16 Jun
2005
16 Jun
'05
9:04 a.m.
On 6/15/05, SP <spedraja at ono.com> wrote:
In my manual of PICK it talks about the SYSPROG
account. It comes by default
without password, but of course someone could put one.
Sergio, and Jay, and all others,
Thanks!
SYSPROG did it. No password ... I think this was a "personal use
only" system, so no surprise at the lack of password.
I did some more targetted Google-ing and found a PDF book on Pick
BASIC, so I guess I'm on my way :-)
One concern is that I did NOT get any install disks or docs, and the
hard drive this is on is an ancient one, making funny noises....
Hopefully it'll last a little while....
Thanks all for the help!
Rich B.
16 Jun
16 Jun
12:23 p.m.
On Thu, 16 Jun 2005, Richard Beaudry wrote:
One concern is that I did NOT get any install disks or
docs, and the
hard drive this is on is an ancient one, making funny noises....
Hopefully it'll last a little while....
I assume it's an MFM or RLL hard drive? It'll be a little but of work,
but if you have a suitable Linux box handy you should install an MFM/RLL
controller and find a duplicate of the drive installed in the Pick box
(that might be difficult as well) and run dd to duplicate it to the
second.
--
Sellam Ismail Vintage Computer Festival
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
International Man of Intrigue and Danger http://www.vintage.org
[ Old computing resources for business || Buy/Sell/Trade Vintage Computers ]
[ and academia at www.VintageTech.com || at http://marketplace.vintage.org ]
4:34 p.m.
New subject: Archiving MFM and RLL drives (Was: Re: Default password for Pick system on an AT?)
One concern is
that I did NOT get any install disks or docs, and the
hard drive this is on is an ancient one, making funny noises....
Hopefully it'll last a little while....
I assume it's an MFM or RLL hard drive? It'll be a little but of work,
but if you have a suitable Linux box handy you should install an MFM/RLL
controller and find a duplicate of the drive installed in the Pick box
(that might be difficult as well) and run dd to duplicate it to the
second. 
4:52 p.m.
New subject: Archiving MFM and RLL drives (Was: Re: Default password for Picksystem on an AT?)
From: "Richard Beaudry" <richard.beaudry at gmail.com>
Sent: Thursday, June 16, 2005 3:34 PM
It is either an MFM or RLL drive. I haven't pulled the drive or
cleaned the dust to verify which. According to the sticker someone
taped in to the front of the drive, it is a 15MB (FULL height, 5.25"),
type 2 in the AT setup (I've no idea what cyls/heads/secs that refers
to, so I'll have to pull the drive and hope it is labeled).
Heresy, I know, but I don't have a Linux box :-)... Also, please
don't tell me "you ought to set one up" ... I don't wish to fan
advocacy flames, so let's just drop it there.
Would something like Ghost work? I've never tried it on small, old
drives.
I do have a DOS box (p-133), so if there's some DOS/WIN 3.1 utility to
do the same thing, I could use that ....
I'll see if I can dig anything up on my end, and I might just give
Ghost a try ... meantime, if anyone knows of another DOS/WIN31 way to
make a drive image of an old MFM/RLL drive, I'm all ears.
Rich B.
Linux may be easier, luckily there is no need to "set one up". Get knoppix
it runs from a CD:
http://www.linuxiso.org/
I carry a CD around just so when I'm at a clients I have a known set of
tools handy.
Randy
www.s100-manuals.com
One concern is that I did NOT get any install disks or
docs, and the
hard drive this is on is an ancient one, making funny noises....
Hopefully it'll last a little while....
I assume it's an MFM or RLL hard drive? It'll be a little but of work,
but if you have a suitable Linux box handy you should install an MFM/RLL
controller and find a duplicate of the drive installed in the Pick box
(that might be difficult as well) and run dd to duplicate it to the
second.
17 Jun
17 Jun
1:42 a.m.
New subject: Archiving MFM and RLL drives (Was: Re: Default password for Pick system on an AT?)
On Thu, 16 Jun 2005, Richard Beaudry wrote:
Heresy, I know, but I don't have a Linux box
:-)... Also, please
don't tell me "you ought to set one up" ... I don't wish to fan
advocacy flames, so let's just drop it there.
No advocacy flames required. It's a little bit of work but the tools you
get with Linux far outweigh the trouble involved in setting up a system.
Would something like Ghost work? I've never tried
it on small, old drives.
I'm not sure, but dd does.
I do have a DOS box (p-133), so if there's some
DOS/WIN 3.1 utility to
do the same thing, I could use that ....
Probably. I wouldn't know off-hand.
--
Sellam Ismail Vintage Computer Festival
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
International Man of Intrigue and Danger http://www.vintage.org
[ Old computing resources for business || Buy/Sell/Trade Vintage Computers ]
[ and academia at www.VintageTech.com || at http://marketplace.vintage.org ]
21 Jun
21 Jun
2 p.m.
New subject: Heathkit HDOS source listings
Hello all,
I recently acquired a 4-volume set of Heathkit HDOS source listings.
They are in assembly langage, printed out on May 16th, 1980. They
have nicely printed cover pages from Heathkit, and the rest appear to
be photocopies of greenbar paper listings. I haven't examined them
completely, but they appear to be intact, readable, and complete. The
command processor and BASIC interpreter are definitely there, and
there is a lot more as well...
I'll post more details if anyone is interested. Also, I don't know if
these are archived anywhere. If not, is there interest in getting
these scanned and posted? If so, I'll move it to the top of the list.
Bear in mind it's at least a 6" high stack, double-side printed, so
"top of the stack" may still take a while to do... :-)
I found some comments by a "J.G. Letwin". Perchance the same Letwin
of OS/2 fame?
Thanks,
Rich B.
16 Jun
16 Jun
8:22 p.m.
Richard wrote...
I did some more targetted Google-ing and found a PDF
book on Pick
BASIC, so I guess I'm on my way :-)
The real beauty of Pick BASIC (aside from
all the statement amenities &
variable autotyping & such)... is Dynamic Arrays & fileIO. Dynamic arrays
are actually how the data is stored on disc, give or take some link fields.
One concern is that I did NOT get any install disks or
docs, and the
hard drive this is on is an ancient one, making funny noises....
Hopefully it'll last a little while....
FYI - Pick/AT uses a totally
nonstandard disk format. However, at least it
obeys FDISK rules and lives in a partition. A replacement drive would have
to be identical, and your copy would have to be "bit level", nothing that
tries to understand a "filesystem".
Jay
17 Jun
17 Jun
9:54 a.m.
On 16 Jun, 2005, at 20:22, Jay West wrote:
Richard wrote...
...
I have no knowledge of the details of Pick, but if it uses
FDISK-compatible partitions it should also use standard sectors. In
that case, it should be possible to copy to a larger disk drive, just
deliberately wasting disk space by not using the extra sectors per
track. It means you would have to do sector-level copying, but unless
the system is really weird it ought to work.
--
-bv
One concern is that I did NOT get any install
disks or docs, and the
hard drive this is on is an ancient one, making funny noises....
Hopefully it'll last a little while....
FYI - Pick/AT uses a totally
nonstandard disk format. However, at
least it obeys FDISK rules and lives in a partition. A replacement
drive would have to be identical, and your copy would have to be "bit
level", nothing that tries to understand a "filesystem".
7006
days inactive
7011
days old
7 comments
5 participants
participants (5)
-
bv＠norbionics.com -
cctalk＠randy482.com -
jwest＠classiccmp.org -
richard.beaudry＠gmail.com -
vcf＠siconic.com