Something has been rattling around my head and I have the urge to get it onto the ether (sorry I know it hasn't been a week yet, but the time did change). Somebody needs to set up an archival site for EPROM images, and we need to come up with a regular/practical method of getting data burnt into a chip for anybody that needs it. I think a good storage transmittal format is MIME, text in the message with all the details of what it is, name in the subject, and whatever common EPROM file format as the attached file, or you know the funny looking block of text. More thinking, we need to keep the site private, or upload only, with download permission only to selected individuals (who I would hope would keep a mirror of the site in case the main site had a problem). The value of perserving this data is obvious, so pardon me if its already been done, but if it hasn't lets cook it up and get it going.

At 12:08 31-10-1999 -0700, you wrote: <snip> Great minds think alike. I'm in the process of doing EXACTLY this. The kicker is twofold: 1). USWorst, or some other carrier, needs to make DSL service available in my area so I can put my domain on the air. 2). I'm concerned about copyright violation, even on the older stuff. The one thing I absolutely cannot deal with is a lawsuit! Ahhhhh... now THAT might get me around the copyright issues! Set it up such that only the folks who own equipment that can use the images can get to it... -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- Bruce Lane, Owner and head honcho, Blue Feather Technologies http://www.bluefeathertech.com // E-mail: kyrrin(a)bluefeathertech.com Amateur Radio: WD6EOS since Dec. '77 "Our science can only describe an object, event, or living thing in our own human terms. It cannot, in any way, define any of them..."

A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: text Size: 1063 bytes Desc: not available Url : http://www.classiccmp.org/pipermail/cctalk/attachments/19991101/8638004f/at…

Exactly the flame that burns in my black heart, all of the neat roms for my HX20, Rev C eproms for my video card, ROM 3 roms for my IIgs, etc. Three parallel efforts, preserve the data, locate and preserve the parts, and making any part a persons heart (black or otherwise) wants available at a reasonable price.

Absolutely, in fact I would set it up with a cell type security. One site that is made public for uploads only, then two or three sites that mirror the inspected main site and grant access to a limited set of people. For a one time burn the files are small enough to be emailed from the secondary sites without granting access. That way if a secondary site gets busted, they can shut down hopefully without effecting the primary site. Perfect, a working model we can copy, and if the MAME guys get away with it, we would be entirely safe. System roms are one of the handiest to include, so that things like a Apple II can have any rev we choose in them instead of what we find. I have video cards that become worthless past a certain OS release with a rom upgrade and the company is offering no practical support (ala Radius and Radius vintage). ............................. I don't know about other people, but I see a LOT of boards going into the scrap stream with eproms on them, and if we can get something organized I would start picking them off and filling bags or tubes with them. ............................. Heresy beyond heresy I would actually like to see people with eprom burners be able to make a few bucks by burning the eproms. I think it would make a DANDY little web business. Now obviously the database and the burning businesses need to be completely separate, people would be all over us if we "sold" burnt eproms, but what would be wrong with burning customer supplied data and printing a label with supplied text?

On Sun, 31 Oct 1999, Tony Duell wrote: Tony, you've hit the nail on the head. The Apollo ISA bus is a real ISA bus. However, most ISA cards will not work in the machine for one of a number of reasons: - The Apollo cannot use any BIOS extension ROMs due to it not having the PC BIOS to extend, and because it's architecturally completely dissimilar to a PC (Motorola 68k CPU being byte-backward from x86). - There is no OS support. DOMAIN/OS has a very limited view of the world with respect to hardware device drivers. Theoretically it would be possible to make any arbitrary ISA card work in an Apollo if one were to write his own device drivers and software to use that driver. This driver would have to use no calls at all to the BIOS extension ROM, which as I understand can be tricky to work around as even if you get programming information from the manufacturer for the card, it will often not tell you where, for example, the hardware registers live beyond those presented by the onboard BIOS. Anyway. Oh, yes, and the WD7000/ASE found in Apollo workstations (only supported in a few late models) is a "Three-way peripheral controller" bearing only slight resemblance to the Intel PC product, the WD7000/FASST SCSI controller. The /ASE has floppy, ESDI, and SCSI interfaces. Don't expect to be able to boot the Apollo from a SCSI disk, or even to use one at all unless you are running DOMAIN/OS at 10.3.5 or later. The SCSI interface seems only to be well-supported for tape devices (two in particular, an Archive 60 MB QIC unit, and the Exabyte 8200). ok r.