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

by legalize＠xmission.com

Does anyone have one of these? <http://terminals.classiccmp.org/wiki/index.php/DEC_VT8-E> -- "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, 11 months

5
6
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IBM 5170 AT 286 bios: how to add a new HARD disk

by phb.hfx＠gmail.com

On 2014-07-19 6:08 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 > I have done this before manually, I did not use the position 47 but rather altered one of the existing table entries, but that should not make any difference as long as the parameters in the table are correct. Did you check the output from this BIOSUTIL to make sure that the table entry looks correct? Other than that the only other important thing is to make sure the checksum is correct, I seem to recall that the algorithm used to checksum the ROM expects the last byte (word?) to roll the sum over to 0, but it is a long time since I did this and I may not be remembering this correctly, nor do I remember if the AT does the sum in bytes or words. What happens when you try to boot the new ROM? Do you get any response from it? If you get nothing two things come to mind, the BIOS image you downloaded is no good or you interchanged the high and low byte ROMs. If the checksum is wrong it will post an error message, if it seems to do its memory check ok but won't boot off the disk that might suggest that you are not pointing at the correct drive table entry or some parameter in the table is not correct. If it was me I would not be downloading a ROM image off the web I would just dump my existing BIOS and make whatever changes where necessary to it. Paul.

11 years, 11 months

1
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DEC LAxx,RX, and VT1xx parts VAX 780/5 pwr sup

by useddec＠gmail.com

Had a cool day in Illinois today and my crew brought down boxes of parts including: M7744 RX02 controller M7745 RX02 R/W H7110 LA120 ps M7081 LA120 pwr/logic bd LA36 and LA180 pwr and logic boards, encoder motors, heads, numeric kybds, etc add on logic and option boards for the LA36- these are getting hard to find... I have a few LA36s which have been upgraded to 120cps and plan on restoring them to original configuration There are boxes to go through yet. They are close to 6 or so VAX 11/780 pwr supplies. if someone is interested in them I can try to have them pulled tomorrow. Found some VT 100 or 101 pwr supplies ,and more logic boards. Feel free to contact me off list with offers. 61853, IL Thanks, Paul

11 years, 11 months

5
12
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IBM 5170 AT 286 bios: how to add a new HARD disk

by enrico.lazzerini＠email.it

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

11 years, 11 months

1
0
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HP 9836 & 9836U

by emu＠e-bbes.com

Was the only difference between those two the 68000 vs 68010? Thanks

11 years, 11 months

3
13
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Solaris 8 Sparc

by jws＠jwsss.com

I need an ISO if someone can spare a copy. Need to load up a system for some testing. Sparc 32 bit. media. I have a lot of intel, but low on Sparc stuff. Also am going to give some Tadpoles a run with it, hopefully. thanks Jim

11 years, 11 months

6
7
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PDP8 Omnibus to usb interface

by gaslaurence＠gmail.com

Dear Phillip, I came across your correspondence regarding an interface card to the PDP8 Omnibus. Did anything come of this and if so, are there any cards left? Stephern Laurence, Preston, UK (Owner of 4 non-working PDP8s but I hope to get them going!) -- Using Opera's mail client: http://www.opera.com/mail/

11 years, 11 months

5
7
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Encoding of BASIC source code on punched tape

by rwiker＠gmail.com

On 18 Jul 2014, at 20:45 , Chuck McManis <chuck.mcmanis at gmail.com> wrote: > So you could put one, two, or even a > hundred DEL characters at the end of the line and it wouldn't matter > semantically.. So those DEL characters became a way of providing a safe > 'delay' that would allow a machine without any flow control to accurately > read in the paper tape. I'm pretty sure that some of the 8-bit microcomputer systems used NULs for this exact purpose, when loading data through the serial port; specifically, I think I heard about NUL padding for the UK-101 and KIM-1.

11 years, 11 months

3
2
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Manual wanted for GNT 4604 Reader/Punch Station

by nf6x＠nf6x.net

I'm looking for a technical manual for a GNT model 4604 paper tape punch/reader. I have a scanned brochure which includes helpful information such as DIP switch settings, but I'd also like to find more detailed documentation, particularly including its handling of control characters and escape sequences, so that I can write a utility that talks to it. I can do basic I/O already, but I think it may have other features that I would like to use. If anybody can help me find an original, photocopy or scan, I'd appreciate that. For reference, I found the brochure here: http://www.cryptomuseum.com/telex/santec/gnt4606/files/gnt4604_brochure.pdf There are pictures of the very similar GNT 4606 here: http://www.cryptomuseum.com/telex/santec/gnt4606/index.htm I'll probably post about the machine on my web page eventually. -- Mark J. Blair, NF6X <nf6x at nf6x.net> http://www.nf6x.net/

11 years, 11 months

1
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Encoding of BASIC source code on punched tape

by nf6x＠nf6x.net

I recently bought a few punched paper tapes from an eBay seller. They were said to have been from an IMSAI system, and I found BASIC source code on them. Except for the leaders at both ends consisting of NULs, the rest of the bytes on each tape have the most significant bit set. As I understand it, Teletype model 33 ASR units are conventionally configured with MARK parity keyboards when used with PDP-8 systems, and I gather that it's conventional to encode PDP-8 source code tapes with MARK parity. I'm guessing that the same convention was used on the IMSAI, or at least was used by the original creator of these tapes. I just received a GNT model 4604 tape punch/reader yesterday, and today I got it working after making a few repairs. Then, I set to work reading in these tapes and converting the raw binary images (which I saved separately) to plain ASCII text by clearing the MSBs, and dropping any NUL and DEL characters. One tape included a splice which the creator marked with red ink. Each line was terminated by the sequence CR-LF-DEL-DEL. I presume that the two DELs after each line were there to give a 33 ASR (or similarly slow printer) time to return the carriage before the next line starts printing. Here is my question: Is it conventional and/or important to include the two DELs after each line when creating a source tape which is to be read in to a BASIC interpreter, or is that just an artifact of how the tapes were created (i.e., by printing source code out to a 33 ASR printer)? I ask because I want to know if I should include the DELs if I ever create new tapes from the extracted text files. The tapes were marked with 1976 dates, and were named: STRTRK DIET BLUFF I'll share their contents on my web site soon, and I'll also try running them in a BASIC interpreter sometime. -- Mark J. Blair, NF6X <nf6x at nf6x.net> http://www.nf6x.net/

11 years, 11 months

5
12
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WTB DEC VT100 flyback transformer

by shadoooo＠gmail.com

Hello, I have a VT100 to repair, I need a 16-16463-00 flyback transformer, but these seem to be unavailable... Anyone has to sell? Thanks Andrea

11 years, 11 months

2
1
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cctech Digest, Vol 131, Issue 26

by michael.99.thompson＠gmail.com

> From: Kevin Keith <krfkeith at gmail.com> > Date: Thu, 17 Jul 2014 13:51:56 -0600 > Subject: Re: Yet Another FPGA VAX Discussion > Ha! > > "[Futurebus] intended to replace all local bus connections in a > computer, including the CPU, memory, plug-in cards and even, to some > extent, LAN links between machines." > > How accurate is that statement? There doesn't appear to be any citation. > > -- > Thanks, > Kevin At the time it was developed Futurebus+ was probably the most advanced and highest performance bus. It had very advanced protocols that did a great job of handling distributed cache coherency, and a very nice distributed priority resolution circuitry. DEC could have build a complete VAX or Alpha on Futurebus+ and made a very high performance system. SCI (Scalable Coherent Interface) would be the best choice for interconnecting Futurebus+ systems. Unfortunately the NAVY's NGCR program, that was one of the big target markets for Futurebus+, was defunded and support for Futurebus+ evaporated. High speed serial buses were also getting fast enough to be competitive with parallel buses, and much easier to implement than a 64/128/256 bit wide bus. -- Michael Thompson

11 years, 11 months

1
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Any US IBM System 34 or 36 owners out there?

by cclist＠sydex.com

I received a call from a gentleman who'd like to get a listing of the contents of a couple of System 34 floppy magazines. Seems he wrote some business applications a years ago and would like to have a printed record of the source. If you are willing to tackle this (for money that you'd negotiate for, of couse), drop me a line and I'll hook you up. --Chuck P.S. I do know that you can open the magazines and retrieve the floppies one by one, but if you've got the IBM gear, it would be so much simpler.

11 years, 11 months

1
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Yet Another FPGA VAX Discussion

by michael.99.thompson＠gmail.com

> From: Paul Koning <paulkoning at comcast.net> > Date: Wed, 16 Jul 2014 17:33:02 -0400 > Subject: Re: Yet Another FPGA VAX Discussion > > Also Futurebus. Or did that never make it out the door? I remember a pile of work on that. Very strange bus, not well named. :-) > > paul I worked on the original IEEE-896 Futurebus standard and the updated Futurebus+ that DEC used. I think that it was used on the VAX 10000 and 7000. They made the DWLAA Futurebus+ bridge and the DEFAA-YA FDDI board for Futurebus+. I have the DEC tutorial book on Futurebus+. -- Michael Thompson

11 years, 11 months

4
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RetroComputing talk at CircleCityCon

by christian_liendo＠yahoo.com

One person's take on retro computing older Unix machines.? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5qkuRiDS-gU

11 years, 11 months

15
21
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ThinkPad 860 / 850 1.2GB HD

by BHuntsman＠mail2.cu-portland.edu

Anyone here have an extra/parts machine ThinkPad 860 or 850 with a working 1.2GB hard drive in the caddy? I'm having terrible luck finding one. So I'll throw out a bounty :) I'll offer $100 for just the drive and caddy... Thanks in advance! -Ben

11 years, 11 months

1
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Recent prices for Vintage computers ( yes I know this is a COW (can of worms) )

by earl＠baugh.org

I've been helping in some restorations recently (both my own, and someone I know's Sun 1...) and one of the questions that have come up is valuation (say for insurance, etc, or acquiring another system...) Is there some sort of collected list of values of some of vintage machines that have sold, either ebay, privately, auction, etc.? I know that something is worth only what someone will pay for it, but for insurance purposes at least you'd need some sort of benchmark to give to the insurance company... I know you don't get a good valuation if you let them do it... Thanks. Earl

11 years, 11 months

2
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Recent prices for Vintage computers ( yes I know this is a COW (can of worms) )

by cctech＠beyondthepale.ie

> >I've been helping in some restorations recently (both my own, and someone I >know's Sun 1...) and one of the questions >that have come up is valuation (say for insurance, etc, or acquiring >another system...) > >Is there some sort of collected list of values of some of vintage machines >that have sold, either ebay, privately, >auction, etc.? > >I know that something is worth only what someone will pay for it, but for >insurance purposes at least you'd need >some sort of benchmark to give to the insurance company... I know you don't >get a good valuation if you let them do it... > When considering insurance, I think the questions to ask are if the system is a total loss, would it be possible to replace it with an acceptable equivelant and if so, how much would it cost to do this. However difficult this is to calculate in a way acceptable to the insurance company now, bear in mind that in the event of a claim, they are probably going to go over values with a fine toothed comb and by then, costs and availablilty may well have changed. If it isn't possible to replace it, then there is no point in insuring it. Someone who regards classic computers as some sort of investment would probably disagree but I don't think that's what we are about here. Museums would probably disagree for different reasons. Regards, Peter Coghlan.

11 years, 11 months

3
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PDP-8/S Incompatibilities......

by lbickley＠bickleywest.com

I've had my PDP-8/S up and running for some time - but have recently experienced failures using some PDP-8 software. My 8/S passes all the DEC diagnostics - and it runs FOCAL-69 and 71 perfectly. So I decided to track down what was causing some programs to fail - and I discovered that the problem is PDP-8/S incompatibilities. PDP-8/S "Reality" ----------------- The PDP-8/S User Manual lies! It makes the following claim regarding Group 1 Operate Instructions: "The only restriction on combining OPR 1 (Group 1) operations within one instruction, other than logical conflicts, is that a rotate operation (bits 8, 9 or 10) may not be combined with the increment AC operation (bit 11) since they are executed during the same bit times." I decided to test that claim on my PDP-8/S and got the following results (via single stepping through the test program below.) The "8/S" column is Link AC contents (L AAAA): *200 Page 1 1 0200 *200 2 /AC 8/S NOTES 3 00200 7200 CLA /0 0 0000 4 00201 7201 CLA IAC /1 0 0001 5 00202 7326 CLA CLL CML RTL /2 0 0002 6 00203 7325 CLA CLL CML IAC RAL /3 1 0003 8/I AND UP 7 00204 7307 CLA CLL IAC RTL /4 1 0001 8/I AND UP 8 00205 7327 CLA CLL CML IAC RTL /6 1 0003 8/I AND UP 9 00206 7215 CLA IAC RAL RAR /10 1 0003 6120 10 00207 7203 CLA IAC BSW /100 1 0001 8/E AND UP 11 00210 7332 CLA CLL CML RTR /2000 0 2000 12 00211 7354 CLA CLL CMA RAR RAL /3776 1 7777 8/I OR 8/L 13 00212 7350 CLA CLL CMA RAR /3777 1 7777 14 00213 7330 CLA CLL CML RAR /4000 0 4000 15 00214 7352 CLA CLL CMA RTR /5777 1 7777 16 00215 7333 CLA CLL CML IAC RTR /6000 1 0003 8/I AND UP 17 00216 7346 CLA CLL CMA RTL /7775 1 7777 18 00217 7344 CLA CLL CMA RAL /7776 1 7777 19 00220 7240 CLA CMA /7777 ? 7777 20 00221 7402 HLT 21 $ No detected errors No links generated Note that all of the CMA shift instructions failed - even though the test (from Programming Languages) thought they should work in pre-8/I machines. At first I thought my PDP-8/S was failing - until I found the following from the PDP-8/S FAQ (What is a PDP-8/S?): "Compatibility: The core of the PDP-8 instruction set is present, but there are a sufficient number of incompatibilities that, as with the PDP-5, many otherwise portable "Family of 8" programs will not run on the PDP-8/S. Perhaps the worst incompatibility is that the Group 1 OPR instruction CMA cannot be combined with any of the rotate instructions; as with the PDP-8, IAC also cannot be combined with rotate." I decided to understand WHY this happens - and the answer is in the PDP-8/S Maintenance Manual and the PDP-8/S schematics. I've abreviated the sequence of execution below. (The "Ax" references are bit timimg): Group 1 Instruction Sequencing ------------------------------ Fetch ----- A12 Set or Clear Link, Clear AC per instruction Execute ------- A00 For right rotation (A00-01), shift AC+L together once or twice per instruction A(00-11) IAC: Adds one to AC CMA: Complements the AC IAC*CMA: Complement and add one to AC Left Rotate: AC+L shifted right 11 or 12 times per instruction A12 IAC: Complements L on overflow (CMA appears in gating, but has no effect) As can be seen, while the system clears the AC and clears or sets the Link during Fetch - it rotates right BEFORE complementing the AC! It also attempts to execute a complement of the AC at the SAME TIME as a left rotate - which simply does not work! Finally, just to verify the correctness of the test program, I single stepped it on my PDP-8/E and got the same results as the SIMH trace below: SIMH PDP8 Trace of the above: ----------------------------- sim> sh cpu history PC L AC MQ ea IR 00200 1 7777 0000 CLA 00201 1 0000 0000 CLA IAC 00202 1 0001 0000 CLA CLL CML RTL 00203 0 0002 0000 CLA CLL CML IAC RAL 00204 0 0003 0000 CLA CLL IAC RTL 00205 0 0004 0000 CLA CLL CML IAC RTL 00206 0 0006 0000 CLA IAC RAL RAR 00207 0 0001 0000 CLA IAC BSW 00210 0 0100 0000 CLA CLL CML RTR 00211 0 2000 0000 CLA CLL CMA RAL RAR 00212 0 7354 0000 CLA CLL CMA RAR 00213 1 3777 0000 CLA CLL CML RAR 00214 0 4000 0000 CLA CLL CMA RTR 00215 1 5777 0000 CLA CLL CML IAC RTR 00216 0 6000 0000 CLA CLL CMA RTL 00217 1 7775 0000 CLA CLL CMA RAL 00220 1 7776 0000 STA 00221 1 7777 0000 HLT sim> Cheers, Lyle -- Bickley Consulting West Inc. http://bickleywest.com "Black holes are where God is dividing by zero"

11 years, 11 months

2
1
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Recent prices for Vintage computers

by billdeg＠buzz1.com

> Subject: Recent prices for Vintage computers ( yes I know this is a COW (can of worms) ) > Is there some sort of collected list of values of some of vintage machines that have sold, either ebay, privately, auction, etc.? > I know that something is worth only what someone will pay for it, but for insurance purposes at least you'd need some sort of benchmark to give to the insurance company... I know you don't get a good valuation if you let them do it... For insurance prices you need the replacement cost. Has to be documented. You need good photos of the item insured "before" and you need purchase receipts and/or documentation of a similar item on Ebay. Using Ebay is good because these tend to be retail prices. For oddball collectibles, which is what the insurance business considers a niche like vintage computers, you need a lot of documentation to back up your claims, bottom line. Also be sure your items have been stored at least 6 inches above the floor. I have a small policy with the expectation that I will not lose everything at once, and that it will be hard to get 100% of what I paid for anything. Forget about your labor. There is an older book by M Nadeau called "Collectible Microcomputers". The low prices are a reflection of the year the book was compiled, but the book helps establish a valuation trend, a point of reference in time. It would be nice if this were updated. Bill

11 years, 11 months

1
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culling my collection

by dgahling＠hotmail.com

I need to clear out. Vaxstations Suns Etc It sells or gets scrapped. Last chance on all my stuff Dan

11 years, 11 months

7
9
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Kontron PSI 9068

by earl＠baugh.org

I'm trying to find some information on the Kontron PSI 9068 which I believe was manufactured in 1983-ish. Does anyone have pictures, docs, etc? Didn't see any in the usual places... Earl

11 years, 11 months

4
4
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VAXBI (was Re: Yet Another FPGA VAX Discussion)

by ethan.dicks＠gmail.com

On Wed, Jul 16, 2014 at 4:12 PM, David Riley <fraveydank at gmail.com> wrote: > - VAXBI (super-proprietary with little known documentation) I think Al just posted something a couple days ago, and I may have some design docs in the basement from when Software Results got a VAXBI license (we made a prototype run of boards - they worked but the market had moved on so we never sold out of that first run). I did the firmware for that product and its driver for VMS from the ground up. It was super-proprietary (and rigidly licensed). You essentially had to work from DEC's PCB template files (they supported multiple design packages IIRC) and add your circuit to the "BI Corner" which they maintained with an iron fist. There's a double-row of VIAs, and you just ran your signals to the right place and the bus area was taken care of for you. There are no "unauthorized" peripherals for the BI that I'm aware of. You *had* to buy BIICs (BI Interface Chips) >from DEC. We got one or two when we got our license, then for the prototype run, I was able to pick up used 2MB boards from the reseller market for about $50 and pull the BIICs (they were socketed) instead of buying new $350 chips. Between that and "refurbed" (used) RAM and CPUs, I got the manufacturing price down $500 per board from the initial numbers. I have a couple VAXBI COMBOARDs in my 8300 in the basement (along with a few of those 2MB (T1008) boards). Generically, they are built around a 68010 CPU with a 16-bit-32-bit discrete bus adapter (reading/writing 1/4 of the '010 address space triggers a bus read or write including upper/lower word latching) with 2MB of local RAM, a Z8530 serial rigged for sync operation (pins 15 and 17 for external data clock) and 64KB of local ROM. The driver works with the firmware to upload a payload application into RAM, but if one could fit all the code into the ROMs, that functionality could be deprecated. > - SBI (is that even separate from VAXBI?) SBI is 11/78x and entirely separate. -ethan

11 years, 11 months

1
0
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Clearout of PDP-11 and other DEC bits (in UK)

by toby＠pdp11.co.uk

Hi, I've lost my storage for the remainder of my vintage computer collection and so I'm going to have to clear out much of what remains. I've listed some of the more interesting items on ebay ( http://www.ebay.co.uk/sch/siliconjunkie/m.html?item=121385278641&hash=item1… to see the list), including an 11/44, an 11/34 and a VT05 I also have some stuff going free to a good home including: QBUS backplanes Lots of DEC cables and manuals Some Vax chassis DEC Rainbows RZ (and possibly RF) DEC Winchesters Lots of misc detritus Alas the clock is ticking though and anything left by end of the month will most likely get skipped for lack of anywhere else to send it. All the best, Toby

11 years, 11 months

7
6
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DG NOVA in Verilog

by jan＠janadelsbach.com

Hi all, I've implemented a DG NOVA in Verilog, at the current state it implements all basic instructions, the only thing the main CPU is lacking is interrupt support which I will add when I have the time. The main problem with the whole thing is the sheer lack of any OSes aside from RDOS. It would be nice if anyone had some smaller/more basic OSes or bootstrappable standalone diagnostic software for me to test things with. (RDOS when manually loaded into memory executes until it tries to load something from disc, which I haven't yet implemented) The Verilog is synthezisable, aside from the IO debugger, Disassembler and device 077 which is currently hacked together. You can find some documentation and download here; http://janadelsbach.com/nova.html - Jan

11 years, 11 months

5
4
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Altos 586/586T firmware

by aek＠bitsavers.org

Has anyone dumped the firmware from these machines? I'm working through uploading a set of 486/586 documentation and I am about to dump the firmware from the 486 I have and thought it would be nice to have the 586 as well. I know Dave Dunfield had a bunch of 586s at one point, and imaged their floppies, but I didn't see the firmware anywhere.

11 years, 11 months

2
2
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ATT 3B1, Unisys U6000 Unix--common source?

by cclist＠sydex.com

I've noticed a lot of commonalities, such as the volume header block structure, between SysV Unix for the AT&T Unix PC 7300 and the Unisys U6000 series of servers. Was the Unix port for both (one 68010, the other x86) done by the same outfit (Convergent?)? Anyone know for sure? --Chuck

11 years, 11 months

2
3
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DEC PC 104 keyboard?

by segin2005＠gmail.com

I have a PS/2 keyboard for IBM PeeCees that bears the Digital Equipment Corporation logo. It's an PC 104, US QWERTY layout keyboard with "Windows" keys and a Menu key. I can mail pictures on request (two JPEGs, 3.9MiB each). Does this count as genuine DEC equipment? (PS. I haven't posted in this mailing list in a half-decade. Please don't kill me.) -- Kirn Gill II Mobile: +1 417-763-8638 VoIP: +1 813-704-0420 BBM: 7B963E04 Email: segin2005 at gmail.com LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/pub/kirn-gill/32/49a/9a6

11 years, 11 months

1
0
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Some new Convergent scans

by aek＠bitsavers.org

Tried posting this on the Yahoo group https://groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/ctos/ , but nothing was posted. There are some new CTOS manuals on bitsavers, including some early 90's documents Also, we received one manual for CTIX, the driver writer manual. Would be nice to find more Mighty/MegaFrame docs.

11 years, 11 months

1
0
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Model M Keyboards (was Re: best dos machine)

by earl＠baugh.org

> On Fri, 11 Jul 2014, Paul Berger wrote: > >> On 2014-07-11 6:07 AM, Derrick Meury wrote: >>> i do know the model m also had a phone cable type connector. i >>> happen to like anything made exclusively by ibm and not by any other >>> company. >>> >> The model M keyboard was used on some terminal products as well on >> that comes to mind is the 3151 ASCII terminal >> and the keyboard connector on it was either RJ11 or RJ45. >> >> You will find that later model M keyboards where made by Lexmark >> which was the spin off from IBM of the Lexington Ky plant. It is >> perhaps fitting they made keyboards, when IBM was in the electric >> typewriter business the Lexington plant built all the typewriters for >> the US market, and the well loved IBM selectric keyboard became the >> model for IBM keyboards including the keyboards used on PC up until >> the model M. >> > That plant is still in operation, making the successor to the Model M. > http://www.pckeyboard.com/ > > g. > Thanks for posting that I had no idea that the model M was still in production, after the PS/2 it seemed that IBM switched to keyboards of a poorer design, and I had thought that the production of these keyboards just went away. I see they are still even making APL keytops. Actually as someone who has one, I'd say they're "reasonable facilimies" Not real Model M's. Aren't quite made of the same materials, nor the same feedback. They're probably my #2 choice after a REAL Model M. Unicomp bought the molds, etc. >from Lexmark after they had bought them from IBM. Still made at the same factory as Lexmark.... I wish they'd make them "exactly" the same as IBM/Lexmark... For all of the machines in my rack via a KVM, I use one (since I sometimes "do" need some of the extra PC/Mac keys that weren't on the Model M...) I will also point out a cctalk member (Maxx) does an EXCELLENT job refurbishing Model M's (and sells them as well). He's done 3 of mine recently, all A++ when they came back (and I even "pimp'ed" one out with a RED backing plate... and then went to Unicomp (the pckeyboard.com site) for red lettered key caps, and added swapped out the LEDs for red versions as well). http://phosphorglow.net/ On the front page, you can see some of the colored plates... another way to keep them from rusting... Unicomp has some other colors as well (which you could use with Maxx's colored plates). A fun way to "refresh" the cosmetics of the Model M. There are also a few sites (Maxx's included) that have the Model M connector cables that go directly to USB (in both black and tan). I've gotten them from the maker on ebay as well. They actually are a significant improvement over adapters. Earl (a VERY happy Model M user since at least '88)

11 years, 11 months

2
1
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Keyboards

by earl＠baugh.org

I always wondered about this because I could swear that I saw at least one XT Model M in the day... Does anyone know if you can identify a switchable Model M from the keyboard cable being terminated into a modular type jack on the keyboard side? Or was going from the modular jack to a hard-wired PS/2 cord just a cost reduction at some point in time after the keyboard was introduced? Best, Sean I have a model M with the XT style connector. However, it's for either an AT or XT/286 (I have the later). The cable is all that is different (same modular jack on the keyboard side) I haven't tried it on a PC, but from what I know it shouldn't work. Earl

11 years, 11 months

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best dos machine

by rmx44＠aim.com

i have been thinking of running a good dos machine or finding one. i find that each machine is different from the hardware to the way it runs the software. some have the use of a hard drive and some don't i have thought of wanting a sorta high end dos machine one that has the use of a hard drive and can run any program that dos can run and not have issues. i remember with dos some programs would run to fast on some machines but with others they would run just fine or to slow. around in seattle its hard for me to find a good dos machine since most of the older machines that became unwanted got sent to a computer ecycler where it got stripped down and killed off for free or that the store sells the stuff for more then what its worth as a whole. maybe one of you might have something or know some stuff.

11 years, 11 months

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Copy of DEC Standard 057 (VAXBI Standard)

by krfkeith＠gmail.com

Does anyone have a copy of this? It doesn't appear to be on bitsavers, or anywhere else for that matter. Information in general on VAXBI seems to be difficult to come by, so any is welcomed.

11 years, 11 months

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Message subjects

by ljw-cctech＠ljw.me.uk

Hello all, As moderator of cctech, and also looking after cctalk, the amount of spam I'm dealing with is becoming extreme. There are about four times as many spam mails which I need to reject as there are proper postings. So could I ask that you choose subject lines sensibly, or you may find they never get through to the list. Subjects like "Look at this" or "For sale" aren't a good idea. That's all, keep up the good work! -- Lawrence Wilkinson lawrence at ljw.me.uk The IBM 360/30 page http://www.ljw.me.uk/ibm360

11 years, 11 months

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FS: Corel Netwinder 275 free to good home

by hugh＠blemings.org

Hi, I have two Netwinder 275s with Power Supplies. One lacks the daughtercard that provided the serial port and second ethernet adaptor. I think I have one of the original keyboards as well. First in best dressed for one or both, free for the cost of postage/shipping from Canberra, Australia. Both were working last time I fired them up. Cheers, Hugh

11 years, 11 months

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MUMPS compiler/interpreter preservation

by chocolatejollis38＠gmail.com

I don't know how many of you fine people are familiar with the MUMPS programming language, but MUMPS development accounts for about 50% of my income. Considering that it has as storied of a background as UNIX (having been first implemented in ~1966), and is old, I'm wondering if any of you have any thoughts about it. Also, I'm wondering if any private collections have any older MUMPS implementations around, not necessarily so that I can try to get them, but so that I can find out if they've been preserved. Since InterSystems bought out Digital Standard MUMPS, as well as contemporaries from Micronetics and DataTree, these old implementations seem rare and hard to find. I've long wanted to get ahold of a VAX-based MUMPS implementation, but the closest thing I've ever found is an installed copy of DSM for Alpha on a cluster I picked up, with no media. Any thoughts or information? jpw

11 years, 11 months

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Message subjects

by dm561＠torfree.net

----- Original Message ----- Date: Sat, 12 Jul 2014 15:07:47 +0100 From: Peter Corlett <abuse at cabal.org.uk> To: "General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts" >...So what you're saying is that you want to butt into a busy community to ask them for help, but aren't prepared to actually participate or give back? And you then wonder why they have their mailing lists configured to discourage this behaviour? ----- Reply ----- Gee, I thought what he was saying is that he thought that at least some members of this "busy community" would be generous enough with their time and knowledge to be willing to help a fellow hobbyist without demanding something in return (as many indeed are!)... As Fred mentions elsewhere, it works both ways; on several occasions a Google search has popped up a request on some list looking for a part or documentation that I happen to have, but when I saw what I'd have to go through just in order to reply I decided to pass... Even if there were indeed flamewars 25 years ago, that doesn't mean that we can't be patient, civil and even friendly today, especially with fellow members of a rather unique community and list of which the main raison d'etre is to share and help each other... m

11 years, 11 months

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HP 9100B schematics and flowcharts

by aek＠bitsavers.org

http://bitsavers.org/pdf/hp/9100

11 years, 11 months

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MUMPS compiler/interpreter preservation

by isking＠uw.edu

On Sat, Jul 12, 2014 at 10:00 AM, <cctalk-request at classiccmp.org> wrote: > Send cctalk mailing list submissions to > cctalk at classiccmp.org > > Message: 8 > Date: Fri, 11 Jul 2014 20:04:06 -0600 > From: John Willis <chocolatejollis38 at gmail.com> > To: "General Discussion: On-Topic Posts Only" <cctech at classiccmp.org> > Subject: MUMPS compiler/interpreter preservation > Message-ID: > <CAOPi=7BNKTUE0mNr==1GpEXgDbG-N_1UJuWQR3= > rT0ECuo4Xsg at mail.gmail.com> > Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8 > > I don't know how many of you fine people are familiar with the MUMPS > programming language, but MUMPS development accounts for about 50% of > my income. Considering that it has as storied of a background as UNIX > (having been first implemented in ~1966), and is old, I'm wondering if > any of you have any thoughts about it. > > Also, I'm wondering if any private collections have any older MUMPS > implementations around, not necessarily so that I can try to get them, > but so that I can find out if they've been preserved. Since > InterSystems bought out Digital Standard MUMPS, as well as > contemporaries from Micronetics and DataTree, these old > implementations seem rare and hard to find. I've long wanted to get > ahold of a VAX-based MUMPS implementation, but the closest thing I've > ever found is an installed copy of DSM for Alpha on a cluster I picked > up, with no media. > > Any thoughts or information? > > jpw > > > When I was at Living Computer Museum, I found some RLs that contained DSM for PDP-11. Also, Kevin Murrell at TNMOC and I discussed MUMPS but I'm not sure what he/they might have. Since LCM has a working PDP-7, I was always looking for a copy of the original MUMPS. If this email thread surfaces such a find, please let Rich at LCM know! -- Ian -- Ian S. King, MSIS, MSCS Ph.D. Candidate The Information School University of Washington Madness takes its toll - please have exact change.

11 years, 11 months

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How many addressing modes does the VAX actually have?

by krfkeith＠gmail.com

I've seen 16, 22, and 24 cited as the official number. The VAX architecture manual seems to suggest 24. If the number is indeed more than 16, how are they encoded? Seeing as how the manual says 4 bits are used for specifying the specific mode, and 4 for the register selection, and seems to imply that the operand specifier is always a byte long. Sorry for the potentially dumb question.

11 years, 11 months

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I've got some VAXStation VLCs available

by chuck.mcmanis＠gmail.com

They all have drives, they are all set for serial console operation (four of them were a small 4 node cluster at one point) I believe they have 16MB of memory but they may have 24MB (that was the max for those machines). Not sure what postage to Portland would be, I'm shipping one to Eric Smith so I'll have a good number on that. I shipped a VT340 to a guy in Colorado and packed and shipped with that giant keyboard they came with came out to $72 so I'm guessing it will be about 1/2 that (given its volume). They are easy to MOP boot (which makes netbsd on them pretty easy or a network install of VMS) if you use a SCSI CDROM you of course need one that will read as 512 byte sectors. I'm also throwing in an AUI <-> 10BaseT adapter (they all had one) since its a pain to find AUI ethernet hubs these days. --Chuck On Thu, Jul 10, 2014 at 5:51 PM, Benjamin Huntsman < BHuntsman at mail2.cu-portland.edu> wrote: > How much do you think shipping would be to 97601? > I'd take at least one if you haven't sold them all off yet... > > Thanks! > > -Ben > > ________________________________________ > From: cctalk-bounces at classiccmp.org [cctalk-bounces at classiccmp.org] on > behalf of Jason T [silent700 at gmail.com] > Sent: Thursday, July 10, 2014 5:40 PM > To: General Discussion: On-Topic Posts Only > Subject: Re: I've got some VAXStation VLCs available > > On Thu, Jul 10, 2014 at 12:51 PM, Chuck McManis <chuck.mcmanis at gmail.com> > wrote: > > 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. > > AKA the 4000/30, IIRC. A nice little desktop. > > Are there drives, memory? > > -j >

11 years, 11 months

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AU/X thoughts

by seefriek＠gmail.com

I wrote this a while back, but found it in the drafts bucket so I apparently never sent it... > A/UX has (had?) its warts... Warts like a toad with skin cancer. It was based on SVR2 (another quick-n-dirty port from Unisoft, the goto guys for "I got an mc68k, I need to ship Unix next week and the budget is tight"), which was already 4 years old when A/UX was released (SVR4 shipped a couple of months after A/UX). Various bits of SVR3 and BSD were bolted on with different degrees of frankensteinisms. Some apps were newish versions, some were ancient R2 versions (like UUCP, important at the time), so moving between Unixes was frustrating. The native dev tools were pretty awful, networking was flaky (NFS was particularly fun in a dev environment) and the filesystem seemed to be moderately unstable for most of it's run. It didn't actually implement all of POSIX (or a bunch of other things) so porting software was always an adventure. And whenever I tried to use some neeto-keeno Apple-ism slapped on the top, I was always tripping over some new-and-different showstopping bug. That's just what I remember 20+ years down the road. So, yeah...pretty warty. The company I worked for at the time hacked our TCSEC B-level technology into that mess so that Apple could extend the "see...we got POSIX" line to "see, we got Orange Book evaluated" so they could sell to military & intelligence customers. So lot's of crawling around in the kernel. Not pretty. But enough sold to justify the contract. > Not the best UNIX implementation compared to what we > have nowadays but in light of its contemporaries it was > probably no worse than average. When A/UX came out in 1988, it went up against the likes of SunOS 3.5, Sony NEWS-OS 3, SGI IRIX 3 and Ultrix 4. I would argue every one of them is a much better Unix implementation than A/UX. So much better it's really not even a contest. My daily-driver-at-the-time Sun 3/160 w/ SunOS 3.5 was so much faster, functional and stable it was physically painful to think "time to muck with A/UX". Even SVR3.2 was more consistent and stable, if not as feature-filled (and I really thought layers+dmd5620 was wonderfully clever, but that's a wild tangent). To really get to contemporary levels of crappy, you've got to go down to Xenix. And unlike A/UX, Xenix could run Microsoft Word well. When A/UX was finally put out of it's misery in 1995, it still ran only on mc68k, still based on SVR2.2, and was up against Solaris 2.4, OSF/1, Irix 6, UnixWare 2, AIX 4, Ultrix 4.5 and eminently usable versions of Linux and *BSD, all running on platforms a order of magnitude or two faster than what A/UX ran on. > The Mac OS GUI was still single-threaded, cooperative- > multitasking, no protected-memory System 7.0 with some > application compatibility issues... so the benefits of UNIX > weren't really extended throughout. The much vaunted MacOS emulation layer didn't really show up till version 3, and didn't work particularly well if you didn't have the latest versions of your applications from mainstream vendors. More than "some" application issues (as in anything that wasn't written 32-bit clean was a coin toss you usually lost). > That all said, I don't see why A/UX would have been any less > suitable a foundation for Apple's next-generation operating > system than NeXTstep? Mercifully no one at Apple even considered going down that road. A/UX existed so Apple could sell hardware to the Federal sector. Even though the A/UX team looked around for other markets, it was a checkbox product and it never had any more mindshare with Apple senior management than that. And it shows.

11 years, 11 months

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best DOS machine

by dave＠mitton.com

On 2014-07-09 02:22, cctech-request at classiccmp.org wrote: > Date: Tue, 8 Jul 2014 14:22:40 -0700 (PDT) > From: Fred Cisin <cisin at xenosoft.com> > To: "General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts" > <cctalk at classiccmp.org> > Subject: Re: best dos machine > Message-ID: <20140708142144.O37762 at shell.lmi.net> > Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII > (IBM never called it "motherboard" due to use of the word "mother..." <snip> Fixed drive (IBM didn't called it a "hard" drive) On Tue, 8 Jul 2014, A. P. Garcia wrote: > and don't forget to use our favorite numbering system, hexidecimal, because ibm was too prudent to call it sexadecimal... "FIXED" disk?? "FIXED" In a veterinary context??!? No - "Fixed" as opposed to "Removable" Remember big-boy machines had disk packs (Winchesters, etc) that you swapped in and out. In DEC speak: RK05s, RP0x and so forth. And btw: the IBM XT originally came with 5.25" floppies the fixed hard drive came later. Dave.

11 years, 11 months

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More Geek Porn...

by leec2124＠gmail.com

I posted a couple more vintage computing videos to Youtube: 1. http://youtu.be/N12pQBiRd7A Raw video of John Maniotes of Purdue-Calumet describing the IBM 1620 software library donated to the IBM 1620 Restoration Project at CHM. 2. http://youtu.be/ZQzDSOXHd70 Video of a XDS Sigma-9 and Sigma-6 mainframes with associated peripherals. Enjoy! -- Lee Courtney

11 years, 11 months

2
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AIX 4.1.5

by BHuntsman＠mail2.cu-portland.edu

By any chance, does anyone have a copy of AIX 4.1.5 for Clients they'd be willing to part with? A regular 4.1.5 would work too... Thanks in advance!!

11 years, 11 months

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best dos machine

by seefriek＠gmail.com

From: John Wilson <wilson at dbit.com> > It seems as if 32-bit API support for PAE kind of didn't happen -- wasn't > AWE32 supposed to be a thing on Win32? I couldn't make it work in real > life. And I couldn't find a Linux equivalent. John...I probably don't understand your use case, but Linux has had pretty robust PAE kernel support for a while. User space apps are of course still limited to 4G-ish, but the kernel can see up to 64G. I've used it on bigmem servers that had to run legacy apps that had heartburn with 64-bit distros. There were a couple of things that were weird (I seem to recall issues with vmalloc()...it's been a while), but generally worked as expected. KJ

11 years, 11 months

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I've got a Seagate ST-506 drive available

by chuck.mcmanis＠gmail.com

I don't know what is on it, or if it even works, but it is an ST-506 as opposed to ST-506 compatible :-) Free for postage or pickup. --Chuck

11 years, 11 months

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OSI fun as part of Retrochallenge

by terry＠webweavers.co.nz

Hi, I realise not everyone on this list is into events like this but I must admit to having fun exploring my OSI C4P as part of this competition. Some classiccmp people have already helped me with this (e.g. Dave, Philip Lord) and progress thus far has been good. Anyway, I thought I'd post the link showing the sequence of events here for those who might be interested (warning..it's long and will get longer). http://www.classic-computers.org.nz/blog/2014-06-30-fixing-C4P-ram-expansio… When I started this project, I had some difficulty figuring out those jumpers on the 527 RAM board. By chance, I was flipping through "The first book of the Ohio Scientific Computer" last night and lo and behold, there was a few pages devoted to this. However, these pages were not mentioned in the index, which is why I missed it! In fact, there is a whole section missing from the index! Had I known that section was there it would have saved me much head-scratching. Gotta love OSI's rough and ready documentation! Terry (Tez)

11 years, 11 months

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Computer Collecting Sub-Reddit

by christian_liendo＠yahoo.com

I know some people don't take kindly to people posting advertisements about things they wish to sell. Also sometimes they don't like postings that are not considered "on-topic" So I created a sub-reddit on reddit for people to look and post items for computer collecting.? http://www.reddit.com/r/computercollecting/ You will see events, sub reddits and lots of craigslist and other ads for machines that are for sale. There are two other sub-reddits that may be of interest The Vintage Computing Sub-Reddit ============================================ http://www.reddit.com/r/vintagecomputing/ The Retro Battle Stations Sub-Reddit ============================================= https://www.reddit.com/r/retrobattlestations/ Please feel free to come and contribute.?

11 years, 11 months

7
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best dos machine

by cctech＠beyondthepale.ie

> >P.S., and not for the OP: Flames about top-posting will be redirected >to /dev/null. Take your flames to Google for making it the Gmail >default and making cut-and-paste so unusable on Android. > My grandfather used to say "A bad workman blames his tools". Regards, Peter Coghlan.

11 years, 11 months

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test-drb