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101090 discussions

CDC 9" PA5N1F15 drive head locking. How?

by xds_sigma7＠hotmail.com

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

25 years, 10 months

ADM's on list.

by aknight＠mindspring.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?

25 years, 10 months

Zork on Apple II, wanted for PDP-11 (was Re: Thrift Store find: Apple IIgs)

by ethan_dicks＠yahoo.com

--- 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. __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Send instant messages with Yahoo! Messenger. http://im.yahoo.com/

25 years, 10 months

Did you see...

by foo＠siconic.com

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!

25 years, 10 months

More Stuff

by allisonp＠world.std.com

-----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! > >

25 years, 10 months

Got some DecMate 1s!

by dlw＠trailingedge.com

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

25 years, 10 months

Zork on Apple II, wanted for PDP-11 (was Re: Thrift Store find: Apple IIgs)

by ethan_dicks＠yahoo.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. http://im.yahoo.com/

25 years, 10 months

Composing on paper, Green-bar, hardcopy output, card decks (L ong)

by mmcfadden＠cmh.edu

>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

25 years, 10 months

Free stuff!

by Marion.Bates＠dartmouth.edu

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

25 years, 10 months

Programming on Paper

by dhquebbeman＠theestopinalgroup.com

> >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

25 years, 10 months

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