28 Dec
2007
28 Dec
'07
2:10 p.m.
Hi, Henk,
Formatting problems aside, please trim your replies.
On Fri, Dec 28, 2007 at 10:29:24PM +0100, Henk Gooijen wrote:
Sorry, I just don't understand why the quoted
text is so messed up.
It all looks fine before I click the "Send" button. This time, I changed
the encoding from UTF-8 to Western Europe (Windows) ...
This was worse - everything, all the quoted text, all the new text,
was on one line.
I better not putmy answers interspersed.If somebody
knows how to get
this stupid quoting corrected: help!
Sorry... don't know what's up... I don't do e-mail on Windows nor
use Windows browsers.
The manual is called "LP11/LS11/LA11 line printer
user's manual",
but the etch on the M7258 only says "LS11 interface".
That's not really surprising.
The round cable is not a flat cable, but has separate
wires.
At least,that is how it looks to me.
Right. Got that. When I said "like the flat cable", I meant
more of "pin-1-to-pin-1" for all necessary pins. There's
probably only 24 to 30 wires in that cable, _if_ they are
using a ground for every signal (more likely back in those
days than now). I didn't mean to suggest it was like a
ribbon cable rolled into a tube.
I will "announce" the LA180 page when it is
finished ...
Cool.
and hunt down that cat :-) If somebody has that text
file,
I would love to print it!
I have a dim memory that someone who is now, or was once, a
member of this list had some ASCII art on a PDP-8 page.
It might also be on some RX01 images of PDP-8 software out
there.
If nothing else, googling for "ASCII art" will probably
reveal a huge repository of pictures of Mr. Spock and
Snoopy. I can't think of a computer room prior to 1985
that didn't have one or more items hanging on the walls.
Some of it was quite simplistic (just asterisks), but ones
like the cat were amazing.
You got me up the attick for the third time Ethan :-)
If you hold the M7258 with the fingers at the right side...
The picture was totally trashed, sorry.
The module is original DIGITAL, it is in the etch,
M5973. It's in the
Field Guide: "M5973 LLD11 U TTL to differential transceiver".
There are only 3 fingers connected at the end, for power supply.
The way it is, this M5973 must have been installed in position B of
the slot, where the M7258 goes into an SPC (position C-F).
Very odd. Sounds like it might need a custom backplane, not a
DD11-DK or DD11-CK. I don't recognize the LLD11, but it sounds
like someone may have been trying to run a printer very far
away from the CPU. I don't know the max cable length (it should
be in the manual), but I'm willing to guess that it's under
100', probably under 50'.
The manual indeed is for the major part concerning the
LP01/02/04/05.
Make sense. Those were more common in the era of low-density
quad-height cards like the LS-11. I fixed an LP05 once, at a
different job, in 1988, but it was an ancient beast then.
Wished I could have played with DEC stuff in those
days! Cool having
your own pdp8 at 16!!
It was one of those random flukes that affected the rest of
my life (in a good way). I literally stumbled across it
as they were herding the folks out of the Dayton Hamvention.
It looked really cool, and I recognized the vendor (Digital)
from a computer store we used to have in Downtown
Columbus.
I knew *zip* about DEC equipment then. Took me 2 years to
get that first -8 working (I had no docs), but it was a
great learning experience. Two years after I got it, someone
gave me a PDP-8/a and offered me that job working with
PDP-11s and VAXen and embedded 68000 processors. Literally
a life-changing event.
Henk (wondering how this will appear on the list!)
Poorly.
-ethan
--
Ethan Dicks, A-333-S Current South Pole Weather at 28-Dec-2007 at 21:40 Z
South Pole Station
PSC 468 Box 400 Temp -16.1 F (-26.7 C) Windchill -37.7 F (-38.7 C)
APO AP 96598 Wind 10.5 kts Grid 41 Barometer 685.2 mb (10433 ft)
Ethan.Dicks at usap.gov http://penguincentral.com/penguincentral.html