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

Info on Amstrad 40095/A / DRMD20A12A MFM HDD

by technobug＠comcast.net

On Sun, 05 Jun 2011 00:19:24 +0100, Philip Pemberton wrote: > On 04/06/11 23:00, Phill Harvey-Smith wrote: >> Doh! We've all been there and done that :( > > I also managed to lean over a powered up CDC Wren-II/HH 5.25in > half-height drive while I was probing the DiscFerret's STEP line with my > scope. > > For those of you who have never seen a Wren-II/HH, they have a pair of > small-ish HDA interface PCBs on the back of the 'drive enclosure'. There > are a dozen or so metal pins joining these two boards. > > I wear a metal watch. > > No points for guessing what happened. Back in my high school days, a friend working on his relay computer science project laid his metal watch band across a selenium rectifier and managed to cauterize all the veins and such in his wrist - taught me to never wear jewelry and the like. While on my military stint, a gentleman jumped from a truck catching his wedding ring on the deck and completely deboning that finger - taught me to never get married. -> CRC

15 years, 1 month

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DEC Haul Update.

by chr15bailey＠yahoo.co.uk

Adrian Graham? witchy at binarydinosaurs.co.uk? ( Ely, Cambridge) ? - DEC pro 350 (x2) - Vax Console? -? Boxes of 115v fans - Paper tapes - Microfiche + reader - V3201 monitor - ? ? ? Rob Jarrett? robert.jarratt at ntlworld.com? ? -? Microvax II - ? ? John Shadbolt?Documentation, handbooks.??john_shadbolt at talk21.com?? (BT, Martlesham Heath Ipswich). ? - ? ? ? VRxxx + VTxxx - Paul Anderson useddec at gmail.com? (awaiting payment for postage) ? 1. Cook Book on Vax desktop monitors (general lists & Parts lists for all monitors) 2.?VT330 Pocket service guide 3. VT240 series -?Pocket service guide (two copies) 4. VT220 Pocket service guide 5. VT220 Programmer pocket guide 6.?VT102 Programming reference card 7. VT101 series - Pocket service guide 7. VT100 User guide 8. VR330 Pocket service guide 9. VR319 Monitor service guide 10. VR290 Colour video? monitor (illustrated service guide) Also -?VR14 CRT display illustated parts breakdown + troubleshooting procedures for VR14/VR20.+ VT50 (some?paperwork) ? ? PDP12 documents?? Owen Sharp? ohh at panix.com?? (Seattle, Washington USA) ? ? PDP12? - Demo/Monitor/users guide (A4 paperwork inc spacewars, kalidescope info?etc) PDP12??- Instruction List LINC mode (card) ? Boxes Of TU 58's DECtapes? Barry Moyer? iamvirtual at gmail.com?? (Langdon, Calgary,?Canada)? ? ? ? PDP-8 Documents. + boxes of IC's? Gerhard Kreuzer ?gerhard.kreuzer at liftoff.at? (Vienna, Austria) ? 1.?PDP8?????Diagnostic programs index by options (1973) 2. PDP8???? Product summary (1979) 3.?PDP8?????Software Components catalogue (July 1979) 4. PDP8?????Pocket reference card (two copies)? 5. PDP8/a? Miniprocessor handbook (two copies) 6. PDP8/a? Minicomputer handbook 7. PDP8???? Introduction to programming (two copies) 8. PDP8/e, PDP8/m, PDP8/f? Small computer handbook 9. PDP8/e & PDP8/m? Small computer handbook (1972) 10. OS/8? Operating system RTPS (pocket reference card) 11.??PDP8? Intro to Prog (A4 paperwork) -?Inc. - Front panel exercise ????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????? ?- Loading exercise ?????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????? - ODT?exercise. 12. PDP8/a circuit diagrams (Paper drawings) ? ? ? Microvax info?? Peter Coghlan? ?PETER at beyondthepale.ie? (Dublin, Ireland) ? MIcrovax - Maintenance info Vol 2 - Enclosures DECStation 3100 & VAXstation 3100 Maintenance guide & info VAXstation 2000 & Microvax 2000 Maintenance guide.

15 years, 1 month

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OT: Old high school physics lab meters

by chd＠chdickman.com

The local high school physics teacher was told to clean out the lab of all the "old junk." She has a bunch of meters that she is supposed to dump, but she wanted to know if there was any market for "antique" meters. I have not seen them, but the way she describes them they are single function meters (galvanometers, AC voltmeter, DC voltmeter, etc.) in slope from cases with binding screw terminals on top. She thought the cases were Bakelite. Is there any value to such things? Is there an on-line market that might let me determine a value, if any? I know she is thinking that if it is worth anything she can use the proceeds to buy supplies. -chuck

15 years, 1 month

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Usenet is officially dead from May 20th ?

by spedraja＠gmail.com

... or at least is what I've read this morning in 'El Pais', the main newspaper in Spain. What's about this ? -- Saludos - Greetings - Freundliche Gr??e - Salutations Sergio http://www.linkedin.com/in/sergiopedraja http://www.quora.com/Sergio-Pedraja https://www.xing.com/profile/Sergio_Pedraja ----- No crea todo lo que ve, ni crea que esta vi?ndolo todo

15 years, 1 month

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Info on Amstrad 40095/A / DRMD20A12A MFM HDD

by classiccmp＠philpem.me.uk

Hi guys, Someone has just donated an old ST506 hard drive to the DiscFerret project... This time, it's an Amstrad drive, with part number 40095/A "DRMD20A12A". Thing is, I can't seem to find any information on it -- and at the very least I need to find out what the CHS settings are in order to create a DriveSpec file. Here are a couple of photos: Top of drive: http://twitgoo.com/2bnvcy / http://i52.twitgoo.com/n7yp.jpg PCB: http://twitgoo.com/2bnvdl / http://i53.twitgoo.com/2cgzc0k.jpg Major chips are: Hitachi HD63B01Y0P SanKen STA435A Hitachi HA13426 CF77143FT SSI 540-3CH S8714 32119.1.1F Hybrids: SC619 and SC628 Text at top corner of PCB near power connector: PY349C Head stepper motor is labelled: TYPE 103-4902-0320 10.5VDC 0.26A 0.9 DEG/STEP LOT NO. 05709I 6035095-1 Form factor is 3.5-inch, half-height (about the same height as a 5.25 HH MFM drive) From what I can gather, it's a 20MB MFM drive, with four heads -- there's a sticker on the top which reads: DEFECT:CYLINDER HEAD0 HEAD1 327 386 426 504 HEAD2 HEAD3 216 (The numbers are handwritten -- badly) There's a second sticker along the edge: W A R N I N G WARRANTY VOID IF THIS SHIELD BROKEN Does anyone have any idea what this thing might be? Thanks, -- Phil. classiccmp at philpem.me.uk http://www.philpem.me.uk/

15 years, 1 month

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free for the cost of shipping : Apollo DN 4500 +extra's

by hp-fix＠xs4all.nl

Free for shipping or collecting a Apollo DN 4500 with network and SCSI interface, working is unknown (I never tested it, but the previous owner sayd it's in working condition) Including : keyboard, mouse(cable isolation in bad shape) and video cable. And also included about 30 tapes containing System and Mentor Graphics IC design software. The only thing I'm asking from the new owner is : he is willing to make a binary image of the tapes for Bitsavers.org I promised it to Al, but my workload and other obligations are in the way of completing this task. Everything is located in the Netherlands, but I'm willing to ship worldwide probably 2 heavy boxes. -Rik NB. It's shipping as one lot, I'm not going to part this up.

15 years, 1 month

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SIX Button BA23 Front Panel

by tiggerlasv＠aim.com

>>On 01/06/2011 03:21, Jerome H. Fine wrote: >> For those of you who have heard about a mythical >> SIX BUTTON FRONT PANEL for the BA23, >> it does exist and actually works. > Mythical? I've probably seen more BA23s with a 6-button panel than > without, and both my BA23s have 6-button panels. Most of the BA23's I ran into over the years had the plain old (white) 4-button panels, and occasionally the (black) 4-button panels. Some had guards around some of the buttons to prevent accidental fat-fingering. If I needed more than 2 drives, I just soldered resistors onto the back of the 4-button panel. Granted, the extra drives were always write-enabled and ready, but how many people really make their drives read-only? I much prefer the 10-button BA123 chassis anyway. ;-) T

15 years, 1 month

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Fwd: Seattle Retro-Computing Society inaugural meeting June 25th

by aek＠bitsavers.org

-------- Original Message -------- Subject: Seattle Retro-Computing Society inaugural meeting June 25th Date: Sat, 4 Jun 2011 20:16:11 -0700 (PDT) From: SRCS Admin <searetcompsoc at gmail.com> Organization: http://groups.google.com Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers I am pleased to announce... the Seattle Retro-Computing Society's inaugural meeting, on Saturday, June 25th, 2011! Do you do any of the following with old computers near Seattle? + Use them + Collect them + Play games on them + Write programs for them + Develop new hardware for them + Help other people do any of the above If your answer was "yes," as I expect it will be if you're reading this near Seattle, then the SRCS is for you! We exist so you can show off your awesome stuff, bounce ideas off of fellow enthusiasts, and be inspired by one another's achievements, plans and aspirations. No idea is too big or too small, and we're not picky about what flavor of vintage machine you prefer! Come on down and tell us about it! The meeting is graciously hosted by the Living Computer Museum, a relatively new organization which is building a computer museum in Seattle's SODO neighborhood. There will be refreshments, presentations on various vintage topics of interest, and enough table space & power to set up anything you may want to show off! For further details, please see our page at http://srcs.nfshost.com/. Hope to see you there!

15 years, 1 month

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Info on Sharp CS-4801?

by derschjo＠mail.msu.edu

Hey all -- I picked up an oddball calculator/computer -- it's labeled on the bottom as a Sharp CS-4801 "Electronic Calculating Machine." At first glance, it looks like a standard desktop 4-function printing + stat function / memory calculator, but it also has a small QWERTY keyboard that slides out from the front. The display is a 20-character alphanumeric VFD. Opening it up reveals a Z80 CPU, 32K of RAM and an EPROM, so there's clearly more than meets the eye here. Unfortunately, I can't get the machine to do anything other than normal calculator functions. I haven't yet dumped the EPROM, but I plan to later this weekend. Anyone know anything about this series? Thanks, Josh

15 years, 1 month

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SIX Button BA23 Front Panel

by tiggerlasv＠aim.com

Jerome Fine wrote: > If possible, it would also be "nice" to have those 2 extra > LEDs for the floppy drives displayed on the 6 button > panel (or at least added somehow). ISTR that the RQDX3 doesn't have the drive circuitry to support the front panel LED's. Only the RQDX1 and RQDX2. T

15 years, 1 month

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Ferguson BigBoard I & Microcornucopia Magazine

by elazzerini＠interfree.it

Hi at all, this email to remember my website with the hope to can to contact and to maintain alive all possible about and around this (but not only) great old board. For the Bigboard: <http://web.tiscali.it/enrico.lazzerini> http://web.tiscali.it/enrico.lazzerini <http://www.fergusonbigboard.altervista.org/> http://www.fergusonbigboard.altervista.org/ For the Magazine: http://enricolazzerini.interfree.it Regards Enrico - Pisa (ITALY)

15 years, 1 month

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Reading TOPS-10 and maybe TOPS-20 9 track magtapes?

by dbetz＠xlisper.com

Does anyone on this list, preferably close to the Boston area, have the ability to read TOPS-10 9 track magtapes? I have a friend with a few tapes from which he'd like to extract the contents. Thanks, David

15 years, 1 month

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SIX Button BA23 Front Panel

by bqt＠softjar.se

On 2011-06-01 10.00, Ethan Dicks<ethan.dicks at gmail.com> wrote: > On Wed, Jun 1, 2011 at 3:19 AM, Pete Turnbull<pete at dunnington.plus.com> wrote: >> > On 01/06/2011 03:21, Jerome H. Fine wrote: >>> >> >>> >> For those of you who have heard about a mythical >>> >> SIX ?BUTTON ?FRONT ?PANEL for the BA23, >>> >> it does exist and actually works. >> > >> > Mythical? ?I've probably seen more BA23s with a 6-button panel than without, >> > and both my BA23s have 6-button panels. Yeah. Nothing mythical about the 6-button panel. Glad to see that I'm not the only one thinking so. > I remember_trying_ to put two hard disks in one machine for quick > disk-to-disk copies. I have a fuzzy memory that it didn't work for > me, but I don't remember whacking either drive to the point that they > didn't work when returned to their former homes. As far as I know, the BA23 backplane distribution panel can *not* be used for two disk drives. I know there is a DEC note/article about this not working. You need the external distribution board for the RQDX3 to use two drives. If you use the BA23 backplane distribution panel with two harddisk drives, you have a high chance of corrupting both disks. (If I remember right, the write gate signal somehow goes to both disks, no matter what, which cause the disk to possibly start writing when the disk is seeking, for example. Very bad.) The BA23 backplane distribution should only be used for one harddisk, and possibly one floppy. Johnny

15 years, 1 month

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SIX Button BA23 Front Panel

by tiggerlasv＠aim.com

I've run BA23's with either an RX50 or TK50, and a pair of piggy-backed RD32's. It seemed to work well. I had soldered a pair of 2.2K (?) resistors onto the back of the 4-button panel to force the 2nd drive "ready" and "write enabled" full-time. I may have the details on that particular modification tucked away in my documentation somewhere. I also worked up instructions a while back to construct a ribbon cable to go from an RQDXn controller directly to an RX50 or RX33. I should be able to dig that up as well, if anyone is interested. T

15 years, 1 month

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Is Classiscmp working?

by jhfinedp3k＠compsys.to

I don't seem to be receiving any posts? Does anyone else have the same problem? Jerome Fine

15 years, 1 month

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seeking PC-DOS 2.0

by mcguire＠neurotica.com

Hey folks. I'm looking for floppy images (or actual floppies) of PC-DOS v2.0. Can anyone point me in the right direction? Thanks, -Dave -- Dave McGuire Port Charlotte, FL

15 years, 1 month

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Usenet is officially dead from May 20th ?

by cisin＠xenosoft.com

> "For many years it maintained an almost vegetative life, but on 20 > May, Duke University, Durham (USA), decided to unplug the server host > that kept it alive: Usenet, the online network of discussion groups > formally signed death . It was a precursor to the Internet, but mail, > RSS, and especially Facebook and Twitter have sustituidoel service > they provide." "precursor to the internet"????? If Cern were to shut down their server, would WWW die? -- Grumpy Ol' Fred cisin at xenosoft.com

15 years, 1 month

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SIX Button BA23 Front Panel

by bqt＠softjar.se

On 2011-06-02 07.56, <arcarlini at iee.org> wrote: > Johnny Billquist [bqt at softjar.se] wrote: >> > As far as I know, the BA23 backplane distribution panel can*not* be >> > used for two disk drives. I know there is a DEC note/article >> > about this >> > not working. You need the external distribution board for the >> > RQDX3 to > I used several configs in the DEC lab with 2 RD54s in a BA23 for years > and never hit a problem. (Mind you, I also had a KDA50 in a BA23, so > I'm not saying you should do this at home :-)). It's not an issue with two drives, per se, but an issue with the built in distribution panel. > If there's a note, I'd like to see it sometime ... I'll try to locate it. I know I have it somewhere in paper form, but hopefully it's been scanned somewhere on bitsavers, since all my papers are far from me. On 2011-06-02 07.56, "Rod Smallwood"<rodsmallwood at btconnect.com> wrote: > Two hard drives in a BA23? Like I said above. It's not the question of two drives in the BA23 as such. It is the built-in distribution panel that is the problem. > Provided you don?t want to connect to another BA23 or use a non-DEC disk > controller then a brace of DEC SCSI drives and a flat SCSI cable will do it. SCSI disks have even less to do with it. :-) > I think the drive power cables come direct from the PSU. If so, then you can > rip out the backplane and card guides. The guides can be used to make > storage units for PC cards. You can use the back plane to make a real 'open' > system i.e. one you can get at the pc cards. Yeah, the power cables comes from the PSU, and yes, there was an issue with those on some BA23. But that is something else. And just using the box as a shelf is obviously also not a problem. On Thu, 02 Jun 2011 08:20:11 +0100 Pete Turnbull <pete at dunnington.plus.com> wrote: > On 01/06/2011 18:23, Johnny Billquist wrote: > > >> >> I remember_trying_ to put two hard disks in one machine for quick > >> >> disk-to-disk copies. I have a fuzzy memory that it didn't work for > >> >> me, but I don't remember whacking either drive to the point that they > >> >> didn't work when returned to their former homes. > > > > > > As far as I know, the BA23 backplane distribution panel can *not* be > > > used for two disk drives. I know there is a DEC note/article about this > > > not working. You need the external distribution board for the RQDX3 to > > > use two drives. If you use the BA23 backplane distribution panel with > > > two harddisk drives, you have a high chance of corrupting both disks. > > > (If I remember right, the write gate signal somehow goes to both disks, > > > no matter what, which cause the disk to possibly start writing when the > > > disk is seeking, for example. Very bad.) > Although some manuals do mention that you should only use one hard drive > in a BA23 (eg the Maintenance Manual) I've seen several systems -- > including mine -- do so with no problem. I've never seen a problem with > Write Gate, nor would I expect to. Like all other ST412-type > interfaces, the M9058 distribution card has the same write gate signal > wired to all the 34-pin HDD connectors in parallel. In fact the /only/ > control signals not wired strictly in parallel on those connectors are > some of the drive selects. The M9058 is the RQDXE. Don't anyone ever read what I write, or am I really that bad at expressing myself? I wrote "the BA23 backplane distribution panel". That is *not* the RQDXE. With the RQDXE it works just fine. > What I do know is that the docs say you must draw no more than 7A from > the 12V supply in a BA23, and one RD51 takes 4.5A. So 2 x RD51 would > overload it. I believe that's the only restriction, because putting a > second RD5x in a BA23C expansion box, connected via an RQDXE, was > supported -- and AFAIR the RQDXE doesn't do anything clever with the control or status signals. Yes, the power supply is a separate issue. And yes, there is no issue putting two drives in the same BA23 if you use a RQDXE. However, if you plug in two drives using the built-in backplane distribution panel, you will have a disk crash, which I unfortunately have first hand experience of having to clean up after. The formatting of one, or both drives, will be destroyed, and you will need to reformat the drive to be able to use it again, if reformatting is possible. I never tried that, as I wanted to get as much data as possible off the two drives, and afterwards, the machine got SCSI drives instead of the RD drives, as you might as well upgrade when you were working on it. Johnny

15 years, 1 month

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SMS FWT0100 dual 8" floppy for PDP or LSI-11

by chrise＠pobox.com

I'm investigating some SMS (Scientific Micro Systems) dual 8" floppy units that were built for PDP- and LSI-11 systems. They are model number FWT0100 and, similar to an RX02, have a "formatter" board inside the box with the floppy drives. Then there is a 40-pin ribbon cable that goes to a host controller in the PDP or LSI which can be either a Unibus or a QBus interface. I am wondering if anyone knows if the box+formatter is electrically and protocol compatible with the real RX02... such that you could connect the box to an RX11 or RX211 controller if you do not have the actual SMS host adapter? The documentation for the OEM version of the SMS box (which is out on Bitsavers) talks about the unit being interface and protocol compatible with the RX02 but it is not clear if they are talking about the complete system including their controller in the host or if they are meaning that the interface to the formatter is compatible. The thing has two modes... normal and enhanced and in enhanced mode, there are extra capabilities that the RX02 can not do and I fully expect that you need the SMS controller to operate in that mode... but the normal mode is still a question. I have an RX211 and no real RX02 drives and I now also have one of these SMS boxes so I'm trying to do a little investigation of their compatibility before I just plug them together and see what happens. The RX211 end is pretty well documented. The SMS end... with details of the formatter board... not so much. There is also a FWT1100 version of the SMS box which has a single 8" floppy and an 8" Winchester in it. These work with the same SMS host controller but then for sure run in enhanced mode in order to support the Winchester capabilities. Does anyone have more info or experience with the SMS dual 8" floppy boxes? Chris -- Chris Elmquist

15 years, 1 month

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search for SDI and SMD disks (in europe)

by shadoooo＠gmail.com

Hello. To restore a couple of old machines I'm searching for fixed and/or removable disks. For one machine (a DG Nova 4 upgraded to MV7800) I would need an SMD disk or cartridge drive. For the other machine (a DEC PDP11), I need an SDI disk unit. If anybody has some to sell a reasonable price, please let me know. Thanks in advance Andrea

15 years, 1 month

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Have some Core memory made by Fabri-Tek - trying to find what system this came from.

by ragooman＠gmail.com

I have some Core memory from a guy who worked at Four Phase. They're made by Fabri-Tek and he remembers these being used in some IBM system - the best he can remember. The really cool thing about this is that it's assembled in a way where it folds up. I have some pics at the links below. I'm hoping somebody might know what system this came from. I also have closeup pics of the board, serial, and part numbers too. Then maybe I can find a manual for this. With some luck and some hacking, I can then wire an interface to this for my homebrew PDP-8. http://www.flickr.com/photos/ragooman/5788472143/in/photostream http://www.flickr.com/photos/ragooman/5788471265/in/photostream http://www.flickr.com/photos/ragooman/5789025174/in/photostream http://www.flickr.com/photos/ragooman/5788469637/in/photostream http://www.flickr.com/photos/ragooman/5788469117/in/photostream http://www.flickr.com/photos/ragooman/5789023250/in/photostream =Dan

15 years, 1 month

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SIX Button BA23 Front Panel

by jhfinedp3k＠compsys.to

For those of you who have heard about a mythical SIX BUTTON FRONT PANEL for the BA23, it does exist and actually works. NOTE that the first hard disk drive MUST be set to DS3 and the second hard disk drive MUST be set to DS4. You will almost certainly destroy the format for BOTH hard drives if they are both set the same. A SIX button front panel for a BA23 had been sitting on my bench of spare parts for more than a decade. I finally had an opportunity to use it yesterday for the first time to make a backup copy of an RD51 to a second RD51 Both READ ONLY buttons operate independently and can be turned off and on at any time - as expected, but now verified. There is a simple work around which requires a bit of soldering to a short piece of 10 pin cable, but then the READ ONLY button can't be used very well and is not independent for both drives. I imagine that Tony could add a bit more with a switch that would work much better. If you don't ever use the READ ONLY button, then the simple work around will be sufficient. While I first backed up the RD51 to a TK25 before I installed the SIX button front panel, being able to directly copy (and compare) the two hard disk drives (especially an RD51 which takes under 3 minutes) is much more convenient. This is just to let anyone who is interested that if you are using an RQDXn with a BA23, you actually are able to place two hard drives in the same box. If I am also using the RX50, then I usually run extra long cables out the front of the BA23 and keep the RX50 outside the BA23. If the BA23 backplane is full and you are also using a TK70, then I put both the RX50 and the TK70 inside the BA23 and use the extra long cables to the hard disk drives PLUS I use a spare PC power supply for the hard disk drives so that I don't overload the BA23 power supply. NOTE that my experiments using a BA123 and ESDI Hitachi hard drives which tend to run rather hot and also require their own fans (when I used an external PC power supply), I found that the TK70 MUST use the internal power supply from the BA123. I imagine that the same would apply to the BA23 box for both a TK50 and a TK70. Yes, I occasionally do work with real DEC hardware. Jerome Fine

15 years, 1 month

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Perkin Elmer 7300 Pro System Museum Quality!

by mail.list＠analog-and-digital-solutions.com

Here's one some of you might like. Perkin Elmer 7300 Pro System Museum Quality! http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=2738081449 Current bid US $9.99

15 years, 1 month

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What to do with Transputer Equipment?

by tshoppa＠wmata.com

> 10 GOTO 10 > Parallelize THAT. By the 1970's many timesharing and batch type compilers would kick out the embarrassingly useless programs without even trying (the environment well tested by millions of college student's programming attempts). I think the line between embarrassingly useless and embarrassingly parallel may not always be obvious. In many university-type batch processing systems, student programs that ran for more than 5 CPU seconds were summarily terminated as "obviously being stuck in some kind of infinite loop that the compiler can't catch yet". Just a few years later the same problems probably qualified for Grand Challenge grants :-) I remember when a very big fear of the US govt, was that the Japanese would wipe us out with Fifth Generation computers. (The WMD of the 80's) Boy, did that miss the mark. The Japanese came up with the Fuji Eagle (perhaps the most defining commodity-computing storage element ever) and today teraflop-class vector processors are in every fanboy's computer and they're called "graphics cards". Tim.

15 years, 1 month

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new Z180 based SBC beta testing

by lynchaj＠yahoo.com

new Z180 based SBC beta testing Michael Kerpan madcrow.maxwell at gmail.com On Mon, May 30, 2011 at 9:34 PM, Randy Dawson <rdawson16 at hotmail.com <http://www.classiccmp.org/mailman/listinfo/cctalk> > wrote: > I didn't know you could still get the TMS9918 > > Heart of the TI 99/4 > > A cool add on board for those of us that started with the TI9900 'University Board' trainer, a video card that plugged on top from Eyring Research I suspect that TMS9918s have to be sourced from dead MSX-1s or 99/4s. BTW, does anybody know if the Yamaha 9938/58 enhanced clones were pin-compatible? The extra colors and hardware acceleration might be nice to have if they'd fit... Mike -----REPLY----- Hi! The TMS9918A and AY-3-8910 are both optional components on the N8. They are both available through multiple vendors and consistently on eBay. They are relatively common and low cost if you look around a bit. The initial build and test team mostly used the bare Z8S180 CPU with its dual serial ports for debugging the boot ROM and CP/M. However, adding the video and audio are very handy debugging tools so I would not discount their usefulness. The V9935/V9958 are not pin compatible but are software backward compatible. They use the Shrink DIP-64 so they are about the same physical size but more complex to trace route. I won't consider upgrading the N8 to use the V9938 or V9958 until after our N8VEM S-100 VDP board comes out based on the V9938/V9958 and verifies the design. The separate N8 design is too far along for such a radical change and the TMS9918A is sufficient for usable NTSC composite video comparable to Commodore 64, Apple II, Atari 800, Jupiter ACE, Timex/Sinclair 1000, etc. Thanks and have a nice day! Andrew Lynch

15 years, 1 month

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new Z180 based SBC beta testing

by lynchaj＠yahoo.com

Hi! The new N8 (pronounced "innate") Z180 based SBC will be going into beta test at the end of June (estimated). This is what used to be called the N8VEM home computer which was mentioned a couple of times in the "FreeCP/M" thread on comp.os.cpm The N8 is an "all in one" design with Z8S180, 1 MB SRAM, 1 MB EPROM or 512KB Flash, dual serial ports, parallel printer port, PS/2 keyboard and mouse ports, RTC and NVSRAM (DS1302), composite NTSC video (TMS9918A), audio (AY-3-8910), dual joystick ports, IDE port, FDC port, SD socket, optional CSIO port, optional RS-485 networking port, and ECB bus expansion. It can be powered from a 9VDC wall supply or from a scrap PC power supply and fits on a 10"x6" PCB. The N8 is wrapping up its initial round of build and test and I will be ordering the second batch of prototype boards in one week. If you would be interested in participating as a beta tester please let me know. If there is enough interest I can expand the prototype board order to accommodate additional builders. I anticipate the final board to come out sometime this fall. Note this is a PCB only and you will have to source your own components to keep the costs low. Schematics, PCB layout, and part list including supplier information are available on the N8VEM wiki in the "N8" folder. Thanks and have a nice day! Andrew Lynch

15 years, 1 month

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What to do with Transputer Equipment?

by jkunz＠unixag-kl.fh-kl.de

Hi. In a recent dumpster diving session I rescued three "IMS B012" boards. These are "VMEbus Master Motherboards" with 16 slots for TRAMs (TRAnsputer Modules). The three B012 are equiped with a total of 29 TRAMs. Each TRAM consists of one T800 Transputer chip and 1 MB of DRAM. In addition there is a single B420 Vector Processing TRAM. So, what to do with this stuff? There is a lot of documentation out there on the net. This covers topics like theory of operation, programming languages, libraries, ... but no "how to get started with real hardware" guide. I have a VME chassis to put them in. Currently this chassis houses a MVME68k machine running NetBSD. But as I understand the documentation on the B012 it uses the VME form factor, but has no real VMEbus interface. So my hope to use the MVME68k (or one of my Sun3 / Sun4 VME machines) as a host is lost. It would have been cool to add the transputers as a co-processor to my Sun 4/110 or 4/610... If I can't get any use out of the Transputers I would like to trade them for some more ordinary QBus stuff for my PDP-11. I need a M8061 RLV12 RL01/RL02 disk controller, QBus memory (at least 1 MB) and perhaps a M7559 TQK70 TK70 controller. Alternatively a MVME160x PPC VME CPU board would be nice. -- \end{Jochen} \ref{http://www.unixag-kl.fh-kl.de/~jkunz/}

15 years, 1 month

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Data I/O manual sought in PDF format.

by geoffr＠zipcon.net

Looking for the Calibration/Service manual for the Unipak 2B unit, it has schematics in it and the calibration procedures. Since some of the adapters are unobtanium, with the service/cal manual it should be possible to reverse engineer some of the adapters :)

15 years, 1 month

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minuteman II computer D17C / was Re: minuteman guidance computer D17B

by jtp＠chinalake.com

> And then there is the D37D of the minuteman III. TI and the minuteman related bits: http://www.ti.com/corp/docs/company/history/timeline/defense/1960/docs/62-sp ecial_ics.htm D37D onboard was used in the initial minuteman III missile guidance set (MGS), the NS-20 configuration. It was about 1/4 the size of the D17, still contained a disk and was/is visually less interesting. It has been replaced with the 16-bit missile guidance computer (MGC) in the current NS-50 MGS. The MGS contained the computer, gyro system, amp and guidance set. In the NS-50 configuration the amp is part of the MGC. The MGS is contained in a slice that sits below the reentry system (warhead and associated support systems). Although START [treaty] dramatically reduced the number and capabilities, there are 400+ MMIII ICBMs that remain operational.

15 years, 1 month

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new Z180 based SBC beta testing

by lynchaj＠yahoo.com

Alexandre Souza - Listas pu1bzz.listas at gmail.com ________________________________ > The N8 is an "all in one" design with Z8S180, 1 MB SRAM, 1 MB EPROM or > 512KB > Flash, dual serial ports, parallel printer port, PS/2 keyboard and mouse > ports, RTC and NVSRAM (DS1302), composite NTSC video (TMS9918A), audio > (AY-3-8910), dual joystick ports, IDE port, FDC port, SD socket, optional > CSIO port, optional RS-485 networking port, and ECB bus expansion. It can > be powered from a 9VDC wall supply or from a scrap PC power supply and > fits > on a 10"x6" PCB. Are you building a "MSX on a card" ? :oD -----REPLY----- Hi, I am not sure what you mean by your comment but I'll assume it is a serious question I'll take a try at answering it. The intent of the N8 is to be a unique all in one home brew computer with the major functionality built in such as CPU, memory, video, audio, basic IO, and disk storage. Unlike the N8VEM SBC V2 most builders will probably not want to expand it using the ECB backplane although that is retained as an option. The N8 is a little like a combination of a high performance Z180 system like a SB-180, YASBEC, or P112 and an MSX computer. You can plug the N8 into an ECB backplane although it is much larger than the usual Eurocard 160x100mm format board. It has the Z8S180 CPU and a lot of integrated peripherals like the SB-180, YASBEC, and P112 although all DIP/PLCC plated through hole PCB construction for easy hobbyist assembly. Only a couple optional SMT parts are used. In theory the CPU is capable of 33 MHz operation although since the CPU clock is also used for serial baud rate calculations 29.4912 MHz or 24.576 MHz are probably realistic. The N8 has some MSX hardware compatibility and can run many MSX games particularly at BIOS level compatibility. However hardware compatibility is not 100% so it is not an MSX clone computer. There are several major differences such as the use of PS/2 keyboard and some IO peripherals are at differing locations. There are a lot of builder photos and videos present on the N8VEM wiki in the N8 folder so feel free to review them. Also the schematics, PCB layout, and parts list are also posted although not the most current version. Thanks and have a nice day! Andrew Lynch

15 years, 1 month

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FS: S100 transformers

by dgriffi＠cs.csubak.edu

I have five transformers marked "Morrow" that appear to be intended for building linear power supplies for S100 machines. If anyone wants one, they're $20 each shipped. -- David Griffith dgriffi at cs.csubak.edu A: Because it fouls the order in which people normally read text. Q: Why is top-posting such a bad thing? A: Top-posting. Q: What is the most annoying thing in e-mail?

15 years, 1 month

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What to do with Transputer Equipment?

by tshoppa＠wmata.com

> Well, yes. A lot of early attempts at *anything* kind of sucked. We > are now 20 odd years past the MPP "boom" of the mid 80s - I certainly > hope technology would have marched on during those years. If your problem isn't embarrassingly parallel, you're doing the wrong problem. Really. Tim.

15 years, 1 month

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Radio Shack Science Fair manuals

by kf5eqz＠cox.net

Brian, You had posted back in 2006 that you have the manual for the Radio Shack 300 in one Science Fair. Could you email me copy of the manual? It would be greatly appreciated. I haven't been able to find one online anywhere. Thanks so much. Grant

15 years, 1 month

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Dec M9401 module available

by quapla＠xs4all.nl

Found during sorting out some stuff, a Dec M9401. Text says 'mirror image cable connect module for LSI-11' It has 2 50 pin berg connectors Eur 10 + postage (send from NL) Msg me off list if you have questions Ed -- Dit is een HTML vrije email / This is an HTML free email.

15 years, 1 month

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TK25 Problem

by jhfinedp3k＠compsys.to

After 20 years, I need to use my TK25 again. I now remember why I switched to the TK70. I takes about 4 minutes every time I need to change a tape. Now there is a hardware problem. When I insert a different tape, the tension cycle shows a flashing (left side of the front panel) green light until the cycle is complete. I am confident that the light changed to solid green in the past, but now the light stays unlit and the unit is not ready. At first, I tried to boot RT-11, but no luck. By accident, I needed to turn off the power, and then turn it back on. The TK25 power was left on and as soon as the PDP-11 started the boot cycle, the green light on the TK25 turned solid green. After RT-11 had booted from the hard drive, the TK25 is ready and everything works. Any suggestions? Controller? Drive? Cable? Since it takes 4 minutes for the tension cycle, having to boot again (less than a minute) is not a deal breaker. Also, now just a boot turns the green light on. Thank you in advance for any suggestions? Jerome Fine

15 years, 1 month

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Collection is cleaned out, gone...

by trash3＠splab.cas.neu.edu

Hi all, Thanks for all the responses and offers. William Donzelli took everything, including all the manuals and handbooks. Quite a haul. My thanks to Will for keeping this stuff from the dump. If there was somehting particular you were looking for, you might want to send him a note. Joe Heck

15 years, 1 month

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D 17A FRONT PANEL CONSOLE

by rlaag＠pacbell.net

I HAVE A FRONT PANEL CONSOLE FOR A D 17A IF ANYONE NEEDS A PICTURE...

15 years, 1 month

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FS: Sony SDT-S9000 DDS3 External SCSI, also 2 CR-ROM caddies

by jtp＠chinalake.com

Sony SDT-S9000 DDS3 External SCSI drive Pulled from storage where it was bagged with desiccant. Clean, no dings/dents/fading I have a few cleaning tapes somewhere, all real media was shredded. Comes with a passive term (AMP type, DIGITAL logo). $30USD OBO Metro-west Boston, MA. Will ship from 01888 (~6lbs packed) Probably have a cable around if needed. Also have two CD-ROM caddies. Clean, usual tan, clear top w/ metal centre cap. Few bucks + shipping would be nice. -Jim (jtp at chinalake.com)

15 years, 1 month

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Tunne machine video

by csquared3＠tx.rr.com

For those interested, there is a new Tunne code breaker machine video available. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-13566878 Enjoy, Charlie Carothers

15 years, 1 month

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program for authoring ASCII animations?

by legalize＠xmission.com

Is anyone aware of an open source program for authoring ASCII animations and playing them back on different terminals at different baud rates with maximum fidelity? Ideally it would be something that stores the animation as meta data and not as raw escape codes for the terminal on which the animation was authored. -- "The Direct3D Graphics Pipeline" -- DirectX 9 draft available for download <http://legalizeadulthood.wordpress.com/the-direct3d-graphics-pipeline/> Legalize Adulthood! <http://legalizeadulthood.wordpress.com>

15 years, 1 month

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Debugging styles (was 'scopes)

by mark.kahrs＠gmail.com

You know, it all depends on the person. Personally, I call the logic analyzer the "tool of last resort" or "the dreaded logic analyzer". When you need it, you need it and nothing else will do. But often you can get a long way with a 'scope and a logic probe (in the ancient days when strobes were easily accessible). When you're debugging a 32 bit bus and you've got probes hanging all over the place, then you know you are deep in hell --- one of the circles that Dante didn't describe.

15 years, 1 month

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Loading software onto a real PDP11

by doug＠doughq.com

Hi everybody, I am sure that this has been solved, but I can't see a single cohesive way of doing it so I thought I would ask. I have a PDP11/04, with a RL01 disk drive. Ther are real physical hardware (about 40Kg each....) The hardware now operates - I can boot the custom software that is on one of the RL01 disk packs. It boots and displays "SYS5 READY~" then hangs - The system was used for a race track display board, so some of the custom hardware is not there. There are a couple of other packs that I have verified that don't boot, so what I would love to do is to load some useful software (RT11 or Basic or Forth....). I can not figure out how to actually do that - I have simulated images for SIMH, and can get SIMH to actually boot RT11, but I can't figure out how to actually move the data onto the nice, big, physical disk... Can somebody provide some advice? Doug (In sunny Canberra, Australia)

15 years, 1 month

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program for authoring ASCII animations?

by tshoppa＠wmata.com

Back in the early 80's we created such animations by writing Fortran codes that had hardcoded strings to set up the static parts and used DO loops to emit the escape characters to do the animation on the terminals of the time (first VT52 then VT100). As necessary for regulating the speed of playback, NUL's and other "do nothings" would get inserted along the way in the DO loops. In my circle it was, by definition, being done on a DEC machine (either a -11 or a VAX, sometimes taking advantage of easy portability of the Fortrans). Some guys did this on PDP-10's but the Hollerith strings were not so portable between -10's and the -11/VAX platforms. There wasn't really much abstraction going on in those programs. Fortran was great for do loops etc. but a little bit ugly when it came to emitting character strings. It was often a kludgey combination of Hollerith strings stored in integer variables or arrays, format statements, and (where we had F77 later on) CHARACTER datatypes. We had absolutely no inhibition at using a 4-byte integer to store an escape sequence and then through the ugliness of equivalence statements making one of those bytes be the index of a do loop, and emitting it as a Hollerith string. Usually we did whatever was easiest so it was very common to see multiple approaches mixed together often inside the same format statement :). After making a file containing the escape sequences for an animation it was "released" by putting it in a public directory and/or copying it from site to site via DECNET. VMS Mail could (for a while) be used to send ASCII animations in the body of the message but most sysadmins eventually disabled control characters in message bodies (details of this... oooh I used to know but it escapes me now.) After my time (e.g. by the late 80's and early 90's) the animations were done by younger guys who knew C and some of them even used termcap libraries.

15 years, 1 month

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Edusystem-25 BASIC (was Re: PDP-11/03)

by ethan.dicks＠gmail.com

On Wed, May 25, 2011 at 11:29 AM, Dave McGuire <mcguire at neurotica.com> wrote: > On 5/25/11 9:34 AM, Jerome H. Fine wrote: >> >> You are either unaware of Multi-User Basic under RT-11 >> or you may have not remembered. > > ?About MU-Basic, another listmember just sent me a copy. ?I've not seen it > in about twenty years, and never on one of my own systems. ?I know what I'll > be doing this afternoon! :-) This thread got me looking for the PDP-8 equivalent (thinking back to Dave Ahl's original (pre-MSBASIC) edition of "101 BASIC Computer Games") and I found this... http://www.bitsavers.org/bits/DEC/pdp8/papertapeImages/russ.ucs.indiana.edu… ... but every copy I've found has what looks like some corruption halfway through (just below the label "FOGO2"). Has anyone ever gotten a working version of this? The comments up top suggest a rare but not-impossible-to-assemble set of hardware requirements (especially in emulation)... /EDUSYSTEM 25 BASIC IS FOR THE PDP-8/E, -8/F, -8/M, -8/I, -8/L WITH /12K OR MORE MEMORY AND EITHER THE DC02 OR PT08(KL8E) OPTION /AND TC08 DECTAPE CONTROLLER WITH TU56 OR TWO TU55 TRANSPORT(S) /NOTE: START ADDRESS IS 15200. A bit of brief reading of the code suggests that it could handle up to 8 terminals. I don't happen to have a TC08 (only a TD8E), so it's unlikely I'll ever take it any farther than emulation, presuming an intact version of it is still floating around out there. -ethan

15 years, 1 month

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Varian Data Machines

by keith＠smartdev.demon.co.uk

Hi, I used to be a field service engineer for VDM in Europe. Did you get the 620L100 working? Was the Tektronix a 611? If so it could have been an early nuclear medicine system. Regards, Keith -- Keith

15 years, 1 month

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identify this equipment?

by legalize＠xmission.com

OK, you guys were so good at identifying that other equipment from its photo, how about these? They look like HP cabinets, but I didn't feel like digging them out to look closer, just snapped a photo. <http://www.xmission.com/~legalize/tmp/Photo_BC168B00-4C04-E083-3201-B6DAC37…> -- "The Direct3D Graphics Pipeline" -- DirectX 9 draft available for download <http://legalizeadulthood.wordpress.com/the-direct3d-graphics-pipeline/> Legalize Adulthood! <http://legalizeadulthood.wordpress.com>

15 years, 1 month

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OT: HRFS information

by cclist＠sydex.com

I've got what I believe to be a drive with a Vxworks HRFS filesystem on it. Anyone know of a quick way to verify this (by peering at the raw data)? Are there any third-party utilities that might let me mount this under Linux or (shudder) Windows? TIA, Chuck

15 years, 1 month

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Ancient VMS for an ancient VAX emulator

by madcrow.maxwell＠gmail.com

If you follow the SIMH list at all, you may have heard that the preliminary version of a VAXstation 2000 emulator has been released upon the world. Judging from what I've heard on the VMS newsgroup, a system like that really works best with an older (4.x-era) version of VMS along with the VWS workstation software. I've been able to find DECtape II images of an upgrade only version of VMS 4.7 for use with an 11/750, but can't seem to find anything that has the whole hog? Does anybody know of a place where TK50 images of VMS/MicroVMS 4.7 as well as a few other basics like VWS and maybe Pascal or Fortran or BASIC might be found? Ideally, I'd like to get the setup process written up and a few screenshots made for the curious, so any help that can get me started would be most apprectiated. Mike

15 years, 1 month

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Borland Turbo Assembler doc? Ping Al Kossow

by vintagecoder＠aol.com

This is sort of addressed to Al but if anybody else has a scanned copy or knows where to find one that would be great. Al, do you have a copy of the Borland Turbo Assembler doc for v5? I check bitsavers once in a while and have not found it. Do you have any Borland doc you have not put up on the site and if so do you have a list and any ETA? Thank you. -- +------------------------------------------------------------------------+ | Vintage Coder America Online ivagntrpbqre at nby.pbz <ROT13> | | | | Collecting: DOS assemblers, compilers, & books (Z80, M68X, 6502, 808X) | | Software & doc for IBM S/360 through OS/390 | | | | Can't find: Ada 95 compilers for MVS/ESA & Solaris (Sparc) | | PL/I X Optimizing Compiler for MVS, APL/SV for MVS | |---------------------------------------+--------------------------------| | Powered by Slackware 64 & Solaris 10 | Powered by Hercules | |=======================================+================================| | PGP Key 4096R 0x1CB84BEFC73ACB32 Encrypted email preferred | | PGP Fingerprint 5C1C 3AEB A7B2 E6F7 34A0 2870 1CB8 4BEF C73A CB32 | +------------------------------------------------------------------------+

15 years, 1 month

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Loading software onto a real PDP11

by captainkirk359＠gmail.com

As an idea to get RT-11 onto your RL01; why not try using a TU58 emulator, with oversized tape images? There's a modified driver file out there - very easy to find too - that'll let you have RT-11 think the DECtape II tapes are the size of an RL02, which will let you boot the RT-11 V5.3 installation pack on the emulator. From there, just install RT-11 to the real RL01 as you would normally install RT-11. It's simple to setup (and if you don't want to fiddle around with disk images, asking will get you one from me or whoever else has done it this way), and all you need on the PDP-11 side of things is a second serial line. Also, it's relatively painless, as the RT-11 install isn't all that difficult. (Honestly, the entire installation of RT-11 via the emulated, oversized, TU58 would be: INITIALIZE/BACKBLOCK DL0: COPY/SYSTEM SY:*.* DL0:*.* COPY/BOOT:DL DL0:RT11SJ.SYS DL0: BOOT DL0: And that's it, you're in RT-11 SJ on your real RL01, SYSGEN it if you wish to tailor your RT-11 install.) Cheers.

15 years, 1 month

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