2 Jan
2001
2 Jan
'01
9:58 a.m.
Wow! I hit gold! Wacky Willy's... I cleaned the Vaughn St. location
of every DEC bit I could find. Here's what I found:
M7606 AF, MicroVAX II w/1MB RAM and floating point
2x M7608 BC/BF, 4-Mbyte RAM for microVAX II (Q22-bus)
M7164, Q-bus SDI disk adaptor, Q-22 (1 of 2)(what does that mean?
Guess I need another board)
M7516 YM, Ethernet interface (replaces DEQNA) - what do I need to hook it up?
M3106, 4-line double-buffered async EIA MUX, with modem control;
replaces M7957 - What do I do with this? It has a cable attachaed,
p/n BC05L-03
3x M3104 DHV11, 8-line async DMA MUX
M7551 CA, 4-Mbyte 22-bit parity/CSR MOS RAM (what will this work with?)
M8053 MA, M8053 with DDCMP control ROM (point-to-point or multidrop) - huh?
Non-DEC DEC stuff:
Sigma Info Systems DZV11, some WDC chips on it and two 40-pin connectors
Emulex TU0210401
National Semiconductor NS638 - tons of chips, looks like memory
Now, what do I do with all this stuff? What will work with my 11/84
and how do I set it up? My 11/84 is bare right now - just CPU and
some memory. I don't even remember what exactly is in there right
now, I'll have to go check later. The MicroVAX II CPU was a surprise.
Is there anything I can do with that? Anyone in the Portland, OR area
(or other areas of OR/WA with a bit of planning) need any of this
stuff or have something that I could use with it?
Oh yeah - other finds at Wacky Willy's were still shrink-wrapped
copies of DOS 6.21 and Windows 3.11, and a couple of 12v SLA
batteries.
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2 Jan
2 Jan
12:03 p.m.
Wow! I hit gold! Wacky Willy's... I cleaned the
Vaughn St. location
of every DEC bit I could find. Here's what I found:
Non-DEC DEC stuff:
Emulex TU0210401
Maybe a Tape controller?
National Semiconductor NS638 - tons of chips, looks
like memory
Given what you got it with I'd guess that it's MVII RAM. It sounds vaguely
familiar.
Now, what do I do with all this stuff? What will work
with my 11/84
and how do I set it up? My 11/84 is bare right now - just CPU and
some memory. I don't even remember what exactly is in there right
now, I'll have to go check later. The MicroVAX II CPU was a surprise.
Is there anything I can do with that? Anyone in the Portland, OR area
(or other areas of OR/WA with a bit of planning) need any of this
stuff or have something that I could use with it?
I'm guessing all the boards you just got are Q-Bus, the 11/84 is Unibus.
However, I think you can pull the CPU and RAM out of the 11/84, and put them
in the Q-Bus chassis and have a Q-Bus 11/83. Wait a MINUTE! Did you get a
chassis with all these boards, or just the boards?!?!
I'm in the area and think I've got some spare RQDX2 disk controllers (trust
me you don't want them). Not sure if I've got any spare RQDX3's, but
probably do. Of course if you didn't get a chassis, these won't do you any
good as they're Q-Bus. I've got a few Unibus boards, but no spare Unibus
drive controllers. Warning, right now, none of the stuff is accessable.
Oh yeah - other finds at Wacky Willy's were still
shrink-wrapped
copies of DOS 6.21 and Windows 3.11, and a couple of 12v SLA
batteries.
Any Sun stuff? Hillsboro had three Sun 1962B monitors, all dead :^(
Zane
3 Jan
3 Jan
12:20 a.m.
healyzh(a)aracnet.com wrote:
Now, what do I
do with all this stuff? What will work with my 11/84
and how do I set it up? My 11/84 is bare right now - just CPU and
some memory. I don't even remember what exactly is in there right
now, I'll have to go check later. The MicroVAX II CPU was a surprise.
Is there anything I can do with that? Anyone in the Portland, OR area
(or other areas of OR/WA with a bit of planning) need any of this
stuff or have something that I could use with it?
I'm guessing all the boards
you just got are Q-Bus, the 11/84 is Unibus.
However, I think you can pull the CPU and RAM out of the 11/84, and put them
in the Q-Bus chassis and have a Q-Bus 11/83. Wait a MINUTE! Did you get a
chassis with all these boards, or just the boards?!?! I'm in the area and think I've got some spare
RQDX2 disk controllers (trust
me you don't want them). Not sure if I've got any spare RQDX3's, but
probably do. Of course if you didn't get a chassis, these won't do you any
good as they're Q-Bus.
I may also have a few spare RQDX3 controllers. But, they use only the
RD51,2,3,4 hard drives and RX50/RX33 floppy drives. And to format
the hard drives, you really need XXDP. I suppose that an RD54 at about
159 MBytes is not terrible, especially for RT-11 and the hobby V5.03
of RT-11 (oops - you can only legally run V5.03 of RT-11 as a hobby
user with the Supnik emulator), since V5.03 was the first version to
support eight 32 MByte RT-11 partitions and will soon support dates
after 1999 as well as other great options (if I ever get around to it -
still not very much interest, but I am working on it very slowly). If you
need an RX50 floppy to use with XXDP, I can probably find one of
those as well.
Lots of fun with the 11/83. What operating system do you intend to run?
If you don't intend to use some of the boards, please let me know - I
can always use a few spares.
Sincerely yours,
Jerome Fine
2:38 a.m.
New subject: Altair Owners ...
Has anybody got an ALTAIR that actually runs CP/M?
I have one OS for an Altair, namely a system with the MITS serial board an a
Morrow DJ2. Not being an Altair-owner myself, I don't know how, exactly to
prepare a BIOS for the two Altair add-ons I'm building up for eventual
liquidation on eBay.
I've got two genuine MITS boxes, one intended (but never used as such) FDD
box, with a front face plate I made in the shop, which houses a PSU, and
offers four HH 5-1/4" drive bays, with a dual 50-conductor cable hookup in
the back, the latter hookup being of my own design an the opening for it
having been milled by me. The box is original, but there's no
identification of any sort, since this was from a batch of raw boxes I
bought when MITS went tits-up. The other, essentially identical box is a
MITS HDC box, with the original cardcage and PSU (repaired) but no back
cover, which once covered the card cage opening from the rear, and,
consistent with the original MITS accommodated a parallel interface to the
Altair computer. It is completely original and has no modifications to the
box, which still bears the original dress panel and key-switch, but the box
houses a WD-1002-05 bridge controller, capable of handling 4 floppies
(albeit 5-1/4" and 3-1/2" only, due to the supported clock rate). This box
is intended to be used in tandem with the COMPLETELY COUNTERFEIT drive
enclosure mentioned above, though it's being done in a period-authentic way.
What I want to know is what sort of support for floppy diskettes will be
require, if any, based on the fact there will only be 5-1/4" drives
accomodated in the system. Has anybody got a "better" sort of BIOS setup
for booting from the WDFDC? I'm looking to clone something, so the eventual
owner will be able to build and use a boot diskette from something else,
prefereably something that already exists, yet the only running Altair boxes
I've seen/heard-of myself use the hard-sectored mini-floppies of the
Northstar, and that's not an option.
Any suggestions?
Dick
12:13 p.m.
New subject: Altair Owners ...
At 09:38 AM 1/3/01 -0700, you wrote:
Has anybody got an ALTAIR that actually runs CP/M?
Yep... Versions running on Tarbell single and double density controllers,
and a version that runs on the native MITS 8 inch disk subsystem.
-jim
---
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The Computer Garage - http://www.rdrop.com/~jimw
Computer Garage Fax - (503) 646-0174
The 'computergarage.org' domain is currently offline.
Current web site and email shown above
5:44 p.m.
New subject: Altair Owners ...
Really!
I sold off a MITS FDD that I'd had lying about for some 20+ years over the
last year or two.
My concern over the eventual dispositon of the artifacts I mentioned is
probably unwarranted by the general lack of concern about much other than
appearance. I have endeavored not to modify the orignal hardware beyond
repairing broken electronic components, etc. The stuff I've added is added
without physically modifying the orignal boxes, though that's not always
easy. I'm curious about whether a "real" Altair user has preference for
one
or the other of the two modes of interfacing the clearly not original MITS
electronics in the HDC box. My understanding is that the orignial interface
to the HDC card set, missing from my HDC box, was a parallel port set. I
could easily provide that, but am troubled by the fact it would be so much
(probably 8-10x) slower than using the channel interface that works so well
with the WD 100x controllers. Since the hardware I'd provide is not
authentic in either case, it really doesn't matter, but it's a fine point
I'd be concerned with if I were a collector.
I have these old blank S-100 parallel port boards that were used for testing
HDA's at Miniscribe in the '80's, and they're pretty easy to modify into
either form of interface. The hardware I'm providing makes no attempt to do
anything beyond filling the purpose and filling the open holes in the boxes.
I do see this as an easy way for an Altair with no FDC or HDC to become a
working computer, perhaps superior in performance and functionality to
anything originally availble for the Altair. My quandary is that getting it
working is a lot of work probably of little or no interest to a "collector"
who just wants matching boxes stacked on the shelf.
How do you see this?
Dick
----- Original Message -----
From: "James Willing" <jimw(a)agora.rdrop.com>
To: <classiccmp(a)classiccmp.org>
Sent: Wednesday, January 03, 2001 7:13 PM
Subject: Re: Altair Owners ...
At 09:38 AM 1/3/01 -0700, you wrote:
Has anybody got an ALTAIR that actually runs CP/M?
Yep... Versions running on Tarbell single and double density controllers,
and a version that runs on the native MITS 8 inch disk subsystem.
-jim
---
jimw(a)agora.rdrop.com
The Computer Garage - http://www.rdrop.com/~jimw
Computer Garage Fax - (503) 646-0174
The 'computergarage.org' domain is currently offline.
Current web site and email shown above
4:31 a.m.
New subject: Pacific Data Systems
Hello All,
Does anybody know what happened with Pacific Data Systems?
I tried to call them on 530 893 2394 but that number seems to be
disconnected.
Thanks,
Ed
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2 Jan
2 Jan
1:27 p.m.
At 03:58 PM 1/2/01 -0800, you wrote:
Wow! I hit gold! Wacky Willy's... I cleaned the
Vaughn St. location of
every DEC bit I could find.
Very cool, you've found a bunch of Q-bus bits, not Unibus bits. So please
don't mix them:
M7606 AF, MicroVAX II w/1MB RAM and floating point
2x M7608 BC/BF, 4-Mbyte RAM for microVAX II (Q22-bus)
The three above, put together into 3 Q/CD slots of a Q-Bus backplane, form
the basis for a MicroVAX II (and VAXStation II, and VAXStation II/GPX) this
is the MicroVAX CPU and 8MB of memory for it (creating a 9MB system total)
M7164, Q-bus SDI disk adaptor, Q-22 (1 of 2)(what does
that mean? Guess I
need another board)
This is half an interface for DEC "SDI" drives, the most familiar is the
RA81 and RA82 type. (Very heavy drives) If you need the "other half" I can
help (I've got three extra sets I believe) :-)
M7516 YM, Ethernet interface (replaces DEQNA) - what do
I need to hook it up?
This then is your ethernet, it happens to be a "DELQA-T" or affectionately
known as the "Turbo" DELQA. Pretty much the nicest ethernet you can put in
a Q-bus VAX machine until you get to the DESQA series for the MV III.
M3106, 4-line double-buffered async EIA MUX, with modem
control; replaces
M7957 - What do I do with this? It has a cable attachaed, p/n BC05L-03
Again, I (and probably others) can send you the "cab kit" for this board
which takes that cable and turns it into four DB-25 connectors. Generally
this mounts in one of the option holes in the back panel of the VAX.
3x M3104 DHV11, 8-line async DMA MUX
This is the 8 line version of the above and a "quad wide" as opposed to the
dual wide 3106. If you're lucky you can find M3107's which are the line
line dual-wide versions. Again, if you need cab kits I tried to give them
away earlier and no takers.
M7551 CA, 4-Mbyte 22-bit parity/CSR MOS RAM (what will
this work with?)
This is for a PDP-11/23 or ll/73. Basically you can "fill" the memory space
for one of these processors with this board.
M8053 MA, M8053 with DDCMP control ROM (point-to-point
or multidrop) - huh?
This is a synchronous serial port that knows how to do DDCMP (the DECnet
serial protocol) You will find this comes in handy if you want to create a
DECnet link from a VAX to a PDP-11 (it can be easier than creating an
ethernet link sometimes)
Non-DEC DEC stuff:
Sigma Info Systems DZV11, some WDC chips on it and two 40-pin connectors
This is an async mux as well, the DEC cab kits work with it I believe.
Emulex TU0210401
Don't know.
National Semiconductor NS638 - tons of chips, looks
like memory
According to my notes this is an 8MB RAM card for the MicroVAX II. (could
give you a total of 16MB when combined with the other two cards) Check to
see if it has the 50 pin connector on the right side (when viewed from the
front)
Now, what do I do with all this stuff?
Well, several choices, one you could combine the M3106 + M7516 + M7606 + 2x
M7608 in a BA23 cabinet and create a diskless MicroVAX II. Bootable via MOP
into either VMS or NetBSD.
What will work with my 11/84 and how do I set it up? My
11/84 is bare
right now - just CPU and some memory. I don't even remember what exactly
is in there right now, I'll have to go check later.
If the 11/84 is Unibus then I don't think you can do much with it, but if
you get a BA23 or BA123 you can have yourself a MicroVAX II in short order.
--Chuck
8535
days inactive
8537
days old
7 comments
7 participants
participants (7)
-
cmcmanis＠mcmanis.com -
edick＠idcomm.com -
healyzh＠aracnet.com -
jhfine＠idirect.com -
jimw＠agora.rdrop.com -
kd7bcy＠teleport.com -
quapla＠xs4all.nl