of peripherals. You can't usually plug extra hardware into an embedded system. > > with the right CPU card set. > >It had a KK8-E CPU card set. To get it to run general-purpose PDP-8 >software, you're going to have to replace the memory, as the MR8-F >isn't too useful for that. I see. Perhaps it's the case that the VT14 doesn't have Omnibus RAM, and only has a MR8-F which the KK8-E CPU uses to run the code that manages the display. This is the first I've heard of the MR8-F, which apparently has onboard RAM to provide the read/write memory needed. (The older Ombibus ROM devices shadowed core.) >The power supply isn't suitable for core >memory, but it might be for semiconductor. The keyboard and display >are going to be useless. The backplane, CPU, power supply, and >teletype interface are the only parts of the VT14 that you're going to >end up using. I wouldn't call that "easy", nor would I call the >result a "PDP-8/E". Yes, and the power supply isn't useful unless you're using something other than core. And how many slots does the backplane have? Yes, it's possible, but given what I know now it's not easy. It's a source for a donor CPU board set, and maybe a TTY interface (assuming it's KL8 compatible) and that's about it. Possibly workable with the recent semiconductor memory boards. Oh, and of course, no front panel, making it hard to do anything useful unless you reprogram the MR8-F. -Rick

11 years, 1 month

3
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Open source Nova 3 assembler

by shadoooo＠gmail.com

Hello Mark, well I suppose it would be very useful for this kind of operations. And as the whole read operation would be in the control of the PC, you could retrieve the whole disk, or a part, or a single sector.. whatever you want. The first step is to debug it and let it work with SIMH. Then I will try it with my 8" double floppy unit. At this time, adding support for any other drive would be a matter of knowing the peripheral control registers and producing a set of scripts from these informations. I will keep you informed about it. Thanks Andrea

11 years, 1 month

1
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IBM 5170 AT 286 bios: how to add a new HARD disk

by jws＠jwsss.com

On 7/19/2014 2:08 PM, Enrico Lazzerini wrote: > I managed to find a bios for an IBM 5170 AT 286 Type1 Mainboard. It is > here: 30aprile1989 (list here: > http://ibm-pc.org/firmware/ibm/5170/5170.htm) > In practice I have manually added the number of cylinders, heads, and sect > / trk that allow the machine to recognise a disk IBM 250MB. At this point > regularly boots DOS. > But I wish to program these data permanently in the bios. Does anyone know > what program to use and give me the procedure? I tried with BIOSUTL, but > the new EPROM do not boot the machine. > With BIOSUTL i made what follow: read actual BIOS, you can add new disk > geometry parameters at free 47 position, then you have to recalculate bios > checsum, then BIOSUTIL devides BIOS into EVEN and ODD file so i can finally > program them into two 27256 150nS eprom. > Thank you > Enrico > Enrico, I suspect you do not have a good checksum on your image, unless you took pains to change that as well as the table Once you have modified your table, you have to bring the sum which will be visible in the bios space at F000:0 thru F000:ffff back to 0. A simple checksum of the data is all that the bios does. See below. I have patched numerous bios images, but always have to add a fudge in some byte somewhere to bring the simple sum below back to 0 overall. Jim I used a copy from bitsavers for the listing below. Had to clean up the OCR a bit :-) http://bitsavers.trailing-edge.com/pdf/ibm/pc/at/1502494_PC_AT_Technical_Re… If you look at the PC At tech reference, bios listing you can see what they do: On page 5-36, during startup ROS_CHECKSUM is called to check the roms. On page 5-67 (PDF file page 205 on bitsavers) EXTRN ROM_ERR: NEAR ;---------------------------------------- ; ROS CHECKSUM SUBROUTINE ; ;---------------------------------------- ASSUME CS;CODE, DS:ABSO POST3: ROS_CHECKSUM PROC NEAR ; NEXT ROS MODULE SUB CX,CX ; NUMBER OF BYTES TO ADD IS 64K ROS_CHECKSUM_CNT: ; ENTRY FOR OPTIONAL ROS TEST XOR AL,AL C26: ADD AL,DS:[BX] INC BX ;POINT TO NEXT BYTE LOOP C6 ; ADD ALL BYTES IN ROS MODULE OR AL,AL ; SUM = O? RET ROS_CHECKSUM ENDP

11 years, 1 month

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PDP-8 VT8-E

by rick＠rickmurphy.net

At 02:34 PM 7/20/2014, Eric Smith wrote: >On Sun, Jul 20, 2014 at 5:46 AM, Jerome H. Fine ><jhfinedp3k at compsys.to> wrote: > > My question was not intended to be limited to the VT14 AS SUPPLIED! > >Nor was my answer. > > > Rather, could the VT14 have been relatively easily modified (i.e. > without > > major changes AND without having to reverse the changes OTHER than > > to removing them with ONLY a screwdriver or other similar tool within > > about 30 minutes) to be able to run PDP-8 software. The VT8-E was a set of modules that turned a PDP-8 into a terminal. In one mode, it DMA'd a chunk of memory and displayed the contents. Interesting to fire it off when running memory checks, but that's about it. It also had a bitmap font generator. You could run an OS with the VT8-E running, but you couldn't run anything like OS/8 with the VT8-E as the console as it ate too much memory and wasn't in any way KL8 compatible. I don't know anyting about a PDP-14, but it it used a VT8-E, it had to be an Omnibus machine with Omnibus memory, so it could easily be turned into a PDP-8/E with the right CPU card set. -Rick

11 years, 1 month

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I've got some VAXStation VLCs available

by chuck.mcmanis＠gmail.com

This the smallest VAX you can own :-) I've got 6 or 7 I would like to get adopted. Available free for local pickup (Sunnyvale, CA) or if you're willing to pay packing and postage I can take them to the local shipping shore and have them sent off to you. --Chuck

11 years, 1 month

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windows ce/compaq c120

by rmx44＠aim.com

i happen to have acquired a compaq c120 running windows ce 2.0. i got it with no accessories other then a few extra stylus and a 16mb pcmcia memory storage card. i am on a hunt to find programs for it and even any other accessories. i did find a site that had updates for it but when i tried to run them in windows ce it said they weren't windows ce compatible programs. maybe someone out there knows what i can do. maybe someone has accessories for this thing

11 years, 1 month

6
9
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PDP-8 VT8-E

by chd＠chdickman.com

On Sun, Jul 20, 2014 at 1:59 AM, Eric Smith <spacewar at gmail.com> wrote: > The VT14 was specifically a terminal to program a PDP-14 using ladder > logic, had ROM firmware that only did that, It would be interesting to have a copy of that firmware. -chuck

11 years, 1 month

1
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Paper Tape Image Manipulation Utility

by nf6x＠nf6x.net

As previously threatened in the "Encoding of BASIC source code on punched tape" topic, I'm working on a Python utility for manipulating paper tape images. It will be a refactor of my previous silly paper tape renderer that I had written in C++, with added features for the manipulations I've recently found necessary since I've become interested in retrocomputing. I haven't determined how I'll specify interactions with actual tape punch/reader hardware like my GNT 4604 yet, but here is the "--help" output to show how I anticipate the user will interact with the utility to perform useful manipulations of paper tape images. I'd appreciate some input about what features are missing to make it helpful with tape formats and systems that I'm not familiar with yet. For example, I haven't yet included a feature to handle sequences like CR-XOFF-DEL-DEL, but I have a place-holder feature to pad each CR-LF with two DEL chars. I haven't decided the best way to cleanly handle various line-ending translations yet, to be generally useful without being too arcane or cumbersome. This will be written in Python, will be open-source, and will include modules and classes to make it (hopefully) easy to re-use the code for special purposes that I didn't implement in the command-line utility. While the main focus here would be on 8-bit ASCII tapes, I'm also including some support for 5-bit Baudot tape handling due to my interest in RTTY (radio teletype). -------- 8< cut here 8< -------- ...src/papertape% ./tapeutil.py --help usage: tapeutil.py [-h] [--clear] [--load FILENAME] [--append FILENAME] [--save FILENAME] [--hexdump] [--trim] [--add_leader INCHES] [--add_trailer INCHES] [--strip_nul] [--strip_del] [--set_msb] [--clear_msb] [--pad_crlf] [--title TITLE] [--rot_title TITLE] [--ascii2baudot] [--baudot2ascii] [--render_ascii WIDTH] [--render_pbm WIDTH FILENAME] Punched paper tape image utility version 2.0.0-ALPHA Arguments are processed in the order encountered, with cumulative effects upon the tape image buffer. The tape image buffer is discarded at program exit, so the final argument should generally be one which outputs the buffer to a file, the screen, or a tape punch. Arguments may be abbreviated. optional arguments: -h, --help show this help message and exit --clear Clear the tape image buffer. --load FILENAME Load tape image buffer from file, replacing previous buffer contents. --append FILENAME Load tape image buffer from file, appending to previous buffer contents. --save FILENAME Save tape image buffer to file. --hexdump Print a hex dump to stdout. Most significant bit (bit number ) will be ignored for the ASCII representation. --trim Trim leader and trailer of NUL chars from buffer. --add_leader INCHES Add NUL leader to buffer. --add_trailer INCHES Add NUL trailer to buffer. --strip_nul Remove all NUL chars from buffer. --strip_del Remove all DEL chars from buffer. --set_msb Set most significant bit (bit number 7) of all chars in buffer. --clear_msb Clear most significant bit (bit number 7) of all chars in buffer. --pad_crlf Add two DEL chars after each CR-LF sequence in buffer. --title TITLE Add human-readable title to beginning of buffer, using a font composed of 5x7 punched hole patterns. --rot_title TITLE Add human-readable title to beginning of buffer, using a font composed of 5x7 punched hole patterns. Rotate the letters for use on a 5-bit tape. --ascii2baudot Translate entire buffer from ASCII to Baudot coding. --baudot2ascii Translate entire buffer from Baudot to ASCII coding. --render_ascii WIDTH Create an ASCII art rendering of a punched tape, in a style similar to the bcd(1) program. WIDTH specifies the tape width in bits, and must be 5 or 8. Rendering will be printed to stdout. Leading edge of tape will be at top. --render_pbm WIDTH FILENAME Create a rendering of a punched tape in Portable Bitmap (.pbm) format, with each pixel representing 0.01 inches. WIDTH specifies the tape width in bits, and must be 5 or 8. Leading edge of tape will be at top. Example: tapeutil.py --load myfile.txt --pad_crlf --set_msb \ --add_leader 2 --title "MY TAPE" \ --add_leader 5 --add_trailer 5 --save myfile.tap -- Mark J. Blair, NF6X <nf6x at nf6x.net> http://www.nf6x.net/

11 years, 1 month

2
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IBM 5170 AT 286 bios: how to add a new HARD disk

by cisin＠xenosoft.com

On Sat, 19 Jul 2014, Enrico Lazzerini wrote: > I managed to find a bios for an IBM 5170 AT 286 Type1 Mainboard. It is > . . . > checsum, then BIOSUTIL devides BIOS into EVEN and ODD file so i can finally > program them into two 27256 150nS eprom. Does the 5170 accept 27256 150ns EPROMs? Perhaps, burn an UNMODIFIED copy, and confirm that that works. THEN modify and burn the modified copy.

11 years, 1 month

1
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IBM 5170 AT 286 bios: how to add a new HARD disk

by ard＠p850ug1.demon.co.uk

> > I managed to find a bios for an IBM 5170 AT 286 Type1 Mainboard. It is > here: 30aprile1989 (list here: > http://ibm-pc.org/firmware/ibm/5170/5170.htm) > In practice I have manually added the number of cylinders, heads, and sect > / trk that allow the machine to recognise a disk IBM 250MB. At this point > regularly boots DOS. > But I wish to program these data permanently in the bios. Does anyone know > what program to use and give me the procedure? I tried with BIOSUTL, but > the new EPROM do not boot the machine. When I did this, I used a couple of 8Kbyte EPROMs and fitted them into the spare sockets on the motehrboard. I then added a bit more logic (I think just one IC) to disanble the top 8K words of the origian BIOS ROMs and enable the extra EPROMs. This was relatively easy, since the enable lines are o nthe DIP shunt at the rear edge of the motherboard. There was no real reason to do this, it just meant I could use 2764s from my junk box, whereas I would have had to order the 27256s. I didn't bother with any program other than a hex editor. I simply editied the values in the ROM image, recalculated the checksum (OK, I think I wrote a program for that), then took the last 8K words of the new image, split them into odd and even bytes, then programmed the ERPOMs. I had no trouble at all. -tony

11 years, 1 month

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IBM 5170 AT 286 bios: how to add a new HARD disk

by enrico.lazzerini＠email.it

Thanks Paul for your suggestions. I try to provide some answers. The original IBM AT BIOS that I have on my TYPE 1 motherboard has two prom labelled: 6181028 and 6181029. The present drive in my IBM PC AT is a 3.5" 720K and the boot is not made ??by it or rather I think the bios expects to have an A drive as 1.2 MB which I have not. Therefore I downloaded from here: http://www.minuszerodegrees.net/bios/bios.htm an AMI BIOS SUITABLE FOR 5170 (Dated 30MAR89) which made available the only position 47 to add hard drives. Biosutil works well: I read the bios AMI, i save it in the file, allows you to change the position 47 with the geometry inserted for the new hard disk, recalculates the checksum of the file and save it to a even file and an odd file 32KB each . The saved file is BIN type and not hex. I am not in a position to know whether the calculated CheckSum is correct with respect to the expected one. With the AMI bios at boot i heard a beep and then it boot from the hard disk, but with the bios changed to make the geometry of the hard disk to a permanent position 47 nothing happens. no reply. I thought I had reversed the two EPROM, inverting them it does not change the result. Not being able to load the dos disk with the biosutil from my 720kb drive and i not having to drive 1.2 mb I can not boot dos and biosuil with original firmware. But it could not be true that biosutil allows you to edit an existing position. Dear Fritz, I can not fully understand how to use an EPROM with a network card and XTide. Why an unmodified AT bios at its boot if it can not boot from any drive, it should load the contents from an EPROM of the network card and run it? And what should I save in the EPROM of the network adapter so that it allows to see my hard drive? Enrico

11 years, 1 month

1
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Open source Nova 3 assembler

by shadoooo＠gmail.com

Hello, I have a Nova3 with dual 8" floppy, but unfortunately no diskette with OS. To try to recreate a set of disks, I had the idea to try to create a tool similar to VTSERVER for PDP11, This piece of software runs on a PC, connected to the DG Nova on terminal port. At boot the software emulate a punch tape reader and can be used to copy a small program in the memory of the Nova and to execute it. This software should allow access to IO peripherals and memory via the terminal port, using a command / acknowledge operation, thus allowing the PC to read / write disks, tapes, and so on. This is a sort of bridge between Nova hardware and PC. Of course this piece of software had to be developed and complied on PC, and the controlling software for the PC as well. With the help of Bruce Ray and some patience in reading many DG manuals kindly provided, I started the development of a tool using Python, that allows to perform many tasks, using python IDLE console: - load / save memory images with PL/APL/raw binary format - load / save ASM listings - assemble from loaded ASM listing to binary data - disassemble from binary data to ASM listing The development is almost done (only some stuff regarding labels handling still has to be done). Basically the tool handles one or more memory areas, and allows the user to do listed tasks in a wanted sequence, for example load a file containing an APL dump, disassembling it to create a ASM listing, save it to text file. I'm using this tool to assemble the bridge software, of course I had to write the listing before... The bridge will allow the PC to perform "remotely" any kind of IO operation, executing single IO opcodes one-by-one. All the parameters can be controlled from the PC, so access to any kind of peripheral is virtually possible. The bridge also allow to read / write on the Nova memory using variable size data blocks; this allows handling operations on peripherals that use DMA. This tool has been developed to 99%, but it hasn't been debugged yet. I would try to use SIMH with telnet on the terminal port, to emulate the Nova, and to use Python to develop the controlling software, scriptable so different peripheral support can be added at any time easily. I'm encountering problems with this task on SIMH3.9: - emulation of program load operation (starting CPU from peripheral defined via switch/levers position) is described in the manual, but effectively it doesn't works - the terminal emulation (TTI/TTO) seems to work only at 7bit, while we need 8bit I need to patch SIMH, anybody is in willing to help? After bridge debug , the next step is to write down the controlling software, and scripts to handle wanted peripherals. Andrea

11 years, 1 month

2
1
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[SPAM key] - Re: PDP-8 VT8-E

by jhfinedp3k＠compsys.to

>Eric Smith wrote: >>For the PDP-11 Qbus environment, DEC produced a >>VT100 with a 4 x 4 Qbus backplane inside and named >>it the VT103. >> >> >[...] > > >>The point of the above information is that DEC seems to >>have used some of the popular (at the time) terminals to >>be integrated as combination terminal and popular PDP >>(Program Data Processor >> >The situation with the VT14 is *much* different than the VT103, though. >The VT103 is intended for use running PDP-11 software. >While the VT14 contains a PDP-8, it isn't intended for running PDP-8 software. > I am totally unfamiliar with the PDP-8, so my question and observations could be entirely out of the ball park. Although the VT14 was not intended to run PDP-8 software, was or would it have been possible? If so, did that ever happen? May computer systems were used for projects which were totally unanticipated by the individuals or the companies which produced the computer systems in the first place. For example, my first contact with the VT103 was as a diagnostic station which, although the code was PDP-11 and there was a standard DEC PDP-11 CPU, had the code on an EPROM and the code was totally different from any other PDP-11 software that I have even seen. In addition, from what I understand, all DEC variants of the VT103 arrived with an 18 bit backplane which, in my opinion, resulted in a system that could be compared to a human with an IQ of a shoe size. With only 256 KB of memory available, there was almost never enough memory for most anything that was significant. Since upgrading the backplane to 22 bits was actually quite simple, that made the primary difference when a J11 based CPU was installed. Jerome Fine

11 years, 1 month

4
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IBM 5170 AT 286 bios: how to add a new HARD disk

by fritz_chwolka＠t-online.de

Am 19.07.2014 23:08, schrieb Enrico Lazzerini: > I managed to find a bios for an IBM 5170 AT 286 Type1 Mainboard. It is > here: 30aprile1989 (list here: > http://ibm-pc.org/firmware/ibm/5170/5170.htm) > In practice I have manually added the number of cylinders, heads, and sect > / trk that allow the machine to recognise a disk IBM 250MB. At this point > regularly boots DOS. > But I wish to program these data permanently in the bios. Does anyone know > what program to use and give me the procedure? I tried with BIOSUTL, but > the new EPROM do not boot the machine. > With BIOSUTL i made what follow: read actual BIOS, you can add new disk > geometry parameters at free 47 position, then you have to recalculate bios > checsum, then BIOSUTIL devides BIOS into EVEN and ODD file so i can finally > program them into two 27256 150nS eprom. > Thank you > Enrico > > Hi.. the biosutil maybe one way. The version I use told me: Biosutil V1.1 InfoMatrix Bios utilities for the AT BIOS. Brad Gibson Copyright (C) 1990 by Secret Software and I believe there's no other version. here is an other way. You can easily ad an enhanced bios if you have an free rom place in a network card like a ISA 3com etherlink. Look here for https://code.google.com/p/xtideuniversalbios/ The xtide bios works on most xt/at. Greetings fritz

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