On 06/08/2012 15:00, Al Kossow wrote: A pity that UK related stuff goes to the US where we can't see and touch it.... -- Dave Wade G4UGM Illegitimi Non Carborundum *** For the Hams on the list three special event stations in Manchester now operational ***** **** GB2012MV, GB2012MS and GB2012MW. See http://GB2012MS.COM/ for links and schedules. ***

On 8/6/12 9:23 AM, Dave Wade wrote: The documents will be scanned, the tapes and cards read. This is more than would occur anywhere else but at CHM.

THis is the main reason why I have 'issues' with museums. Of course the only museums I've had close dealings with are those in the UK. I will happily state that Al and his colleages do a wonderful job in preserving and sharing docuemtnation and software. My comments are not directed to him, his organisation, or any similar organisation. But IMHO the purpose of a museum is to make artefacts and related material 'available' Most UK museums fail to do this. THey seem to think that if they have na artefact than nobody else should have one. Heck, a lot of UK museums prohibit photography for various bogus reasons [1] meaning they're a less-than-useful reference source. If they have docuemtnation, you can be sure it's impossible to refer to, [1] I can understand that flash photography can damage some artefacts. I can understnnd that a tripod can be a nuisance at busy times (but surely they could agree there are non-busy times). Those are not bogus reasons. But darn it, I refuse to beilve that a flash photograph would damage a 400-year-old clock movement. Or a 40 year old computer chassis. I'ce lost count of the number of times I've contacted a UK museum who claims to have some device similar ot one that I am working on and asking if they could proivde inforamtion only to be ignored or to be told 'No way' (in various ways...). Since help goes both ways I have made it my policy not to help UK musuems. -tony

OK.... 1) I do not claim to run a 'museum' (and nor do most people here). I do not think it's reasonable to expect private collectors to make all their stuff aviaalbe. But museums enjoy rathe more beneifts than private collectorsm and I regard making stuff avaialble to be part of their job. 2) If you ask me nicely for just about any manual/schematic/etc that I have (and can find), I iwll make a copy of it when time permits. If it's just a couple of sheets goignt somebody in the UK, I'll jsut do it (please son't all ask for stuff :-)). if there are significant costs involved (lots of sheets, overseas shipping, then we come to some arrangement. 3) If I didn't approve of making stuff availalbe, why woold I let hpmusuem.net (and indeed bitsavers) distribute stuff that I had produced? Ditto for the HPCC Scheamtics CD. YEs, you have to buy it, but it's not expensicve, and I don't see one penny (cent, whatever) of that money. Note that in many cases, if you wanted to distribute said diagrams for the desktops (sorry, I have agreeded with HPCC that as that's a 'handhelds club' the only wat ot get the schemnaitcs for the handhelds is to buy the CD) then if you ask me nicely I am likely to grant permission 4) On several occasions I haev sent you (Al) ROM images, commented source listings, etc and just been ignored. If you don't like the way I sent them (.tar.gz file as a mime attachment) or don't like Intel hex, or couldn't work out what machien they were from, then you could ahve asked me. As it is, Iv'e stopped bothering to send them. -tony

Al, I'm a fan but I have to say you are qi quite wrong to suggest documents won't be adequately archived anywhere but CHM. It simply isn't so. Al Kossow <aek at bitsavers.org> wrote: -- Colin

On 8/6/12 11:27 AM, Colin Eby wrote: That isn't what I said.

Adrian Stoness wrote: What if the museum that had a demonstrated commitment to making historical documents publicly available worked on it, and other museums gratefully acknowledged their work?

Al, You have, to my knowledge, husbanded into existence the greatest public collection of this form of material. Again, I lend my hearty thanks to you. Software and document scanning does happen outside CHM. My own current project is an HP 2116. The documentation around that along with the software, has been most readily and copiously available directly associated with CHM, but whoever, and where ever in Oz they are, my hearty thanks to them too. I think my point was to underline that CHM is not the global repository for all computing history, no matter how fantastic a resource it is. There are other threads of the tale being told elsewhere and with different context. TNMOC doesn't currently have a public web-based documentation archive. Perfectly true. We have the old fashioned walk in and look at stuff kind, but I take the point, and understand the value of the virtual one. I know I'm talking out of school (*the thoughts and opinions of this internet troll are completely his own and not to be attributed to TNMoC, et al), but we were certainly planning for one. The grant we sought to gear up for mass scanning didn't come through. We'll keep trying. In the meantime, we've refurbed and build out our archive facilities -- and are cataloguing the current documentation and ephemera collection. We've relaunched out website to allow more contributors to get content on and off it, as well as making plug ins (such as archival access) more readily possible. At the same time we've been pushing ahead with a refresh on collections catalogue management, display refurbishment (new software gallery under construction) and yes, some software and particularly video capture. Our strands of activity twist around a bit over time, but ultimately we're rapidly maturing as an organisation thanks to a vibrant voluteer community and gentle steerage from key association officers. I could not hand on heart say when a tranche of documents might be published, unless I had hand on scanner, and did them myself. As I don't know how many pages and formats involved, all I can do is stand back, such my teeth and mumble something like, 'ooo its a big job'. I also don't know how quickly we might get written clearance from IBM to publish their old documentation -- your arrangements wouldn't cover us in UK law. But I have faith in our community that the emails will get exchanged and it will happen. As great a collection of material as you've published so far, I imagine it will become merely one of many such collections all connected together in a community which Sir Tim called the world wide web. So no biggie if it all ultimately ends up in your hands. Would be nice though if the Brits got to tell a bit of IBMs UK story, actually in a place where British school kid can come to see it, before buying a BBC keyboard key keyring in our shop :). On Mon, 2012-08-06 at 12:46 -0700, Al Kossow wrote: -- Colin

Is it genuinely possible of j-rnadom-public to 'walk in and look up stuff'? My expeirience is some years old, I admit, but I certainly could never get a look at anything. -tony

On 8/6/12 11:31 AM, Dave Wade wrote: http://bitsavers.org/bits/IBM/1620/1620.zip These were read by the 1620 restoration team when the project was active, and have not been completely cataloged.

Realize that the USA is a very big place, and those of us on the East Coast...well, CHM might as well be in he UK. No, I can not visit every other week, as I wish I could. At best, I roadtrip many thousands of miles once a year and see CHM for just a day or two. But then again, I am a nut. And yes, all that DEC and IBM and DG and Univac and Interdata iron was mostly born in East Coast stables. But, for software and document preservation, CHM is a established success - one that other computer museums have not matched. (and Wild Hare!) -- Will

Museums in general and computer ones in particular suffer from 'Iceberg Syndrome' Seventy five percent of what they are you can't see. They are driven to hoard anything they can get their hands on and just let it rot away in storage. They only restore items that they think will attract visitors. Hands up all of those who have made an equipment donation to a museum and have seen it restored and displayed in working condition. Does anybody know of a museum that restores systems to working order regardless of if they will be displayed or not. The only exceptions to this rule seem be Cars and Planes. Every vehicle/plane is usually restored to running condition and they even make a display out of the restoration process. Rod Smallwood ? ?Definition of A Magpies nest: Large untidy structure docorated with shiny items that the bird has found. -----Original Message----- From: cctech-bounces at classiccmp.org [mailto:cctech-bounces at classiccmp.org] On Behalf Of Al Kossow Sent: 06 August 2012 18:33 To: General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts Subject: Re: To all with interest in IBM 7090 On 8/6/12 9:23 AM, Dave Wade wrote: it.... The documents will be scanned, the tapes and cards read. This is more than would occur anywhere else but at CHM.

My problem is Museums not wanting to restore systems that are on display. I guess that's the difference between a Computer Museum and a Computing Museum. Many conservationists believe that restoring a machine to working order, and using it destroys its authenticity and reduces its historical significance, whereas to me anything that's not running might as well just be a film set. To me it doesn't help you learn unless it can be seen working. Just like a cotton mill, e.g. http://www.nationaltrust.org.uk/quarry-bank-mill/ or the power hall at MOSI http://www.mosi.org.uk/explore-mosi/explore-galleries/power-hall.aspx Computers are about noise, heat vibration and smell. Whilst Bletchley is coming close with its ICL 2900, there isn't really any thing in the UK that captures the feel and atmosphere of a mainframe data centre of the 1960's. I think one of the problems is that many of the museum staff have never experienced this for themselves and don't understand what the visitor is missing from the experience. I really like running the remnant at the Hartree Differential Analyzer at MOSi but I am sure the Museum aren't really happy about it, as every time we replace the integrator cords we are removing a part of history from the machine, even though the cords that were on only date from the 1960s when it was coming to the end of its working life... My wife thinks I have too many plotters but I don't. She especially hates the DPX-3300 which I love. However I do think my Selectric Electronic Composer was a purchase too far so if any one is interested they are welcome to it. I was hoping to use it as an emulated IBM1130 console built has proportional spacing so I don't think its suitable. I am told it has a minor fault but I have never had the space to test it.... (is it computing or not, not really sure)... You really have to, although you might, like Bletchley keeps enough parts to allow running repairs of ...

It depedns. If you're one of these people who thinks a computer is like a piece of fine art, then I guess you want to keep it in the state you got it, never replacing anything, Most museums seem to take this view, even theough the machines, when thek get them, are rarely jsut as they left the factory. Alternatively you can run them. YEs, parts fail, but if you've been sensible, you will know how to handle this, you'll have backups of the firmware, etc. You replace said parts with the closest alternatives _and docuemtn the fact_. And enjoy the machine some more. You do relaise that computers (in particular ICs) will die just sitting on the shelf? Plastic parts will degrade and fall apart. You might as well run them while you still have a chance. -tony

...that can be studied in extreme detail for many years, thanks to the original parts still being there. Nobody can tell what will be important in years to come. Things we see as mundane today may be very important in the future. We have seen this before. In classic-era archaeology, everyone wanted to study how the kings and emperors lived, with only a passing interest in how all the regular people got along. But then the unthinkable happened, and now everyone wants to what those regular people ate, smoked, built, drank, played, shat, painted, and learned. But many of those classic-era archaeologists trashed the village sites so they could get to the temples. Yeah, tell that to the hard disk people. Or the printer people. Anyone have a 1416 print chain? -- Will

Simulators are good. I do not think there is any demand, so why should someone make one? But there is a demand for the simulators, so people write them. This is not a black and white issue. There are plenty of old machines out there that someone can study to learn the heritage - or even purchase to hack on. Getting a PDP-8 is not hard to do. Getting an Altair is not either. Yes, getting a 7000 series IBM is out of reach, but you just have to deal with the fact that they were never made in big numbers, and most are long gone. The ones that remain need to be pampered and properly cared for if you want them to last for the grandkids. Or the great great great great great great great great grandkids. Just realize that it is a good idea to set aside *some* machines in a museum, and treat them as if they need to last for 1000 years. Well, the 1401 team would sure like to know about it. Pretty soon the 1403s will be silent, as they are down to only a chain or two. I thought I had some, but they are actually print trains (for the 1403N1). -- Will

Simulating everything for a computer museum is like a regular museum having nothing but reproduction artifacts. It doesn't work well. But, not everyone can get to the hardware. I've been playing with OpenVMS lately myself, using simh to emulate a VAX. My goal is to get a VAX machine, but for now the simulator has to suffice. -------- Paul Anderson -- VE3HOP On 2012-08-09, at 5:47 PM, ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk (Tony Duell) wrote:

Please note that I said nothing about a computer museum using simulators. The question asked was: I replied: Note no museum use was mentioned. Simulators work well for this, and can be run from the comfort of anyone's home. No museum required. So please reconsider your post and how things were actually said. Please do not stoop to Tony's level, twisting my words at any occasion - you will end up soiling your reputation (back to the "don't be a dick" idea). Anyway, here is a fun thought experiment. Consider two absolutely identical big machines from the 1960s. Take one, and restore it to operation. Take the other, and put it into a museum archive and preserved. Wait 30 years. Now, in 2042, compare the two machines. The running one will be quite a bit more "used" than the preserved one, just from normal wear and tear on the components. Now here is the twist - in 30 years ago, simulators will be magnitudes beyond what we have today. Simulating not only the architecture, but the sounds, smells, colors, textures, and so forth. Yes, virtual reality. Now, what would you want your near perfect simulation to be based off of - the machine that was used far longer than its normal working history, or the one that was preserved as it was just taken out of service? -- Will

One big differnece. PC sound systems have volume controls and can be turned off totally (e.g. by unplugging the speakcers). The incidental noises from real hardware cannont be so controleld. You have ot put up with them. And there';s another differnece. If you make a mess running a simulator, you drop the virtual card deck, or you mis-configure soemthing, format the systmne disk pack (even, if the simualtor ever gets to that level, you drop a screwdriver int oa running machine and short the maisns to a bus line), you can restoe the simualtor files from a backup nad try again. Do that on the real hardware and you might have a long day ahead of you. That _is_ part of the xperience of running such a macbhine, though, It has been suggested that the fact that if you are 'killed' in a video game you can restart and have another go has led certain classes ot people to not treat human life as seriously as they should. You can't 'reboot' if you've just been shot by a real gun. -tony

On 8/10/2012 4:16 PM, Fred Cisin wrote: You mean like in this novel. http://www.baka-tsuki.org/project/index.php?title=Sword_Art_Online Ben.

On 8/9/2012 9:40 PM, William Donzelli wrote: Simulators also help do something with software that running artifacts can't do. They get the software off of bitsavers and into a lot more places than just a few old farts with working machines. I think the dec software is far more healthy today for the work of simh and others to write simulators than if such didn't exist. I remember back in the good old days (mine were in the mid 70's on) that I wish I had simulators because even when this crap was new it was a pain in the ass. I'm into hardware and all, but software and a simulator will present the same thing thru a terminal as the real thing, sometimes better, which is an added plus. the simulator I have runs over 500x as fast as the original hardware, which I'm just fine with. After you've gotten all the feel of the original, there is still the original thing we came for, which is delivered most times just as well with a simulator and original software. Of the topic a it as it is preserving hardware, noise components. They have the most value in the market, but I get way more of a thrill from seeing the latest thing Al got on bitsavers than the hardware, or even better help him get something there. Jim

On 8/10/2012 1:51 AM, Mouse wrote: And of course with out simulators modern hardware never could be made. Back to FORTRAN. At one time utilities for new hardware (1970's) was written in FORTRAN to portable. Any idea what machines they expected the programs to be ran on? Ben.

On Fri, 10 Aug 2012, Brent Hilpert wrote: Is there a 360/70 simulator that will run on 68K Macs?

On 8/10/12 5:23 PM, Paul Anderson wrote: Doubtful. We fixed a lot of problems with memory management when Apple went to PowerPC. The 68K runtime has major problems dealing with large chunks of memory. Running a big simulation on MacOS 68K is a chore.

On 8/10/12 7:27 PM, David Riley wrote: The memory manager was designed in the days of the 128k Mac. It is really awkward to deal with anything larger than 64k. This is a big problem for large programs. Code segments can't be bigger than 64k. Back porting large programs is very, very difficult. It is a shame that they essentially took a non-segmented CPU, and made it segmented. That all got fixed with the native PPC runtime and it made life much easier.

The S/360 is still mostly around. These days in the form of IBM z Series. In 2007, I was working as an admin on a couple z900s running z/OS. That was my first exposure to a system that didn't have a hierarchical filesystem. I learned JCL and REXX. I'm still quite fond of RACF, wish more systems had something like it. It's unfortunate that the system is so hard to get your hands on. I'd like to keep up on it, but having a job where you admin it is nearly the one way to get access. -------- Paul Anderson -- VE3HOP On 2012-08-10, at 12:38 PM, Brent Hilpert <hilpert at cs.ubc.ca> wrote:

On Fri, 10 Aug 2012, Chuck Guzis wrote: "more portable than syphilis"

If it's 'better' then IMHO it's not a faithful simulation. The fact that you had to leave the machine running overnight to get something complied _is_ part of running a classic computer. The fact that if you bang the table, the RANopack wobbles and you lose everything _is_ part of running a ZX81. -tony

On 8/10/12 8:14 PM, William Donzelli wrote: I decided over ten years ago that my time is better spent working on things that can be shared. During that time I've slowly been getting rid of my hardware collection.

Oh come now. The ewhole context of this sub-thread was museums. If you want to change that then fine, But at least tell us! Fore example : 'Simulaotrs are good becasue you can run them at home and don't need to go to a museum. And you can run whatever you like on them.' And please make it clear what you are talking about. You are a terminal idiot. Period. Well, given that thwe one that's bneen in storage for 30 years probalby won't still work, while the one that's keen kept running probably will (albeit with some components replaced over the years), I think the answer is obvious :-). -tony

Serial or twinax? -------- Paul Anderson -- VE3HOP On 2012-08-10, at 9:07 PM, William Donzelli <wdonzelli at gmail.com> wrote:

In article <CANij+dfLdaBXBEat5G04O2H_X4Z10fXWn4isa5aTgVDfnLUYiQ at mail.gmail.com>, William Donzelli <wdonzelli at gmail.com> writes: I have *one*. That is enough to make me want to sell it :-). Actually I have been learning more about HDLC, X.25, 3270 chitchat, etc., in order to try and get these Westinghouse airline terminals to talk. However, as we discussed during your last visit when we were at the Hole, I need to focus on graphics and not become exclusively a terminal museum. Get some twinax/bisync *graphics* terminals my way and I'll get a lot more interested. However, I just haven't found them. like the following are interesting models: - IBM 2250 (vector display) - IBM 3179 Display station (color or graphics) for IBM 3270 - IBM 3192G Terminal. 24 or 32 lines. Graphics. - IBM 3194 Advanced function colour display - IBM 3279 Color graphic terminal; 1979 - IBM 6153 Advanced monochrome graphics display - IBM 6154 Advanced color graphics display - IBM 6155 Extended monochrome graphics display - IBM 6180 Color plotter - IBM 6186 Color plotter - IBM 7372 Color plotter, 6 pen, desktop - IBM 7374 Color plotter - IBM 7375 Color plotter - IBM 7350 Image processor, a specialized terminal for scientific and research applications; 1983 - IBM 7404 Graphic Output - IBM XY749 Plotter - IBM XY750 Plotter The list is pretty sketchy and doesn't give details, or date of introduction, for most of these things. But judging from what's there, a number of models look like they could be interesting. I know IBM had a role in the history of graphics, but really IBM is such a world unto itself that it's going to take some considerable study on my part in order to understand the story, much less tell it to anyone else accurately. -- "The Direct3D Graphics Pipeline" free book <http://tinyurl.com/d3d-pipeline> The Computer Graphics Museum <http://computergraphicsmuseum.org> The Terminals Wiki <http://terminals.classiccmp.org> Legalize Adulthood! (my blog) <http://legalizeadulthood.wordpress.com>

{begin pedantry} I'll butt in and say, yes twinax is serial, but no not in a RS232 serial terminal way. Twinax (twin-axial) only describes the cabling infrastructure. Normally twinax networking refers to an IBM specific workstation infrastructure common to their mid range before the ubiquitity of TCP/IP. The protocol was block mode rather than character. The transmission is serial based I believe, but not RS232 compliant. The signalling is compatible with twisted pair, as well as the twin core coaxial cable from which the whole communication infrastructure typically nicknamed. The protocol is typically referred to as 5250 after the original workstation model. But unlike typical serial comms, it is a bus topology. So not really an intersecting set in a meaningful compatibility kind of way.{end pedantry} ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk wrote: -- Colin

Exactly my (pedantic) point. Not all serial interfaces are RS232, not all are asynchronous. [Just about the only bit of the 'USB' name that's right is 'serial'. I get very confused when soembody asks for a USB to serial converter...] -tony

On Sun, 12 Aug 2012, Tony Duell wrote: YOU have a USB port! (My CAR has one (Prius-V)) Although ANALOG, isn't a POTs line serial? Although not electronic, aren't most cashier queues serial?

At least until someone notices "hey, if we run another 7 data pairs, we can get 8 times the data rate for free!". And the cycle of reincarnation continues.... Mouse

On 08/12/2012 07:23 PM, Dave wrote: Well that was one of the reasons. ;) ATA/IDE was one of the worst-designed interconnects in the history of this industry. Even the PC weeniez knew it had to go. SATA, for all of its faults, is a godsend! -Dave -- Dave McGuire, AK4HZ New Kensington, PA

The problem is that SCSI never has been cheap, and it still used those accursed ribbon cables. I've spent hours fighting with those cables trying to get them to fit... Sent from my iPhone On 2012-08-12, at 8:13 PM, Mouse <mouse at rodents-montreal.org> wrote:

-----Original Message----- From: cctalk-bounces at classiccmp.org [mailto:cctalk-bounces at classiccmp.org] On Behalf Of Dave McGuire Sent: Monday, 13 August 2012 10:32 AM To: General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts Subject: Re: To all with interest in IBM 7090 Seriously, what's there to dislike about it? Faster, hot swappable, smaller cabling - the haters will just keep on hating anything new unfortunately.

On 08/12/2012 09:57 PM, Lance Lyon wrote: I DO NOT dislike it. I didn't say I disliked it. I never mentioned whether I liked it or dislike it. What I said was, "we didn't need it." We already had a disk interface that was faster, hot swappable, and with smaller cabling. Now we have about three more! For the record, I happen to like it. I like them all, because they're (mostly) all pretty well-designed. What I DO NOT like is IDE, because it sucks. If you've been keeping track, that's SEVEN storage interfaces that have been mentioned in this thread, and I (as if you actually CARE) "hate" precisely ONE of them. But that didn't stop this inexplicable reaction: ...and the knee-jerk labelers will just keep on labeling anything they read here, regardless of whether or not the point being made has gone squarely over their heads, even though it was spelled out in plain English. WTF? -Dave -- Dave McGuire, AK4HZ New Kensington, PA

----- Original Message ----- From: "Mouse" <mouse at rodents-montreal.org> To: <cctalk at classiccmp.org> Sent: Sunday, August 12, 2012 10:56 PM Subject: Re: To all with interest in IBM 7090 Don't they make SATA to IDE converters for under $3 shipped from China?

----- Original Message ----- From: "Mouse" <mouse at rodents-montreal.org> To: <cctalk at classiccmp.org> Sent: Monday, August 13, 2012 12:00 AM Subject: Re: To all with interest in IBM 7090 The local brick-and-mortar store would charge $19.99 for the same part.

On 08/13/2012 12:00 AM, Mouse wrote: I dunno Mouse. You and I usually agree on this sort of thing, but this time I have to disagree. It's a whole lot easier to to sit here in my underwear at 4AM, click on a listing and have it show up at my door a week later...in the meantime I can get back to doing real work, and not have to deal with the "duhhhhhhhhhhhhh" of the mouth-breathers who work retail these days. Brick-and-mortar stores are WAY overrated. (and dying) -Dave -- Dave McGuire, AK4HZ New Kensington, PA

On Aug 12, 2012, at 9:30 PM, Al Kossow wrote: There is Excess Solutions in Milpitas. It's way better than Halted these days. All these places are going the way of the dodo. They will even admit it if you ask. There is no manufacturing left in the valley so no surplus. Excess has still got a huge stock of everything while Halted feels like they are running out of everything.

On Aug 12, 2012, at 11:56 PM, jim s wrote: I don't think any of them want anymore 74 series stuff. There is no demand and the Chinese will sell you 1000 of whatever for a dollar. I needed three and it ended up cheaper to buy 60. Now I have all these IC here in tubes I will never use. I throw them at the stupid cats that like to have loud cat sex in my back yard.

On 08/13/2012 03:59 AM, Paul Anderson wrote: Just a bit! ;) That machine really is an achievement. There's nothing particularly complex in there, but the level of work involved is stunning -Dave -- Dave McGuire, AK4HZ New Kensington, PA

On 8/13/2012 1:53 AM, mc68010 wrote: Ah free chips ... Meyow! Meyow! As for the TTL designs on the the web most are 8/16 bit computers. I want 9/18 bits instead. Even with a 9 bit byte you can't get a good clean instruction set for byte & word instructions. 4 registers S(tack) I(index) A(cc) P(c). AND,OR,ADD,SUB,LD,ST for byte/word instructions, r)index and r++. CMA,SRC,SLC for registers. JCC R+ T,NC,EQ,NE,LT,GE,LE,GT JSR R+, PSH, EI/DI Front panel Adress load,run,dep,exam. Control will be microcoded 512 x 24 with 1 control PCB and 2 9 bit ALU PCB's. Ben. PS. this is nice simple design - smaller than say a PDP 11 stretched to 18 bits.

On 08/13/2012 12:30 AM, Al Kossow wrote: For stuff like this, I agree 100%. :-( From my point of view though, such places never existed in the first place, anywhere near driving distance of where I've always lived. ;) The only exception to that has been Skycraft Surplus in Orlando FL, but that was (when I lived in FL) still a 2.5hr drive, and their prices border on the obscene. -Dave -- Dave McGuire, AK4HZ New Kensington, PA

On 13 Aug 2012 at 7:17, emu at e-bbes.com wrote: Try Circuit Specialists. Nice guys, but they seem to have only the 233x160mm board in stock: http://www.web-tronics.com/vme-bus-prototyping-boards Talk to them; maybe they've got something kicking around in back. --Chuck

On Sun, 12 Aug 2012, Al Kossow wrote: Surplus parts are ending up in one of three places now: either going to China as scrap, the "Gold Fever" basement hoarders, or eBay. Sometimes parts cycle around between these three places. I've gotten some very good deals on eBay from retired guys who were selling off their entire shack of 20-30 years worth of parts, but these kinds of buys don't turn up all that often. These came from one such individual: http://strudel (dot) ignorelist (dot) com/~tothwolf/classiccmp/ECG_073_tobacco_can.jpg http://strudel (dot) ignorelist (dot) com/~tothwolf/classiccmp/ECG_073_tobacco_can_lid.jpg Gold! Gold! ;P ...probably what most of those gold scrappers are smokin' too ;) I don't remember now how many ECG 073 SCRs are in that can, but there are quite a lot. I used a counting scale to count them once and I wrote it down in one of my notebooks. I'm not even sure why they would have had that many SCRs. Were these used for TV repair maybe?

----- Original Message ----- From: "Mouse" <mouse at rodents-montreal.org> To: <cctalk at classiccmp.org> Sent: Monday, August 13, 2012 12:43 AM Subject: Re: To all with interest in IBM 7090 Actually they are on ebay for $2.45 shipped and work bidirectional. Example: http://www.ebay.com/itm/IDE-TO-Serial-ATA-I-II-Hard-Drive-HDD-Converter-Con… To be honest for small commodity items I just order stuff from ebay, they are all made in China or Asia anyway so you might as well get them from the source and shipping is pretty fast on small parts. I don't know of an electronics surplus place in NE Ohio, and Best Buy charges a mint for cables and stuff I only head out there for DVD media when I am low and they have a sale. WWW ordering has taken over what used to be mail ordering of computer parts (loved that in the 1990's). Since everything is pretty much manufactured overseas surplus stores will either turn into cheap resellers of stuff they buy direct from China or they will go out of business. Sooner or later anything old you need is going to come from a collector who hoarded it when it was dumped, everything else is getting recycled by the ton.

On Mon, 13 Aug 2012, Al Kossow wrote: I've had very poor results with these sort of adapters even with small hard drives and optical drives. A lot of them don't seem to handle DMA and ATAPI commands very well.

On Aug 13, 2012, at 12:13 AM, Dave McGuire wrote: I disagree, with qualifications. Back in Baltimore, there's a great little electronics store called Baynesville Electronics which is more or less what Radio Shack always should have been. It's the only place in the local area (and I live in Philadelphia now) where I can go and pick up a handful of resistors, obscure batteries and cables of all kinds (need an MMCX->RP-SMA cable right now? They have one) on the spur of the moment. More expensive than Digi-Key, but if I need some parts RIGHT NOW, it's a great option. Less of one now that I live in Philly. I wish there were more around like that. And there are, in the SF Bay area (visit Halted next time you're out there; you won't be sorry). I'll absolutely agree they're dying, but sometimes they're not overrated. - Dave

On 13 Aug 2012 at 6:30, Cameron Kaiser wrote: Well, if you manufacture stuff, this is what you get. I can remember shopping the surplus shops on S. Michigan Ave. in Chicago when I was young. Almost anything you could imagie. By the late 60s they were all gone. During the 70s and 80s, the Santa Clara vallley was loaded with shops because people were still building things there. I'm surprised that no one has mentioned Anchor Electronics. They still have lots of interesting stuff. But I can empathize with those trying to sell stuff now. If I look in my own stuff, I ask myself "Who wants bipolar RAM any more?" Once very expensive, now practically worthless. Yet I can't bring myself to toss it. If I ran a surplus store, I'd go broke. It's a tough business. --Chuck

On 13 Aug 2012 at 15:27, Dave McGuire wrote: Okay, let's call your bet. I've got perhaps 16 or 20 Fairchild 93L422 *new* bipolar RAMs in that funny 22 pin 0.400" wide package. Blisteringly fast 45 nsec. (typ. but max. can get as bad as 80 nsec.) access time, 256x4 bit organization dissipating only, oh, about a quarter-watt (if I have my math right) per package. Who wants them enough to pay shipping for them? Who will offer something additional for my time? I can't see me *ever* using these. --Chuck

* Chuck Guzis <cclist at sydex.com> [120813 18:01]: Hi Chuck, I'd be happy to take them for the cost of shipping. Funds are strapped right now but we can talk about something extra too if want. I'd hate to see these (or anything) tossed... Todd

On Mon, 13 Aug 2012, Cameron Kaiser wrote: Fry's would have to improve several orders of magnitude to reach "terrible". "Customer service" reseals items that were returned due to defects, and puts them back on the shelf. It gets sold over and over, on the premise that it is user error, until somebody either fixes it themselves, or leaves it lying around too long to return it. Some of their prices are good, some aren't - 5% discount on acratched and dented appliances with missing parts? In their early days, it was worth driving an hour each way. Now, they don't even sell Jolt Cola anymore. I'd rather get generic Chinese items through eBay.

On Aug 13, 2012, at 1:58 PM, Chuck Guzis wrote: Why? Fry's used to be a good place to get good electronics and components. So did Radio Shack, though never to the same level. I find that the size of a chain is generally inversely proportional to its quality, though I'm not sure if the causal relationship is quite as cut-and-dry as it seems. I think in the case of Fry's, they got in trouble when they stopped being Radio Shack (of old) and tried to be CompUSA. Joining the race to the bottom can rot a store's soul. - Dave

On Aug 13, 2012, at 3:24 PM, Dave McGuire wrote: They sure aren't. I've never seen anything else like Baynesville on the east coast. It's a shame, because there's a market. I don't know how they stay in business, but it's been the same guys running it since I was a kid, so I assume there's a bit of "labor of love" involved. I seem to recall you mentioned Laurel, which is on the other side of the city (Baynesville was up in Towson). It's about a half hour drive (45 minutes in medium traffic), but well worth it. I only knew about it because I grew up in Towson. Most people don't seem to know what it's there for (their sign is a giant 2D rendition of an octal-base tube, which I suspect is lost on most of the customers who come looking for replacement watch batteries), so I hope it stays around for a while longer. - Dave

On 8/13/2012 7:25 PM, Dave McGuire wrote: When I posted about a surplus place in an early response I had a moments hesitation. I didn't want it to get too popular or well known. There is a limited amount of stock and I want it to be there when I go. If the store goes out of business then it's all gone so, that's stupid but, I did think about not posting for a second. My precious....it's all mine. mine.

On 8/13/12 7:51 PM, mc68010 wrote: This list has existed for years.. http://www.junktronix.com/svss/

On Sun, 12 Aug 2012, TeoZ wrote: They generally don't work properly.

On Mon, 13 Aug 2012, Lance Lyon wrote: The only thing I dislike about SATA is how hard drive manufacturers decided that once they were making SATA drives that they no longer had any reason to make PATA drives. There are a lot of devices (not just computers) that use PATA hard drives and replacing those drives as they age is becoming incredibly difficult. Those SATA to PATA "adapters" simply do not work correctly, especially for higher speed devices that make use of DMA. [If there is even room to fit an adapter at all anyway, which often in embedded applications there is not.]

On 08/13/2012 02:53 AM, Jochen Kunz wrote: Yes, a direct answer to FibreChannel. They went to 4Gbps, and could've gone to 6 or 8 (maybe did, not sure)...and nobody has run them as loops for years, right? True. Yep. -Dave -- Dave McGuire, AK4HZ New Kensington, PA

On 08/12/2012 08:13 PM, Mouse wrote: I'm talking about its technical implementation, not the business implications. ATA was very much at the "end of its road" in terms of its design by, say, 1993 or so. We saw how long it lasted after that, for no good reason. Absolutely. There are several other notable foibles of that industry...the very existence of (IBM's proprietary) SSA and SAS, which are both completely pointless in the face of FibreChannel...they are all just different physical layers for SCSI. Complete and utter stupidity, combined with greed, is what gives us this garbage. So you'd prefer to be stuck with the continued existence of IDE? ;) -Dave -- Dave McGuire, AK4HZ New Kensington, PA

On 08/12/2012 08:44 PM, Al Kossow wrote: Actually I have. Yep. Your statement seemed to suggest that this is in conflict with my assertion above. Perhaps I misinterpreted it. Nice work! -Dave -- Dave McGuire, AK4HZ New Kensington, PA

On Sun, Aug 12, 2012 at 09:57:52PM -0400, Mouse wrote: The Dell server I've seen lately all have SAS backplanes but for a test setup I swapped the SAS disks in some for SATA disks. Works perfectly fine, it is just slower (the SAS disks are 15k6 RPM, the SATA ones 7k2 RPM). Kind regards, Alex. -- "Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and looks like work." -- Thomas A. Edison

On 08/12/2012 08:47 PM, Mouse wrote: Well. We can always count on suits to give us the least quality for the highest profit margin. I generally avoid it by not using commodity trash. My servers all have native FibreChannel interfaces...there's really no excuse for settling for less, especially at today's "collapsing economy" prices on used top-end gear. -Dave -- Dave McGuire, AK4HZ New Kensington, PA

On 08/12/2012 09:19 PM, Cameron Kaiser wrote: I find nothing at all wrong with it. That wasn't my point. My point was we didn't need it...it's a solution in search of a problem, as we already had FibreChannel, which can be made every bit as cheap as SAS if the manufacturers want to do it. We didn't need YET ANOTHER fast serial transport mechanism for the SCSI protocol. -Dave -- Dave McGuire, AK4HZ New Kensington, PA

On Sun, 12 Aug 2012, Dave McGuire wrote: Meh... You could say the same thing about single ended SCSI though. The reason SCSI was able to last is that it continued to evolve. Parallel ATA on the other hand, evolved differently, mainly because of the consumer computer market. The irony is towards the end of ATA's widespread use, it had evolved to the point where it had a lot in common with single ended SCSI, but because of the way of had been forced to conform to existing standards, it retained some major flaws. Look at the UDMA 80-wire cables for UDMA-66 and faster. The industry didn't want to change from the 40-pin 2.54mm connectors, but needed a ground wire between each of the data lines to avoid crosstalk. SCSI on the other hand had done this for years, even with good old 50-wire ribbon cable. In order for ATA to do this so late in the game, special wire and special connectors were required, which were not only much more expensive and difficult to assemble, but they had more long term reliability issues as well. ATA drives were also speaking SCSI towards the end, just look at all the widespread implementation of ATAPI in not only cdrom and dvdrom drives, but even hard disks. At least people wised up and decided maybe the primary ATA/IDE hard drive really should be on the far end of the ribbon cable. With 40-wire cables, the convention had been to put the primary drive in the middle (which can be problematic since you can get signal reflections in that loose ribbon cable "tail"). When the industry switched to the UDMA 80-wire cables, the convention changed to putting the primary drive on the end of the cable instead of the middle (and this was enforced with the use of those proprietary ribbon cable connectors since the primary and secondary connectors omit different pins).

----- Original Message ----- From: "Dave McGuire" <mcguire at neurotica.com> To: "General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts" <cctalk at classiccmp.org> Sent: Tuesday, August 14, 2012 2:59 AM Subject: Re: To all with interest in IBM 7090 There was a brief hop to just differential SCSI (higher voltage then LVD which is how LVD got its name). HVD and SE/LVD don't like each other while the other SCSI standards did with some tweeking.

On Sun, 12 Aug 2012 20:13:47 -0400 (EDT) Mouse <mouse at rodents-montreal.org> wrote: Parallel SCSI has some of the same problems like PATA. Thats why it got replaced with SAS. And SAS is basicly SATA on steroids... IIRC you can connect SATA disks to SAS adapters. -- \end{Jochen} \ref{http://www.unixag-kl.fh-kl.de/~jkunz/}

On 08/12/2012 06:49 PM, Dave wrote: Indeed, PCIe is serial. The amazing advancements in LVD signaling and high-speed PCB design have given us a lot of interesting new capabilities. The PCI bus evolved FROM parallel TO serial to gain more speed, whoda thunk it? ;) It turned out that, in the end, skew along parallel buses became a bigger problem than pushing the speeds into the GHz range. -Dave -- Dave McGuire, AK4HZ New Kensington, PA

On Aug 12, 2012, at 7:00 PM, Dave McGuire wrote: Yes, and then by turning it into multiple high-speed serial streams which can be realigned through the use of FIFOs, we've come to a kind of strange "parallel serial" implementation (it's really trunking, when it comes down to it). Nice that our serial implementations have let us make parallel communications possible again. :-) - Dave

No, I mentioned those later on. I meant RS422 here (differential drivers/receivers) YEs, but I have none of thsoe aroudn here :-) They are. Indeed. But I doubt anyone disputes the existance of serial <-> parallel inerface devices. Incidentally, the centronics interface (say) is bit-parallel but character-serial (in that you send the characgters one after the other). SOme small strip printers used e.g. for data logging or printing the output from a digital measuring instruemtn (about 40 years ago) wewre chracter-parallel, they had 4 lines on the inerface for each column on the paper (perhaps a total of 64 lines), each set of 4 lines defiend the chracter to appear in that column (normally BCD for the digits with the other 6 codes ebign thigns like '+', '-' blank, etc). The HP59301 'HPINB parallel translator' was actually designed to drive such a printer (HP5055 IIRC) amongst other things, hence the rather odd set of characters it handles in one of its modes. -tony

YEs, but not on a general-purpose computer. On the TV set. According to one of the manuals (I forget if it's the user or service manual) you candownload updated frimware for the main control processor in said TV and store it on a USB memory device under the right filename. Then plug that into said socket and select some option from the TV setup menu and it will re-flash said control processor. I am sure there are various checked made on the firmware file first... Not having any way to download things ot a US Bmemeory deviec, I've never tried it. Odd.. My father's car has a CAN bus port. And yes I have used it. -tony

On Fri, 10 Aug 2012, William Donzelli wrote: when will smell-o-vision be coming back? The old "well broken in" one, not the factory demo!

Taken out of service does not mean factory demo. (yes, Chuck, I know this was not you saying this). I understand that all of the early 6600s were in some way unique, and it was not until maybe around number 20 when the design settled down. -- Will

On 09/08/2012 22:47, Tony Duell wrote: I think simulation has its place. So for example at MOSI there are a number of ASR33 TTYs and a small mini computer for which I think the disk packs are missing. Now they are never going to get the mini running but I would imagine the ASR33s are not beyond repair, they look reasonably clean. So is it legitimate top connect these to some kind of simulation (Raspberry PI based perhaps) to give folks the experience of using a TTY with auithentic old software? -- Dave Wade G4UGM Illegitimi Non Carborundum *** For the Hams on the list three special event stations in Manchester now operational ***** **** GB2012MV, GB2012MS and GB2012MW. See http://GB2012MS.COM/ for links and schedules. ***

Dave Wade G4UGM Illegitimi Non Carborundum Several reasons think:- 1. Lack of documentation 2. Money 3. The "Museum" things we have already mentioned. 4. General condition. There are many alloy parts which have corroded. I don't think the system was taken appart with any care. More info on the object can be found here, but these don't really reflect the current condition of the objects:- http://emu.msim.org.uk/htmlmn/collections/online/display.php?details=full&a… n=12706&QueryPage=%2Fhtmlmn%2Fcollections%2Fonline%2Fsearch.php&section= http://emu.msim.org.uk/htmlmn/web/pages/common/imagedisplay_mosi.php?&i… 76&size=543x600 But I would like to try.. They have oil in the proper places.... Not sure if we have that for that particular mini. There is one disk pack.... Dave Wade G4UGM Illegitimi Non Carborundum

On 11/08/2012 20:58, Tony Duell wrote: My personal opinion is that something local and unusual would be nice. As we are in Manchester, for a long time one of the spiritual homes of ICL, and as there appear to be no ICL1900's left running anywhere, i would haev thought that Dave Holdsworth's ICL1900 emulator with George would be a most appropriate machine... It used to live at www.icl1900.co.uk but that appears to be down... -- Dave Wade G4UGM Illegitimi Non Carborundum *** For the Hams on the list three special event stations in Manchester now operational ***** **** GB2012MV, GB2012MS and GB2012MW. See http://GB2012MS.COM/ for links and schedules. ***

On 12/08/2012 19:20, Tony Duell wrote: I am pretty sure they are 6-bit character set machines, but I never used one in anger... -- Dave Wade G4UGM Illegitimi Non Carborundum *** For the Hams on the list three special event stations in Manchester now operational ***** **** GB2012MV, GB2012MS and GB2012MW. See http://GB2012MS.COM/ for links and schedules. ***

There is a real problem about computer heritage. These machines are, arguably, one of the most important inventions in human history - but very few have any interest in how they work, or how they evolved over time. It seemed in the '90s with the rise of Windows and Microsoft, everyone moved away from that level of knowledge. The Ontario Science Center outside of Toronto had a magnificent computer display showing logic gates and their interaction(in fact, as a child I was featured in a commercial for the centre playing with that exact display). Microsoft made a donation, and it was all pulled out - replaced by desktop machines. I've been fascinated with computers almost my entire life, and it's an ongoing goal of mine to help propagate that sort of information. I've been wanting to see if I could put together a kit that would mimic the old TX-0 architecture, then offer it as a kit through a place like Seeed Studio. I'm not aware of any active kits for the old style of toggle-switch programmed machine. On 2012-08-08, at 5:49 PM, Dave <dave.g4ugm at gmail.com> wrote:

On 08/08/2012 05:49 PM, Dave wrote: I do not have one. -Dave -- Dave McGuire, AK4HZ New Kensington, PA

... But not running them is all about pissed-off people now. I think you have to consider wht damage could be done. And that depeneds -- a lot -- on the artefact. A vitage aeroplane is likely to be totally destroyed if it crashes, so you probably don't want to fly it very often. A vitage car, used on public roads is at the mercy of other drivers, but used on a test track it's a lot less likely to get wrecked. So you might well consider doing the latter from time to time. In the case of a vitage computer or peripjheral, it's very unlikely that failure would totally destroy it. Yiu would still have the unit looking as it should do, even if an irreplaceable IC failed. And in that start it can still be displayed, bot not run. You might as well run it while you can. -tony

Nothing lasts forever. Get used to it. But using electronics makes forever a much shorter time - there are bushels of engineering studies on component reliability out there if you do not believe me. -- Will

Yes, I suppose. The pre-WW2 airplane people are headed this way already. Look up "Rhinebeck Aerodrome". Keep in mind that the design tools that can be used to reverse engineer VLSI chips will also continue to improve. These days, taking a first generation logic IC and *completely* reverse engineering it is completely feasible even with outdated tools. What will it be like in 2042? Fancy SGI VLSI may turn out to be child's play. So yes, I tend to be an optimist here. -- Will

On Fri, Aug 10, 2012 at 01:19:23AM -0400, William Donzelli wrote: Well, the floor plan for a first generation SPARC cpu was hanging in an office in a certain east german university in the year 1989. Then certain changes happened and the massive reverse engineering efforts there stopped. Quite a few years earlier, they had designed the U880 as an almost functionally identical copy of the Z80 via reverse-engineering the original chips. Kind regards, Alex. -- "Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and looks like work." -- Thomas A. Edison

And much reverse engineering of silicon requires access to the silicon. This means eating off the plastic housing with acid. Very impressive things can be done, and I would wager that if you passed a sufficiently interesting chip to a guy like Bunnie Huang he'd see about reverse engineering it. Sent from my iPhone On 2012-08-12, at 2:57 PM, ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk (Tony Duell) wrote:

On 8/12/12 4:49 PM, William Donzelli wrote: http://visual6502.org/ is probably more relevant to this discussion

I've been wracking my brain trying to remember these guys. Thanks! Sent from my iPhone On 2012-08-12, at 9:30 PM, Toby Thain <toby at telegraphics.com.au> wrote:

On 8/9/12 8:29 PM, "William Donzelli" <wdonzelli at gmail.com> wrote: Citations, please. There is another school of thought that maintaining systems in running condition, and running them, extends their lifespan. I've not seen literature that suggests that using solid-state components shortens their lifespan as long as they are treated well (not run at extreme temperatures, no voltage spikes, etc.). We run our ECL-based 2065 24 x 7 to avoid thermal stress on its components, for example. -- Ian

Less than 45 seconds of Google found this report from Panasonic: http://www.semicon.panasonic.co.jp/en/common_info/q_manual/pdf/t04007be-3.p… And there are a lot more where it came from. -- Will

Preciisely my point. Storing it and never running it will _not_ allow it to last for ever. In fact you might well find that when it is turned on sometime in the future, it deosn't run, and can't be made ot run again. In which case you might as well have run it now and had some use out of it. -tony

On Thu, Aug 09, 2012 at 10:25:41PM +0100, Tony Duell wrote: The local flying club begs to differ: http://airforcecenter.ch/index.php?id=25&L=1 IIRC there are 8 airworthy Junkers Ju-52 still around. The Airforce Center D?bendorf (near Z?rich) has 6 of them and they are actively flying them quite a bit. There regular tourist tours around Switzerland and you can even charter them, e.g. for an event. In fact, they are currently doing something very special: they flew one of their Ju-52 all the way from Switzerland to the US, to show up in the Oshkosh airshow. Under it's own power, mind you: http://www.rimowa-in-the-air.com/northamerica/logbuch/ That is the first passenger certified Ju-52 since 1937. And since the folks at the Airforce Center D?bendorf are TTBOMK mostly swiss, you can bet that bird is in top condition ;-) I do see the occasional vintage car around here from time to time on the public roads, usually in very well cared for condition. And the drivers do tend to drive rather carefully, of course. Kind regards, Alex. -- "Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and looks like work." -- Thomas A. Edison

The important thing is if you return something functional(regardless of what) to its original visual appearance you have only done half the job. If you showed it to its original designers/builders said it was had been restored I don't think you would get much agreement. The big problem is the attitude of organizations (I won't even call them museums) that they have 'saved' something. They really mean 'if we cannot restore this item then we will make sure nobody else does in case we loose face. Remember they are self seeking egoists trying to attract the approbation of a wider audience by trying to draw attention to something they have done. Collectors on the other hand do what they do for personal satisfaction. They consider unpublicized success reward enough. However if asked by a like minded soul will do as much as they can to help. Regards ? Rod Smallwood ? ? -----Original Message----- From: cctech-bounces at classiccmp.org [mailto:cctech-bounces at classiccmp.org] On Behalf Of Tony Duell Sent: 12 August 2012 19:28 To: cctalk at classiccmp.org Subject: Re: To all with interest in IBM 7090 depeneds often. flying Well, if they're preapred to fly an essentially irreplacable aircraft, whioch could be totally destroyed if soemthing fials (of course they do a lot of checks -- they have to by law -- but things can still fail), and since running the aeroplane will casue wear on moving parts (and thus damage the artefact) then IMHO a computer museum has no excvuse whatsover not to run a much more oommon classic computer ,at least from time to time. -tony

In article <502185AB.8010104 at gmail.com>, Jules Richardson <jules.richardson99 at gmail.com> writes: The things I've been turning down are commodity microcomputers that were made in the millions quantity. Either that, or they are things that are already located at a place where other people can buy them. If something truly odd does come by, I've been known to hold on to it so that someone else with a focus on that area can obtain it from me, or I will point other collectors interested in that stuff towards it. A local guy has Data General Eclipse MV/8000 machines. I posted to this list about it, but noone ever contacted me to follow up on it. I posted to this list about the VAX 11/750 that was at The Black Hole and noone ever contacted me to follow up on it; Will Donzelli got it in the end, but people here had plenty of time to get it before him. -- "The Direct3D Graphics Pipeline" free book <http://tinyurl.com/d3d-pipeline> The Computer Graphics Museum <http://computergraphicsmuseum.org> The Terminals Wiki <http://terminals.classiccmp.org> Legalize Adulthood! (my blog) <http://legalizeadulthood.wordpress.com>

On 8 Aug 2012 at 23:31, Paul Anderson wrote: While the iron is nice to have, it's the documentation and associated ephemera that are the most interesting to me. Given sufficient documentation, it's possible (perhaps not practical) to build a real working 7090 replica. Or to manufacture 10 tons of potsherds. Makes me wonder what archaeologists a thousand years hence will think of our landfills. I wonder if we're starting the "Great Dark Age" where almost nothing will be known, because, you know, it's all on the Web... I feel that way sometimes when looking for old software and hardware information. Sure, archive.org has a lot of stuff, but it doesn't archive *everything*. Inevitably, it's that missing bit that I really need. --Chuck

My cousin was on a dig like that, maybe 15 years ago, I think in Sicily. I think she said that on that occasion, they just used a backhoe to move the pile over a bit. And someday we will be using backhoes to move over piles of PeeCees, Macs, iPhones and Droids. -- Will

*thwack* -- ------------------------------------ personal: http://www.cameronkaiser.com/ -- Cameron Kaiser * Floodgap Systems * www.floodgap.com * ckaiser at floodgap.com -- MOVIE IDEA: Blazing E-mail Signatures --------------------------------------

They're never the droids we're looking for... :/ On 2012-08-09, at 4:03 PM, David Riley <fraveydank at gmail.com> wrote:

On Thu, 9 Aug 2012, William Donzelli wrote: Backhoes? Tractor beams.

On Tue, 7 Aug 2012, Rod Smallwood wrote: I have a policy now of /not/ donating computer-related items to any sort of museum simply because of this. I'd rather something collect dust in my own storage than have it be buried forever in a museum's "archive" where it is inaccessible. Locking things away from people who might have a genuine interest in them is imo just not right. I personally own a number of examples of "rare" and historically significant computing technology. Two such examples are a SGI IRIS 1400 [Computer Chronicles, Computer Graphics, 4/5/1984 http://archive.org/details/Computer1984_6 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xmO0y51_y9o] and a complete Motorola Altair wireless network system. While there are quite a number of IRIS 2000 and IRIS 3000 series systems out there, and as much as I detest using the word "rare" due to widespread overuse, the IRIS 1400 is about as rare as hen's teeth and there are very few examples of these machines left today. My own 1400, serial # 95 (originally serial # 47), was located in the UK from about 1983 to 1998 and was originally used as part of a DC-10 flight simulator. After people learned I had a complete 1400, I got all sorts of email offers wanting to buy it for stupid money, but both then and today, it isn't for sale. I would rather restore it and show it at events such as VCF than have it hidden away in a museum's archives or tucked away in someone else's private collection. My Motorola Altair devices (currently non-working due to an unusually large number of failed/shorted/burned SMT tantalum capacitors) are also extremely uncommon today. Not only do I have a complete setup, but I even managed to obtain the books and documentation with them. These too would be much better to show at events such as VCF than hidden away in a museum archive or stuck behind a glass display case. I actually almost loaned my Altair devices back to Motorola's legal firm as prior art for a patent lawsuit, but ended up not doing so. I was also going to duplicate the books for them but that didn't happen because their legal firm's account number turned out to be on hold...and then I found out that the company who would have copied the books wanted to strip the spiral bindings off and run the old pages though document feeder. My condition for loaning the equipment out would have been that they pay for replacement capacitors (which are expensive, IIRC, replacement parts were over USD $250) and that they were to be installed before I would loan the equipment out. After the fiasco with the documentation, I decided loaning out any of it would probably be a very bad idea.

On Tue, 7 Aug 2012, Richard wrote: I never sought out to collect a 1400, it just found me at the right time and I had the means to haul it away. The manuals and boot tape (QIC format) turned up later and I went back to pick those up as well. To me at least, the Octane seems more "uncommon" than the 4D series... I own 5 different models of 4D series machines, including one which is housed in a large brown rack (all 5 machines came from the same place), yet I've never seen an Octane in person. The 1x00, 2x00 and 3x00 used the same deskside chassis, so the average person just looking at the exterior of the computer wouldn't see much difference between them. You 3100 being complete and fairly well populated with boards might actually make a better working demonstration than an earlier machine such as the 1400. The real challenge with my 1400 I think will be the hard drive. I pretty much put my 1400 project aside when I discovered that the V170 hard drive's head lock solenoid was stuck because I just don't have the means to service the drive (oddly enough, the drive shows signs of previous service work). A number of other things still still need to be done to my 1400 too, including replacing the rubber roller in the QIC tape drive, replacing the 240V muffin fans with 120V fans so it can be converted back to 120V, and replacing the electrolytics in the monitor (the monitor was barely readable ~10 years ago, so I know it is going to be much worse now). Another issue I noticed was the mouse cable. For whatever reason the outer insulation began to break down and crumble after the 1400 was removed from the controlled environment computer room it had been living in. I suspect I'll have to repair it with heatshrink tubing. This is of course all in addition to the other repairs I've already made. Most museums would never even consider making the repairs that this IRIS 1400 requires to get it fully functional.

On Wed, 8 Aug 2012, Richard wrote: Considering the size of the 4D series machines I have, that isn't that surprising. Each deskside machine would pretty much have to be shipped on its own pallet. I think you are thinking of the 1100 and 1200. The 1400 used the larger 20-slot deskside chassis (same as your 3100) and was a complete workstation with a hard drive for local storage. Historically speaking, it is an important system in the timeline of both Silicon Graphics and 3D graphics, but strictly for demonstration purposes, a 3x00 is going to have more memory and graphics processing to work with. Well, even SCSI drives are getting harder and harder to find (in working condition and at sane prices). Eventually we are going to have to find a cost-effective way to reliably replace such SCSI drives with currently available parts. [Yes, CF-IDE + IDE-SCSI solutions have been used by some, but this tends to be prohibitively expensive for most people.] Well, by repairs I'm even talking about the failed ring/fork terminal connections I had to replace for the DC power supply wiring. Some of them had been poorly crimped and had failed (we've all see this). The "preserve everything exactly how it is" mentality from most "museums" would mean that they wouldn't cut off the burned terminals and reterminate the wiring (with exact replacements even).

Isd this a Vertex V170, a 5.25" wincheser? I know the V150 from my PERQs, evil little things that have various problems. If it is similar to the drive I am thinking of, the lock solenoid is inside the HDA :-(. I asusme you've checked it's getting a voltage across it, and that it's not open-circuit (although what you could do if it was is not obvious). I think you're going to need to make one of those 'clean boxes' that get menitoend here from time to time. -tony

On 8/8/12 1:55 PM, Tothwolf wrote: Did you manage to make a copy of the software tape?

In all honesty, have you every actually ever *talked* with museum staff about this? You will find out that most museums are quite happy about showing things off in the back room. All you need to do is be very respectful and follow the rules, have *some* sort of reason to want to see something, and most importantly, don't be a dick. It is pretty easy, actually. -- Will