Any one with experience on doing electrical troubleshooting on (Maxtor) ATA
Drives, please drop me a note off-list. I just had a PS failure and it
"took-out" a drive with some fairly critical data. I believe the board
(rather than the platter itself) took the bullet, and I want to explore
options before sending the drive out for $6K+ in repair costs.
David
"Some days you have all the (bad) luck"
I visted one of my "sources" today and he had a surprise for me, a
Tektronix 4025 terminal!* I brought it home but haven't had time to try it
out yet. I googles but didn't find much about it. Can anyone tell me more
about this thing?
* Also three more Intel 86/330 computers, two Intel 80/20 computers and
a big pile of manuals :-)
Joe
Hello,
I have been searching the web for the past week, looking
for an online copy of the bits for a version (any version)
of the TI 990 "DX-10" operating system.
Anyone know where I might be able to find them?
I'm aware of MESS (mess.org), which has a 990 simulator.
It looks like a significant piece of work, but they only
create (software-based) hardware emulators. Without the
bits to a version of DX-10, running a virtual 990 is not
quite the experience I had hoped for ....
I'm also aware of http://www.cozx.com/~dpitts/ti990.html,
and I've been able to download and run TXDS. It's cool,
but again, it's not really anywhere near what it would be
like to really (ok, virtually-really :-) run DX-10 again.
They aren't at bitsavers.org either. Some great manuals
(score!) but not the software itself.
Any leads or ideas as to how I might get in touch with
these bits again would be appreciated. I'm open to the
idea of helping to finance or otherwise help in ensuring
that these bits aren't lost forever.
Best,
John Sambrook
__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Mail - Find what you need with new enhanced search.
http://info.mail.yahoo.com/mail_250
Ok, I finally found an 8" drive that worked. I don't think there's a
coincidence that it's half-height, and seems to have been made in the 1982
timeframe. I can't tell who the manufacturer is because I haven't
unbolted it from the chassis it's installed in to check yet.
I was able to format a disk mostly successfully (more on this in a bit)
and transfer MS-DOS 6.22 to it. It was pretty nifty booting DOS on my PC
off an 8" drive ;)
So anyway, when I was formatting the disk, it didn't seem to like the last
4-6 tracks or so. Above the clatter of the noisy fan (bad bearings) I
could hear the head recalibrating. When the format finished, it reported
107520 bytes in bad sectors. This comes out to 210 bad sectors (assuming
512 bytes per sector) which comes out to some weird number of tracks.
Aren't there supposed to be 26 sectors per track?
The main hurdle has been jumped, so I'm in good shape at this point.
Thanks for the tips, all!
--
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 ]
> Jerome Fine replies:
>
> Once done, the SET command values are held in the
> DU.SYS device driver file. You do NOT need to
> do the SET commands each time. Probably not
> recommended in any case.
Ahaaa... Is that saved in DU.SYS when you issue the commands, then? Makes
sense. I'll try it when I get home.
> Assuming you are booting from an RL02, then the
> DU.SYS device driver my be LOADed for a bit faster
> response after the first usage. In addition, I
> strongly suggest you use RT11FB rather than RT11SJ
> unless the added size of the RT11FB monitor has
> a serious impact on the program which you run.
Well, the idea is to load TSX-Plus over it, which requires the SJ monitor.
> In addition, it would be helpful to know the full
> version number of the RT-11 version which you are
> using. Based on the above SET commands, it must
> be at least V05.03 or RT-11 which was released
> in 1985. There are certain features which later
> versions of RT-11 have that you may wish to be
> aware of. the RT-11 command:
> SHOW CONFIG
> will provide the information, as will the banner
> when RT-11 first boots.
On bootup, and in SHOW CONFIG, the version is given as 5.00.
> Finally, I strongly recommend against the SET
> values which have been suggested since they
> impact very negatively with regard to booting
> RT-11. You will not lose anything with a
Ok, why is that?
> different combination of SET parameters, but
> you will gain with respect to what drives
> can be booted, in particular from a cold start.
In this instance I want to boot from a "clean" install of RT-11 from DL0,
but eventually I will be booting from DU0.
> The exact nature of which disk drives are being
> used will also help. I suspect an RD53 and an
> RX50, but please confirm. Most novice RT-11
OK, this is where it gets tricky. I'm not totally sure how to identify
the ST506 drives fitted to the machine. One is a full-height 5.25" drive,
with (seemingly) about 65,000 blocks on each partition. The other is
half-height, with considerably less on each partition - one is around
40,000 blocks, one is around 16,000 blocks (if I remember correctly - I'm
not actually near the machine right now to check). The smaller drive is
made by Fujitsu, may be something like M224XAS ? The label is rather hard
to read.
The other drives are an RL02 (I have two but lack the cable that links the
two drives) and an RX02.
Gordon.
On Mar 10 2005, 20:33, Jules Richardson wrote:
>
> Just futzing around with this Manta board (SCSI floppy controller).
>
> The docs I have say that pin 2 of the floppy connector is normally
an
> input to the controller from the drive, but that some drives expect
pin
> 2 to be an output to the drive from the controller (e.g. for changing
> rotation speed on a drive capable of 300 and 360rpm)
>
> That sounds wrong to me; surely most drives either don't use pin 2
for
> anything, or they expect it to be an output from the controller (to
cope
> with things like speed changes)
Yes, but I believe some drives did use pin 2 to signal the controller
in some way. I've never (knowingly) come across one, but I'm told some
Apple drives did this.
--
Pete Peter Turnbull
Network Manager
University of York
I have all three of the service manuals for the IPC and the Service ROM.
According to the manual, when you turn the IPC on the yellow light on
the printer reset button should flash twice and then go out. Then the print
head should move to the right and then return home. Next the red lite on
the disk drive should light momentarily and the drive should click. About
three seconds later the display should light up and display "Executing the
RAM, MMU, and the short keyboard test, please stand by". Are you getting
any of those? The manual is quite clear that the most likely fault that
prevents turn on is a power supply fault. It doesn't give any information
about the display itself except for a general description (512 x256 pixels)
and that it uses 180 to 200 volts to operate and that the HV drivers are on
the driver bvoard attached to the screen. There is a description and
schematic of the Logic Board B that interfaces to the display. Mostly it
just converts the display data to a serial format and the data is sent into
the display serially and there is some fancy timing to reverse the polarity
of the high voltage on alternate screen cycles to prevent degrading the
screen.
Joe
Ij:09 AM 3/10/05 +0100, you wrote:
>I have current;ly on my bench an old HP Integral Unix luggable....
>
>Doesn't boot, powersupply seems to be OK.
>Therefore : anyone have schematics, or, more in particular, a pinout for
>the Sharp LJ512U03c EL-display, used in the Integeral ?
>
>( I did google, bitsavers and Sharp itself....)
>
>---------------------------------------------------------------------------
-----------------
>Jos Dreesen jos.dreesen at philips.com
>Philips Semiconductors , BL Cellular systems, PSZ Zurich
>Tel +41 1 465 1162
>---------------------------------------------------------------------------
------------------
>
28. Started with a Tomy Tutor and then a Commodore 64, although I'd also been
exposed to TIs and Apple IIs by this point. Developed a taste for Unix during
college (naturally, as a University of California graduate, I prefer BSD).
Most of my technical background, besides medicine, is in database
administration.
--
---------------------------------- personal: http://www.armory.com/~spectre/ --
Cameron Kaiser, Floodgap Systems Ltd * So. Calif., USA * ckaiser at floodgap.com
-- "I'd love to go out with you, but I'm in perpetual denial." ----------------
> You've got gravity. Dry sand flows pretty well. Bamboo is
> hollow and so can be used to channel dry sand around.
> Different lengths of bamboo could be used to introduce
> delays. Doubtless you could make basic logic gates.
>
> Some sort of mechanical effort would be needed to lift sand
> again in order to combat gravity pulling sand downward.
>
> Not much different from a relay computer really, I suppose.
> Just slower.
> And more sandy.
And relay computers don't like salt water, but administrators might.
Hmmm, seaside computing. I think we hit on something.
Jay West <jwest at classiccmp.org> wrote:
> One of the problems mail server admins face, are people who throw up their
> own mailserver at home. You don't have gobs of bandwidth, you don't have
> multiple backup servers, and you don't have diesel generators and online
> UPS. If you don't, you have no business running a public mailserver. Most of
> the time I see this it's because someone wants some kinda juvenile bragging
> rights about "Ohhh I run a my own K00L server". Geeze. I have seen a few
> people who do it for good reason, but, if you run a mail server you need to
> be a good net citizen about it.
Have you ever heard of the word SOVEREIGNTY? I run my own servers for
everything because I exercise my right to be totally independent from the
outside world. I'll keep running when the rest of the world explodes in
the thermonuclear holocaust.
What makes you think that you have the right to impose your elitism on the
rest of the world? Just because you are rich and snobby enough to have
gobs of bandwidth and redundant servers and all that, why in the hell should
everyone else? The Founding Fathers of ARPANET made it accessible to
everyone. I have the right to be a netizen even if my entire installation
consists of a single VAX-11/780. I *do* diligently maintain it, and it has
a very good uptime. But every Classic Computer needs hardware maintenance
occasionally, and if it is acceptable to everyone at my site to have occasional
downtime, what right do YOU have to impose on us that we have to spend millions
of dollars on redundancy that we don't need?
We are concerned with *CLASSIC* computers here. It is extremely hypocritical
of you to shut me out because I run my entire operation on CLASSIC hardware
with CLASSIC software in the CLASSIC manner, using business practices of
the CLASSIC computing era, exactly as it was done on ARPA Internet in 1980s.
Hell, I actually have more bandwidth at this facility that most ARPANET sites
had: I have 384 kbps SDSL and they only had 56 kbps. I run my VAX servers
just as diligently as UC Berkeley ran theirs, but demanding the level of
performance you are asking for is absolutely and totally outlandish,
extravagant and orders of magnitude over the threshold of socially
unacceptable.
> What does being a good net citizen admin entail?
It entails following standards. RFC 1123, Requirements for Internet Hosts,
says that you must retry mail for 4 days because the recipient has the
*RIGHT* to run a mail server that may occasionally go down for a day.
MS
I have current;ly on my bench an old HP Integral Unix luggable....
Doesn't boot, powersupply seems to be OK.
Therefore : anyone have schematics, or, more in particular, a pinout for
the Sharp LJ512U03c EL-display, used in the Integeral ?
( I did google, bitsavers and Sharp itself....)
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Jos Dreesen jos.dreesen at philips.com
Philips Semiconductors , BL Cellular systems, PSZ Zurich
Tel +41 1 465 1162
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Hi,
A friend has a ST-238R and ST-225 that came out of his XT long ago.
We're trying to figure out what the most likely controller that was
being used in the original machine so we can recover the data. It must
have been 8-bit and support RLL. The best guess I can come up with is
the WD 27X (which I used to have). Anyone else have a good guess?
I think the ST-225 came with the machine and then the ST-238R was
installed as part of a kit. So whatever controllers were usually sold
with those as a kit (i.e. from Dirt Cheap or a refurbisher) would be a
likely candidate too. For example, my 27X came with a Miniscribe 8438
kit from a refurbisher.
Thanks,
--
Ryan Underwood, <nemesis at icequake.net>
OK, thinking about getting a catweasel board for the museum.
1) What's the official homepage for the board? A google search suggested
http://www.jschoenfeld.com but that site seems horribly incomplete and
out of date.
2) Opinions of the board would be much appreciated, particularly in the
context of what it *can't* do, how easy it is to code for, how easy it
is to get hold of others' code to handle a particular format (rather
than reinventing the wheel), how well the board copes with media errors
etc.
The other option's the Torch Manta board, for which I do at least have
full schematics, PAL equations etc. - downside being that it'll only
handle FM/MFM data (and as mentioned on the list in the past, there
isn't even one particular standard of MFM).
We must have around a thousand different machines covering a *lot* of
different manufacturers, hence being able to cope with hard & soft
sectored disks and all manner of encodings is important. In a lot of
cases, getting the machines up and running might be a long-term goal, so
preservation of the media using 'alien' hardware is an issue.
cheers
Jules
First I got "just a typing unit" for an ASR-33 (thought it was going to have some more of the unit included)...not too useful, but it really sparked the bug...
Then I bought a unit and had it shipped. Poorly packed, it was virtually destroyed (ok the case was destroyed) in transit. Pictures are at www.dynamicconcepts.us/Teletype. After some re-construction, it is powered up, but I have been completely unable to get the h-plate properly aligned...
So, I wend up to Vermont [I am in NY] to pick up another teletype. This one I carefully transported back (after some disassembly), but once it was back together....you guessed it....I cant align the DA$&*#*@MN H-Plate!
I have been working on those two units off and on since before the holidays, and have become quite fustrated.
Then a teletype appeared on e-Bay, and it was local (actually between my home and work!!!)...special bonus, nobody seemed to be biddingh it up [it was listed at the same time as the infamous $1400+ unit]. I won it, and picked it up.
This time I secured the typing unit in place, AND marked the exact position of everything with a marker!
I get it home and power it up. The main cam shaft is not properly secured (the hold down just past the gear is broken)...No biggie..I have the original typing unit which can be gobbled for parts. After transfering over the assembly containing the cam holedown, I power it up again..
The keyboard works (NO H-Plate problems [yippie]), the paper tape punch worked [the reader needs to be replaced, but I have a NIB unit for that], the type cyclinder spinds and lifts, the hammer strikes...and a really faint improperly alligned imnage is all that gets printed [Yes I have a brand new ribbon on it].
So at this point, I am wondering how to address this problem...The cylinder is well cleaned (boy was there buildup), the characters look sharp on it, the rubber bumper on the hammer is in apparant good condition [and not "soft"]....
Any clues appreciated... [wishing there was a traveling teletype repairman who wanted to come to Long Island NY....]
David
On Mar 10 2005, 14:18, willisjo at zianet.com wrote:
> I did know about the serpentine weirdness. It caused me a great deal
of
> grief in getting the system to pass its self tests in the beginning,
before
> I stumbled (quite accidentally) across hamster's digital$resources
> page on Qbus. However, I think you may have hit on something. The
RQDX3 is
> not at the end of the bus.
No, it's not that...
> If memory serves (I'll verify this
> after I get home from work today), the backplane arrangement is
>something like this:
> A B C D
> +-------------------------------------+
> | CPU |
> +-------------------------------------+
> | Memory |
> +-------------------------------------+
> | TQK50* | |
> +-------------------------------------+
> | M9047 | |
> +-------------------------------------+
> | RQDX3* | |
> +-------------------------------------+
> | DHV11 |
> +-------------------------------------+
> | ???? ** |
> +-------------------------------------+
> | | |
> +-------------------------------------+
> | | |
> +-------------------------------------+
That's what's wrong. Assuming this is in a BA23, you don't have
interrupt or DMA grant continuity. The first three slots are Q22-CD
but (if this is a BA23) the fourth is Q22-Q22 so you need something in
the RHS (slots C+D) of row four:
A B C D
+-------------------------------------+
| CPU |
+-------------------------------------+
| Memory |
+-------------------------------------+
| TQK50* | |
+-------------------------------------+
| M9047 | RQDX3 |
+-------------------------------------+
| DHV11 |
That's the only reason you have a grant card; it is to sit next to a
dual-height card in a Q22-Q22 slot. If this were a BA123, you'd not
need it at all.
--
Pete Peter Turnbull
Network Manager
University of York
I have an old Canon BJ-10e bubblejet printer. I bought it new back in
1990 or so. I have the printer, an ink cartridge, a printer cable, a
power adapter, a user's manual, and a programmer's manual.
If you want it, you just need to pay shipping.
alan
On Mar 9 2005, 11:26, Vintage Computer Festival wrote:
> On Wed, 9 Mar 2005, David H. Barr wrote:
>
> > On Wed, 9 Mar 2005 12:53:19 -0600, Jim Isbell, W5JAI
> > <jim.isbell at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > > At that point I began wondeering about a steam powered computer.
> > > Actualy I guess this laptop is actually a steam powered computer
by
> > > that historians definition. BUT..what about a steam powered
computer
> > > using steam valves and pistons. That could give you great
gain!!!
> >
> > Wasn't Babbage's original design to be steam powered?
>
> Yes.
The Difference Engine isn't, it's hand-cranked. The Analytical Engine
would have been steam-driven.
--
Pete Peter Turnbull
Network Manager
University of York
On Mar 9 2005, 12:53, Jim Isbell, W5JAI wrote:
> At that point I began wondeering about a steam powered computer.
> Actualy I guess this laptop is actually a steam powered computer by
> that historians definition. BUT..what about a steam powered
computer
> using steam valves and pistons. That could give you great gain!!!
Different method, but Babbage's Analytical Engine was to have been
steam-powered, using a steam engine to drive the mechanism.
--
Pete Peter Turnbull
Network Manager
University of York
I'm building my personal library for vintage computing. I need to
probe the collective wisdom of the list in what books must a "wannabe"
collector (like me) should have on his/her bookshelf.
Although I collect primarily DEC stuff, I don't want my knowledge to
be just restricted to what DEC had to offer.
p.s. Don Lancaster's books are the first on my list. :-)
/wai-sun
Can anyone tell me what kind of DSD device a DSD 804432-02 card connects
to? I've got a DSD 880 that it'd be really *swell* if I could get a
QBUS interface card for (so I can read in some RX01s for the 11/780
emulator that Bob Supnik is working on, and hopefully help to get my
11/780 running).
Or, if anyone has an appropriate spare card for not too many $$$, I'd be
happier to do that than to buy a card off of eBay.
Pat
--
Purdue University ITAP/RCS --- http://www.itap.purdue.edu/rcs/
The Computer Refuge --- http://computer-refuge.org
Hi
I constantly see on ebay sales that say they are
auctioning a 1702. Closer looks show them to be
1702A's. The 1702/1701/1602/1601 were the first
EPROM, not the 1702A. Still, they state that these
were the first EPROM. You can't even program them
with the same algorithm.
Just an observation.
Dwight
I wanted to try out my VC8/I Point-Plot Display with PDP8 spacewar.
I added support to SPCWR3.PA for the VC8/I.
http://www.chd.dyndns.org/pdp8/VC8/SPCWR3_vc8i.PA
This requires an EAE and now I find out that my untested EAE does not work.
The first sign of problems was that the processor paused while running
and the only way to stop it was to turn off power. The HALT switch did
nothing.
I got a copy of MAINDEC-8E-D0LB-D which is EAE test 1 and it locked up
pretty much the same way. I removed the EAE and the diagnostic halted at
a reasonable place insteading of locking up.
The EAE stops the main processor sequencer and then does it's thing and
when it is finished, restarts the processor sequencer. I seems to me
that this handoff is not occuring properly. The front panel shows that
the processor is stuck in Execute (E) State with a 7 in the IR and the
PC within one of an EAE instruction.
This not gonna be easy to fix. The over-the-top connectors prevent the
use of an extender card, so I can't probe anything easily.
Since the MAINDEC tests won't run, I will try to figure out which if any
of the EAE instructions function and which to not. Since, so far,
everything seems to hang, it might be something fundamental, and that
might be easier to find.
Suggestions, comments please.
-chuck
If this is an extra post, my apologies.
The rules have changed, and I respect that.
The saga continues...
After doing a conversational boot:
>>>b/1
2...1...0...
SYSBOOT> SET STARTUP_P2 "TRUE"
SYSBOOT> CONTINUE
the system begins its startup procedure, yet it freezes at this:
$if startup$autoconfigure_all .and. .not. f$getsyi("NOAUTOCONFIG") then -
sysgen autoconfigure all
Any pointers??
Thanks much,
John
FedEx dropped off another 100+ books today and there many in the cases that
I want to read but I pulled these three for now. "Heathkit Manual for the
MICODER II" model HD-1984, "Charles Babbage Father of the Computer" by Dan
Halacy, and "Introduction to Computer Systems Using the PDP-11 and Pascal"
by Glenn H. MacEwen.
>From: "Jim Leonard" <trixter at oldskool.org>
---snip---
>I should note that, since FDI images are 100% exact bitwise dumps, they aren't
>exactly easy to read (they're not nice clean formatted-track-and-sector images)
>so getting them translated back to an actual floppy diskette is not currently
>possible (since nobody has written the software to do so yet).
---snip---
It is not a matter of software. It is a matter of hardware. Unless
someone can comes up with a trick, the controller won't do it.
Dwight
>From: "Vintage Computer Festival" <vcf at siconic.com>
>
>On Wed, 9 Mar 2005, Jules Richardson wrote:
>
>> On Tue, 2005-03-08 at 20:40 -0600, Jim Leonard wrote:
>> > Or, you could try a simple parallel cable and Disk2FDI:
>> > http://www.oldskool.org/disk2fdi
>>
>> How does that work? From past discussions on this list, the PC parallel
>> port isn't fast enough to sample the bitstream from a floppy drive...
>
>It doesn't work over the parallel port: it uses the actual PC floppy drive
>to read GCR disks natively using an incredibly clever trick. Read the
>information in the downloads on how it works. You can get the trial
>version for free, but it requires two drives to work.
>
Hi
Wow! Clever trick. Once the controller starts dumping
the sector, you just switch drives on it. Running it until
it completes. It just thinks it is a big sector.
I wish I'd thought of it first.
Dwight
I'm building my personal library for vintage computing. I need to
probe the collective wisdom of the list in what books must a "wannabe"
collector (like me) should have on his/her bookshelf.
Although I collect primarily DEC stuff, I don't want my knowledge to
be just restricted to what DEC had to offer.
p.s. Don Lancaster's books are the first on my list. :-)
/wai-sun
Lancaster's TTL Cookbook is a great place to start.
The most indispensible book in my collection is _Bowker's 1985 Complete
Sourcebook of Personal Computing_. This 1050-page (2.25" thick) buyer's
guide is just loaded with information about the state of personal computing
for that year. (I used to have the 1984 edition too, but I gave it away
long ago). If you can get your hands on any of thier sourcebooks you will
be very happy with it.
A couple of other suggestions also come to mind. If you're at all
interested in CP/M, then you should have The Waite Group's _CP/M Bible_ and
it's companion book _The Soul of CP/M_.
--T
Jam the computer...trash every lethal machine in the land! --Timothy Leary
>From: "Randy McLaughlin" <cctalk at randy482.com>
>
>From: "Dwight K. Elvey" <dwight.elvey at amd.com>
>Sent: Wednesday, March 09, 2005 12:34 PM
>> >From: "Jim Leonard" <trixter at oldskool.org>
>> ---snip---
>> >I should note that, since FDI images are 100% exact bitwise dumps, they
>aren't
>> >exactly easy to read (they're not nice clean formatted-track-and-sector
>images)
>> >so getting them translated back to an actual floppy diskette is not
>currently
>> >possible (since nobody has written the software to do so yet).
>> ---snip---
>>
>> It is not a matter of software. It is a matter of hardware. Unless
>> someone can comes up with a trick, the controller won't do it.
>>
>> Dwight
>
>You might look at:
>
>http://www.rothfus.com/SVD/
>
>It uses a PIC. It only has 256K of RAM right now but he is upgrading it to
>1mb.
>
>I'm looking into using an eZ80 and a Flash card. By using track buffering
>it is possible to emulate almost anything with very little RAM.
>
>
>Randy
>
Hi Randy
I'm familiar with Eric's work. I was stating that without
specific hardware, writing these unusual formats is not possible
with a PC. Eric's stuff is a good way to handle things.
Does anyone know the specifics of what is different
between the SVD format and the FDI's?. The SVD is an
ASCII octal format. Is the FDI a binary or something?
Dwight
--- Wai-Sun Chia <waisun.chia at gmail.com> wrote:
> Any chance of these getting into bitsavers?
> /wai-sun
I hope not. Don is alive and still selling his books.
--
Paul R. Santa-Maria
Monroe, Michigan USA
>From: "Joe R." <rigdonj at cfl.rr.com>
---snip---
>
> Another suggestion is Mick & Brick's book 'Bit-Slice MicroProcessor
>Design'. Hmmm. I was getting ready to put some books on E-bay and I have
---snip---
Hi
I was digging into some piles of things and
came on some data sheets for a few of the 2900 chips.
I think I have for the 2901 and 2911, as well as
one or two others. If these are not already posted
someplace, I can bring them to Al to put on his
site.
Dwight
>
> No you can't use a RLL with an MFM controller. Similar but not the same.
Sure you can.
If the interface is the same (most likely the ST506/ST412 interface
here), then you can use an RLL-capable drive with an MFM controller. You
won't be able to read what's on the drive, you'll have to low-level
format it, and you'll only get about 2/3s the stated capacity. But if
you're trying to replace a hard drive in some old machine with an MFM
controller and you happen to have an RLL-capable drive around, it'll work.
-tony
>From: "Jim Battle" <frustum at pacbell.net>
>
>Ron Hudson wrote:
>
>...
>> If the desert island has vines you could make a rope computer, as
>> described in a
>> Scientific American, I don't remember the issue.
>
>It was an april fool's issue, I believe. If memory serves, the island
>was called APRLFUL or something like that. The article showed how, with
>clever arrangements pullies, toggles, springs and such, inverters and
>simple logic gates could be produced. Entertaining enough.
>
>The problem with that "computer" is that the logic gates have no gain.
>
>Each gate has no power supply other than the mechanical power of the
>input signals (ropes getting pulled). For instance, say you pull an
>input rope of a NAND gate one foot (OK, let's keep it metric) ten inches
>:-) and the output rope moves nine inches, so the gain is 0.9. Put N of
>these gates in series and the output signal is (0.9**N) of the input
>signal. After half a dozen gates, very little is left at the output.
>The rope gates had a gain much less than 0.9 -- probably 0.5.
>
>It is the same reason why computers aren't built of of just diodes and
>resistors. You can have a gate or two in series, but then the signal
>needs to be reconditioned before being applied to the next stage.
>
>
Hi
Relays work great. They have a lot of gain. Maybe much more
than is needed for a computer.
I've always wanted to build a calculator using marbles that
are feed from a hopper and the addition of a manual lever
to work as a clock ( and additional power ).
Dwight
>From: "Jim Leonard" <trixter at oldskool.org>
>
>Jules Richardson wrote:
>> On Tue, 2005-03-08 at 20:40 -0600, Jim Leonard wrote:
>>
>>>Or, you could try a simple parallel cable and Disk2FDI:
>>>http://www.oldskool.org/disk2fdi
>>
>> How does that work? From past discussions on this list, the PC parallel
>> port isn't fast enough to sample the bitstream from a floppy drive...
>
>Not all are, but a few can. I believe the website has suggestions on $15 PCI
>parallel port cards that are known to work. The distribution also has a speed
>testing utility (doesn't require a cable to run).
>
Hi
Most have some capacitors added to slow the signals down.
One can just remove the capacitors. Then you need to
worry a little about transmission line effects.
Dwight
Hey gang,
I've got a couple of TI-99 thingys that need a new home:
1.) Pair of joysticks
2.) RF Modulator
3.) Donky Kong game
4.) Star Trek game
5.) Speech Synthesizer
>From what I understand, some of this stuff is hard to come by... So, I'd
like to get something for it. Offers anyone?
BTW: I'm in Western North Carolina
SteveRob
Hello,
I am always interested in all DEC gear. We maintain a large inventory of parts and assist customers in keeping their legacy systems alive. Please let me know what you have and I will make an offer. Thank you.
Shannon Hoskins
Pacific Data Systems
25197 Reeves Road
Los Molinos, CA 96055
530/384-2013
shannon at theskybeam.com
-----Original Message-----
From: Phil Spanner <pspan at amerytel.net>
Sent: Mar 5, 2005 6:55 AM
To: cctech at classiccmp.org
Subject: Scrapping of DEC Equipment
Hello All,
I am in the process of scrapping out my Telecom gear. I have some LA 120's and other Dec boards that I will be listing. The printers are not very economical to ship, so my thoughts are that there may be some interest in the parts. If that is the case, please let me know.
A year or so ago, the folks next door talked about wanting to sell their Dec inventory, test fixtures and prints. Although I did forward all of the info to them, I don't think they did anything with the information. If there is still any interest, please let me know.
Thank you.
Phil
Hello,
I am always interested in all DEC parts. We maintain a large inventory and assist end-users with keeping their legacy systems alive. Please let me know what you have and I will make an offer.
Best regards,
Shannon Hoskins
Pacific Data SYstems
25197 Reeves Road
Los Molinos, CA 96055
530/384-2013
shannon at theskybeam.com
-----Original Message-----
From: James Fogg <James at jdfogg.com>
Sent: Mar 5, 2005 8:09 AM
To: "General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts" <cctalk at classiccmp.org>
Subject: RE: Scrapping of DEC Equipment
> I am in the process of scrapping out my Telecom gear. I have
> some LA 120's and other Dec boards that I will be listing.
> The printers are not very economical to ship, so my thoughts
> are that there may be some interest in the parts. If that is
> the case, please let me know.
Where are you located?
After more than a decade of occasional emails about my
Terak Museum http://www.threedee.com/jcm/, yesterday I met
with Don Gaubatz <dag at gaubatz.com>.
He recently moved from outside Boston to Neenah, WI (45 minutes SE
of Green Bay, at the top of that big lake on the left side of WI.)
That puts him about two hours from me, or two hours from Madison.
Formerly a VP at DEC, his groups in Palo Alto and Maynard delivered
workstations based on the MIPS, VAX, and Alpha chips, as well as
DEC's first 3D graphics and multimedia peripherals. Earlier at DEC,
Gaubatz developed the first Ethernet and disk controllers for the MicroVAX.
He's currently a consultant in the semiconductor industry. He's on
the editorial board of Microprocessor Report, an semiconductor industry
newsletter. He's on the board for NSF's sci-viz center, and a founding
member of the Computer History Museum.
We talked Terak for a few hours, looking over my docs and assembled
hardware. It is always comforting to show my three-floor combo
tree-fort / office / storage building and have someone say "Ah, yes,
this looks like my place." Don said his computer stuff filled two
28-foot trailers in his move. The visit may spur me to update my
inventory lists in order to better share docs and software with
other Terak enthusiasts.
Don would also like to track down ex-DEC people in Wisconsin, not
to mention find the hidden caches of DEC equipment.
- John
> Another suggestion is Mick & Brick's book 'Bit-Slice MicroProcessor
> Design'. Hmmm. I was getting ready to put some books on E-bay and
> I have an extra copy of Mick & brick. I think I'll throw it on there too.
> Let's see, I also have 'LSI PDP 11/03 Processor Handbook' and 'VAX >Technical Summary' that I don't need. I'll throw them on
> there too.
Or you could offer them to list members (for a reasonable price.....)
I have truly HAD ENOUGH. This was brought to a head by the fact that one of
the most active list moderators has just resigned, specifically due to the
excessive off-topicness (or more precisely, the amount of time necessary to
moderate the off-topicness). Here is a snippet of his email to me:
"I'm sorry, but I'm horrified by the state of my Inbox. ...snip... but I am
no longer prepared to wade through the slew of offtopic sh** in order to
forward the good stuff to cctech. I've just totted up over 160 offtopic
posts from the past few days, on picking locks, gravity, merits of
running your own mail server, mail vs NNTP vs forums, people's ages, and
even installing Windows XP, for f***'s sake."
We're losing a very dedicated person, for a very bad reason (I'm not saying
he isn't justified, I'm saying it sucks to lose someone for this). Ya'll owe
him a HUGE amount of thanks, and I daresay an apology.
Now, before you go on and on about "some off-topicness" is ok on cctalk, let
me explain something. The current setup where the list moderators manually
read every post on cctalk and individually route select "on-topic" messages
to cctech is made extremely time-consuming when there is a significant
amount of off-topicness. I would easily bet that the list moderators spend
an hour a day, seven days a week, sifting through all the messages one at a
time. This means a few people are paying a very high price so that you can
get wildly off-topic.
The thing that truly irks me about this is I'm spending a lot of time on
list infrastructure and such - trying to get to reworking the faq and
cleaning up the archives - and the LAST thing I have time to do right now is
start doing most of the moderation. My pinball machine known as "life" is
screaming "TILT".
I do NOT want to see a huge string of posts to the list with a subject of
"Re: ok listen up". This isn't open for public discussion any longer. This
list was entrusted to me years ago to take care of and I'll be damned if I'm
going to see it degenerate. I love this hobby and this forum way too much
for that.
My current thought is this: Make cctech the main list. It will be rigorously
moderated, anything posted there that isn't strictly on topic will be
bounced. cctalk will become the list for discussion of the list itself, and
will no longer be a place to post anything technical. It will be unmoderated
except for personal flames, politics, etc. You can consider it "the water
cooler". While it's primary purpose will be for discussion about list
features, etc. you can also just banter with your friends. The key
difference is that it won't be for discussion of technical/vintage computer
items. People may get trounced on for posting technical discussion to it,
instead of to cctech. Then I'll also probably create a classiccmp-announce
list, to announce any changes that are implemented based on cctalk
discussions.
The above isn't a final decision yet. I'm perfectly willing to entertain
other ideas - OFF LIST. If you have a concern, want to express some
thoughts, just email me directly, I'm very willing to listen.
So, you may ask... how is this different from the current setup? On the
surface, the only difference is cctalk won't be for any direct computer
discussion any longer and posts from cctalk will never make it to cctech.
But under the hood... I'll tell you what the difference is - instead of
moderators having to wade through the crap to gate stuff to cctech, YOU will
have to do YOUR part to make sure you post to the right list with a given
post. It's time to shift the workload people. I'll listen to off-list input
for a few days, but then I'll act because I don't want this snowballing.
Regards (and don't you dare hit reply to the list on this),
Jay West
>> Do you have a Central Point Option Board (any rev) for your museum?
I have one of these - haven't installed it yet. From reading the documentation,
it looks like it can copy disk to disk, and disk to temporary file on the hard
drive and back to disk, but it does NOT look like it can copy a disk to a file
and then at some point later in time copy the file back to the disk...
I am mainly interested in read disk images to files for long term archival.
Does anyone know if this is possible with the option board?
The option board isn't really a good candidate for this anyway, as the format
of the archived data is not documented (at least not in any of the material
I have with the card), so you would be relying on a non-obtainable and
unsupported card to restore the disks in the future - but I thought I might
play with it a bit.
Regards,
Dave
--
dave04a (at) Dave Dunfield
dunfield (dot) Firmware development services & tools: www.dunfield.com
com Collector of vintage computing equipment:
http://www.parse.com/~ddunfield/museum/index.html
> Jerome Fine replies:
>
> Once done, the SET command values are held in the
> DU.SYS device driver file. You do NOT need to
> do the SET commands each time. Probably not
> recommended in any case.
Ahaaa... Is that saved in DU.SYS when you issue the commands, then? Makes
sense. I'll try it when I get home.
> Assuming you are booting from an RL02, then the
> DU.SYS device driver my be LOADed for a bit faster
> response after the first usage. In addition, I
> strongly suggest you use RT11FB rather than RT11SJ
> unless the added size of the RT11FB monitor has
> a serious impact on the program which you run.
Well, the idea is to load TSX-Plus over it, which requires the SJ monitor.
> In addition, it would be helpful to know the full
> version number of the RT-11 version which you are
> using. Based on the above SET commands, it must
> be at least V05.03 or RT-11 which was released
> in 1985. There are certain features which later
> versions of RT-11 have that you may wish to be
> aware of. the RT-11 command:
> SHOW CONFIG
> will provide the information, as will the banner
> when RT-11 first boots.
On bootup, and in SHOW CONFIG, the version is given as 5.00.
> Finally, I strongly recommend against the SET
> values which have been suggested since they
> impact very negatively with regard to booting
> RT-11. You will not lose anything with a
Ok, why is that?
> different combination of SET parameters, but
> you will gain with respect to what drives
> can be booted, in particular from a cold start.
In this instance I want to boot from a "clean" install of RT-11 from DL0,
but eventually I will be booting from DU0.
> The exact nature of which disk drives are being
> used will also help. I suspect an RD53 and an
> RX50, but please confirm. Most novice RT-11
OK, this is where it gets tricky. I'm not totally sure how to identify
the ST506 drives fitted to the machine. One is a full-height 5.25" drive,
with (seemingly) about 65,000 blocks on each partition. The other is
half-height, with considerably less on each partition - one is around
40,000 blocks, one is around 16,000 blocks (if I remember correctly - I'm
not actually near the machine right now to check). The smaller drive is
made by Fujitsu, may be something like M224XAS ? The label is rather hard
to read.
The other drives are an RL02 (I have two but lack the cable that links the
two drives) and an RX02.
Gordon.
It's nutjob-expensive, if you ask me - but the guy's 2 - one he's epaying
alone ($50 USD opening bid, BIN for $75) and he's got another complete
machine with the BASIC ROM in it for $115 BIN, IIRC. No bids on either
one... should I snag the ROM to make backups of it? :-O
Will another chance come along like this at all???
Anyone wanna go in with me on it? *I gotz the Eproms...*
Lemme know!
"Merch"
--
Roger "Merch" Merchberger -- SysAdmin, Iceberg Computers
zmerch at 30below.com
What do you do when Life gives you lemons,
and you don't *like* lemonade?????????????
---------------Original Message:
From: Vintage Computer Festival <vcf at siconic.com>
Subject: RE: List etiquette (was RE: cctalk Digest, Vol 19, Issue 15)
To: "General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts"
<cctalk at classiccmp.org>
>Mike, I like you, but your method of replying to messages leaves a LOT to
be desired. You intermingled my message with your replies. Use some
software with a quoting feature, eh?
-----------------------------------
My apologies; I just changed ISPs and, along with that, my email SW.
Looks OK at my end, but somewhere along the way the indentation
got stripped out.
>I don't consider my response either rude or condescending.
-------------------------------------
Well, the tone of your posts has itself been the subject of several OT
threads, but we love ya anyway.
====================================================
The rest of my reply to Sellam is off-list, except for:
I think my main point is that, as historians, museum curators, technical
resource people etc., maybe we have a special responsibity to present
a friendly, helpful and more or less mature attitude to the outside world,
*especially* in contrast to some of the other lists around.
Sorry if the discussion's moved on in the meanwhile; that's the trouble with
being on the digest list.
mike
-----------------Original Message:
From: steven stengel <tosteve at yahoo.com>
Subject: FREE: Toaster video tapes (copies). WANTED: Commodore PET
ROM.
......
Also, I need ROM 016 for my "chicklet" PET 2001.
Any givers?
Steve.
-----------------Reply:
Maybe; can't put my hands on my spare ROMs at the moment, but when I
find 'em, I'll let you know. Meanwhile, please confirm that that's a 6540-016
(Basic I, H4) and not a 901439-16 (Basic II, H6), off-list please.
But I'd recommend what Dave suggested and replace it (or the whole set)
with EPROMS if you have the facilities or know someone who does; 6540s
were notoriously flaky in the long term, might not be long before another
one goes bad, and you could upgrade the Basic at the same time.
mike
>From: "Randy McLaughlin" <cctalk at randy482.com>
>
>From: "Wai-Sun Chia" <waisun.chia at gmail.com>
>Sent: Sunday, March 06, 2005 10:36 PM
>> On Sun, 6 Mar 2005 21:09:01 -0500, Dave Dunfield <dave04a at dunfield.com>
>> wrote:
>>> All the discussion on stacking two PC supplies and cutting
>>> grounds to try and keep them isolated seems like asking
>>> for trouble....
>>
>> Asking for trouble is correct.
>> After all, to get 24V and I don't think a typical 8" drive will
>> surpass 1A anyway, a LM317 plus a couple of passives and a small
>> transformer is more than enough to do the job. If you get the LM317K,
>> then it'll even do up till 1.5A provided you give it an
>> appropriately-sized heatsink.
>>
>> /wai-sun
>
>
>SA800's require 1.7A on the 24v line.
>
>Randy
>
Hi
Randy is right. They used the 24V line for the stepper.
The 12V line was used for the analog electronics.
Still, as I recall, the 24V didn't need exact regulation.
I'd have to check my schematics for the drives.
Dwight
>
>
Went digging in the attic again, mainly looking for my serial EPROM burner
which has the built-in eraser... and I found a goodly chunk of everything but.
:-/
However, I did find my HHC, no power supply. It takes a rather odd critter,
too; 9V DC ; and I believe the correct terminology is called "Drum
Positive" i.e. on the outside connection of the barrel connector. Most
barrel connector PSs have the ground on the outer conductor to help protect
it from shorting out; the Tandy 10x/200 are also notable in being wired
"drum positive."
As I just got done hooking up my Xeltek Superpro L EPROM burner, it's
sitting on my desk, with the PS sitting on top of my PC case -- I take a
look at the sucker -- *Exactly* what the HHC needs! :-O I check the
connector - perfect fit!
OK Everybody! Let's all collectively watch Tony jump out of his skin!
;-) I plugged the sucker in, to see if it worked! It does! I set the time,
and it keeps between short unplugs (had to test a few ROMs, you know...
;-). I'm guessing the NiCds won't hold much of a charge at all, tho.
It's got a smokin' 4K RAM - any upgrades for that, or was that all you got?
=-=-=-=-=
Found my PC-DOS 7 diskettes - prolly set up a second virtual PC to test 'em
out... (it's ontopic this year...)
=-=-=-=-=
Found lots of my CoCo stuff, I'm trying to get back into that...
=-=-=-=-=
More shiznit later, but if I don't find my eprom eraser soon, whomever
would be willing to burn me a copy of that BASIC might get his/her for
free... ;-)
Time for bed, gotta be up in a few hours anyway... Laterz,
"Merch"
--
Roger "Merch" Merchberger | "Profile, don't speculate."
SysAdmin, Iceberg Computers | Daniel J. Bernstein
zmerch at 30below.com |
Pardon me while I step back into my past a bit. I really
enjoyed working with the 990, and want to share some of my
experiences with anyone else that enjoyed the 990 as well.
> I'm in contact with two gents who worked on TI-990's back in
> the 80's. Since this platform doesn't get a lot of traffic on
> the list, I thought I'd share their recollections of working
> on these systems.
>
> ======== Gentleman N
>
> [ Referring to the pictures/links posted a few days ago of a
> [ TI-990 in L.A. ...
>
> The disk drives for this computer is actually a pair of drives in one
> enclosure. One removable and the other "fixed" internally. They
both
> have the same capacity (5MB I think).
You're dead on. If memory serves (and more and more, it doesn't :-)
the drive was the CDC "Hawk" drive -- five up, and five down. The
bottom platter was fixed; the top was removable.
> The funky terminal is just that. It's a great monochrome terminal
with
> addressable cursor and it is fast for its day when compared to
> VT52/VT100s.
Yeah baby! The 911/VDT. It was pretty sweet. I believe the cable
>from the tube to the system was coax for the video, plus a few lines
for the kbd. The tubes were fast to display information. And a
really lovely green color.
I remember that DX-10 had a really nice user interface, and the
commands were quite mnemonic. You could even write your own little
shell scripts and they would integrate nicely with the existing
system utilities.
I always thought (and still do) that it was a well engineered
system.
> The OS seemed decent from what little I used it but I never did any
> programming with it. In 1986 I helped out Bryan with an old client
in
> Honolulu who had a rack mounted version with three DS10's where two
of
> the unit (four drives) had failed with head crashes (don't move packs
> between drives after those funny scrapping sounds begin). The
service
> guy had the system already repaired and I helped get the their
> accounting system going again. I went back 1987-89 and wrote a new
> version running on i386/AT&T Unix System V Release 3 so they could
have
> more modern hardware.
>
> It was a nice system...but not an IBM 1401 (or CDC 8090)!
My brother and I did similar things with his system. We were writing
accounting packages in Ryan-McFarland ("RM") Cobol. It was really a
lot of fun, and I was writing an average of one good-sized file
maintenance application per day. I believe it really was a pretty
productive system for its time. It even had a decent keyed file
capability (one primary key, multiple secondary keys) that we
really exploited in our work.
We wrote systems for several companies in Seattle. One of them was
a company that manufactured blue jeans -- they were quite a cast of
characters. At one time, the company name was "Bearbottoms", then
it was "James Jean", and then something else.
The guy that owned the company made money hand over fist -- it was
said that he paid something like $2.00 to get a pair of jeans sewn
in Mexico, which then sold at the Bon or Nordstroms for something
like $30.00.
> ========
>
> ======== Gentleman A
>
> Wow, that's a (nice) blast from the past. And to help connect the
dots,
> I am a friend of Bill's who handed over a customer with one of these
for
> Bill to provide software support.
>
> I had a 2 person company (sales guy and me) that developed business
> applications for a chain of radio stations, and we needed a system
that
> we could resell 1) quickly; 2) with no cash upfront; 3) that was
> reasonably powerful for a multi-user terminal based application.
>
> This was around 1980, and we talked to all the usual suspects, DEC,
Data
> General, HP, maybe Wang... It's been a while. Anyway the TI folks
> basically sold us a machine and delivered it, no cash down, 120 days
to
> pay, lots of support, etc. I had the thing in my living room of my
> bachelor-pad apartment for a few months of development and testing,
then
> we delivered it to the client.
>
> The application was in Fortran (is that correct Bill?), but I
remember
> writing a few little assembler tools and twiddling a few bits here
and
> there. Once we delivered it to the customer my access was somewhat
> limited to bug-fix and enhancements during evenings and weekends, so
I
> didn't get to play with it as much as I would have liked.
>
> The coolest thing I remember from the OS was a near real-time
display
> of in-memory processes. Sort of a graphical version of 'top' mapped
> onto physical addresses.
I know *exactly* what command you are talking about. That would be
the "Show Memory Map" command, and it *was* a heck of a lot of fun
to watch.
You could really get a feel for exactly what the machine was doing,
when it was rolling jobs in and out of memory. You'd see big chunks
of the screen change (from bright green (reverse video) to darker
green, IIRC) as the system rolled jobs between disk and memory.
I remember one of the companies we worked with, IALC, had a 990/12,
and they bought a 911 VDT to do nothing but sit in the glass computer
room and run SMM all day long :-)
I'm currently talking with someone about getting a 990/10 of my own.
Don't know if it will happen (the system is pretty far away), but I
am excited at the possibility of getting my hands on one of these
systems again.
Well, that's enough for now. Thanks for letting me relive some
old memories.
John Sambrook
__________________________________
Celebrate Yahoo!'s 10th Birthday!
Yahoo! Netrospective: 100 Moments of the Web
http://birthday.yahoo.com/netrospective/
I know I'm beating a dead horse with the "can't we be a little nicer" question, but...
Since _he_'s not going to get your reply (unless you CC'd him?), I assume
you're just trying to impress the rest of us with your knowledge of RFC's?
OK, I'm impressed, in more ways than one; you must have a lot of time on
your hands to type all that instead of just cutting & pasting a message
header.
I'll send him the info, but if I were he and saw your reply in the archives I'd
promptly unsubscribe and find some other place to discuss my classic
computers.
mike
-----------Previous Message:
Date: Tue, 8 Mar 2005 04:54:54 -0500 (EST)
From: der Mouse <mouse at Rodents.Montreal.QC.CA>
Subject: Re: joining the list ?
> How does somebody new join this list.
> Who do they write to, etc ?
Well, you could always try the standard -request address, as outlined
in the last paragraph on page 5 of RFC 1118; the second question in
section 9 of RFC 1206; the "mailing list" entry in RFC 1392; question
9.2 in RFC 1594; section 3.1.2 and 3.2.2 of RFC 1855; section 6 of RFC
2142; the last paragraph of section 1 of RFC 2369; and probably other
places I didn't pick up offhand.
If wherever you found out about the list includes messages with
headers, you could also use either of the links present in the
List-Subscribe: header of every list message.
Not that it couldn't be taken care of.. Bamboo has "partitions" every
foot to 6", you'd have to
split it, cut out the partitions, and tie it back together.
If the desert island has vines you could make a rope computer, as
described in a
Scientific American, I don't remember the issue.