AFAIK, MPI was a joint venture between Honeywell and CDC, but I could be
wrong... Also, FSD = Fixed Storage Disk, aka Winchester.. those drives are
very nice units... as are the later Sabre's that are half the size of the
FSDs..
Will J
________________________________________________________________________
Get Your Private, Free E-mail from MSN Hotmail at http://www.hotmail.com
Hi,
I have one ADM-3A that is available for sale or trade.
I don't have a price in mind but am certainly not looking
for "eBay" amounts - I'd actually prefer a trade for some
interesting old nixie-tube or HP calculator stuff or certain
computer stuff that's on my "want" list (see my web page).
The one I have is an off-white color, not light blue as some
of them are. Please contact me ASAP if you're interested.
Alex Knight
Calculator History & Technology Museum Web Page
http://aknight.home.mindspring.com/calc.htm
- "want" list is at http://aknight.home.mindspring.com/wanted.htm
At 04:37 PM 6/20/00 -0400, you wrote:
>> Bill Sudbrink asks:
>> How many {ADM-3A's} are out there, just on this list?
--- Eric Smith <eric(a)brouhaha.com> wrote:
> > and was able to boot up the
> > only DOS 3.3 disk I could find - Zork I.
>
> Minor nitpick: Zork I doesn't use DOS of any version. It was originally
> shipped on a bootable 13-sector diskette, and later on 16-sector, which
> is what you have.
True. Mea Culpa. I should have said, "the only Apple II bootable disk I
have is..."
> The earliest Zork I release was buggy as all heck. Once I managed to have
> in my inventory about 20-30 "rooms".
On an early version of Zork I for the C-64, I managed to "give me to the
thief". Later on, in the strange passage, I saw "a cretin" sitting in
the hallway.
> In the early-to-mid 1980s, Infocom used to offer a bunch of their games
> for the PDP-11. Naturally I didn't get my first -11 until after that.
> If anyone has a copy of Zork (or the other games) for the -11, I'd
> certainly love to get a copy.
I remember seeing "Planetfall" up on the wall of the Digital Store in
downtown Columbus when I was a kid. I knew who Digital was, but I
didn't get my first Dec machine until I was 16 (a PDP-8/L that took
two years to restore owing to a lack of docs).
> The -11 processor would do a good job of implementing the Z-machine.
I agree. They aren't much different from each other, architecturally. I've
completely disassembled the C-64 version 1 engine, partially commented it
and gotten it running on VICE with a VIC-20 and a BASIC 3.0 PET! If I ever
had _way_ too much free time, I could probably craft a working engine for
RT-11. I used to program that for a living, too, in a former life.
-ethan
=====
Even though my old e-mail address is no longer going to
vanish, please note my new public address: erd(a)iname.com
The original webpage address is still going away. The
permanent home is: http://penguincentral.com/
See http://ohio.voyager.net/ for details.
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Bill Sudbrink said:
> > If you're wondering if they're rare, the answer is no, they are not.
> > They're about as rare as Altairs, which by the way used to show up on
> > eBay at least once a week.
>
> I would think that they are significantly more common than Altairs.
> You wouldn't normally find 20 Altairs in a bank.
My point was that they are not very rare at all and the person who paid
$355 for one was, well, let's not get into that :)
Sellam International Man of Intrigue and Danger
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Looking for a six in a pile of nines...
Coming soon: VCF 4.0!
VCF East: Planning in Progress
See http://www.vintage.org for details!
-----Original Message-----
From: Sellam Ismail <foo(a)siconic.com>
To: classiccmp(a)classiccmp.org <classiccmp(a)classiccmp.org>
Date: Monday, June 19, 2000 3:06 PM
Subject: Re: More Stuff
>On Sat, 17 Jun 2000, Tony Duell wrote:
>
>> I want one too!. I notice it didn't mention what CPU it used -- any
>> ideas? Initially I guessed at the Z80, but I am now wondering if it's an
>> 1802 or something odd...
>
>No menion in the ad. Maybe Allison knows. The kit was sold by Netronics,
>the same people who sold the ELF II and Exlporer 85 kits.
Netronics what? they only did the Explorer (8085) and the Elf (1802)
anthing else were supporting boards for one or the other.
Allison
>
>Sellam International Man of Intrigue and
Danger
>---------------------------------------------------------------------------
----
>Looking for a six in a pile of nines...
>
> Coming soon: VCF 4.0!
> VCF East: Planning in Progress
> See http://www.vintage.org for details!
>
>
WooHoo! I received two DecMate I systems today along with a
Dec LetterPrinter 100 and an RX02 Dual Drive unit. I have some
doc and software to go with them. Have to sort through it all.
Problem is I promised my wife I'd go with her to the ball game
tonight. Dang, now I can't check it all out until tomorrow evening.
Oh well, at least this way she won't complain about having them
around the house... not much anyway.
Now the quest to get them up and running begins.
Oh and thanks for getting the systems to me John, if you're still on
the list. They arrived nicely packed and safe and sound.
-----
David Williams - Computer Packrat
dlw(a)trailingedge.com
http://www.trailingedge.com
--- Eric Smith <eric(a)brouhaha.com> wrote:
> I forgot to answer the other question:
>
> > So... now that I have two machines that want to have 3.5" drives and
> > no copies of DOS 3.3 on that medium, is it possible to aquire it anywhere?
> > I have Macs, etc., so I can make a 3.5" disk from an Apple disk image
> > if that's what it takes.
>
> Apple never supported DOS on 3.5". There were some third-party hacks, but
> I've never obtained copies.
So how did the Apple IIc+ work? It has an internal 3.5" floppy. Did you
have to have an external 5.25" drive to play old games, etc?
-ethan
=====
Even though my old e-mail address is no longer going to
vanish, please note my new public address: erd(a)iname.com
The original webpage address is still going away. The
permanent home is: http://penguincentral.com/
See http://ohio.voyager.net/ for details.
__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Send instant messages with Yahoo! Messenger.
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>From the Jargon file
greenbar: n. A style of fanfolded continuous-feed paper with alternating
green and white bars on it, especially used in old-style line printers. This
slang almost certainly dates way back to mainframe days.
This makes me feel ancient.
The green bars were 1 inch wide which was 6 lines normal or 8 lines
compressed. About 1979 I remember when I wrote a talk for a microbiology
conference on my VT52 terminal. I then printed it out on greenbar which was
used to prompt me during the talk. The greenbar proceeded to unfold down
the front of the podium all the way to the floor. My boss was kind enough
to indicate that the talk was really written by the computer.
One problem with greenbar was that you had to turn it over if you wanted to
print pictures or banners on the paper. Very long fiber paper, some of the
cheap stuff was kind of like newspaper greenbar. I still have several cases
of it, the fancy kind with printed line numbers.
The nice thing about composing on paper was that once you wrote the same or
similar thing several times by hand you decided to create a
subroutine/procedure. Paper could be taken to the pool or outside, no
electricity required. Composing on terminals was only practical when there
were terminals available. Doesn't anyone remember coding sheets? If you
are punching cards on an IBM 026 keypunch then any errors and the card was
trash. The IBM 029 keypunch didn't actually punch the card until the end of
the line, you could correct errors if you noticed them. Trash cards were
useful for phone messages and notes.
All of the JCL cards were usually a different color to allow the card decks
to be split apart. I seem to remember pictures being drawn on the decks to
allow the user to peer through the computer room window to see if your deck
was due to be run soon.
The best card run I ever saw was a 1976 run where the entire music list for
the MU radio station was read in and then sorted by music type, performer,
and title and then printouts produced. This happened on a Sunday when CPU
time was free on the IBM 370 model 158 due to system testing. 12 boxes of
data cards were read in and then stored on 9-track tape.
Best input output/setup was in 1970 at CMU where the cards were read in and
then output printed down a long series of sloped tables, each user got <10
minute response, they had a traffic light set up in the IO room. RED =
system down, GREEN = system up, YELLOW = use at your own risk. They had a
camera and speaker watching the printer to tell the users to change the
paper on the printer. Worst setup was MU Computer Sciences where you turned
in the cards and got back output in 24 hours. Many times with message CPU
time exceeded and no output.
Mike
Coder from the dark ages
Hey --
Been housecleaning recently. I have several machines and some parts available to anyone who can come pick them up -- I'm living in Jacksonville, FL for the summer.
Apple IIc and power adapter (works)
Zenith 286 laptop (works)
Apple IIGS (powers up, but I seem to remember it having some weird intermittent error message)
Magnavox monochrome Computer Monitor 80 (works, small and lightweight, good for a testing bench?)
Mac Plus with power supply problem, rest of it works
2 internal SCSI hard drives (230 and 260 MB), both worked last I checked
800k internal Mac floppy drive (dunno if it works)
400k external Mac floppy drive (dunno if it works)
ImageWriter II (works, good cosmetic condition)
Dead Apple Newton 100 with some accessories, manuals, etc. -- I think I fried something when attempting to resolder the loose audio wire
Mac SE/30 (works, but if you take this, you are required to take the rest, too. ;-)
And OT: some other electronic thingies, like a dead Sony Bookman and a Sega "simon says" game, if your tastes are that eclectic.
Please email off-list for details, directions, etc.
Thanks,
-- MB
> >Having a machine to interact with allows you to test your code on the
spot
> >and if you are writing in an interpreted language the error-checking the
> >interpreter provides is a godsend for the coder. Why anyone would code
> >without the interaction of the target machine is beyond me.
>
> I write perfect code, like Mozart it flows out in its final form to the
> paper, and then to the system.
I think the immediacy of interactive programming causes the programmer
to tend to exit the design loop early, before the design has actually
crystallized in the mind. Working with paper provides the slowdown
needed to allow this crystallization to occur.
And now that I think about it...
ISTR a paper by someone at Purdue during the 60s, a paper exploring
the value of interactive computing (timesharing), and it specifically
referred to hypothetical systems so fast that the benefits of being
able to immediately submit a design to test would be lost due to the
programmer jumping out of the design loop too quickly.
But, to each his own... as long as they're not working for me.
-dq