test-drb

test-drb@ccmp.vtda.org

101090 discussions

by steverob＠hotoffice.com

> Nice find! Wow, that weighs more than my Dynabyte 5100 system! > Are those 8" hard drives? Naw... They are smaller that that. I guess they are 5"? > > Could that be renamed MP/M or a variant of MP/M? > The DOCs are far from complete but, it looks almost like a "shell" of some sort for CPM. The syntax for the very limited set of commands is similar to CP/M although not quite the same. Most of the commands seem to be associated with file & data security and device allocation. I'm got some MP/M docs here (promised to Joe Rigdon next time I see him) so I can compare the syntax of the two OSs... Although, I suspect that "MLX" is just a security and multitasking layer for CPM? I tried to load CPM using a variety of other BOOT images but, so far no luck. I'll have to drag out some more disks and see any of them will work. Before I got it, the owner had told me that it was running PC-MOS and I posted an inquiry about that OS to the group. Either he was mistaken about the OS or the system can run that OS as well. When the OS loads, it indicates "SYSTEM RESIDENT", then "BASIC RESIDENT", then the password prompt. I have tried to stop the boot process by pressing ^C, ESC, and every other trick that I know. But, so far no luck. When the process is interrupted, the system just halts... Dang it! > What's needed is a good, inexpensive, portable "clean room box." A > while back, I saw one of these somewhere, but it wasn't something > marketed to hobbyists and I doubt that it was inexpensive. I could tell the platters weren't spinning so, figured I really didn't have anything to loose. In a situation like this, I think the greatest risk is when the heads are "ripped" away from the surface rather than contamination. It took a considerable tug to get the thing loosened up again and I'm kinda supprised a chunk of the surface didn't come off. Steve Robertson <steverob(a)hotoffice.com>

25 years, 10 months

Unusual weekend find

by allisonp＠world.std.com

First off, use plain text not RTF or other indigestable formats for messages. > Could that be renamed MP/M or a variant of MP/M? > Could be or Turbodos. OSs... Although, I suspect that "MLX" is just a security and multitasking layer for CPM? Only if it were vanilla CPM as MPM was already multitasking. I tried to load CPM using a variety of other BOOT images but, so far no luck. I'll have to drag out some more disks and see any of them will work. Unlike PCs CPM system had no common bios (commonly none in rom!) so a booter from a like machine might boot and run but not work as the IO could be at different addresses or even use different serial devices {8250, 8251 and Z80 SIO were not similar). Allison

25 years, 10 months

Unusual weekend find

by steverob＠hotoffice.com

Picked up an unusual system this weekend and was wondering if anyone could provide some pointers. The system is a "Lasor Computer" (note the spelling) is housed in a desk-sized cabinent and weighs about 300 LBS. I don't know if it's true but, according to the previous owner, whom purchased it new around 1982, there were only about 300 of these systems ever built. This one is serial number 140, has been in storage since 1985, and is in outstanding condition. It not even dusty inside! It has two 8" floppies, 2 10-MB hard drives, and 16 serial ports. All the major components are mounted in 19" trays so, supposedly everything could go in to a standard rack. When I first saw it, I thought it could be a S-100 system because of the card cage, and power supply configuration. (my mouth was really watering) :-) After removing the cards, it's obviously not S-100 but, looks very similar. The cards look to be the same width as S-100 but they are about 3" deeper and there are no regulators on the cards. The CPU for this thing is an Intel 8086 and all the cards are marked "LASOR SYSTEMS". Anyone know what kinda bus this is? According to the DOCs, the system runs "MLX" which stands for "Multiuser Executive". supposedly, it can read CPM formatted disks. I'm not sure if it will boot CPM or execute CPM apps though. When I tried to boot the system, it got a failure on the boot drive so, I had to do some microsurgery. Seems the heads had stuck to the platters and it took a little coaxing to get the platters spinning again. Hopefully, I didn't hurt the platters too much. I finally did get the system to boot OK but, now I'm getting a "Password" prompt. DOH!!! I have contacted the original user and maybe he'll be able to help me out. I'll keep my fingers crossed. If not, I'll see if I can get it too boot with a CPM disk and hack my way past the password prompt. Also in the deal I got 6 - Televideo 950 terminals, and 4 large printers, and about a mile of wiring. All of the printers are in excellent condition with the exception of the chain printer (Teletype model 40). When I plugged that one in, the letters went flying everywhere. Seems the letters are mounted on a large rubber band that had decomposed sling-shotting pieces everywhere ;-) Oh yeah... I spent $50 bucks for the whole truckload. Steve Robertson <steverob(a)hotoffice.com>

25 years, 10 months

Kim-1 analog portions

by ryan＠inc.net

So, I just lost an auction for a KIM-1... But this prompted me to ask a question: In the picture of the KIM on ebay: http://cgi.ebay.com/aw-cgi/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=337577016 There's a lot of analog stuff (mostly large caps from what I can tell) in the lower left. Is this power supply stuff? Tape stuff? I've got a Sym-1, and doesn't have nearly as much analog on it. Just curious, Ryan Brooks ryan(a)inc.net

25 years, 10 months

Papertape and Mylar variant

by dhquebbeman＠theestopinalgroup.com

> Somewhere I have a tape fragment, not from a missile but from some game code. > I think this tape was not fan folded but rolled for storage. Right-o... teletypes with the reader/punch used rolls of paper tape. I have a copy of DEC Monopoly on papertape that I punched myself, as well as a copy of Intel's INTERP-80 (8080a simulator) and a Star Trek game called BIGMES (from an HP 2000). At IU, we had a CDC6600 with an online highspeed punch, and I have a couple of tapes I punched on that, as well as what was left on the roll. I'm not sure if the fanfold method came about for ease of mailing or not; eventually, there were readers available that had "bins" instead of reels, and you could load either fanfold or roll tape in the bins. -doug q

25 years, 10 months

Defining Disk Image Dump Standard

by rachael_＠gmx.net

>On Fri, 26 May 2000 Vintage Computer GAWD! wrote: >> On Fri, 26 May 2000, John Foust wrote: >> >> > Below is the section from the manual that describes their >> > file format. >> > >> > Each sector written to the file is optionally preceded by an >> > 8-byte header record of the following form: >> > >> > >> > +------+------+------+------+------+------+----------+ >> > | ACYL | ASID | LCYL | LSID | LSEC | LLEN | COUNT | >> > +------+------+------+------+------+------+----------+ >> > >> > ACYL Actual cylinder, 1 byte >> > ASID Actual side, 1 byte >> > LCYL Logical cylinder; cylinder as read, 1 byte >> > LSID Logical side; or side as read, 1 byte >> > LSEC Sector number as read, 1 byte >> > LLEN Length code as read, 1 byte >> > COUNT Byte count of data to follow, 2 bytes. If zero, >> > no data is contained in this sector. >> > >> > All sectors occurring on a side will be grouped together; >> > however, they will appear in the same order as they occurred on >> > the diskette. Therefore, if an 8 sector-per-track diskette were >> > scanned which had a physical interleave of 2:1, the sectors might >> > appear in the order 1,5,2,6,3,7,4,8 in the DOS dump file. >> > >> > After the last specified cylinder has been written to the DOS >> > file, AnaDisk returns to the Main Menu. >> >> This is a good start. The header should include a byte that contains a >> flag indicating the status of the sector (good, bad, etc). >This seems rather "high level" if you are wanting to preserve the exact disk >contents. Though it may be all you can do using a standard PC floppy >controller. >> What about odd formats? I take my experience from the Apple ][. You had >> stuff like half-tracks and quarter-tracks (the head was stepped half-way >> or half of half-way between tracks to store data), odd disk formats >> (custom sector sizes, custom sector layouts, etc.), synchronization >> between tracks (one copy protection scheme was to write a two tracks so >> that if a seek was done from one track to the other, a specific sector >> would be expected under the head as soon as it got to the next track). >I would like to be proved wrong, but there is no way to account for every >possible strange thing that could be done in terms of custom formats, >copy-protection etc., at least in a high level file format that doesn't just >sample the bits coming from the disk. >It would be possible to construct a device for archiving disks at a very low >level. I guess this would be similar to commercial floppy disk duplicators, >except writing data to a file instead of another floppy. The bit stream from >the disk would be sampled at a very high rate to allow for various tricks >that could be done. Or by modifying a floppy drive, the analogue signal from >the read head could be sampled. Tricks like "pulsing" the drive motor during >a write to vary rotation rate, changing the data rate mid-write (e.g. 2us vs >4us per bit cell), changing precompensation values mid write, using custom >non-MFM-or-GCR coding methods, reducing drive motor speed for some tracks >(thus writing long tracks which cannot be duplicated on an unmodified >drive/computer),... >[Long tracks are a common form of copy-protection on Amiga games.] >Such a low-level dump of raw data would at least preserve all (or almost all) >information on the disk. Successfully writing an exact duplicate back to >another floppy would depend on the capabilities of your disk controller. >Still, such as image file could be easily supported by emulators. Also bad >sectors would be preserved, meaning that recovery of most of the data from >them would be possible. >> The AnaDisk software doesn't seem to accomodate copy protected or >> custom-format disks. The standard will have to address these disks as >> well. >You may know that Amiga computers have very flexible floppy controller >hardware. There are several programs on the Amiga that are intended to >image/archive disks at a low level. >These read the raw bits from an entire track in one pass, and store that >(from index to index, plus some). This is independent of the coding method >used >(MFM, GCR or whatever), and of course preserves sector order, distance >between sectors etc. It should be possible to successfully archive almost any >PC floppy disk that way, protected or not. >I don't have many copy-protected PC floppies. Was any famously "evil" type of >disk-based copy-protection used for PC software? I would quite like to try >making a working backup of a disk like this. >The Catweasel disk controller hardware (available as an ISA card for PCs) is >capable of similar things. However due to its developer (stupidly IMO) >refusing to release details on how to program it directly, this would be of >no use; you're stuck with the provided drivers which are apparently pretty >poor. >- -- Mark -------------------------------------------------- = IF this computer is with us now... = =...It must have been meant to come live with us.= = (Belldandy - Goddess First class) = --------------------------------------------------

25 years, 10 months

Get up on the wrong side of the bed this morning? [Was: Re: N otes on repa...

by dhquebbeman＠theestopinalgroup.com

> > Not sure what country you live in, but if you're in the US, then > > regardless of whatever munincipal laws have been enacted, the U.S. > > Supreme Court has ruled (on multiple occaisions) that refuse is > > exactly that- stuff that people no longer want. > > > Well, the rule depends. If it's a commercial dumpster on > private property you're tresspassing and stealing if it's in > the dumpster. At the curb it's on public property and avaiable. Granted... tresspassing is tresspassing. -dq

25 years, 10 months

OS/2

by dhquebbeman＠theestopinalgroup.com

> Close, but not quite correct. > > GPF is a general protection fault, the most common problem is > a bad or uninitialized pointer. > > What makes a DLL get loaded, or paged in, is a page fault. > Its the same mechanism that causes a swapped out page to be swapped back > in on a 4K boundary. What I'm saying is that the way is *should* work is: pointer fault on attempt to execute faulted pointer to DLL routine segment fault on attempt to execute code in unmapped DLL routine's segment page fault on attempt to execute code in unmapped DLL routine's page And in a really proper OS you'd also get a page fault if the page map containing the PageMapTableEntries weren't currently mapped in (and yes you can page out page maps). And before you point out that segments went away from Win32 let me say that too is another fatal flaw with the Windows family of OS's. -dq

25 years, 10 months

Sellam Explodes

by kyrrin＠bluefeathertech.com

Criminys... ask a guy to just let the subject drop, and this is what happens. I've blocked any further E-mail from Sellam at this end. It's obvious that I can't even disagree with him now without ticking him off. I'm posting his final message as something of a warning to others who think he can handle things like this in a mature way. -=-=- <snip> -=-=- Date sent: Mon, 29 May 2000 19:48:02 -0700 (PDT) From: "Vintage Computer GAWD!" <foo(a)siconic.com> To: "Bruce Lane" <kyrrin(a)bluefeathertech.com> Subject: Re: Please let it DROP! On Sat, 27 May 2000, Bruce Lane wrote: > If you value, as I do, the fact that we got along pretty well > during our few past meetings, please let the subject drop. Here and > now. > > It is obvious that we agree to disagree, and I would prefer to > leave it at that point than start a flame-war that's going to leave us > both too pissed off to see straight. Bruce, I value our "friendship" as much as you do, which is to say not enough for you to avoid constantly insulting me like you have the monopoly on valid opinions and to act in a uncivil manner. Basically, take your apoplectic rantings and stick them up your ass. I tried to be patient and not get angry from your last message, but I've never been one to accept a continued stream of abuse, especially >from a dweeb like yourself. I don't want, nor do I need, a reply from you. Any more messages I receive from you on this matter I will consider to be SPAM and, since you live in a state which has laws against that sort of thing, I will not hesitate to file a complaint against you. Best regards, Sellam -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- Bruce Lane, Owner/Head Honcho, Blue Feather Technologies (www.bluefeathertech.com) kyrrin(a)bluefeathertech.com "SCSI Users, Unite! Beware the IDEs of March!"

25 years, 10 months

Somebody wanted TI S1500

by mmcfadden＠cmh.edu

I can't find my link to whoever wanted a TI s1500. I think is was a museum. Please respond to mmcfadden(a)cmh.edu. I was diving through my local computer surplus exchange and came across the following. I had to stand on top of a fork-truck and look into a big box to examine all of these. There's goodies in those dusty boxes. TI S1500, also external expansion chassis wd900 Doesn't look like my TI explorer. TI Business Pro TI 990 with 9-track cipher tape equivalent all in 5 foot rack Tektronix 4052 I'm keeping the Tek 4052 but I want to have the surplus exchange transfer the TI S1500 to the museum. I'm taking pictures before I transfer any of these. Mike mmcfadden(a)cmh.edu

25 years, 10 months

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