online (some black and white picture of the RTC surgery), just received the battery clip a week or so back), and I've go (it's been on the bench for 5 months, it seems). You're welcome. the classic machines. floppies, grabbed who knows how using resources maintained by Numerous Internet resources have helped me enormously too. In fact for me, this hobby would almost be a very lonely and incredibly frustrating hobby to engage in if the Internet wasn't around. Terry (Tez) On Thu, Jun 6, 2013 at 2:34 AM, Jim Brain <brain at jbrain.com> wrote:

On 6/5/2013 6:47 AM, Tothwolf wrote: Interesting. If I could trouble you for a link or a reference number or something, I would appreciate it. I spent an entire night looking at Digikey for such a connector, and it might very well be there, but I can't determine the right keywords to find it. As noted, it looks similar to sound card audio connectors used on some CD-ROMs, but I don't have any of those cables to check, and the actual pins seem different. Yeah, I have one of those around here as well (could not find it last night. I figured my question would be valid no matter the specific target HDD option. I have 2 1MB modules. I have not opened mine, but is it possible to replace just the backlight, or is it a single encapsulated unit? Jim -- Jim Brain brain at jbrain.com www.jbrain.com

My apologies for confusing you. I have the adapters, I am looking for the special power connector that the S86/SLT uses. Jim

On Wed, 5 Jun 2013, allison wrote: Memory modules for the 286/SLT? These machines didn't use industry standard SIMMs. They used a proprietary module that was specific to the 286/SLT alone. I'll see if I can snap a photo of one this weekend. That's not a bad idea and is something I'll keep in mind for the future. Since these displays are grayscale and use a tinted plastic material over the front, color correction as you would have with a color LCD is pretty much a non-issue.

On 5 June 2013 12:47, Tothwolf <tothwolf at concentric.net> wrote: That is what I was going to suggest. They're cheap, too, especially with a tiny CF card like a 512MB one or something. If you got creative with DR-DOS or FreeDOS, you could possibly run FAT32 on it, but it seems a lot more trouble than it's worth. But a 1GB CF and an adaptor would probably come to about the cost of a pint of beer, where I am. :?) -- Liam Proven ? Profile: http://lproven.livejournal.com/profile Email: lproven at cix.co.uk ? GMail/G+/Twitter/Flickr/Facebook: lproven MSN: lproven at hotmail.com ? Skype/AIM/Yahoo/LinkedIn: liamproven Tel: +44 20-8685-0498 ? Cell: +44 7939-087884

We still have DOS, MS and IBM. It is not in such terribly short supply. Also have Win 3.1, 3.11, etc. Cindy Croxton Electronics Plus 1613 Water Street Kerrville, TX 78028 (830)792-3400 phone (830)792-3404 fax AOL IM elcpls -----Original Message----- From: cctalk-bounces at classiccmp.org [mailto:cctalk-bounces at classiccmp.org] On Behalf Of Fred Cisin Sent: Wednesday, June 05, 2013 11:46 AM To: General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts Subject: Re: LIMITS (Was: 286/SLT and HDDs TRY to get DOS 3.31 or above! On Wed, 5 Jun 2013, allison wrote: surely, nobody needs more than THAT If you use DOS 3.30 or below, then your maximum partition is 32M 2GB for FAT16 FAT16 uses a 32 bit number. BUT, somebody at MICROS~1 used a "signed long". Therefore, the capacity limits are from -2G to 2G, instead of 0 to 4G NT? corrected it to an unsigned long The RAM on 286 could go to 16M, but DOS could only access 1M, plus slightly less than 64K (HIMEM.SYS, IFF you have A20 support) Third party software could use that EXTENDED memory as EXPANDED memory (LIM-SIM, etc.) for RAMDISK, print spooler, etc. ----- No virus found in this message. Checked by AVG - www.avg.com Version: 2013.0.3343 / Virus Database: 3184/6383 - Release Date: 06/04/13 ----- No virus found in this message. Checked by AVG - www.avg.com Version: 2013.0.3343 / Virus Database: 3184/6383 - Release Date: 06/04/13

Fred Cisin wrote: What about something like PC-DOS 4? Peace... Sridhar

On Wed, 5 Jun 2013, Fred Cisin wrote: I'll second this. v4 was a horror show. g. -- Proud owner of F-15C 80-0007 http://www.f15sim.com - The only one of its kind. http://www.diy-cockpits.org/coll - Go Collimated or Go Home. Some people collect things for a hobby. Geeks collect hobbies. ScarletDME - The red hot Data Management Environment A Multi-Value database for the masses, not the classes. http://www.scarletdme.org - Get it _today_!

On Thu, 6 Jun 2013, Dave McGuire wrote: 3.31 has partition > 32M support that 3.30 does not. 3.31 is not available in PC-DOS, and in MS-DOS only from specific OEMs. (2.11 and 3.31 were the most heavily customized, albeit most of the customizations were very specific to special hardware and the MODE.COM) 6.20, 6.21, 6.22 were the same other than disk compression One of my students patched a copy of 6.22 for the Humane Society to become MY-DOG 6.22, including chainging the boot message from "Starting MS-DOS" to "WALKING MY DOG" <OB_NIT_RANT> There is no "3.3" nor "6.2", nor "3.2", "3.1", "2.1", etc. Internally, WHERE IT MATTERS, 3.30 is three point THIRTY 6.20 is six point TWENTY. DOS versions were ALWAYS a number, then a period ("full stop", not a decimal point - it was a separator, not a floating point number), then a TWO DIGIT DECIMAL number! PLEASE, In DEBUG, type: A MOV AH, 30 INT 21 INT 3 [Enter] G now look at the displayed AX 3.30 will put 3 in register AL and thirty (1Eh) in AH 3.31 will put 3 in register AL and thirty-one (1Fh) in AH 6.20 will put 6 in register AL and twenty (14h) in AH 6.21 will put 6 in register AL and twenty-one (15h) in AH 6.22 will put 6 in register AL and twenty-two (16h) in AH I used to assign, "Write your own VER program, [discussion of function 30h] . . . and try it on the machines in the lab" (not all of which were PC-DOS 3.30) One student used function 9 to print "MS-DOS version 3.3" What grade should I have given him? My copy of 4.01 (presented to me as "four point one" by a former student who went to Microsoft) put 4 in AL and 0 in AH. But it had "issues" Some 4.xx issues were real, SOME WEREN'T. The most heavily talked about "ISSUE" was, "4 won't run Norton Utilities!", meaning that Norton Futilities didn't understand the >32M drive structures. </OB_NIT_RANT> -- Grumpy Ol' Fred cisin at xenosoft.com

I did it a lot...Patching MSDOS was a fun sport :oD

On Thu, 6 Jun 2013, John Wilson wrote: The guys that own DR-DOS right now used to be the guys behind Caldera before the merger with SCO. They're doing no development that I can see and are just bleeding out the code base for whatever they can get for it in the embedded market. I worked a LOT with a very nice guy from the Novell EDC back in '96/'97 to get GEM and DR-DOS ("OpenDOS") released as open source. We got as far as the GEM stuff and the OpenDOS kernel & command.com, but the corporate minders put a stop to it after that. I still have my "OpenDOS MRS" CD that contains a complete buildable tree for the whole thing. Includes all the compilers, linkers, etc. It's quite the hodge-podge, but it works. :) I onced asked for permission to release what I had, and the guy on the phone came as close to the ideal descrption of "apopleptic fit" as I've ever heard. :) g. -- Proud owner of F-15C 80-0007 http://www.f15sim.com - The only one of its kind. http://www.diy-cockpits.org/coll - Go Collimated or Go Home. Some people collect things for a hobby. Geeks collect hobbies. ScarletDME - The red hot Data Management Environment A Multi-Value database for the masses, not the classes. http://www.scarletdme.org - Get it _today_!

On 06/06/2013 08:05 AM, Dave McGuire wrote: On x86 stuff, DOS 6.22 for me--but for 386 and up, DOS 7.1 (FAT32 support) with DOSLFN for non-protected mode stuff. Anyone use PC-DOS 2000? Under what conditions? --Chuck

On 06/05/2013 12:15 PM, Sridhar Ayengar wrote: Please, not PC-DOS 4.0--4.01+, okay. But the number of CSDs in my files for PC-DOS 4.0 seems to tell me that 4.0 had "issues". --Chuck

On 06/06/2013 07:57 AM, geneb wrote: I was once graphically exposed to the education term-of-art "issues" and have never forgotten it. I'd decided to do some volunteer tutoring of students in a local middle school (US grades 6-8) here. I was warned by a friend who taught in the same system that this was one school where they were attempting to "mainstream" children with behavioral problems. I Asked him what that entailed. He responded only that some children had issues. Uh-huh. Running around the classroom screaming in today's edu-talk is a behavioral "issue". My god, what today's teachers have to endure... --Chuck

THAT is why I taught COMMUNITY COLLEGE. All of my students were there because they wanted to be. SOME were taking "required course", but most actually wanted to learn! I could not have handled K-12 warehousing, incarceration, and "training them to be good citizens". I miss it already. -- Grumpy Ol' Fred cisin at xenosoft.com (retired 2 weeks)

On 6/6/13 8:47 AM, Chuck Guzis wrote: Low pay, and deliberate abuse from students, knowing that if the teacher tries to restore order they will whine to their parents who will get them fired (or transferred if they're in the union) because their precious little snowflake would never lie. You can tell I was just talking to a middle-school teacher about this the past few days..

Here in Seattle, a teacher was effectively disciplined because he taught courses that made students think. OMG. A little more information: he was teaching a bare-knuckled course on issues like race, gender and power in American culture. ONE FAMILY complained that their precious little snowflake felt the topic was intimidating. The district never talked to other students, who are now protesting the district's bonehead move: the teacher is being involuntarily transferred to another school where he will not be able to teach his Citizenship and Social Justice course in the future. There is evidence he is to be punished as well. http://blog.seattlepi.com/seattlepolitics/2013/06/03/seattle-students-prote… Once again: OMG. -- Ian NOTE that this is a personal opinion and does not reflect the position of my employer. I'm just speaking for myself on this issue.

On 6/6/2013 9:50 AM, Al Kossow wrote: A friend who tried special ed (not politically correct, but that was what we called it) had to endure this crap. Actually the students were like sophomore to senior age felons in training, and two of them had to have two classroom assistants to make sure that they didn't try to rape the teacher in question, and get out of control. Bouncers in the classroom. The administration, which was the principal, counseling staff, and others all told her not to take notes and to leave it to them. this was in a district with multi million dollar homes and no issues with money, just brains. when two of them were failed, ultimately they were going to punt and try to blame her. However she had kept an independent log of the entire year, and all the incidents. Also had several lawyers who had dealt with such that had helped her record what she needed and were available. One of the few instances when the school didn't dump on her, but she left teaching very very disillusioned. My mother taught the "slow" class of second grade for years and had nothing but satisfaction. Very sad it has come to this. Jim

I susepct., alas, that's anotehr Bad Thing that we have imported fro mthe States. Certainly I am told that this sort of thing goes on in schools over here now. I must ahve been a teacher's nightmare at school. No I didn't run around screaming. No I didn't attack people. 'All' I did was to realise that what I was being taught couldn't possibly be correct, or it contracted something taught last week, or soemthing like that. I would then raise my hand to ask a question and simply ask for an explanation. Often I didn't know the real version and I wanted to learn. Only problem was that the teacher didn't know it either. I once tied a poor physics teacher up in knots (metaphorically) by asking something that (although I didn't realise it at the ime) has _no_ clasiscla expaliation. I is a quatuum trick (athough it doesn't seem to be one). On the other hand, I never had a single maths or physicvs teacher that I regarded as really clueful. I am not sure about other subjects, the point about maths and physics was that in those subjects I'd read many other books so I'd come acrsso extra things... -tony

Early 1960s, in fifth grade, I was "sent to the Principal's office" for discipline for insisting that PI was NOT exactly 22/7, inspite of the textbook stating, "PI is about 3.1416 or 22/7", which the teacher interpreted as meaning exactly 22/7. Life would be simpler if it was a rational number! Then we could all learn trig in base 7!

On Thu, 6 Jun 2013, Ian King wrote: I think I would have responded along the lines of, "Wow. I guess you really didn't like that math question. Let me ask another then. How will you enjoy living under an overpass after you destroy your entire career over striking a student that asked you a question about the subject being taught?" Alternately, "Come get some, bitch." works too. :) g. -- Proud owner of F-15C 80-0007 http://www.f15sim.com - The only one of its kind. http://www.diy-cockpits.org/coll - Go Collimated or Go Home. Some people collect things for a hobby. Geeks collect hobbies. ScarletDME - The red hot Data Management Environment A Multi-Value database for the masses, not the classes. http://www.scarletdme.org - Get it _today_!

On Fri, 7 Jun 2013, Tony Duell wrote: A janitor once threatened to fight me if I opened this one door a second time... -- Cory Smelosky http://gewt.net/ Personal stuff http://gimme-sympathy.org Experiments

On 06/06/2013 02:38 PM, Cory Smelosky wrote: If I had done that in grades 6-8, I'd have gotten the everloving shit knocked out of me, and I wouldn't do it again. But I graduated from high school in 1987...you graduated..."recently". ;) Things have changed a lot since a good spanking became "wrong". -Dave -- Dave McGuire, AK4HZ New Kensington, PA

On 06/06/2013 06:14 PM, Ian King wrote: Administrators are paid well, and there are a lot of them. Suits. Pics!! -Dave -- Dave McGuire, AK4HZ New Kensington, PA

So that;'s what, about 8 or 9 years old? And he threw an armchair? That's almost impressive. Just a pity he thrw it at somebody. Indeed. Children _do_ need to be disciplined. They do need to be taught what is acceptable behaviour, and they do need to be punished. I do not mean total cruelty, but the current idea of letting them do just about anything is responsible for a lot of problems IMHO. Incidentaly, I am convinced tht one punishement that should never be used is setting extra schoolwork. Yes, having to translate a passage for, $language to English, having to solve another 20 equations, etc, may well be a pain. But you are giving the child that idea that all such work is a punishment, and thus he/she will enver enjoy your lessons. Not Good. Unfortuantely, I can think of few jobs less pleasant that attmepting to tech things to kids who clearly don't want to learn such things (conversely there are few things more satisfyuling that teaching people who do want to learn). That's serious power -- 10's of kW. What on earth does it use it all for? How can a tape drive take 40A on 3 phases? The motors can't be that big, surely? Having used 16mm^2 twin-and-earth, I know exactly what you mean... -tony

On Fri, 7 Jun 2013, Dave McGuire wrote: I guess that'd require more than my laser printer which needs about 9A. It would trip the UPS when I'd print a page. -- Cory Smelosky http://gewt.net/ Personal stuff http://gimme-sympathy.org Experiments

On 6/7/13 3:16 PM, "Dave McGuire" <mcguire at neurotica.com> wrote: It's also that the power is distributed to multiple slave drives from the controller/primary drive cabinet. So all the power for up to (ISTR) five nine-track vacuum-column drives is coming through one straw. -- Ian

On 08/06/2013 02:21, Jim Stephens wrote: They were HUGE in the early drives. I think its more re-wind speed. Time spent re-winding is time the computer is idle. I remember blowing an auxiliary generator with tape drive rewinds. You could hear it slow as the drives went to rewind. When it stalled there was a "bang" and a puff of smoke and many odd words from our small Scottish engineer who I am sure was called "Jim" A reel of 1/2" tape has serious angular momentum.....

On Jun 8, 2013, at 3:36, Dave <dave.g4ugm at gmail.com> wrote: Yes, and that's why God gave us vacuum columns. A fair amount of power is consumed, not for the reel motors, but for the vacuum pump. If I look at the specs for the mid 1960s CDC 606 drive (on bitsavers), the drive is connected via a 15 amp 3-phase 208V connection. Idle current draw is a miniscule 1 amp; when tape is loaded and ready, 8 amps; when tape is in motion (150 ips forward/320 ips rewind), 11 amps. This is on an over half-ton (1200 lbs) behemoth of a drive standing 6' high, BTW--and probably one of the best tape drive series that I've ever used. The 65x and 66x drives were much inferior, IMOHO. I suspect that the IBM 729 (another great drive) has similar physical and power characteristics. --Chuck

On 06/07/2013 04:41 PM, Tony Duell wrote: It seems to me that 3 phase power should require a LOT less to start, or even stop, a motor. 40A of 200V? I'll have to do a little research, but I think that that is more than my Prius needs. How fast does that tape move? Maybe it also lights a few LEDs :-) Does it also power some Pentium space heaters? -- Grumpy Ol' Fred cisin at xenosoft.com

On Wed, 5 Jun 2013, Cindy Croxton Electronics Plus wrote: MS-DOS 6.22 is my favorite version. 6.2x was the first [and only?] version of DOS where improving reliability was the primary design goal. 6.20 fixed the "disk compression problems", by cutting back the inappropriately aggressive SMARTDRV configuration, and made dozens of bug-fixes The "disk compression problems" were called that because people encountered them after installing disk compression, but all of the actual reported problems were due to shutdown before write-caching completed its writes. The repair consisted of: default of no write-cacheing (V previous default of on) NOT displaying the DOS prompt until the buffers were written ("Save the file, back at the prompt, I can hit the power switch now) NOT rearranging disk writes (for efficiency). Rearranging caused DIR entries to be written BEFORE the data was written, sometimes with power going away befre the write. Write-cacheing also meant that writes were reported to be successful before they were attempted. A write error could not be recovered from. "Data Error Writing Drive C: Retry?" (no "(A)bort", "(I)gnore", or "(F)fail" options) to then be able to try again. 6.21 removed the disk compression, due to the STAC Electronics lawsuit 6.22 brought it back in a non-infringing version -- Grumpy Ol' Fred cisin at xenosoft.com

On 06/05/2013 12:46 PM, Fred Cisin wrote: There is never enough but, it was the typical amount when that was a current. Forgot that fun little detail... Been a long time since I've use anything before DOSV5. Many systems there were other limits due to implementation like 1gb disk addressing. LBA addressing mostly fixes that, if the bios supported it.... Many machines did not support more than 1MB in bios and physical. If you needed space the LIM-SIM support on a ISA board helped. This is where the MCA machine were often more capable than the ISA and that leads to the bus wars.... Allison

On Wed, 5 Jun 2013, Cory Smelosky wrote: Windoze 3.10 REQUIRES that there be SOME RAM (preferably 64K) above 1M. It refused to install without HIMEM.SYS, which would latch onto 64K at the 1M boundary. But 512K plus 512K above 1M, and even 512K with 64K above 1M, seemed to work OK. If you have 1M of RAM, you MUST have it configured to not have it all below the 1M boundary. NITS: HIMEM.SYS took advantaqge of the segmented architecture overflowing. A segment of FFFFh, with any offset 16 or more was above 1M, even though still in "REAL" mode. Therefore, the MAXIMUM REAL MODE address was FFFF:FFFF, which was 16 bytes short of 64K above 1M. I think that HIMEM.SYS could probably have worked even if it only had 16 bytes above 1M, but it had to have SOME for HIMEM.SYS, and Win 3.10 refused to install without it. I don't know whether FDISK and the partition table had the signed long issues. File sizes could be negative, but I never tried a negative partition. -- Grumpy Ol' Fred cisin at xenosoft.com

On 6/5/2013 12:19 PM, Fred Cisin wrote: That only works with Fortran and complex numbers -- Microsoft feature. +G real data -G imaginary data.