30 Aug
2012
30 Aug
'12
4:41 p.m.
Josh,
I'll be trying to prepare the machine as a dynamic museum display. As
part of that process, I'll be going through the existing archive to
identify what's there in detail. I have a summary list. I'll pass on a
listing of what diskettes are there as soon as I have a chance to go
through them. Before using them on the live system (assuming everything
comes back to life without too much jiggery pokery) I'll be attempting
to Catweasel the diskettes as a backup. Typically I store files in a
raw MFM serialisation format so they can always be re-postprocessed into
a specific image type later. We have a stable rig set up for the
purpose. Depending on the licensing limitations of the software I
discover, and the determination of the museums archivist, I may be able
to share those images officially. Personally I'm all for Al's share
everything approach. But the museum has legal niceties to address, and
that's the purview of our archivist. Be assured, we are doing tactical
scanning and imaging, and planning for a pervasive approach -- it's just
down to money as always (all cash donations welcome -- www.tnmoc.org!)
As for backing off the hard disk over serial -- I'd love to have a go
with that. If the system is run regularly, it will be important to have
a backup.
Fair warning all of this is somewhat speculative for the moment. I'm
just gathering advice and documentation.
The PERQ is part of an exhibit area I'll attempting to breath life back
into. Currently, in this room, we've revived an HP K-class, IBM 5362,
IBM 6150RT, DECMate III and Cray Y-MP EL. On the fix list are the PDP
8, PDP 11/70, PERQ, Sun 6500, Xerox 860, HP 9845 and a number of other
goodies. The PERQ's the next on the list. However, this gallery is just
one project strand out of half a dozen I'm tied up on, so please be
patient with me. I'll share as much as I can as soon as I can. Just at
the moment, my primary focus is on the IBM 7090 archive -- and preparing
for that. I have hard dates to meet for that project, so I other tasks
end up taking longer. However, with a following wind, I should get
cracking on the PERQ archive listing this weekend, and maybe work
through the power supply.
On Thu, 2012-08-30 at 15:35 -0700, Josh Dersch wrote:
On Thu, Aug 30, 2012 at 3:18 PM, Colin Eby
<colineby at isallthat.com> wrote:
-- Colin
All, especially Tony,
I'm getting ready to power up a PERQ 1a which has been sitting for a
while (5+ years). I have no reason to believe it has any faults. I've
done the obvious prep, like unparking the disk, and removing the locking
screw. And I will need to build a dummy load to retest the power
supply. Are there any other gotchas or quirks I should be aware of? I
have no previous experience with this model, and would err on the side
of leaving it dormant rather than proceeding blindly.
-- Colin
Congrats on finding an amazing classic machine! :) Tony I'm sure will be
along with some useful advice shortly (he is by far the expert on PERQ
hardware).
I'm here to make a request for you when you do get the machine up and
running: I'm always looking for more software to run on my PERQ (and the
emulator PERQemu that I occasionally find time to hack on). If you have
any PERQ software (on floppy or otherwise) I'd like to make sure it gets
archived. I have a simple utility for dumping PERQ hard disks over the
serial port if you're willing to contribute to the cause :).
Thanks,
Josh