I have an LNW-80 Model I. If my memory is correct, this unit will run CP/M.
Can anyone confirm that?
And, if so... Can someone point me to where I can get disk images?
Thanks!
Al
Keansburg, NJ
> That's a pile of random loktals. What I'm talking about is a set of the
> five tubes called for in an All-American-Five design. I might have to
> rewire this thing for regular octals.
14Q7, 14A7, 14B6, 50A5, 35Y4? All easily available at any of the places
that have a broad stock of tubes. e.g. ESRC, Antique Electronic Supply,
etc. One of my specialties is the loctal Zentih Transoceanic (8G005) which
some describe as rare but really they're as common as dirt. I was
surprised that many of the stocks of loctal tubes are recentish (60's,
70's) Eastern European production - I had always thought of loctals
as a Philco thing of the 40's.
The business sense in dealing with something that hasn't been made
in decades (or indeed more than half a century) is contrary to most
business rules of thunb. To have a profitable resale business as a rule
of thumb you have to be able to turn your inventory over several times
a year. Anything not sold after a few months has to be slashed in price
or simply thrown out to make room for the new stuff. The tube resellers
have to work differently - their stock is already decades old. It's not
a business I'm in but I can appreciate some of the challenges. I think
the business world of tubes has seen some tumultousness recently, what
with the US Govt unloading huge stockpiles of many tubes and the de-
nationalization of Eastern European/Russian factories, but may be
stabilizing a bit.
Tim.
Does anyone have experience navigating the DECUS archive at digiater.nl?
Under this directory: http://digiater.nl/openvms/decus/vax000/
is this file: 11spp_87.001
which contains this reference:
11-SP-42 Symposium Tape from the RSTS SIG, Spring 1980, Chicago
Version: Spring 1980
Does the archive contain the contents of this tape? I would rather not
have to download the large 500MB+ ZIPs to find the needle in the
haystack and I am not sure I understand how the "indexing" scheme
works.
I looked in here:
http://digiater.nl/openvms/decus/zips_unix_attributes/
but I cannot match these files with those listed under /vax000/
Any tips or directions would be appreciated.
thanks,
nigel.
www.retroComputingTasmania.com
On Tue Feb 16 11:56:45 CST 2010, Dave McGuire wrote:
> That's it...worked like a champ.
Thank you Dave, that worked for me too; applying your tips might now
allow us to try some of the other layered products (C and COBOL -
although I notice the C TAP has a AUTOIN.COM file for auto-install so
I suppose we invoke that, much like the F77 install).
I used BP2 V2.6, only because I understood that version was intended
for RSTS/E V9.6 - I will try BP2 V2.7 and see if it is stable on V9.6.
I am still to discover which of the TAPs of RSTS/E V9.7 are worth
trying.
One surprise I encountered though on rebooting RSTS/E, BASIC/BP2
throws an error:
$ basic/bp2
?Unable to attach to resident library
?Can't find file or account
I fixed this by executing these two commands (found in BP2INS.CMD):
$ INSTALL/LIBRARY/NOADDRESS B26SHR
$ INSTALL/LIBRARY/NOADDRESS B26SH1
Then $ BASIC/BP2 works again.
So it is usual RSTS/E practice to add the install/library commands to
[0,1]START.COM to "permanently" add the layered product to RSTS/E? I
expected the install process to do this for me.
Sorry, I do not have 11SP42. I think I had it confused in my head with
11SP47 (GCE's Portacalc of course).
Lots of the SIG symposia tapes are a kind of
"best of" collection with contents repeated or improved from year to year.
Is there something specific you need from 11SP42? If so it's probably
on some other DECUS tape I can help you find.
Tim.
> Is there a good source for these things (the TVs and the tubes)
> today? I imagine people threw them away mostly. If these are
> difficult to find and/or maintain, I've considered trying to create a
> replica console television from a newer set, maybe even something
> with an LCD in it. I'd probably prefer an original though.
brian
You can try thrift stores although the ones out here in California tend
not to take them anymore. You can also check with a TV repair place as
they tend to get questions from people about what to do with their old sets.
Chuck Guzis wrote:
>On 12 Feb 2010 at 15:30, Jeff Walther wrote:
>> Anyone have a datasheet for the MCM62940 (MCM62940AFN14) static RAM?
>> It's not strictly off topic, as it's from the 256K level 2 cache of a
>> computer from the mid-90s (NuBus PPC Macintoshes).
> Apparently, the MCM62486 is pin compatible and there are datasheets
> for that online:
> http://pdf.chinaicmart.com/86B/MCM62486BFN11_1159896.pdf
> --Chuck
Thanks you for the information, Chuck. They should be very similar. I
imagine the difference is that the XX486 version has adaptations for the
80486 methods of addressing memory, while the 940 version is more oriented
for the Motorola family of processors. At least, I think I read
something to that effect somewhere--maybe in the description of the
associated tag RAM.
Anyway, I've emailed Brent and hope to pay to ship the whole databook.
If anyone else decides they want to order the 4000 soldered down static
RAMs I referenced (they have 19 batches in stock), I can scan the
datasheet after I have the book--if I can get the scanner working again.
Darned glass fell out because the manufacturer's double sided tape got old
(it's more than 10 years old too). I tried a 3M tape
<http://www.shop3m.com/3m-high-performance-double-coated-tape-9088-fl3znfcqj…>
that looked promising but it didn't hold. I'm going to try again and
heat the tape and give it three days to set. On the first try I didn't
see the information that the adhesive needs to set for three days.
Who knew that one needs to read the datasheet on *adhesive tape* in order
to use it properly?
Jeff Walther
Pontus Pihlgren <pontus at Update.UU.SE> wrote:
> Hi All.
>
> I just stumbled upon this video of a computer tablet:
>
> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aPC_w9yYe5M
>
> They show a VAX-11/780 with RP06 and TU70 (I think) and claim its doing
> the graphics. But I'm curious, what terminal and software is used? Does
> anyone have a clue?
Nice stuff.
Interesting to see the speculations of people around here.
The tape drive is a TU77 or TU78, which you should know Pontus... ;-)
My guess would be a TU77 though.
Anyway, no, the graphics is not DEC. And no, it's not a serial
connection. If you ever tried doing bitmap graphics over a serial line
you should all realize that a high resolution picture like that would
take a very long time to download over a serial line, even at 19200. And
by 1986 you didn't have any faster serial ports on a Unibus-machine.
Also, DEC didn't have any high-resolution hardware for Unibus. The
closes was the VS11, VS60 and that kind of stuff. And those don't get
close to the type of resolution, number of colors, or speed of this
thing. DEC did play with a few tablets for the VAX stations by this
time, but hadn't come that far.
So, yes, this is a third party thing.
The two companies that springs to my mind here are Intergraph, who did
CAD systems based on VAXen. They usually based their systems on the
VAX-11/750, but I don't think there was any technical reason that an
11/780 shouldn't be possible as well.
The other is Evans and Sutherland, who specialized in high performance
graphic subsystems. My guess would be that this was some E&S graphic
system, but it's hard to tell, since I never actually saw any of their
stuff in real life. But I think it was/is a whole bunch of cards on the
Unibus, and video cables to a color monitor. And of course input ports
for keyboard and tablet.
There might have been other players around as well.
But I know of no DEC hardware that could produce better than aboout
256x256 on Unibus machines, and only with a very limited palette.
And it's definitely not a VT-whatever. The "best" VT-terminal, in terms
of graphic is the VT340, which have a fair resolution of about 240x800
(roughly from memory), but at most 16 colors, out of a palette of 4096.
But it's also newer than 1986, and don't look like that at all.
Johnny
--
Johnny Billquist || "I'm on a bus
|| on a psychedelic trip
email: bqt at softjar.se || Reading murder books
pdp is alive! || tryin' to stay hip" - B. Idol
Has anyone managed to get any of the Layered Products installed on
RSTS/E V9.X (X >= 6)? Aside from F77 for which there was a declaration
of success here:
http://mailman.trailing-edge.com/pipermail/simh/2008-March/001719.html
I tried with BASIC Plus 2 V2.6 (with RSTS/E 9.6) and can see that the
tape appears to be a BACKUP INSTAL.BCK set, but RESTORE is refusing to
work with the tape (TPC file).
Does anyone happen to have the BP2 installation guide or tips on how
the layered products are generally installed on RSTS/E?
A related question: Can anyone explain what a field-test versions of
RSTS/E means? is it a release candidate (in modern parlance) or a
beta? I see RSTS/E V10 but it is annotated with field-test so I assume
it was not the final shipping version.
thanks.
www.retroComputingTasmania.com
I have several of the DECUS sig tapes as images, and also extracted files.
I think 11SP42 is one of them. Like most of the 70's and 80's post-paper-tape RSTS stuff it's a DOS-11 style magtape.
Will put it up on ftp.trailing-edge.com<ftp://ftp.trailing-edge.com> tonight.
Tim.
Anyone happen to know how the Vax 11/780 and the single-wide corporate peripheral cabinet are joined together? The Vax has good casters, the peripheral cabinet has stupid casters, and they're joined at the hip. Are there hidden bolts or latches, or some kind of joiner panel like on the 11/750?
-Ian
Hi folks,
I arranged to get one of those office machines that do everything. And scanned a box of documents.
This is how it looks when I use it:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=70m0ZdcFOuE
If anybody has some money to help me funding my copy machine - please let me know..... It cost me
most of what I could spend at the moment.
I uploaded the documents to:
http://pdp8.hachti.de/newscan/box1
Feel free to take what's needed and archive it. My files will not stay there for forever!
Here's a list of the box1 directory:
************************************
> hachti at sumpf64:~/scanner/ready/box1$ ls *
> ampex:
> 5104036-10 TM-2 Technical Manual for Siemens+Halske April 1965 .pdf
>
> cdc:
> 41247200 Rev. B 9465 Disk Storage Drive Maintenance Manual.pdf 41248800 Rev. D 9465 Disk Storage Drive Schematics.pdf
>
> dartmouth_dtss:
> 20100212100751305.pdf 20100212101335486.pdf
>
> emulex:
> CD1151007 Rev. B CS11_F1 Technical Manual.pdf
>
> facit:
> PE1000 Technical Description, German.pdf UP631001 FACIT PE 1000 Paper Tape Reader Spare Parts.pdf
> UP630201 FACIT PE 1000 Paper Tape Reader Manual.pdf
>
> honeywell:
> BJ67A Rev. 1 Series 600_6000 FORTRAN Addendum A.pdf
> BJ67 Rev. 1 Series 600_6000 FORTRAN Manual.pdf
> BP82 Rev. 0 Series 600_6000 Biomedical (BMD) Statistical Programs Reference Manual.pdf
> BS06 Rev. 1 Series 600_6000 Jovial Language Manual.pdf
> BS11A Rev. 0 Series 600_6000 Algol Addendum A.pdf
> BS11 Rev. 0 Series 600_6000 Algol Manual.pdf
> D43A Rev. 0 Series 600_6000 Time-Sharing Applicatons Library Guide I - Mathematics, Addendum A.pdf
> D43 Rev. 0 Series 600_6000 Time-Sharing Applicatons Library Guide I - Mathematics.pdf
> DA44A Rev. 0 Series 600_6000 Time-Sharing Applications Library Guide II - Statistics, Addendum A.pdf
> DA44 Rev. 0 Series 600_6000 Time-Sharing Applications Library Guide II - Statistics.pdf
> DA45A Rev. 2 Series 600_6000 Time-Sharing Applications Library Guide III - Industry, Addendum A.pdf
> DA45B Rev. 2 Series 600_6000 Time-Sharing Applications Library Guide III - Industry, Addendum B.pdf
> DA45 Rev. 2 Series 600_6000 Time-Sharing Applications Library Guide III - Industry.pdf
> DA64 Rev. 1 Series 600_6000 Time-Sharing Applications Library Guide IV - Business+Finance.pdf
>
> plessey:
> PM-TC11 Drawing Package.pdf
>
> xerox:
> 190572C Rank Xerox extended Algol-60 Language and Operations Reference Manual.pdf
> 191692A Xerox Universal Time-Sharing System (UTS) Users Guide.pdf
> 900907E Xerox Control-Program-Five (CP-V) Time-Sharing Reference Manual.pdf
> 901677A-1(9-71) Xerox FORTRAN Debug Package (FDP) Revision Package.pdf
> 901677A Xerox FORTRAN Debug Package (FDP) Reference Manual.pdf
> 901733C Sigma 9 Computer Reference Manual.pdf
> 901765A Xerox Operating System (XOS) Batch Processing Reference Manual.pdf
> hachti at sumpf64:~/scanner/ready/box1$ du -h
> 41M ./facit
> 396M ./xerox
> 511M ./honeywell
> 123M ./plessey
> 124M ./ampex
> 32M ./emulex
> 146M ./cdc
> 110M ./dartmouth_dtss
> 1,5G .
******************************
Best wishes,
Philipp
--
http://www.hachti.de
>
> From: Al Kossow <aek at bitsavers.org>
> Subject: Re: Docs found: Some docs scanned
> To: General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts
> <cctalk at classiccmp.org>
> Message-ID: <4B7842F7.5080001 at bitsavers.org>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-15; format=flowed
>
> On 2/14/10 10:04 AM, Philipp Hachtmann wrote:
>
>> ampex: 5104036-10 TM-2
>>> Technical Manual for Siemens+Halske April 1965 .pdf
>
>
> That will make the B-205 fans happy.
> The TM-2 manual has been difficult to find.
When it eventually appears on BitSavers it will be interesting to compare with the half inch (TM4) version I have. Could you please tell me (or the list) when it goes up.
Roger Holmes.
At 05:19 PM 2/15/2010 -0500, you wrote:
>On Mon, Feb 15, 2010 at 5:17 PM, Tom Peters <tpeters at mixcom.com> wrote:
> > A friend is selling her laser disc stuff as she's moving out of state soon.
> > Info is below; please pass this along to others and contact Carol directly
> > if you are interested.
>
>Could you at least say out of which state?
>
>-ethan
I do apologize. The posting was originally to a much smaller audience who
could safely assume Southeastern Wisconsin. When owner asked me to post it,
I should have edited it more carefully.
This equipment is in the Milwaukee metro area.
-----
324. [Philosophy] If you see a man approaching you with the obvious intent of
doing you good, you should run for your life. --"Thoreau's Law"
--... ...-- -.. . -. ----. --.- --.- -...
tpeters at nospam.mixcom.com (remove "nospam") N9QQB (amateur radio)
"HEY YOU" (loud shouting) WEB: http://www.mixcom.com/tpeters
43? 7' 17.2" N by 88? 6' 28.9" W, Elevation 815', Grid Square EN53wc
WAN/LAN/Telcom Analyst, Tech Writer, MCP, CCNA, Registered Linux User 385531
A friend is selling her laser disc stuff as she's moving out of state soon.
Info is below; please pass this along to others and contact Carol directly
if you are interested.
LASER DISC PLAYER AND DISC COLLECTION FOR SALE
I have a Pioneer Compact Disc/Laservision Player, CLD-909 w/Digital Sound
which plays compact disc (cd) and both 8" and 12" laser discs.
I have about 50 laser discs - Disney (Snow White, Bambi, Aladdin, Sleeping
Beauty), allot of Monty Python series & movies, classics like Cassablanca,
African Queen, The Marx Brothers, Terminator 2, ET, Unforgiven, Prizi's
Honor, Battle of the Bulge, TWO Looney Tunes anthologies/sets, Airplane,
Jewel of the Nile, Back to the Future, Goonies, Labrynth, Naked Gun 2 1/2,
A Fish Called Wanda, Last of the Mohicans, Cocoon, Untouchables, Moonraker,
Wayne's World, Neighbors, Hunt for the Red October, The Pink Panther;
Planes, Trains & Automobiles; Return of the Jedi, ...
I would like $250 cash for the entire collection & the player. Everything
is in good order, has always been stored properly, so that's a great
price/value.
I am packing for a move so I need to sell this by Feb. 21st/Feb. 22nd.
Thank you!
Carol A. Roen
carol.roen at att.net
-----
177. [Commentary] "Television is a medium because it is neither rare nor well
done." --Fred Friendly, former head of CBS News
--... ...-- -.. . -. ----. --.- --.- -...
tpeters at nospam.mixcom.com (remove "nospam") N9QQB (amateur radio)
"HEY YOU" (loud shouting) WEB: http://www.mixcom.com/tpeters
43? 7' 17.2" N by 88? 6' 28.9" W, Elevation 815', Grid Square EN53wc
WAN/LAN/Telcom Analyst, Tech Writer, MCP, CCNA, Registered Linux User 385531
Rich wrote:
> Tim wrote:
>> PDF's are fundamentally a VECTOR format. A vector format designed around
>> typography where the most natural unit since long before computers has been
>> the point (=1/72 inch).
> Technically, 100/7227 inch, which is to say, there are 72.27 points per inch
> in typography prior to the creation of the Macintosh. (I don't believe that
> Postscript originally used a 1/72 measure, and TeX certainly didn't, so I can't
> just say "non-computerized typography".)
I'm pretty sure when I learned typography the numbers I was taught was that Cicero
was 6 lines to the inch, and that it was a 12 point font. Maybe neither of those numbers
are actually correct. That was all before I had used computers although I think it's
possible that Postscript was a glimmer in someone's eye by that point.
I briefly used an IBM Composer and I'm pretty sure that defined a point = 1/72 inch before
postscript ever did, although it seems likely that it didn't originate the 1/72 measure
either.
Most computer line printers were six lines to the inch, 66 lines to 11 inch page. This
was set by geartrain if nothing else :-). I think the Model 33 is the same.
> If you think *this* mailing list goes off-topic from time to time, you should
> check out the Letpress mailing list, for metal type and ink folks.
Knuth's Metafont book closely brought together for me, for the first time, computers
and typography, and they've been closely linked for me ever since. I could've sword
that I read that a point = 1/72 inch in there but despite some desparate scouring
he uses "point" as base unit with absolutely no attempt to map it into inches.
Tim.
> Thanks for the lesson, but I am quite aware of those points already and
> I was pretty clear when I posted and said that my source documentation
> was a raster image. I'm using PDF for ease of distribution.
> Also, I object to the redefinition of "100% zoom" in Acrobat Reader,
> which was the source of my confusion last night. I was looking for
> confirmation that this is indeed the behavior that PDF viewers have.
I wasn't really trying to be pedantic. If you really want tools that natively and
in the user interface constantly refer back to pixels in the original scan, then
you really have to stick to formats that are innately raster based.
TIFF, PNG, etc.
I maintain my scanned images as PNG's. I used to have a real hatred for
PDF's as a way of showing raster bitmaps but have learned to
respect my enemy in this case :-).
(Incidentally I am still a big fan of SVG despite Adobe's abandonment of
it.)
I think at least some of the TIFF formats can contain tags for how
large each pixel was in the original source. Don't know how standard
vs proprietary these tags are.
Good multi-page PDF viewers are freely available. The free, distributed with
the OS, TIFF viewers by contrast are perhaps even suckier than they were
a decade ago.
Tim.
> When I say 'Zoom 100%', I expect each bit of my image to be displayed
> with no scaling. Well, Acrobat Reader doesn't work that way. AR
> assumes screen resolution, so what was a 400 dpi bitmap at 100% zoom on
> AR gets downsampled to 72dpi for display purposes. To get back to see
> individual pixels you have to zoom to 555% or something nutty like that.
>
> I tried it and it looks like all of my pixels are there. Can anybody
> else confirm this (bad) behavior?
Bad? PDF's are fundamentally a VECTOR format. A vector format designed around typography where the most natural unit since long before computers has been the point (=1/72 inch).
PDF documents, it so happens, can include bitmap images at arbitrary scalings.
Vector formats natively have NO KNOWLEDGE of a pixel and in fact when you include a bitmap image in a PDF (which is kinda bastardized because it does have some actually quite thorough bitmap support) it can be scaled so that a pixel in the bitmap is any arbitrary size in number of points.
If there was any "bad behavior" it may have been... Adobe putting support in PDF's for bitmaps?
Most current display devices just happen to be raster formats showing bitmaps, but my gut feeling is that this shortcoming will be corrected and we will go back to vector display devices Real Soon Now. How soon? In fact I'm going to go use my Tek 4014 right now :-)
Tim.
I can't remember who wanted them but I have the HP DraftMaster MX Plotter User's Guide and theHP DraftMaster Plotter SX Plus, ,RX Plus and MX Plus User's Guide if you still need them. Covers everything from loading paper through serial communications setup to command set and even 8 types of power cords.
Hi guys,
I'm after a program that can convert TIFF files into PDFs. I've seen
Eric Smith's "Tumble" app, which works great... but only for B&W TIFFs.
While I can use Imagemagick to convert the images to B&W, that defeats
the point: there are photos on the scanned pages, and I'd rather like to
keep them as photos, not black splodges.
Also, has anyone come up with a "best practice guide" for manual
scanning? At the moment I'm scanning like this:
B&W text only: 600dpi, black and white, threshold=50%.
Text + photos: 600dpi, greyscale, then despeckle and scale down to
300dpi.
Obviously if there are better ways (in terms of quality and/or speed)
I'd like to know before I scan a ton of testgear manuals...
Also, does anyone know of an app that can take the PDF file, OCR it and
then insert the text as a background layer while leaving the image
alone? I'm pretty sure Acrobat can do this, but like most Adobe
software, the price tag is somewhat... eye-watering. "If you have to ask
how much it costs, you can't afford it."
Thanks,
--
Phil.
classiccmp at philpem.me.uk
http://www.philpem.me.uk/
the issue was definitely normal electrolytic capacitors. The Dell GX-270 desktop computer was one of the victims. We had over 100 of these and Dell replaced nearly every motherboard due to this specific manufacturer's defect. The electrolytic caps used around the cpu would bulge on the top and in some cases burp out electrolyte out of the top. I didn't research the actual cap manufacturer.
best regards, Steve Thatcher
-----Original Message-----
>From: Randy Dawson <rdawson16 at hotmail.com>
>Sent: Feb 14, 2010 10:45 AM
>To: classic computers <cctalk at classiccmp.org>
>Subject: RE: Getting to dislike tantalum caps
>
>
>Dwight,
>
>There was some criminal stuff going on with electrolytes in this era, from the asian manufacturers. Almost everybody associated with the type of electronics that was not 'throw away' remembers this. I had a note from a pro video repair shop, saying that to get a $15,000 pro video camera back in operation would require the replacement of all the tant caps, as they were all destined to fail, and yet another trip to the shop.
>
>Anybody else recall this? There was one chemical manufacturer pinpointed, that was supplying XR7 or whatever electrolyte to all the manufacturers. They shortcut their process and cut costs, and several years of electronic products were affected.
>
>Please pots your analog computer work! Have you read the Electronic Research Associates books out there (IIRC)
>
>Randy
Cameron or others, not sure if you're interested, but it's time to get
rid of the Tandy PC-4 and all the accessories:
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=290402539975&ssPageName=…
I'll be putting a Northstar Horizon Z80 card and an Horizon HRAM5 card
up tomorrow, if anyone is interested.
Jim
--
Jim Brain, Brain Innovations (X)
brain at jbrain.com
Dabbling in WWW, Embedded Systems, Old CBM computers, and Good Times!
Home: http://www.jbrain.com
I've been talking with HP about obtaining VMS sources for the 6.2 release, which we're running on our VAX-11/780-5. Interestingly, they tell me that source for the original release is available, but not the 'updates' which I believe is the patches issued for this particular release. Does anyone on the list have any experience with these subsequent update releases? If so, please respond to me privately at iank at vulcan.com. I'd like to understand what is or isn't included and how they interacted with the original release. Thanks -- Ian
I had excellent results asking for the Matrox QRGB-Alpha board, so I am
trying again.
I notice that there is a section in bitsavers with one manual for Codar
boards,
but not the item I am looking for. There is also a Qtimer II Model 120
which
is not the specific manual I am looking for, but might be useful.
Does anyone know where I might be able to locate a Qtimer II Model 102
manual?
Sincerely yours,
Jerome Fine
Is it possible that you still may have the 200 in 0ne manual for the radio
shack 28-249 electronics kit? I've been searching for a while for this &
would like to turn the kit over to one of the grandchildren but I have no
manual. I realize your post is extremely old but it's worth a shot. regards
Glenn
Hi All,
I'm having a clear out of the loft in the face of an imminent house
move and I need to compress the collection a bit.
On offer are:
1 x Panasonic SCSI LT-7010E Magneto-Optical Drive, no media, hence
never tested but ID'd properly when SCSI hooked up.
1 x Syquest SCSI 5.25 Drive plus 2 x SQ400 44MB cartridges. In working
order when last used.
Both in Chester, UK.
Free if collected. I will investigate shipping costs if anyone is
really keen. MO drive is pretty heavy though.
Cheers,
Pete
--
Pete Edwards
"Prediction is very difficult, especially if it's about the future" - Niels Bohr
On 12 Feb 2010, at 18:00, cctalk-request at classiccmp.org wrote:
>
> Message: 11
> Date: Fri, 12 Feb 2010 15:59:49 +0000
> From: Pete Edwards <stimpy.u.idiot at gmail.com>
> Subject: Re: The value of assembler language programmers [was RE:
> Algol vs Fortran was RE: VHDL vs Verilog]
> To: "General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts"
> <cctalk at classiccmp.org>
> Message-ID:
> <11c909eb1002120759u37cef5e6x4d7e5470b6678d56 at mail.gmail.com>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1
>
> On 12 February 2010 08:00, Dave McGuire <mcguire at neurotica.com> wrote:
>> On Feb 10, 2010, at 3:15 PM, Roger Holmes wrote:
>>>
>>> the BBC web site. Oh and a couple of weeks ago I posted an old video of it
>>> on U-Tube if anyone is interested the URL is
>>> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VsBPuUJPvKg or just Google ICT 1301 and
>>> select video. I hope to post a better one later in the year.
>>
>> ?Man oh MAN that's a beautiful machine.
>>
>> ? ? ? ? -Dave
>>
>
> Seconded! That's an awesome piece of kit Roger.
> I *especially* like the Forbidden Planet noises at the end.
> What is that audio signal derived from?
Thanks to all who responded, I think you will like it even more when you see the new layout with 8 decks in a row, four of which worked at last years open day.
The sound is produced by executing a very small loop of three or four instructions many times which contains a (decimal) multiply instruction, the duration of which varies with one of its operands. Zero takes almost no time, 555555555555 takes longest because for each digit it can either count down for 1,2,3,4 or 5 or count up for 6,7,8 and 9. There is an increment in the loop hence the time varies with each iteration. A conditional branch at the end of the loop flips a bit which drives the speaker.
In the demo software being run in the video there is also a small test for the bottom 2 or 3 digits of incremented value being zero which allows it to branch off and drive the peripherals from time to time. This does no seem to affect the sound too much though it is not quite as pure as the original 'ghost' program. From time to time (but not in the video) it does a bubble sort of a block of data read from tape which produces a more recognisable 'computer' type sound.
I once keyed in a short sequence of jumps activated by some of the switches on the front panel. The longer loops worked fine but there seemed to be a problem with the top note. There happened to be a young lady present and she said she could hear it fine, it seems it was simply beyond the frequency range of my old ears. I think it would flip the bit 1000000 / 12 times a second, so dividing by another 2 that would be 41.666 kHz. The machine has a nominal 1MHz clock derived from a 250kHz timing track recorded on the last drum accessed and the shortest instruction is 12 clock cycles.
As another thread is discussing cats, I have to add that the first time I saw my 1301, there was a cat asleep on the main power stabiliser rack which was stuffed full of 6 inch by 4 inch by 4 inch heat sinks for the GET875 transistors used in parallel to regulate the various voltage DC supplies. It was the rack which was stuffed, not the cat by the way, the cat got up later and played with my host's hands as he tried to operate the main control panel.
> From: Russ Bartlett <arcbe2001 at yahoo.com>
>
> I worked on one of these systems? 400 words IAS , magnet drum, and 4 tape decks .Programming was MPL.? We would use a card sorter (off-line) to save on sort time for a tape sort/merge process.
You've got it, though I didn't know they ever shipped them with just 400 words. I knew it was theoretically possible to have just one 'barn door' but that must have been incredibly restrictive, especially on a tape machine where you need I/O buffers for Data Transfer Unit to do what we now call DMA into/from. Yes it could be programmed in MPL (Mnemonic or machine code or TAS (Thirteen hundred Assembly System) or MAC (Manchester Auto Code) and later there was COBOL and ICT's attempt to make COBOL more bearable, RapidWrite.
Do you mind telling me where this 1300 or 1301 was? I don't suppose you know its serial number do you? I am trying to identify as many machines as I can, especially so I can find out how many were made. Mine is number 6 and I have parts of numbers 58, 75 and 166 but I suspect the number nearly reached 200 but the best remaining official ICT record is incomplete, some pages were lost and it was a marketing document, a list of customers in alphabetical order, and probably made before production ceased anyway as marketing would hardly be interested in an obsolete product.
Your 400 words reflects on another thread where someone said "In the mid 60's only large companies had systems with greater than 16K
memory and disc drives. Mag tape 800 and 1600 bpi if you were lucky was the norm." Taking the middle of the mid 60's, 1965, about a quarter of the machines in the UK were 1300 series with between 400 and 2000 words of Immediate Access Store (core), no discs just usually one 12000 word drum. Those lucky enough to have mag tape (which roughly doubled the cost of the computer as well as requiring air conditioning) were 300 bpi, usually 10 track (4 data + 6 CRC) half inch or for a lucky few, 16 track (8 + 8) one inch wide tape. There were of course scientific machines like ATLAS around but only three? were ever built, most actual data processing was done on much more mundane machines like the 1301. The IBM 360 was announced in 1965 but how many actually got their hands on one in the UK that year? If you only had 400 words (4800 digits) of storage, who would waste it hold 19s. As to using PICTURE XX , I only ever wrote one COBOL program (put me off for life) but I think PICTURE XX means two characters, which means 4 digits so exactly the same storage size as PICTURE 9999.
Roger Holmes.
I have two shelves of pen plotter manuals at work, including many HP ones. Are you after the operators manual or the programmers manual i.e. the command set. I have a DraftMaster (MX plus IIRC) here. Maybe I can answer your questions from memory, if not I can look next week.
Roger Holmes
(Author of MacPlot, a pen plotter driver for Mac which was an application in 1984 but became a chooser level driver after Apple contracted us to change it so they could bundle it with MacProject and what became Claris Draw II).
On 12 Feb 2010, at 18:00, cctalk-request at classiccmp.org wrote:
>
> Message: 2
> Date: Thu, 11 Feb 2010 22:24:59 -0500
> From: jthecman at netscape.net
> Subject: Manual Needed
> To: cctech at classiccmp.org
> Message-ID: <8CC79AA1704C4E9-27F8-7F3C at webmail-m063.sysops.aol.com>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"; format=flowed
>
> Hello
> Does anyone have a copy of the hp Draftmaster II manual for loan, sale,
> can make a copy of it?
>
> Thanks,
> John K
Message: 12
Date: Fri, 12 Feb 2010 08:44:40 -0800
From: "Chuck Guzis" <cclist at sydex.com>
Subject: Re: Hacking a typewriter into a teletype
To: "General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts"
<cctalk at classiccmp.org>
Message-ID: <4B7514F8.19394.8B6F5 at cclist.sydex.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII
On 12 Feb 2010 at 6:36, Christian Liendo wrote:
> I figured some one on this list would find this useful.
>
> http://numist.net/post/2010/project-typewriter.html
Didn't a number of Brother typewriter models have the capability of
also serving as printers--without modifications? I also wonder if it
might not be better to start with a word-processor type of
typewriter.
Mr. Obvious on the web page stated:
"it also revealed that avr-gcc's code generation is very poorly
optimized"
--Chuck
----------------Reply:
There's a genuine Brother computer>typewriter RO interface
for sale right now ($5) on the Vintage Computer auction site.
And if anyone wants to convert an Olivetti typewriter, I still
have a box full of interfaces for several models from the
days when I was involved in their sales and support.
mike
On Mon, 1 Feb 2010 , ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk (Tony Duell) wrote:
>
>That sounds more like the Intel 8251 USART. IIRC on that chip you have to
>send the reset command 3 times to ensure it's treated as a command and
>not as data to be loadrd into one of the configuration registers.
>
>-tony
>
Hmm, I must be getting old.
Between about 1983 and about 1990, I wrote a fair amount of software for
a communications board which I designed, and which used an 8088, an
8259, an 8253, 8255s, and, for some reason I cannot remember now, I
think it used 6850s for the serial ports. We started out with all
Motorola peripheral chips but found out that the timer chip wouldn't
work properly together with the Intel bus, so we switched to Intel. I do
have the distinct impression that we kept the 6850s for some reason,
probably price, and, I think, simplicity. We had no need for synchronous
communications so that would have been a reason.
We had an earlier all-Motorola design (6809-based) we got ideas from (I
had never designed any microprocessor circuitry before), and IIRC, I
started out sending a single reset command, which didn't work, and then
I looked at the other design and saw that their software sent 3 resets,
which I then understood the reason for.
I may be wrong, as this was 27 years ago, but it would be easy to test. I
can't, as I have nothing to test on. And Charlie C, had you asked me 27
years ago I could have told you exactly what to do ;-)
Whatever it was I did, it worked well, because we sold a number of those
boards, each of which used 4 serial interfaces. It annoys me that I
can't be sure whether we kept the ACIAs or changed to Intel.
Wh?t I do remember is that the Motorola chips were simple and elegant
compared to the Intel chips.
/Jonas
"Chuck Guzis" <cclist at sydex.com> wrote:
>
>Fur critters, huh? I'm fighting a running battle with some nutria
>that keep invading my pond, but they are definitely not "cute".
>
They are, however, reasonably tasty when properly prepared, so there's a way to deal with that situation.
KJ
Anyone have a datasheet for the MCM62940 (MCM62940AFN14) static RAM? It's
not strictly off topic, as it's from the 256K level 2 cache of a computer
>from the mid-90s (NuBus PPC Macintoshes).
The usual web searches have failed me. I thought I had downloaded it
years ago, but it turns out I only collected the datasheet for the TAG
SRAM and not for the cache chips.
This is particularly interesting because one can get 4000 of the chips
(soldered to boards) for about $50.
<http://eshop.macsales.com/item/Motorola/CACHE256M500PK/>
I have a couple of projects in mind where they might be useful. On the
other hand, they do take up a lot of board real estate (about .75"
square).
Jeff Walther
This message has been forwarded from Usenet. To reply to the
original author, use the email address from the forwarded message.
Date: Fri, 12 Feb 2010 15:18:22 -0500
Groups: comp.sys.dec
From: "Tom Lake" <tlake at twcny.rr.com>
Org: albasani.net
Subject: BASIC-Plus-2
Id: <hl4d6a$4vt$1 at news.albasani.net>
========
I'm running RSTS/E on the SIMH PDP-11 emulator and it works fine. It only has
BASIC-Plus,
though. Is there somewhere I can get a disk or tape image of BASIC-Plus-2? Me
ntec was
swallowed up and the new owners don't want to know from PDP-11.
TIA
Tom Lake
Hi! John Monahan and I are making some S-100 home brew PCB projects. The
S-100 backplane, S-100 prototyping board, and S-100 buffered prototyping
board projects are essentially done. I am gathering up those who would like
any of those boards and when there is sufficient interest I'll make a
manufactured PCB order.
We nearly done with the S-100 IDE and S-100 keyboard projects. Both
projects have been prototyped, manufactured PCBs made, and are demonstrated
working. However, there are a few minor issues we'd like to clear up on
both projects and are considering respins of those PCBs. If anyone is
interested in those projects please let me know so I can make an order. The
PCBs typically are in the $20-$30 range depending on quantity.
There is an S-100 SRAM/EPROM prototype PCB in the build and test phase and
an S-100 Front Panel in design phase. No estimate on when either of those
will be done but it will be quite a while since we are making local
prototype PCBs first before ordering manufactured PCBs.
Thanks and have a nice day!
Andrew Lynch
*************Original Message:
Date: Wed, 10 Feb 2010 01:36:01 -0500
From: Dave McGuire <mcguire at neurotica.com>
Subject: Re: Selling Calcomp 565 plotter
<snippage>
I work at home, and one very large room in my house is my office.
An entire wall of my office, and most of another wall, is a row of
racks:
http://www.neurotica.com/misc/wall-o-pdp.jpg
There's more behind where I was standing when I took the picture,
but you get the idea.
<more snippage>
-Dave
Dave McGuire
Port Charlotte, FL
************Reply:
Is that a prayer rug on the floor? Or just there to mop up spilled bits?
m
*******************************************************************************
>>
>>> *Every* generation of programmers has *always* looked down on their successors
>>> as using tools that waste too much computer time to do too little. Of course,
>>> *my* generation (started programming in 1969 on a 1401) is right. ;-)
>>
>> I certainly agree with you in principle, but I still wonder why even
>> non-GUI application bloat has to be as bad as it is. We used to put
>> 25-40 users on an 8MB VAX before it would start to swap. Now, still
>> using a character based interface (which happens to be ssh vs direct
>> serial connect, but that doesn't affect CLI application size), a
>> program to tell me what processes are active on the system is 8MB by
>> itself, vs a few dozen K bytes (I should go back and dig out one of
>> those programs from the old days and port it to a modern machine to
>> compare library bloat vs application bloat. Fortunately, I have my
>> backups from 25 years ago).
> ICBW, but I think a lot of the bloat is caused by the layer upon layer
> upon layer upon layer of application interface code. My theory is that
> all those layers arose because of inadequate or incompetent design in
> the first place. Then too, I think we have a lot of "features" that are
> rarely used and that we would be better off without, to say nothing of
> all the changes for no apparent reason other than to just be different.
> I also suspect that some of those spurious features are the root cause
> of a lot of the security holes. Too, your "non-GUI" application is
> probably actually running inside a system GUI which only emulates the
> non-GUI user interface you think you're using. :-)
I too started programming in 1969 but on a 7094, though as a schoolboy sending off cards one week to get results the next week. Yes of course we're right :-)
I agree there are far too many levels of interface code, many with bugs in them which sometime get corrected in a different level. Take text on the Mac, there was a simple technology for drawing text in QuickDraw on Lisa, it did proportional fonts, different size text, handle descent, ascent and leading. On Mac they added a Text Editing manager. Then they had to allow for internationalized for non left to right languages, then they added kerning etc then they tried to replace the Text Editing manager with the Multi-Lingual Text Editing manager, then along came Unicode and we got ATSUI (The Apple Type Services for Unicode Imaging) and so it went on, all the old levels are still available, though deprecated and unavailable to 64 bit Apps. Trying to get a Carbon application to get Unicode text to appear at the right size on a non 72dpi screen AND print properly is somewhat of a nightmare.
I would like to discuss Moore's law and how it seems to have broken down in recent years. Processor speeds are still increasing but not at the expected rate, but I wonder if the real problem is RAM speed, which does not seemed to have kept up, and no longer seems to be quoted when you buy a computer, or at least a Mac. Of course on chip and level 2 cache has made tight loops of small pieces of data acceptably fast but real world programs don't do that. Think about rotating a 12 mega pixel image for instance, yes the code is a tight loop but the data isn't. Think about rendering a 3D scene with many textured objects with accurate shadows and per pixel shading and anti-aliasing ready for printing on a A0 (about 34 inch by 44 inch) printer and complex enough not to fit the capabilities of the graphics processor so it has to be done in the main processor cores. The data being processed is far too big to fit in the caches and the output pixel maps are too, though I admit it only processes one pixel at a time. Oh and while you are at it, think about error diffusing the output.
I know on the PowerPC the rotation or a one bit per pixel actually ran quicker if I turned the cache off because for every bit I fetched it loaded the cache with four words of data. Does something similar happen on Intel?
By the way I spent three hours this morning showing a BBC regional news crew my 1962 mainframe, apparently it will be condensed down to three minutes. I don't have a transmission date, it didn't go out today and probably will only shown in the south east area of England but should be on the BBC web site. Oh and a couple of weeks ago I posted an old video of it on U-Tube if anyone is interested the URL is http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VsBPuUJPvKg or just Google ICT 1301 and select video. I hope to post a better one later in the year.
Roger Holmes
Hey folks...Is there anyone in the western part of New York who
might be willing to help me with the retrieval and temporary storage
of a smallish system? It's a big deskside chassis, would need a
station wagon or pickup truck type of thing. I'd be able to pick it
up within the next 2-3 months.
Anyone?
Thanks,
-Dave
--
Dave McGuire
Port Charlotte, FL
> This is a good point. I was comparing dollars in early 80's dollar amounts
> for the difference between the IBM and DEC offerings. There's significant
> different in the number, .
> ________________________________
> From: Richard <legalize at xmission.com>
<snip>
>
> $5,000 in 1985 is the equivalent of $9876.79 in 2008.[*]
>
> I know we all realize that inflation is eating away at the value of
> currency, but it really has picked up quite a bit in the last decade
> such that even 1985 currency is quite different from today.
Last time I checked we are deflating, not inflating!
$5,000.00 in 2008 has the same buying power as $$4,982.21 in 2009
BTW, $5,000.00 in 1985 has the same buying power as $9,969.19 in 2009
per http://data.bls.gov/cgi-bin/cpicalc.pl
if u trust yr government statistics :-)
Tom
On 2/11/10, Richard <legalize at xmission.com> wrote:
>
>> Ethan Dicks wrote:
>> > For comparison, a "standard package" color IBM PC/AT (5170)
>> > ... was $5K at launch in 1985, IIRC.
>
> $5,000 in 1985 is the equivalent of $9876.79 in 2008.[*]
Interesting to note. It was expensive then, and by extension,
absurdly expensive now. I routinely install enterprise-grade web
servers that are well under $10K (dual-socket, quad core, 48GB of
memory, 1TB internal RAID, quad gigabit NICs, etc).
> I know we all realize that inflation is eating away at the value of
> currency, but it really has picked up quite a bit in the last decade
> such that even 1985 currency is quite different from today.
Fortunately for me, I'm making more than twice as many absolute
dollars as I was in 1985 (when I happened to be in college but also
had a part-time, but "real", job as an electronics tech, software
developer, and VMS System Manager), so economically, at least, I've
made some progress over the past 25 years. ;-)
> That just floors me because in 1986 I took out a $4,000 loan to get an
> Amiga 1000 with dual flopppy drives and a monitor. (I also got the extra
> CHIP ram expansion thingy on the front.)
I also bought an A1000 in 1986. Mine didn't require a loan, but
that's because I got a bare-bones 256K A1000 with no monitor, single
floppy, just mouse and keyboard, for about $800. I later purchased a
Skyles Electric Works CHIP RAM expansion board for under $50, IIRC
(that's still on the machine!) I repurposed a Commodore 1702 monitor
>from my C-64, and eventually slapped in a $50 after-market RGBI
interface that I hacked to do analog RGB - still a bit fuzzy owing to
the limited video bandwidth of the original product, but *much*
cheaper than the going rate for a "proper" analog RBG monitor.
Unfortunately for me, that monitor was stolen in a burglary in 1990,
along with an A500, and a "Wedge" ISA disk interface (fortunately for
me, they dumped the A1000 on the floor but didn't take it with them).
I did happen to get that A1000 while I worked at the aforementioned
job, and am proud that the warranty was voided before the computer
even made it home. We were doing MC68000 embedded product development
there, so there was no way I could help cracking the Amiga case and
showing off the innards to our engineers, which started a session
comparing the guts of the Amiga to our own 68K designs. I still have
one of those boxes that was under development at the time - about the
size of an A2000, able to be stuffed with 2MB of 41256s, and with
enough proprietary slots to support 32 serial ports. It even had an
early-model 3.5" disk drive. No custom chips, though, so very
different from the Amiga once you got outside of the CPU/memory area.
-ethan
In my unending quest to de-clutter my house, I offer up the following
(local pickup only, please, in the Seattle area); unclaimed stuff goes
to RE-PC next week:
- IBM PS/2 Model 70/386 - 4MB ram, one 1.44mb floppy drive, no hard
drive (but sled is present). Powers up and works fine as far as I can tell.
- 2x IBM PC Convertible, one printer + serial port expansion. One with
backlight, one with transflective LCD screen. Two carrying cases with
two different designs. One AC adapter. IBM's first "laptop." Ugliest
thing in the world, and has the most impractical expansion system I've
ever seen. Kinda neat, but I haven't used them in years and I don't
foresee getting any use out of them, so...
- Sun Ultra Enterprise 2 - 512MB ram, 2xUltraSparc IIi processor
(333Mhz, IIRC) no hard drives, but I have sleds.
- DEC VR262 monitor. 19" monochrome. Just traded away my VCB01 so I've
no use whatsoever for this. It works, but probably needs a new
capacitor or two to make it really hum.
- Compaq 15/30GB DLT drive. No idea if it works; bought it years ago
>from Boeing surplus but never actually put it to use as I had intended...
Thanks as always...
Josh
Hi Folks,
I'm currently saving some documention. If it's ok I'll post what I found so far. Bit by bit.
I'd like to hear comments on the stuff and estimates how and if it would be important to save the stuff.
Now and today I have some Honeywell stuff from 1972/73:
Honeywell Series 600/6000:
**************************
Time Sharing Applications Library Guide
Volume I - Mathematics DA43, Rev. 0
Volume II - Time Sharing DA44, Rev. 0
Volume II - Time Sharing, Addendum A DA44A, Rev. 0
Volume III - Industry DA45, Rev. 2
Volume III - Industry, Addendum A DA45A, Rev. 2
Volume III - Industry, Addendum B DA45B, Rev. 2
Volume IV - Industry DA46, Rev. 1
FORTRAN Manual BJ67, Rev. 1
JOVIAL Language Manual BS06
AGOL Manual BS11, Rev. 0
Biomedical (BMD) Statistical Programs BP82, Rev.0
(supercedes CPB-1183A)
DTSS - Dartmouth Time-Sharing System (Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire):
*********************************************************************************
(good photocopies)
DTSS Software Product Information (Draft copy)
(C) 1973 DTSS, Inc.
DTSS APL, Preliminary Version
By Steve Poulsen, Dartmouth College
(C) 1973 Trustees of Dartmouth College
DTSS - The Dartmouth Time-Sharing System
7/26/72
DTSS User's Guide
September 1972
(C) 1972 Trustees of Dartmouth College
Catalog of Program Library in the Dartmouth Time-Sharing System
- User's guide to the programming library
(C) 1972 Trustees of Dartmouth College
Best wishes,
Philipp :-)
--
http://www.hachti.de
> Date: Tue, 09 Feb 2010 12:28:17 -0700
> From: Ben <bfranchuk at jetnet.ab.ca>
> Chuck Guzis wrote:
>
>> How about GOTO-less CPUs? Do any exist that completely lack a jump
>> instruction of any sort (I'm not counting those where PC is mapped as
>> a general register)?
>
> You must have a jump instruction for a loop.
> Weird programing and computing... different topic.
I'm not sure you would count it as a CPU, but the TI-55 programmable
calculator lacked any type of jump or branch instruction, IIRC. All
programs were purely linear. So, in addition to having considerably
less memory, it was also limited in this way, as compared to a TI-58 or
TI-59.
Jeff Walther
It's a loose-leaf binder, labeled on the spine "IBM 7137 Disk Array Subsystem
Customer and Service Information"...
Anybody want to take this off my hands?
Postage and a little extra would be much appreciated. :-)
I have no use for it, so if I don't find someone who does it pretty soon gets
the binder recycled and the paper gone.
--
Member of the toughest, meanest, deadliest, most unrelenting -- and
ablest -- form of life in this section of space, a critter that can
be killed but can't be tamed. --Robert A. Heinlein, "The Puppet Masters"
-
Information is more dangerous than cannon to a society ruled by lies. --James
M Dakin
I'm looking for "MEMC2 Technical Reference Manual" put out by Advanced
RISC Machines in 1990.
Anyone have it or can make a PDF copy?
Willing to pay a bounty for this if you have it. Please contact me
directly.
Thanks!
--
Sellam Ismail Vintage Computer Festival
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
International Man of Intrigue and Danger http://www.vintage.org
[ Old computing resources for business || Buy/Sell/Trade Vintage Computers ]
[ and academia at www.VintageTech.com || at http://marketplace.vintage.org ]
I am in need of Texas Instruments TIL311 or INNOCOR INL0397-1. I have used
both over the last 30 years and can no longer find them. If you know of a
source I would appreciate the information. Newark Electronics has been my
source over the years. They cannot find a substitute. Also INNOCOR was
bought by JDSU in 2007 (the year I placed my last order with Newark). The
Display Manufacturing was discontinued prior to the purchase by JDSU.
Thanks, Cal