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

by msokolov＠ivan.Harhan.ORG

John Willis <willisjo at zianet.com> wrote: > 7..6..5..4..3.. > > > No dead-sergeant prompt >>> How is the halt enable switch on the back set? MS

21 years, 2 months

2
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MicroVAX II Problem

by willisjo＠zianet.com

Here's the output from the system when connected to a terminal: KA630-A.V1.3 Performing normal system tests. 7..6..5..4..3.. No dead-sergeant prompt >>> It used to also have 2..1.. and then go to the >>> John Willis <willisjo at zianet.com> wrote: > system would actually begin its power-on tests (F...E...D...C... etc.), > however, it hangs at 3. From what I could find in DEC documentation, > this is a "spurious interrupt" problem, 3 is _NOT_ an error, it just means that the system reached the >>> prompt at which you can give it commands like which device to boot from. Connect a terminal to the console port to interact with the console. MS

21 years, 2 months

1
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Create a VAX CPU with FPGA?

by waisun.chia＠gmail.com

On Thu, 3 Mar 2005 21:37:57 -0800, Zane H. Healy <healyzh at aracnet.com> wrote: > I'm one of the lucky ones, all of my main PDP-11's have SCSI > adapters. However, only one of my two -8's (/m & /e) have a disk Lucky bastard! :-) Either you've had a windfall, or you're now less an arm and a leg... > controller, though I've not found time to get either -8 fully running > :^( One thing that really worries me is that the days of being able > to get new SCSI disks that will work with a PDP-11 are coming to an > end, if they aren't already over. One of the vendors that is very > good with getting 3rd party disks to work with VMS has reported that > the new U320 drives don't sync down to Narrow SCSI right. Wow. That has happened already?... bummer > What I'd really like to see is some sort of MFM HD emulator. That's > something that would be of use to more than just us DEC users. For > those of us that would use it with DEC HW, something that would > emulate a RD51-RD54 would be great for those OS's that expect a > specific HD type. To fantasize further: - device end either SCSI/U320/SCA or IDE/SATA - bus end (Qbus or Unibus) emulates the largest type of a family, i.e: RD/RD54, RL/RL02, RX/RX02, RK/RK07, same for RP, and the rest I think the hardware part is the easiest. The stumbling block would be the emulation layer in order for applications to run unchanged int the various DEC OSs.. /wai-sun

21 years, 2 months

1
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MicroVAX II problem

by msokolov＠ivan.Harhan.ORG

John Willis <willisjo at zianet.com> wrote: > system would actually begin its power-on tests (F...E...D...C... etc.), > however, it hangs at 3. From what I could find in DEC documentation, > this is a "spurious interrupt" problem, 3 is _NOT_ an error, it just means that the system reached the >>> prompt at which you can give it commands like which device to boot from. Connect a terminal to the console port to interact with the console. MS

21 years, 2 months

1
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MicroVAX II problem

by willisjo＠zianet.com

Hello all, I purchased a MicroVAX II about a year ago. When I went to the office where it was sitting, the original owner, a former DEC field service engineer, and myself powered the machine up. VMS came up successfully; no problems there. The system is in a BA23 rackmount chassis, and contains a MOB Systems quniverter, to connect it to a BA11K Unibus chassis via two large ribbon cables. The system contains also the following boards: M7658 - 16-bit parallel I/O with DMA and block mode functions M3104 - DHV11-A 8-line asynchronous DMA MUX M7651 - 18/22-bit DMA general purpose parallel interface Also, a TQK50 TMSCP controller and an RQDX3 ST-506 MSCP controller. The system has for drives an RD54 fixed disk and a TK50 tape drive. Anyhow, once I got the system home and cabled everything back according to the notes/pictures taken of the original installation, the system would not come up, and the DC OK light on the front panel would not light. I checked and re-checked the cable connections, re-seated all the boards, still no-go. Realizing I would not need the Unibus chassis, as it contained no cards other than the one needed to connect it to the uVAX II's Qbus, I removed the Qbus part of the quniverter. This solved the DC OK problem, and the system would actually begin its power-on tests (F...E...D...C... etc.), however, it hangs at 3. From what I could find in DEC documentation, this is a "spurious interrupt" problem, and the docs gave no clue as to how to go about tracking it down to any specific part of the system. I have tried pulling all the cards except for CPU and memory, to no avail. I tried installing the RD54 in a VAXstation 2000. It boots VMS successfully when installed in that system, so I know the drive is good. Unfortunately, I recently moved and could not keep the BA11K due to space constraints, so I have since parted with that chassis. I'm completely stumped at this point. Any suggestions? Thanks much, John Willis

21 years, 2 months

1
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fixing broken .Z files?

by julesrichardsonuk＠yahoo.co.uk

Don't suppose anyone's come across anything that'll attempt to fix a corrupt .Z (Unix compress) file, have they? I've got a 40MB compressed tar archive here, but uncompress barfs after the first 23MB - it'd be nice if there was a way of skipping over the duff bits if possible and reading *something* from the last 17MB! cheers Jules

21 years, 2 months

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Not sure who all is near York University

by brain＠jbrain.com

But if you do: If you have the time and interest to wander out to York U on a Friday morning: I've been asked to make a presentation there. My theme (if I don't wander too far off the subject) is "Computer hobbyists of the 70s and 80s" - mostly from a Commodore user perspective, of course. It runs about an hour. This is in connection with a computer museum at York; a bunch of older computers (including lotsa Commodores) will be on display. A little more information can be found at: http://www.cs.yorku.ca/museum/events/events.htm (gosh, I think they must have retouched my photo). And the YorkU host, Zbigniew Stachniak, says: >> Since our history of computing lecture series event is open to anyone, >> you are, of course, free to bring with you anybody who is interested >> in your lecture. > > So come along if you have time and inclination (like the guy who leaned his grandfather clock agains the wall), and we'll all revise history together. :-) --Jim Butterfield Jim "the other Jim" Brain. -- Jim Brain, Brain Innovations brain at jbrain.com http://www.jbrain.com Dabbling in WWW, Embedded Systems, Old CBM computers, and Good Times!

21 years, 2 months

1
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Ottawa collectors in the news

by dave04a＠dunfield.com

In case anyone is interested: CJOH news in Ottawa is running a segment on local collectors of classic computers. The camera crew was here this afternoon, and they visited Mike K's on sunday. It will air as a segment on the "Tech Now" section of this Sunday 6:00pm newscast (March 6). Local Ottawans can tune CJOH directly, anyone with ExpressVu (Canadian satellite) should be able to get it on channel 196 at the above date/time. 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

21 years, 2 months

1
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PDP-1 project milestone

by eric＠brouhaha.com

The PDP-1 Restoration Project is still far from complete, but we hit a major milestone tonight. When we last tried to run Spacewar, the sun and player ships would not display correctly, though the starfield and torpedos seemed to be fine. We ran the DEC instruction diagnostics and they failed on the shift/rotate test, though all the diagnostics had passed a few months earlier. This week we wrote a more specific diagnostic program and determined that left shifts and rotates of the I/O register were not doing anything, though right shifts and rotates of the I/O register were fine, and all shifts and rotates of the accumulator were fine. After a little study of the print set, we identified two system modules that could cause the observed behavior. We tried replacing one of them, a 1607 pulse amplifier. After replacing the 1607, our own diagnostic and the DEC diagnostic both passed. Some of the team wanted to go home without trying out Spacewar, but the rest of us nagged until they gave in. We loaded it, and it ran correctly. Spacewar on the real Type 30 display with long persistence phosphor is a thing of beauty! Some of the tasks remaining to be done: * build new Spacewar control boxes * continue repair/testing of Soroban console typewriter * adjust Type 30 display to factory specs (linearity is poor) * adjust paper tape reader sensitivity/threshold * diagnose & repair suspected flaky memory "module" 0 * voltage margin checks, run all diagnostics * install new belt and test BRPE tape punch Eric

21 years, 2 months

5
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Canon Cat -- what's it really like?

by dwight.elvey＠amd.com

>From: "Eric Flanzbaum" <elf at ucsd.edu> > ---snip--- >Given what others have posted in this thread about the Cat, I'm under the >impression it is basically a editing machine (with some fancy features >built-in), along with a back door into Forth. Almost a glorified word >processor, if you will. > >Was there much (if any) 3rd party software developed for it -- which >expanded beyond its native capabilities? > > Hi Not that I know of but there are others that might have more information on this. From my playing with it, you can not directly execute code from the disk. Even to run Forth, you have to select the code from the screen before it will execute. This isn't hard to do but not the same as running a program on the disk. There might have been some way to do it but the Cat only seems to use the disk for text storage. Once in Forth, I believe one can take over the machine and treat it like a normal processor. I'm sure there must be a trap-door in there someplace to load code from disk but I've not explored what can be done from Forth, other than, when I first got it, to look through the memory to determine where the ROM images were. I do know one of the fellows that wrote code for it and I've been meaning to pick his brain some time. For the curious, it is a great machine. There is so much in there to explore. and even a way to do it ( Forth is like a super monitor ). Dwight

21 years, 2 months

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Canon Cat -- what's it really like?

by elf＠ucsd.edu

Ron Hudson wrote: > sounds to me like emacs is to lisp as cannon cat is > to forth, at least to some extent. It does have that ring to it, huh? Given what others have posted in this thread about the Cat, I'm under the impression it is basically a editing machine (with some fancy features built-in), along with a back door into Forth. Almost a glorified word processor, if you will. Was there much (if any) 3rd party software developed for it -- which expanded beyond its native capabilities?

21 years, 2 months

2
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List subscribtion

by hachti＠hachti.de

Does anybody know why my list subscribtion has been cancelled? I wasn't receiving any messages since February 26. Now I have subscribed again. But I don't know what happened..... Philipp

21 years, 2 months

3
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Re installing XP on Sony

by dwight.elvey＠amd.com

You seemed to have left out a few words so I thought I might help a little. >From: "Jim Isbell, W5JAI" <jim.isbell at gmail.com> > >No, this is NOT a PC support list, it is a general list for computer ^ classic >talk which is what my post is. If you need to be "on topic" go to the ^ not >cctech list. > > Hi This is an un-moderated "clasic computer" list that tolerates some off topic post. Also, it is self regulating in that many off topic post may be flamed. Members should refain from posting replies to post that, if allowed to continue, damage the list in general. Even when they know the answer. I'll admit that I've not always been able to stop myself but many times I have. What to do with Windows XP is way outside of topics covered under clasic computers. The worst of it is that this list most likely has only a small percentage that are up on dealing with XP. Most just use it only when needed and for nothing else. We are not trying to turn you off towards the list but help you realize that there are better places to handle your particular problem. Dwight

21 years, 2 months

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Reply-To: behavior was Re: imaging DC600A QIC tapes

by pete＠dunnington.u-net.com

On Mar 3 2005, 10:03, Tom Jennings wrote: > On Thu, 2 Mar 2005, Pete Turnbull wrote: > > > Probably because Jules' mailer is inserting an unecessary "Reply-to:" > > header (pointless, since it's supposed to be used only when you want > > replies to go to somewhere other than the "From:"), and then mailman is > > applying the principle of "least modification" and *appending* the > > classiccmp address, rather than replacing the one Jules' mailer put in. > > > > I've noticed this with posts from one or two other listmembers. > > I think Jay's right -- mailman may have changed, but it's not > necessarily incorrect. There are few subtleties involving > To:/Reply-To: processing but it's one of those things a lot of > MUAs make configurable. Pine's "reply-always-uses-reply-to" in > feature-list, for example. I'm not suggesting there's anything wrong with mailman -- in fact, applying "least modification" is The Right Thing. You are only allowed one "Reply-to:" line per message, and mailman is quite properly not discarding existing information. I just don't think any MUA should create a "Reply-to:" if it's the same as the "From:" or "Sender:". As for Pine using "Reply-to:" for replies, that's what the RFCs say you *should* do if a "Reply-to:" is present; it's purpose is purely to override the "From:" when replying. -- Pete Peter Turnbull Network Manager University of York

21 years, 2 months

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working MITS Altair 8800 & manual

by dogas＠bellsouth.net

21 years, 2 months

2
1
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Canon Cat -- what's it really like?

by dwight.elvey＠amd.com

>From: "Eric F." <elf at ucsd.edu> > >The recent death of Mr. Raskin has me Google'ing around for information >about his Canon Cat machine. > >Even prior to his passing, I have always thought it a sweet looking machine. > >Does anyone of this list own a Canon Cat? If so, do you use it for any sort >of regular everyday work? And what's your personal impression of the machine? > >Is it even possible to use it in the context of today's work demands (i.e., >for email)? Or is a proper network interface & appropriate software the >limiting factor here? > > Hi I have a Cat. There are some companies that still use these as editing machines. That is why they seem to be missing from the collector group in general. I got mine >from Al Kossow. I had to replace the lithium battery in it but it otherwise works OK. I'd love to get some information on the memory and I/O mapping. It expects to use particular printers so it would be nice to rewrite the driver to work well with my 3SI. I could imagine that if I were doing a lot of writing for college or writing a book, I'd find the editor a real advantage. It has one other nice feature. One can write out a formula and it will give you the answer. It is kind of like having a spread sheet in your text. Of course, if you know the secret key sequence, you can bring it into the Forth mode. From here, you can access the inner machine as well. You can write Forth code and execute it in the text as well. It then becomes a spread sheet plus at that point. Still, it is primarily a text machine in black and white. I talked with Jeff about two years ago. He definitely had interesting ideas about computer interfaces. He didn't think much of the mouse. Besides being the major source of carpal tunnel syndrome (sp?) it is a real time waster for most applications. The machines code wasn't completely written in Forth but Jeff does attribute the quick software development and the fact that there were no errors found in the released version to using Forth in the creation of code. Forth tends to make a person do incremental testing as the code is written. This often helps to produce error free code in the final product. Dwight

21 years, 2 months

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DEC Documentation, RT11/RSX/VMS Denver area

by emu＠ecubics.com

Anybody likes to have it ? Free, PICKUP ONLY

21 years, 2 months

2
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no list traffic for cctech - culprit explained

by jwest＠classiccmp.org

I dug into some of the complaints that people on cctech weren't getting any posts, except from me. Here's what happened. Remember that cctech is 100% moderated. Nothing goes to it without moderator approval. The moderators are behind ;) I just checked and there's a few days of messages in there. I'm sure this will get caught up soon enough. In addition - why are cctech people getting posts just from me? Well, see above, PLUS, I set my own subscription to cctech to not require moderation. Thus, any posts I make go straight to the users without an approval step. I did this because sometimes when I send out notices like "I'm taking the server down for a while", cctech users don't get them immediately like cctalk users do, due to moderation. So by setting my cctech subscription to no moderation, cctech people would get my notices immediately. The downside of this, in hindsight, is that it looks REALLY squirrely to the cctech people. They get a string of my normal posts, and them some time later, possibly a day or so, when moderation occurs, they get all the other posts I make. Problem solved. I think what I'm going to do about this is change my personal cctech subscription back to requiring moderation. That way cctech people won't see the odd out of order behaviour. Then I'll create an additional "admin" subscription for myself that doesn't require moderation. I'll then try to remember to use that "admin" subscription to send out list notices and things will be more sane for cctech people. Regards, Jay West

21 years, 2 months

2
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TRAC; Two TI DS10 disk packs available

by classiccmp＠crash.com

The following are available, but with a request. Two clean TI DS10 (TI-990 era) disk packs. I've been charged by a friend with finding a good home from them, which I think means someone from this list trying to keep a TI-990 in good order. The catch is, we'd like to get any recoverable data off of these disk packs. My friend is a board member for the TRAC Foundation. TRAC is "an interpretive, recursive, string-based, macroprocessing language with no compile step" invented by Calvin Mooers starting in 1959. Going to www.tracfoundation.com one finds that "entire subroutines can be inserted, or deleted, from a running procedure, thus massively changing the behavior during runtime." Whoa! Imagine changing a sort routine half way through a long running job... The reason I mention TRAC is that there's a chance one of these packs has important/useful information about the TRAC language, and my friend would really appreciate it if the new owner could check for and recover anything that's on these. That's the only catch - we want whatever can be read from them. And whoever wants them would need to pony up for shipping and handling, or come collect them near Boston, MA, USA. I can try to scrounge up a suitable box, but the packs might have to go through the UPS Store too. So, preference will be given to the person who stands the best chance of recovering data. I can wait a week to see what responses come in. Thanks, --Steve.

21 years, 2 months

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starmax 3000, starmax4000, accessories, denver area

by emu＠ecubics.com

pickup only

21 years, 2 months

1
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imaging DC600A QIC tapes

by pete＠dunnington.u-net.com

On Mar 2 2005, 22:50, der Mouse wrote: > In passing, on the "whom to reply to" thread, this message came in with > a header > > > Reply-To: julesrichardsonuk at yahoo.co.uk, > > "General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts" > > <cctalk at classiccmp.org> > > I noticed this when I tried to reply and saw both addresses in the To:; > upon checking, I found that Reply-To:. > > How it got that way, of course, is a different question. Probably because Jules' mailer is inserting an unecessary "Reply-to:" header (pointless, since it's supposed to be used only when you want replies to go to somewhere other than the "From:"), and then mailman is applying the principle of "least modification" and *appending* the classiccmp address, rather than replacing the one Jules' mailer put in. I've noticed this with posts from one or two other listmembers. -- Pete Peter Turnbull Network Manager University of York

21 years, 2 months

5
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VT220, vt320, vt420, Denver area

by emu＠ecubics.com

Pickup only please

21 years, 2 months

1
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LSI-11/2 microcode source

by h.wolter＠sympatico.ca

Does anyone have the microcode source code for the PDP11 native instruction set on the LSI-11/2/WD chips? it purportedly provided with the LSI-11 WCS option (KUV-11 -M8018) The descriptions I've found in documentation located on bitsavers say the the kit included the microcode assembler/linker tools as well as the full ' 11 source .mic code for reference. Meagan? Alternate anyone have info on reading out the WD PMOS roms? I've got 3x working M7264 LSI-11/2(quad height) with all the MICROMs loaded as well as a M7270 LSI-11 (dual height), they all run RT fine. Anyone know if you can just swap the MICROMS to make a WD Pascal Microegine? Would be a good set if you already have an 11/23, 11/73 looking to complete the set. Open to interesting trades. Heinz

21 years, 2 months

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TI-990 recollections

by classiccmp＠crash.com

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). 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. 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)! ======== ======== 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. ========

21 years, 2 months

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Mainframes buttons and Gordon Moore...

by news＠computercollector.com

Two interesting articles: - http://tinyurl.com/63yx9 (cnet) - http://tinyurl.com/6y6rb (computerworld) ===== Evan's personal homepage: www.snarc.net *** Tell your friends about the Computer Collector Newsletter! - It's free and we'll never send spam or share your email address - Publishing every Monday(-ish), ask about writing for us - Mainframes to videogames, hardware and software, we cover it all - W: http://news.computercollector.com E: news at computercollector.com - We're approaching 700 readers: win a prize!

21 years, 2 months

1
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imaging DC600A QIC tapes

by pete＠dunnington.u-net.com

On Mar 3 2005, 13:49, Jules Richardson wrote: > On Thu, 2005-03-03 at 13:09 +0000, Pete Turnbull wrote: > > > Probably because Jules' mailer is inserting an unecessary "Reply-to:" > > header (pointless, since it's supposed to be used only when you want > > replies to go to somewhere other than the "From:") > > Possibly fixed now :-) (we'll see when this hits the list...) Yep, that's fixed it :-) -- Pete Peter Turnbull Network Manager University of York

21 years, 2 months

1
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OSI Software Find!

by dfnr2＠yahoo.com

Hi Bill, Any chance of your making binary copies of your working disks available? That would be a boon to the rest of us OSI owners. Dave --- Bill Sudbrink <wh.sudbrink at verizon.net> wrote: > Well, since my C4P-MF has been rock solid stable > since I > fitted the new power supply and cleaned the drive > head, > I've been going through a bunch of 25 (and more) > year old > diskettes to see just what I have. > > Lo-and-behold! > > On a diskette simply labeled OS65D 3.2 (not > originally mine, > acquired I don't know where), I found really nice > machine > code implementations of Space Invaders and > Asteroids! You > don't usually see machine code programs on OSI > diskettes, the > OS was too crude to have a simple binary loader. > Diskettes > usually have BASIC programs, with maybe a couple of > USR$ > sub-routines in data statements. To load and > execute the > programs, you have to EXIT from BASIC into the > sub-monitor and > then load the diskette tracks into memory one at a > time. Once > you have it loaded, then you GO to the starting > address. I > think that these programs might have been originally > intended > to be loaded from cassette tape. Fortunately, the > diskette had > two BASIC programs, each of which PRINTs the > instructions for > loading the machine code programs. I'm really happy > about this! > People usually see OSI boxes running rather slow > interpreted > BASIC programs. These two programs show just what > an OSI box > can do. There is no attribution for the Asteroids > program, but > the Space Invaders is copyright 1980 by Michael > Kincaid. > > Can't wait to show these at TCF! > > Bill > __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around http://mail.yahoo.com

21 years, 2 months

1
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Age, was Re: IBM mainframe goes for 99 cents

by pat＠computer-refuge.org

Jules Richardson declared on Saturday 26 February 2005 03:03 pm: > On Sat, 2005-02-26 at 22:02 +0800, Wai-Sun Chia wrote: > > Born 1966 (age 39). > > Most people start at zero ;-) ??? 1966 + 39 = 2005. That's the current year, unless during my intoxication last night, I built a time machine and sent myself back 1 year in time. :) However, that seems somewhat unlikely. Pat -- Purdue University ITAP/RCS --- http://www.itap.purdue.edu/rcs/ The Computer Refuge --- http://computer-refuge.org

21 years, 2 months

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more duplicate posts

by dwight.elvey＠amd.com

>From: msokolov at ivan.harhan.org > >Vintage Computer Festival <vcf at siconic.com> wrote: > >> This is not your fault. As you may recall, we had this discussion about >> half a year ago, and it boils down to people not configuring their e-mail >> clients properly to obey the reply-to directive in the e-mail headers of >> the list messages. > >No, that is not the problem. Since I read my mail with full headers using >a very "raw" MUA that does *nothing* behind my back, I see what actually >happens is this: most list messages arrive with Reply-To: set to the list, >but some arrive with Reply-To: listing both the list and the author. > >Since the Reply-To: header is tweaked by the mailing list software, I can't >see how it can behave so inconsistently. Since I am a hard determinist >when it comes to computers, the only rational explanation I have is that >there must be some differences in the headers of messages before they reach >the list that causes the list software to process them differently. But >of course in order to pin the problem down, one must see the messages in >their original form prior to alteration by the list software, which I cannot >do as a mere subscriber, only Jay or other list staff can do that. Hi I just sent myself a message. The only thing I see is that the reply-to field has my email address in it. The list server must be simply appending the CCTALK address to what is there. I don't control that part of my mail tool so I annoy Sellam ;) Dwight > >MS > >P.S. One thought: when I was designing my own mailing list management software, >I implemented a feature by which a list can accept posts from non-subscribers >with moderator approval. I implemented it so that it set Reply-To: header >to both the list and the author on those approved outsider posts, on the >reasoning that the author should see replies but won't see them on the >list because he is not subscribed. I don't know anything about the software >Jay uses for this list, but there is a chance that its authors followed >reasoning similar to mine and the posts arriving with Reply-To: set to the >list and the author come from non-subscribers approved by moderators. >

21 years, 2 months

2
1
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classiccmp hardware is covered!

by jwest＠classiccmp.org

Thanks to a lot of generousity from a lot of folks, the purchase of the new hardware has been covered as of 1:06pm CST. Thanks! I'll cut a check to the vendor today. Jay

21 years, 2 months

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origins of IBM 3740 diskette format

by swtpc6800＠comcast.net

Don Hills wrote >The original diskette design was for a microcode load device for an >IBM mainframe. I recall there was an IBM Journal of R&D article about >it, I'll see if I can find it I happen to have the 25th Anniversary issue of the IBM Journal of Research and Development, Sept 1981. There is an article on page 701. The IBM Diskette and Diskette Drive by J. T. Engh The diskette and diskette drive have had a major influence on data processing. They provide a low-cost, compact, high-performance solution to the need for a reusable magnetic medium and have largely replaced the punched card in many applications. Early applications were simple program-load functions. Today these have expanded to a wide range of medium exchange, information storage, and data processing applications. This paper examines the history of the development of these products within IBM. The discussion includes some of the alternatives considered and some of the problems encountered during these developments. You can find it on the IBM Research site http://www.research.ibm.com/journal/rd/255/ibmrd2505ZE.pdf My business card was in the book with an email address of uw-beaver!entropy!dataio!holley Michael Holley

21 years, 2 months

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imaging DC600A QIC tapes

by aek＠spies.com

Next question - anyone think of a good reason why a lot of old tapes I have containing tar archives seem to hit read errors at around 7.8MB into the tape? -- That is the first time the tape reverses direction. You should always 'retension' the tape before trying to read it mt -f /dev/st0 retension works under most unix systems. This runs the tape out, and rewinds to BOT. If the tapes are old, there is a high probablility the tensioning belt in the cartridge is going to break. Keep a few new donor carts around to salvage the belts out of Be EXTREMELY careful when changing a belt to not damage the tape (it is very easy to damage since it is quite thin)

21 years, 2 months

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DEC RX50 Test Disks

by cfandt＠netsync.net

I have a set of five RX50 floppies which contain various service tests. I have not yet discovered what machine/CPU these work upon. Could anybody point me in the direction of how to interpret the seven-character part numbers? All have a copyright date of 1983. They are as follows: CZUFDB1 (disk part # BL-T540B-M1 "USER TESTS") CZXD1B1 (disk part # BL-T541B-M1 "FIELD SERVICE TESTS 1") CZXD2B0 (disk part # BL-T542B-MC "FIELD SERVICE TESTS 2") CZXD3B0 (disk part # BL-T565B-MC "FIELD SERVICE TESTS 3") CZXD4B0 (disk part # BL-T583B-MC "FIELD SERVICE TESTS 4") Are these some version of XXDP? They came with the MVII and MicroPDP-11/73 systems that I got as part of The Great Haul back in July 1998, but there is no indication who they go to. I stumbled across something about deciphering those CZX-type numbers a while back but did not retain the URL (naturally, now that I need to use it). Thanks much. -Chris F. NNNN Christian R. Fandt, Treasurer Antique Wireless Association, Inc. Jamestown, New York USA email: cfandt at netsync.net Electronic/Electrical Historian URL: http://www.antiquewireless.org/

21 years, 2 months

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origins of IBM 3740 diskette format

by dmhills＠gmail.com

On Fri, 25 Feb 2005 07:12:41 +0100, Nico de Jong <nico at farumdata.dk> wrote: > > Yes. The discussion is not about bytes, but about card images. > A card image (apart from some special ones like 96 bytes and "stubs" of > about 30 bytes) is 80 bytes. Furthermore, the lowest sectorsize that could > be formatted on a 3740, was 128 bytes. As there are 73 "user adressable" > tracks with each 26 sectors, there are only 1898 sectors. And as the > discussion is about card images, there is only room for 1898 cards, unless a > technique called spanning is used. The original diskette design was for a microcode load device for an IBM mainframe. I recall there was an IBM Journal of R&D article about it, I'll see if I can find it. 3740 DE (Data Entry) format actually had the option of 80 or 128 characters / "columns" per record. The basic 3741/3742 data entry station only did 80 characters per record, although the diskette sectors were always 128 data bytes. You had to order the optional feature (a plug-in ROM card) to support 128 characters per record. Track 0 was housekeeping and index. Tracks 1 to 73 ware data. I still have my 3741 alignment diskette. It has eccentric tracks, and there was a built-in ROM routine on the 3741/2 station to read a full track and display the sector addresses in binary. You adjusted the head alignment to get two areas of good IDs and two areas of bad IDs. The binary display was unusual, it actually displayed what looked like a capital "H" with additional horizontal bars for each 1 bit. "00" hex looked like "H", "FF" hex looked like a solid block,, "18" hex looked like a square-edged digit "8" etc. > > > IBM's 3740 data entry station put its stamp of approval on the > > floppy. The 3740 format is still the de facto interchange medium > > within the industry. > This is worth a whole new topic, as I happen to know a bit about that (I'm > running a service bureau for media conversion) > > > ... > > IBM's design for the 3740 was very conservative. At the time, IBM > > believed that floppies would be used for the batch entry of data. > That is correct; the 3740 family came to be rather big, eventually ending up > with the 3749(?) data entry station, where one could use DSDD floppies with > a sector length of 1024. IIRC, it could accommodate 6 segments per track, > ending up with 8 x 1024 x 73 x 2 = 1.1196.032 bytes > > > The full-sized floppy was designed to hold the same amount of > > information that 3,000 punch cards would hold - the maximum of > > what a single keypunch operator could do in a day. > See discussion on "spanning" > > Nico > >

21 years, 2 months

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Canon Cat -- what's it really like?

by elf＠ucsd.edu

The recent death of Mr. Raskin has me Google'ing around for information about his Canon Cat machine. Even prior to his passing, I have always thought it a sweet looking machine. Does anyone of this list own a Canon Cat? If so, do you use it for any sort of regular everyday work? And what's your personal impression of the machine? Is it even possible to use it in the context of today's work demands (i.e., for email)? Or is a proper network interface & appropriate software the limiting factor here?

21 years, 2 months

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MousePads

by elf＠ucsd.edu

> I'm not a collector, but I have run into a type that > you might not have seen... oriental rug mousepads. > There's the Mouse Rug, but that's a fake -- just an > oriental pattern printed on a plain old mousepad. > But there are also woven rug type pads, which are > far nicer. > I got mine from oldcarpet.com. Yup - got me one too. Still using it at this moment. I picked it up at a Las Vegas Comdex convention some 7-8 years ago. The main reason I purchased it was the fact that it claimed to automatically clean your mouse. In fact, printed on the backside of it is: "Automatically Cleans Your Mouse" I don't remember ever having to clean my mouse since. (And yes - I still use a mechanical mouse with said mouse ball. Haven't gone optical yet.)

21 years, 2 months

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Vintage Computer Festival Harlem

by dwight.elvey＠amd.com

>> old computas. Shouldn't that be spelled compudas? Dwight

21 years, 2 months

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8" drive on PC troubleshooting

by dwight.elvey＠amd.com

>From: "Vintage Computer Festival" <vcf at siconic.com> > >On Mon, 28 Feb 2005, Tom Jennings wrote: > >> On Mon, 28 Feb 2005, Vintage Computer Festival wrote: >> >> > If I then try to DIR the disk the head backs up a track or so but can't >> > seem to recalibrate to track 0. The head vibrates as if the drive is >> > sending the signals to the stepper to retract the head but it only manages >> > to move back a track or so each time I issue DIR. If I do it enough it >> > eventually gets back to the stop position but it still gets sector errors. >> >> Wrong step rate! Poke a new on eint othe chip, or does it use the old >> table of junk INT 13h used to supoprt? > >Um, I'm not sure. I'm not sure I understand the question either. This is >a standard ISA IDE+floppy controller. Should I try an older one? Or hook >this up to an oldr PC from the 1980s? > Hi There is a table that one stores the step rate for the drive. You need to alter the value for slower drives, like your 8 inch. I forget where is it but it is in that lower area someplace ( 40:xxx or something ). It isn't a problem of the controller. It should work with any controller, you just need to find the table and change it. It has been a while since I've fiddle with it to make my drives step with less noise ( and wear ). Dwight

21 years, 2 months

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ASR-33 hold-down bolt...

by dvcorbin＠optonline.net

Just grabbed an ASR-33 on ePay.....LOCAL so no shipping damage (except what I induce)..... Since I dont carry my reference manuals with me, can anyone post the "proper" size for the hold-down bolt(s)?????? I want to pick this up on the way home this evening....

21 years, 2 months

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imaging DC600A QIC tapes

by aek＠spies.com

I wonder if there is some incompatibility when reading 60MB tapes in a 150MB device. -- I've read hundreds of 60 meg tapes on 150 meg drives. What probably has happened is the end of the tape where the direction reverses either has been damaged due to the tape being slightly sticky with age, or there is now a pile of oxide and binder where the direction reversed. Whoever developed serpentine transports apparently never thought about the problem of oxide and binder shedding as the tape ages (or gets sticky). You end up with gunk on the head, which deposits itself on the tape when the head reverses direction. Since the real size of a QIC tape block is 512 bytes, you might try reading 512 bytes at a time to keep the drive >from trying to form a larger block near the far end of the tape out of parts from the forward and backward tape directions. This also minimizes the data lost if a block can't be recovered. The down side is it can slow transfers down a lot.

21 years, 2 months

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Taking photos of displays...

by dwight.elvey＠amd.com

>From: "Tom Jennings" <tomj at wps.com> > >>> From: "Tom Jennings" <tomj at wps.com> >>> >>> Unlike film, you can'y simply open the shutter and integrate the >>> image over time arbitrarily. CCDs are extremely noisy; silver >>> nitrate (etc) it's at atomic scale. > >On Wed, 2 Mar 2005, Dwight K. Elvey wrote: > >> Actually, once compensated, CCD's have much more >> dynamic range than film. They can be used to integrate >> over long periods of time ( usually cooled ). They >> have issues but don't confuse poorly compensated >> camera's with the ability of a CCD. > >I realized astronomical cameras for example use CCDs, most >definitely cooled, for very long integrations, but the context of >the conversation implied hand-held, non-cooled, ordinary, cameras. >I wasn't slagging CCDs or holding chemical film on high (though >would that be out of character for this list? :-); just wanted to >point out things aren't simply linear like that. Hi It really depends on the actual CCD. I have one that I use un-cooled but it is a low noise CCD. I have used it for 5 min exposures. There is a static drift that is different on each pixel. I compensate by subracting the dark current field. This is not noise but would look like noise when used in an uncompensated photo. If one can make a dark field time exposure of the same length of time, one can subtract that and get a much better image, without cooling. Dwight

21 years, 2 months

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Heavymetal

by jim＠g1jbg.co.uk

I downloaded this and am using it with a LA100 instead of a teleprinter - the artwork is keeping the kids quiet (at least the bits I'll let them look at). I might even get the old Creed 7B teleprinter out and see if I can get it to run! Jim. Please see our website the " Vintage Communication Pages" at WWW.G1JBG.CO.UK

21 years, 2 months

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imaging DC600A QIC tapes

by julesrichardsonuk＠yahoo.co.uk

Having received some of these in the mail, what's the best way of imaging them onto modern media? I hooked up a 150MB SCSI QIC drive to my Linux PC, and it seems to be able to pull data off them happily (even though they're only 60MB). However the tapes contain multiple archives which I'm not too used to handling, plus the archives aren't in any format known to Linux (so I guess dd is the tool for the job there) So, is it just as simple as making sure the tape's rewound, then keeping on issuing: dd if=/dev/nrst0 of=archive01 (with a different output filename each time) ? As nrst0 is a non-rewinding device, I assume the tape will be left at the start of the next archive on the tape after each dd command? Or is it more subtle than that and the archives aren't necessarily back- to-back? Do I need to be issuing some sort of mt command inbetween dd commands to make sure the tape's positioned at the start of the next archive each time? cheers Jules

21 years, 2 months

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BA23,BA123,BA213 Denver Area

by emu＠ecubics.com

Some complete, some for parts, PICK UP ONLY

21 years, 2 months

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Taking photos of displays...

by dwight.elvey＠amd.com

>From: "Tom Jennings" <tomj at wps.com> > >Unlike film, you can'y simply open the shutter and integrate the >image over time arbitrarily. CCDs are extremely noisy; silver >nitrate (etc) it's at atomic scale. > > Hi Actually, once compensated, CCD's have much more dynamic range than film. They can be used to integrate over long periods of time ( usually cooled ). They have issues but don't confuse poorly compensated camera's with the ability of a CCD. Dwight

21 years, 2 months

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