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Reading Old 9-Track Tapes (RE: Pertec Interface Cable Fun)

by dhquebbeman＠theestopinalgroup.com

Good Morning all, Thanks to all who replied to my post re: the Pertec cables. The drive is operational, and I was able to restore files >from my MAGSAV-formatted tapes. Some interesting data points: the two tapes from which I recovered data had sat mostly unused since 1983. One of them I'd handed to a friend in 1988 who was working on a Prime system, for the express purpose of getting everything on disk again and then copying it to floppy disks. I never did figure out if we miscommunicated or if it was unfeasible to do so, but all I got was paper listings... but I digress. These ancient tapes had not been well-taken-care of the last few years. In fact, they were in the basement, a basement which flooded perhaps 6 times since 1996, and they had not only been under water, but had lots of nasty growth on them (mold &/or mildew). In spite of this, I was able to read all but (I think) one or two files from the source tree I'd been hanging on to. The other tape had my custom Primos command environment, Donald Slutz's custom command environment (with QED!), and my Prime-ports of Intel's MAC80, INTERP80, and PLM80. These were the items I most of all wanted from the tape. Now, the tape also (IIRC) held lots of 8080 source code that appears to be unreadable. Fortunately, I have copies of all those files on a 9-track CDC-formatted tape (actually I think it's an ANSI labeled tape, but all the files are in CDC BCD). At any rate, while I may have to write a Fortran program to read the CDC tape, I most likely can get those files. They are, however, older tapes, dating from around 1980 (I also have two 7-track tapes from about 1978). Also, I have a trick or two yet to try on the nasty Prime tape before I give up. The upshot of all this is that, if you stored the tape in a reasonable fashion (i.e. not underwater) and didn't use high density (mine were 800bpi and 1600bpi), your tapes should still be readable. It helps, of course, that this Cipher streamer was under service contract until last Dec, so YMMV. This post brings me to another question, but I'll post it separately. -doug q

25 years, 11 months

Tim Shoppa Personal Note: FW: Pertec Interface Fun (Was: RE: HP 9 7548D Hard Drives)

by dhquebbeman＠theestopinalgroup.com

Tim- Thanks for peace-of-mind re the Pertec. I was hoping to hear back from you about mode-page editing... if you've got a pointer to a good resource on the subject, no need for you to play teacher to my student... regards, -doug quebbeman P.S. Tim- is there a way for me to send mail directly to you? The stuff I'm sending to CLASSICCMP(a)trailing-edge.com is going un-answered. > -----Original Message----- > From: Douglas Quebbeman > Sent: Wednesday, July 05, 2000 8:48 AM > To: 'CLASSICCMP(a)trailing-edge.com' > Subject: RE: HP 97548D Hard Drives > > > > >Subj: HP 97548D Hard Drives > > >I'm looking for a small number (two or three) of these drives; > > >they're 5 1/4 inch full-height differential SCSI drives; they > > >tend to be found in Sun boxen. > > > > > >Anybody have any they'd be willing to part with via sale/trade? > > > > Do you need these exact HP drives? If it's a capacity issue, there's > > a very valuable technique called "mode page editing" that will let > > you adjust drive capacities downward so that you can use large-capacity > > recent-manufacture SCSI drives in place of older low-capacity SCSI > > drives. It's a very valuable technique when the hardware or OS don't > > support large-capacity drives, a very common situation with > > older hardware. > > Tell me more... I've actually been trying to do exactly that, substituting > a Seagate 11200ND, but the unit I'm trying may have a badspot in one of > the low sectors. > > Additionally, I need a sector size of 2080 bytes; that's for a 2048-byte > Primos record plus 32 bytes of system overhead. The controller claims > to be able to do this by combining 5 sectors of the usual 512-bytes each > into each Primos sector. This is using a 1st Solutions 7110DX controller. > > The controller is able to do low-level formatting; you set the # of heads > and the # of sectors-per-track on DIP switches; then you set one switch on > (FMT EN) and issue a Primos command to add the drive; the controller than > initiates the format. I get an error code on a set of LEDs on the controller > pretty quickly, and it corresponds to one I see Primos issue sometimes. > > So my failure to get this to work currently, may be due to a bad drive. > I've got another 11200ND on the way, so I can compare results. > > -doug q >

25 years, 11 months

Intel i960 evaluation board

by allisonp＠world.std.com

>i960, or i860? I wasn't aware that any i960 Unix boxes had been shipped. > >The i960 family was the stripped-down commercial version of the ill-fated >Gemini (P7) 33-bit (not a typo!) processor, a collaboration between Intel >and Siemens. The two companies created a workstation company called BiiN >to sell the workstations, and although they shipped some prerelease >machines, AFAIK they never offered any for sale. It also grew from the 8089 (20 bit) and the 8751(8bit) for embedded processing tasks like engine controls. Allison

25 years, 11 months

Pertec Interface Cable Fun

by dhquebbeman＠theestopinalgroup.com

Help! I just received the controller to hook my Cipher streamer up to my Prime. Usually, there are little colored stick-on dots affixed to the edge connectors and the corresponding cable connectors for easy matching. Not this time. I've briefly looked at the Pertect pinout as per a short document on John Wilson's web site. However, I didn't study it enough to have a feel for what happens if the cables are hooked up backwards (ie simple non-function versus a smoke-releasing exercise). Does anyone know what happens under these conditions? tia, -doug q

25 years, 11 months

HP 85 stuff

by cem14＠cornell.edu

"Tony Duell " wrote: > > A word of caution: the 16K RAM module intended for the HP85A can > > damage the HP85B. This is clearly stated in one of the manuals. > > Interesting... Do you happen to know what damage it actually does? I > assume a bus contention between the controller in the RAM drawer and one > of the memory controllers in the 85B. > -tony No, I don't know what it is that happens. By the way, this weekend my I/O ROM started to go flaky; on power up, it reports an error 112, which is a checksum failure. I remember that this happened before and reseating fixed it, but I haven't had luck this time. I tried other slots in the ROM drawer too. Guess I need to pry open the ROM capsule and have a look. This is weird, because both the pin and the through-hole that make the contacts are gold-plated; they were made to last. I am afraid that this is a case of bit rot :-( . carlos. -- Carlos Murillo-Sanchez email: cem14(a)cornell.edu 428 Phillips Hall, Electrical Engineering Department Cornell University, Ithaca, NY 14853

25 years, 11 months

Price of our hobby

by xds_sigma7＠hotmail.com

Well I can't be silent on this one... I'm broke as all hell, but I don't care.. I should probably be in college right now but I'd rather spend 3K to get a bunch of Interdata's and Perkin-Elmers... my other car is taken apart and I ought to spend money on fixing it but I don't.. Sure, maybe these aren't "good" choices, but whats important is that they ARE choices, I CHOSE to spend my money in such a way, and I live with it. But I work, I pay my bills, and hey, I could easily go to college if I'd get off my ass and work at it.. If you want to just to sit around and bitch about how poor you are, go for it, you won't get my sympathy. I know its entirely in my own power to determine how much money I have/make, so I don't complain.. If you're complaining, you probably don't understand that.. Besides, you could have loads of money if you spent the time you spend bitching working instead... Just my 2K worth... Will J ________________________________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free E-mail from MSN Hotmail at http://www.hotmail.com

25 years, 11 months

Two Epsom QX-10 free to good home

by ASquires＠idecpharm.com

25 years, 11 months

Two Epsom QX-10 free to good home

by ASquires＠idecpharm.com

I would be happy to give these machines and video monitors to anyone who want them (one was refurbished by Star Technology in Colorado; "newer" software too). Would you know of someone who might be interested? Aimee M. Squires, MPH, RN Clinical Communications IDEC Pharmaceuticals 3030 Callan Road San Diego, CA 92121 >From ASquires(a)idecpharm.com Tue Jul 11 16:12:31 2000 Date: Tue, 11 Jul 2000 15:44:34 -0700 From: ASquires(a)idecpharm.com To: Don Maslin <donm(a)cts.com> Subject: Re: Two Epsom QX-10 free to good home Hi Don I am not averse to shipping them, but I would not wish to incur the cost of boxing and shipping (although I do have the shipping box for one cpu). So, letting someone pick them up here in San Diego would be easiest for me (I live in Bonita). Aimee M. Squires, MPH, RN Clinical Communications IDEC Pharmaceuticals 3030 Callan Road San Diego, CA 92121

25 years, 11 months

Two Epsom QX-10 free to good home

by ASquires＠idecpharm.com

25 years, 11 months

Two Epsom QX-10 free to good home

by ASquires＠idecpharm.com

25 years, 11 months

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