Just fyi, some bright spark in the apple2 world has created an aftermarket ethernet board for the apple2 bus. If anyone's interested enough I'll dig up the URL. If you have a GS, they've got a driver for the Marinetti tcpip stack, too. -- Jim Strickland jim(a)DIESPAMMERSCUMcalico.litterbox.com ----------------------------------------------------------------------- BeOS Powered! -----------------------------------------------------------------------

THe LanceGS was the card I was refering to. I don't know anything about En-Link, but remember that when I was into Apple2s any mention of an ethernet card was enough to make me salivate. Alas the lance GS came out too late for me. -- Jim Strickland jim(a)DIESPAMMERSCUMcalico.litterbox.com ----------------------------------------------------------------------- BeOS Powered! -----------------------------------------------------------------------

Yup. It was. I was just starting to get out of A2 stuff when it came out, and given that the early drivers couldn't deal with routing (the brilliant (cough) tcp stack was the problem, actually, the subsequent driver codes around it) I couldn't bring myself to spend that much on a system I was decomissioning. It's still tempting, since I still have one GS that probably works in the basement... -- Jim Strickland jim(a)DIESPAMMERSCUMcalico.litterbox.com ----------------------------------------------------------------------- BeOS Powered! -----------------------------------------------------------------------

--- Sellam Ismail <foo(a)siconic.com> wrote: My sarcasm detector is pinging madly, but I wanted to add that this same organization probably also bought the Apple ][ mouse available about the same timeframe for over $250! It was an original 9-pin boxy Mac mouse and an Apple card. We added support for it for our line of children's software sold through Reader's Digest - Micro Mother Goose and (not sure since I didn't work on the product personally) Micro Habitats. The mouse was flat out the best controller for our "London Bridgeout" game within Micro Mother Goose. Just 'cuz ethernet cards are $9 now and mice sell for as little as $1 doesn't mean they always did. You gotta remember the 1% rule (although it applies more to systems than peripherals) - ten years later, you can get a computer for 1% of its original purchase price. There are exceptions, of course, and much later, say, twenty years, it's not as cheap as 1% anymore, but that's due to scarcity and eBay fever. -ethan ===== Visit "The Seventh Continent" http://penguincentral.com/penguincentral.html __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Get personalized email addresses from Yahoo! Mail http://personal.mail.yahoo.com/

Do remember that at the time PC ethernet cards were gruesomely expensive too. Even in 1990, when I went to grad school, the fact that I got a NIC through the housing department for *only* $129 was a real bargain. And the housing department was buying them in bulk and splitting up the packages and selling at cost, retail was still much more expensive. Also remember that in 1984, PCs were struggling to catch up to the A2 in terms of capability and were perhaps twice the price, and that 1984 was the year the Macintosh was *born*. It was a different era, and if you needed ethernet, it probably made sense. -- Jim Strickland jim(a)DIESPAMMERSCUMcalico.litterbox.com ----------------------------------------------------------------------- BeOS Powered! -----------------------------------------------------------------------

I'm running most of my boxes on SMC ISA here. Yup... you can pick them up for 5 dollars each at flea markets and they're guarranteed for life like the Intel's and 3com's. And if it dies they're gonna replace it for free... I'm debating going Ebaying for some DEC or Adaptec tulip based PCI based cards. The LINKSYS and NETGEAR and DLINK stuff work pretty well for more generic cards. I've been less than impressed with 3com stuff. Bill --- 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

I've been trained to gather up all the 3Com NICs I find with the chip that says "parallel tasking" on it, but no clue if its really better etc.

I used to use Intel cards, since they have really nice support, but I have lately switched to Linksys, because they seem to have similar support (software support, I mean) at 1/6 the price. Plus, they have pretty good CPU utilization numbers on my CPUs. Peace... Sridhar On Tue, 26 Jun 2001, Zane H. Healy wrote:

I've stopped using 3COM cards after > 10 bad 3com PCI 10/100 NICS in less than 2 months :( At 07:02 PM 6/26/01 -0700, you wrote:

Why doesn't Solaris support the linksys? It's Tulip-compatible (largely). Peace... Sridhar On Wed, 27 Jun 2001, Bill Pechter wrote:

It was just pointed out to me that TCJ has totally folded and their website is offline. Any news on this? What about the software they had online for download? g. -- Gene Buckle, geneb(a)deltasoft.com on 06/26/2001

I have found myself with the need to repair a PDP 11 controlled X-ray diffraction machine, used for crystal studies. I don't need any PDP bits, as the computer and everything like that works fine. What I do need to find is an affordable and happy x-ray generator. I'm pretty new to this whole thing, which is why I ask here. The machine is kind of on-topic, seeing that it is > 15 years old. I am trying to modify this machine to do more than it was originally intended, and therefore save it from being junked, and to do this I need a pretty stable x-ray generator. The one on the machine has a broken high voltage tank, and replacements are prohibitively expensive, along with the fact that I have very little experience working on really high voltage equipment. I am looking for a real x-ray generator- Modifying kitchen appliances or using thyratrons coated with magnesium won't due. I have x-ray tubes and all the rest, but the power supply is the toasted bit. Thanks! Greg Linder

On Tue, 26 Jun 2001, Greg Linder wrote: And thus was born the Son of THERAC. :-) -brian.

"Symbiotic Computer Systems" here in the UK produced network cards for the Apple ][ & //e's, fibre optic based things. I installed several systems in various businesses in the Midlands here, they also did hard drive (SymbFile) and tape storage systems, all around the 1982- 1984 era. Wish I knew where the things had all gone to now... greg

People really wanted to network the Apple II, schools and industry both were VERY hot for the idea of a one central server to host all the software, with the Apples just as simple clients. No floppies to lose, easy backup, etc. etc. OTOH Apple wanted to sell macs, so they kept features away from the II and IIgs, to enchance or force migration to the mac.

--- Eric Chomko &lt;chomko(a)greenbelt.com&gt; wrote: I have purchased $10,000 systems ten years later for $100. I have also purchased $3,000 systems for $30. Personally, I would not pay as much as $100 for a IIfx. I might pay that much for a Quadra 950, but it had better have a bunch of RAM in it. I have been buying MacIIsi's for $5-$10 (to get the ethernet cards for SE/30's) and Quadra-600-series machines for <$20 lately. I got a working IBM Thinkpad (486) at Dayton, with case and modem for $20 and a docking station for $5. A few years ago, I passed up a Lisa at a Hamfest, complete with docs, software and printer - it sold later that day for $25. So about that 1%... I'll say this, though... it's not strictly linear. It's hard to find a computer at 1% that originally sold for $100. It's much easier at the $10,000 level. Something about price inelasticity at the low end... eBay fever is what the guy at the hamfest had when I attempted to haggle over copies of David Ahl's books that he wanted $50 each for. When I made a counter-offer, he said, "I can get _at least_ $50 on eBay!" I asked him why he bothered to come to Dayton then, and wouldn't he just be happier somewhere else? I also left without even looking at anything else he had to buy. -ethan ===== Visit "The Seventh Continent" http://penguincentral.com/penguincentral.html __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Get personalized email addresses from Yahoo! Mail http://personal.mail.yahoo.com/

Rumor has it that Ethan Dicks may have mentioned these words: Yugos. "Merch" -- Roger "Merch" Merchberger --- sysadmin, Iceberg Computers Recycling is good, right??? Ok, so I'll recycle an old .sig. If at first you don't succeed, nuclear warhead disarmament should *not* be your first career choice.

--- Roger Merchberger &lt;zmerch(a)30below.com&gt; wrote: Q. How do you double the value of a Yugo? A. Fill the gas tank. Q. Why do Yugos have rear-window defrosters? A. To keep your hands warm while you are pushing it. Q. What's the most important page of the Yugo owner's manual? A. The page with the train timetables on it. (Substitute "Lada" for "Yugo" for further entertainment) -ethan ===== Visit "The Seventh Continent" http://penguincentral.com/penguincentral.html __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Get personalized email addresses from Yahoo! Mail http://personal.mail.yahoo.com/

On Mon, 30 Jul 2001, Hans Franke wrote: Hans, have you ever driven or ridden in a comfortable large American car from the early to mid 1970's, and seen how solidly it was constructed, and how it had features missing from today's newer cars? Back then, one could even choose from a very wide, by today's standards, variety of carpet styles/textures and colors as well as the types of seat coverings, styles of seats, etc. Hmmm... I'd find the joke funnier of the words "Volvo," (can you say "ugly boring cars?") "BMW" (can you say "overpriced VW Beetle?") or the name of some random japmobile (they wouldn't exist if most of the old US cars hadn't been scrapped so that japan could buy the scrap) was substituted. No, I don't apologize for a lower-case japan. No country that treats dogs and cats as "novelty items," to be disposed of by dropping them in chutes on a street-corner like one drops a letter into a mailbox, so that they can later be destroyed by mechanical means, so that a human doesn't have to see them killed, deserves to have it's name capitalized. Of course, I see no reason why most modern American automobiles as well can't be substituted for this joke. Minivans, 4WD vehicles and the so-called station wagons - if one can call those new tiny vehices station wagons, no longer even have tailgate windows that open, due to the cheapness of design. While the "quality" of modern automobiles reeks of cheapness, the prices are nothing other than overly expensive. -- Copyright (C) 2001 R. D. Davis The difference between humans & other animals: All Rights Reserved an unnatural belief that we're above Nature & rdd(a)rddavis.net 410-744-4900 her other creatures, using dogma to justify such http://www.rddavis.net beliefs and to justify much human cruelty.

Ethan Dicks wrote: About the only things that a Porsche and a VW have in common are ancestors that were designed by engineering teams led by the same individual. By that metric I've got a pen that's a cheap {Porsche, VW}. Or is the assertion that all four wheel vehicles with boxer motors Porsches (in which case Subaru is in for a surprise ;-))? -- Chris Kennedy chris(a)mainecoon.com http://www.mainecoon.com PGP fingerprint: 4E99 10B6 7253 B048 6685 6CBC 55E1 20A3 108D AB97

I'd love to have one of the older buses, like the style they have on the Lone Gunmen or that credit card commercial where they're going to different ballparks. I've had beetles from a 60 (6v I converted to 12)to the newest being a 66 with the hardtop that had the canvas/vinyl opening that you turned a handle to pull open for a sun roof. It was great if you didn't forget to close it and it rained. I think in all I've had 10 different standard Beetles, never a super (didn't like them) and always lusted over either the bus or the half bus/half truck (I forget what they were called). In Illinois and New York they rotted bad and now that I'm in an area with no slat and a mild climate they're either scrapped or someone thinks they're worth $7500 for a 68 stock beetle (in their dreams). -> -----Original Message----- -> From: owner-classiccmp(a)classiccmp.org -> [mailto:owner-classiccmp@classiccmp.org]On Behalf Of Ethan Dicks -> Sent: Monday, July 30, 2001 4:17 PM -> To: classiccmp(a)classiccmp.org -> Subject: RE: OT: Cheap cars (was: 1%...) -> -> -> -> --- Chris Kennedy &lt;chris(a)mainecoon.com&gt; wrote: -> > Ethan Dicks wrote: -> > -> > > Hardly... a BMW has that large finny thing in the front that -> serves no -> > > purpose in a Beetle. A Porche is an overpriced Beetle. -> > -> > About the only things that a Porsche and a VW have in common are -> > ancestors that were designed by engineering teams led by the same -> > individual. -> -> I have a couple later Type IIs, one 1975 and one 1976 Microbus. They use -> the same engine as a Porche 914, but, OTOH, I have heard the 914 decried -> as not a "true" Porche. -> -> -ethan -> -> -> ===== -> Visit "The Seventh Continent" -> http://penguincentral.com/penguincentral.html -> -> __________________________________________________ -> Do You Yahoo!? -> Make international calls for as low as $.04/minute with Yahoo! Messenger -> http://phonecard.yahoo.com/

Only the 914-6....but I drive a "water cooled, front engine" Porsche...a lot of people don't consider them "true" Porsches either. (not that I realy care either). James, proud owner of a 1983 944, 365k miles and still going, and a 1997 Volvo 850T5. I resent the ugly and boring label. (asbestos underwear on! Flame your ass off!) Ethan Dicks wrote:

I drive a modified 2001 BMW 530i. I used to drive a modified Audi S4 Biturbo. One can say that the S4 is a glorified Passat. I've never met a 440 hp Passat though. I appreciate the Porsche (and I wouldn't use one for drag racing). I also apprecite the (1995?) Volvo T5R which is a very nice car. Not all Volvos are boring. Peace... Sridhar On Mon, 30 Jul 2001, James Rice wrote:

--- Chris Kennedy &lt;chris(a)mainecoon.com&gt; wrote: What's in mine is that factory-standard engine. When I go to get gaskets for an oil change, the package says "914 2.0L engine". I figured you didn't. That's why I had to respond. No liquid cooling at all in a 1975 or 1976 microbus. Air and oil, and don't run low on oil. -ethan ObClassicCmp: my first direct exposure to analog computers was the 300-component computer for the fuel injection in this beast. I have some basic test procedures, but right now, the 1975 isn't operating because the previous owner (a teenager) tried to fix a high idle problem by tweaking every knob and screw that could be frobbed. The salesdrone at the lot told me that it idled fast - I started it, listened to it, then reached down and pulled on the pedal. The hinge was broken on one side and rusty on the other. It would stick, preventing it from returning to the full upright position. I even splurged on stainless mounting hardware... total cost to repair _that_ problem (of many) - less than $9. Now if only the rest of the fuel injection system was as easy to debug. I don't think it's a computer problem, per se, but a sensor/wiring/out-of-adjustment problem. It's kinda like hacking a black box. Poke here and there and see what falls out the other side. ===== Visit "The Seventh Continent" http://penguincentral.com/penguincentral.html __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Make international calls for as low as $.04/minute with Yahoo! Messenger http://phonecard.yahoo.com/

Jim wrote: The 914 and 924 have been referred to in some literature as "The mass market Porsches". The 916 is certainly the best handling Porsche, being essentially a 914-6 with a 2.7RS engine and a welded-in-place steel roof that corrected the flexy-flyer characteristics of the 914. The 914, in turn, is much more neutral that even recent production 911 derivatives -- and orders of magnitude better than the earlier torsion bar suspension versions wherein one learns the dual mantras of "throttle oversteer is your friend" and "Never, NEVER get off the gas in a corner no matter how badly you want to go for the brakes!". I'd love to say something nice about the 924, but I'm having some problems. How about "The 924S goes faster than a 944?" ;-) -- Chris Kennedy chris(a)mainecoon.com http://www.mainecoon.com PGP fingerprint: 4E99 10B6 7253 B048 6685 6CBC 55E1 20A3 108D AB97

The engines in the VW 411, the early 70's VW type 2 (bus,pickup), and the original Porsche 914, ... are more similar than PC-DOS and MS-DOS. BTW, when marketing parts for those engines, would it be better to call those parts "for Porsche" or "for VW"? -- Grumpy Ol' Fred cisin(a)xenosoft.com

On Mon, 30 Jul 2001, Chris Kennedy wrote: Actually, it was a rhetorical question - don't you hate those? Most mechanics consider it legit to charge the same price that the dealer does for parts, and can make a little more profit for themselves by finding cheaper sources for their inventory. Such as knowing which makes have the same part for less. Did you know (or care?) that the '58 Volvo uses the same brakes as a '54 Studebaker? Porsche mechanics tend to buy a lot of parts from VW suppliers. -- Grumpy Ol' Fred cisin(a)xenosoft.com

I almost mentioned back in the thread someone wanted to know a car that could still be driven at 1% of original price, and quite a few big old Cadillac's are pretty close. Around 2 or 3% or original cost and you actually have a practical to drive vehicle. I have a cousin who won't even think of owning anything but a decade or more old Cadillac.

One of my friends was digging through a pile of scrap and found two Apple I computers in the wooden boxes. I expect to know more about it maybe this weekend or next week. He didn't buy them, and asked me today if they were worth getting. I told him someplace around $10k each depending on condition, so I suspect he will be picking them up.

Not kidding. He isn't in to computers, just fixing old video games, so maybe we should feel lucky it didn't have any parts he wanted. He didn't buy it, just kept digging in the pile, then asked me about it Tuesday. More when I know more. I am going to twist his arm to show me the place so I can at least look for other stuff. Heck I would be real happy to dig out an Aim65.

Man, with a find like that he'd better not even hesitate... 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

Ethan Dicks wrote: Well I suspect that the 1% rule means that a system is a) not rare, and b) totally obsolete in the sense that all its functionality can be had in newer machines (more at superset). I'm trying to think of a coin collecting equivalent and can only think of coins sold by the pound (weight). Many coin dealers actually buy foreign coins that way. I was think that ISA cards could trade that way (weight). No, actually a car IS a good example. What is the value (scrap) of a cubed car? 'Still running' does make a difference. And 'still running' computers obviously are worth more than scrap, IMO. But it seems that many of them (still running computers) do get scrapped. Eric

Ethan Dicks skrev: It's quite funny how I've been given working Mac IIci setups or at most have paid 25 crowns (hamburger money) for them, whereas finding an (unexpanded) Amiga 3000 or Atari TT (equivalent systems at the time, but with a cheaper price tag) below 1000 crowns is very difficult. Similarly, classic workstations seem to be worth peanuts (at least on eBay). If only Amigas had been a success in the academic world, then I could buy them by the dozen on eBay. =) All British notes that I've seen have been in pounds... -- En ligne avec Thor 2.6a. Keine Grenze verlockt mehr zum Schmuggeln als die Altersgrenze. --- Robert Musil

Ah ha, just found it at ftp://ftp.update.uu.se/pub/pdp11/doc/dhq11.txt after Googling for M3107... ;-) greg

Ethan Dicks skrev: Oh, single pound notes! Well, I've only seen the coins, then. -- En ligne avec Thor 2.6a. We have the most thorough test guy in the world... I showed him this program and he asked, 'but Rob, what if time runs backward?'

Iggy Drougge wrote: Hey, good point! Cheap Amigas is always a good thing. But somehow we got screwed twice! Say what? You do know about fiat money, right? You don't expect to melt pot metal for a profit do you? Yes, got a couple off eBay. Looking for a deal with some Brits to send them back. Does the UK have sports memorabilia per se? Soccer or cricket perhaps? Cards, programs, any printed matter? Eric

Generally faster rise times are better unless you're worried about ringing. It will enhance your setup and hold times and thus make your card more reliable on the end of the bus... --Chuck At 08:29 PM 6/28/01 -0700, you wrote:

At 09:30 PM 6/28/01 -0700, you wrote: I take it you are worried about violating the AC spec that reads in part: Rise/Fall Times (from 10% to 90% and 90% to 10%) must be no faster than 10ns. This parameter relates to the 120 ohm bus termination and indicates that the R/C termination constant will critically damp signals that switch at 10ns. If you drive it faster you will get a bit of bounce in your edges as the termination network isn't quite fast enough to absorb the energy and thus some of your signal gets reflected back. Anyway, you could do a couple of things. You could load the capacitance on your bus drivers a bit and slow them down, you could run them through some other gates to slow them down, or you could just use them and look at it with a scope once you're running. If you want to "check ahead of time" then kludge together a card with some on it, switch them on and off and watch the ring. Now how much should you be worried about? If the signal overshoots by more than about 10% of Vcc I'd worry about it or under shoots by a similar amount. Or if the ground bounce induced by switching everything is more than about .2 volts. Clearly you are a worthy designer unlike a PC guy who would said, "Hey if it breaks they'll blame the BIOS or something so no worries!" --Chuck Then again, I've not done transmission line design in about 10yrs so if I'm completely wrong you get your money back :-)

--- Michael Davidson &lt;michael_davidson(a)pacbell.net&gt; wrote: Right. I think I need a pair of 8837s, in fact, to repair my H-11 floppy controller. I cannot cite chapter and verse, but in one of the designer handbooks, I recall seeing the 7438 listed as a functional equivalent, but not a pin- compatible equivalent, for one of DECs approved bus driver/receiver chips. If you are trying to design a device without the proper handbook and/or chip-designer's guide, you are probably going to have lots of hidden gotchas appear unless you happen to clone the bus interface of an existing design. For COMBOARDs, we used 8641s and DC013s for the UNIBUS products, and the real-deal, expensive DC010, DC004, DC005 chips for the QBus product. I think I remember seeing third-party boards using 74LS240s for bus buffers, but I do not know how well they'd work in a loaded box (or any VAX newer than the uVAX-II). -ethan ===== Visit "The Seventh Continent" http://penguincentral.com/penguincentral.html __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Get personalized email addresses from Yahoo! Mail http://personal.mail.yahoo.com/

Jerome Fine replies: I have been following this thread since your first post yesterday. What you seem to have omitted is the target interface. Maybe I am missing something, but is your target a serial port like a DL(V)11 or a disk interface - possibly raw SCSI (or now likely MSCP may be allowed since I understand that the patents expire this year)? device drivers that will be required. If the Unibus/Qbus module emulates an existing DEC board, then there will already be software available to use it. In the past there has been some talk of a Qbus host adapter for both SCSI and IDE drivers which emulates MSCP. I don't know if Mentec acquired the rights to the MSCP patents, but if not then Compaq is not likely to care at this point and in any case if the patents for MSCP have expired, then there won't be a problem. By the way, if IDE drives are used, the idea was to place the drives right on the board since the 18" cable length limitation for a PC environment is likely to be exceeded in a Qbus enclosure. Just some thoughts which may be worth the cost of my time to write this? Sincerely yours, Jerome Fine

Jerome Fine wrote: No, you aren't missing anything ;-) I didn't mention what the target interface was - it is, in fact, IDE - and the thread on that topic (from some time last year, I think) is how I found this mailing list when I did a search to see if anyone had already done this. Interestingly, I think that I had already been over a lot of the ground that was covered in that thread before I discovered it. My first idea was to use a DRV11-W which I already have and to build a suitable interface board to go between it and the IDE bus. Once I looked at this more closely I came to the conclusion that this was probably more trouble than it was worth and that it might actually be easier to just build a (non-DMA) Qbus to IDE interface from scratch. Looking at this idea in more detail it became apparent that it would need almost no additional interface logic beyond what was provided in a standard set of DEC bus interface chips (DC003, DC004, DC005) or their equivalent implemented in discrete bus transceivera and logic cloned from a typical DEC Qbus interface. All you need to do is to add 16 bits worth of tristate bus transceivers to drive the IDE data bus, provide a couple of latches for the low order address bits, and generate the IDE bus DIOR and DIOW read and write strobes at the appropriate times. (Fortunately the Qbus data setup and data hold times at the slave device are sufficiently generous that it looks as if it should be very easy to generate DIOR and DIOW from BDIN and BDOUT gated with the appropriate decoded addresses) The intention is that this will be an almost direct mapping of the IDE interface, which will appear as 8 word addressable registers corresponding to the IDE command register block. Since I am mainly interested in running old UNIX systems the idea is to add support for this new IDE interface to the Supnik emulator running on Linux and then do the necessary driver development work there under the emultor. Once that is done you just copy the emulator disk image onto an IDE drive and move it across to the real hardware. I'm not really interested in MSCP - I only ever worked on fairly early low-end Qbus and Unibus systems all of which pre-dated MSCP so I don't know much about it, but it seems like overkill for what I want. Enclosure??? Who said anything about an enclosure? ;-) (Well, actually one of my Qbus backplanes *is* in a BA11 box ...) I agree that the 18" IDE cable length makes things tight, but I can't see myself putting a drive on the board itself since I was hoping to get this whole thing on a dual height card and I just don't see there being enough room even for a PC card form factor drive. (of course I suppose I could just use a Compact Flash memory card ...) I should probably add that another motivation for doing this would be to hook up an LS120 drive to give me some removeable storage that's more convenient than my dual RX02's. Thanks, I appreciate the information and advice. Michael

Eric Dittman wrote: No, I haven't - I have seen it mentioned somewhere but I couldn't find any details - do you have a link or some more information about it?

Jerome Fine skrev: Why would patents in any way be relevant? People have emulated since the beginning of time, regardless of patents. In a way, that's how the PC clone business came about. -- En ligne avec Thor 2.6a. Life begins at '030. Fun begins at '040. Impotence begins at '86.

Chuck McManis skrev: Ah yes, I suppose that's why people file patents. So, what makes MSCP so particular that it may be patented? And how come people can write emulators and clones all over the place? Haven't Intel or Motorola patents on their processors? -- En ligne avec Thor 2.6a. Vi m?ste vara r?dda om varandra - det ?r det enda reciproka pronomen vi har.

On Fri, 29 Jun 2001, Chuck McManis wrote: The patent protects a very specific portion of the idea, and all possible implementations of that portion. A microprocessor isn't patentable. A nifty way of using a stack for floating point registers is patentable (one of Intel's '387 patents, IIRC). That is why the Weitek math coprocessor wasn't very popular. It was different from the '387. You can't get a patent on something that is in the public domain, or has shipped in a commercial product (even your own). You can't get a patent on anything published, so most of the technology from schools is available for free, though many are starting to create their own patent portfolio for additional revenue. You can't get a patent on anything the government paid to help develop. You can get a patent on stupid stuff if you are lucky and the examiner isn't skilled in the art. The Y2K fix of adding an offset to the year is a good example. Anyway... The MSCP patent basically covers a single bit that indicates a buffer is available for use. This is to allow different rate things to fill and empty buffers independent of each other. At the time, this was a novel and patentable concept (as opposed to ring buffers that can only be filled and emptied sequentially?), and MSCP isn't implementable without it. DEC licensed the patent to anyone who wanted for $100 a board, and Emulex, Dilog, and others STILL made a profit on aftermarket boards. DEC learned(?) from this and wouldn't license a later bus (VAXBI?), so Emulex and Dilog were limited to purchasing the cheapest board DEC made, removing the bus interface chips, and installing them on their own boards. and STILL made a profit. Regards, Clint

--- "Clint Wolff (VAX collector)" &lt;vaxman(a)qwest.net&gt; wrote: It was very difficult to get a VAXBI license. Software Results had to apply multiple times and it was only granted after the market made the VAXBI irrelevant (1989). I still have a pile of VAXBI COMBOARDs (68010 10Mhz, 2Mb DRAM, Z8530). If it weren't for MSCP, I'd consider attempting to convert one to SCSI with an 5380 - not high performance, but neither is the COMBOARD, but that's not a problem when all you are doing is pushing characters over a sync serial interface at 56Kb. Considering I've seen prices like $10K for a VAXBI SCSI card (new, supported disk _and_ tape), there was room for profit. The VAXBI interface chip was $350 from DEC, and at one point, you could buy 2Mb memory cards for the 8200 for $50. The most recent cards I've picked up were (2) 4Mb cards for $10 each, but that was more than 5 years ago. I just wish the KDB-50 wasn't so flakey - I have to reseat mine on a regular basis or the machine won't boot (VAX 8300). -ethan ===== Visit "The Seventh Continent" http://penguincentral.com/penguincentral.html __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Get personalized email addresses from Yahoo! Mail http://personal.mail.yahoo.com/

Ethan Dicks wrote: Well, as luck would have it, I found some 8837's today in the Sunnyvale Frys, so that particular problem is solved for me at least.

On Sat, 30 Jun 2001, Chuck McManis wrote: When dealing with a Fry's employee, always assume the worst :) Sellam Ismail Vintage Computer Festival ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ International Man of Intrigue and Danger http://www.vintage.org

At 06:31 PM 7/1/01 +0100, Tony wrote: Unrelated to classiccmp perhaps, but one thing in the UK and the US that is rekindling some interest in electronics is BattleBots/Robotwars. These are basically high powered and armored R/C cars w/weapons that compete in televised events. Building one of these things requires that you learn a bit about electronics (and mechanics). There's hope for a few of the younger generation if they get inspired... --Chuck

I'm in the robotics club at my college and a guy there is making a robot for the robotwars/battlebot. Its uses a cutting blade of some sort for its weapon. The blade has a four inch diameter and is 3/4 inch thick and the cutting edge is carbide. Neat stuff On Sun, 1 Jul 2001, Sellam Ismail wrote:

Where did you find the Qbus proto board? -- Jonathan Engdahl Rockwell Automation Principal Research Engineer 24800 Tungsten Road Advanced Technology Euclid, OH 44117 USA Euclid Labs http://users.safeaccess.com/engdahl ----- Original Message ----- From: "Michael Davidson" &lt;michael_davidson(a)pacbell.net&gt; interface and

I haven't seen the correct answer to this, so... You need to limit the edge rate to prevent ringing on the bus. Note, ringing will show up in different forms on EVERY board in the system, not just the one you are designing. Draw two square waves on a the top edge of two pieces of paper (one each). Now, slide the two relative to each other and think about what the sum of them would look like. Somplaces you get double amplitude, other places you get negative amplitude. This is ringing. It is bad. The best solution is to use an edge rate limited chip. DEC doesn't make them anymore, but you might be able to remove them from an old DHV11 that nobody wants (they show up on ebay occasionally for next to nothing and don't sell). Otherwise, a small resistor in series with the output of the gate will slow the transition down. Here is the right way to do it: 1) Find or calculate the source resistance of the driver. tau = RC 2.3 * tau is approximately 90% charge (or 90% voltage) or 2.3 * tau ~= 9nS so, Rpin ~= (9ns / Cpin) (C in Farads, R in Ohms) [ Is that right? as C goes up, R goes down... Okay ] 2) Look at the capacitance spec for the bus (I'll call them Cmin and Cmax), and calculate the new resistor (Rnew) 10ns = 2.3 * (Rpin + Rnew) * (Cmin + Cpin) Tmax = 2.3 * (Rpin + Rnew) * (Cmax + Cmin) [ bigger R or bigger C make rise time worse ] Regards, Clint On Thu, 28 Jun 2001, Michael Davidson wrote:

I'm trying to find a Luxor ABC-80 sysetm, and I was hoping that someone might know of a computer collector in Sweden who could help me track one down. If anyone knows of a person who could help me, please pass my name and email address on to them. I'll make them a good offer on trades or cash. Or, pass their info to me, and I'll contact them myself. Thanks. Ernest ernestls(a)home.com

--- Eric Chomko &lt;chomko(a)greenbelt.com&gt; wrote: Fortunately for my peace of mind, I do not remember if it was a Lisa 1 or Lisa 2. Still, it bites. As I'm using it here, yes. It's the irrational mindset that any old book or piece of junk will make you rich if you put it up on eBay, and that anyone who offers you less than you think it's worth is trying to rip you off. Feh. -ethan ===== Visit "The Seventh Continent" http://penguincentral.com/penguincentral.html __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Get personalized email addresses from Yahoo! Mail http://personal.mail.yahoo.com/

On Tue, 26 Jun 2001, Michael Maginnis wrote: Of course, and the fact that the //c has no Apple ][ bus. I was wondering why you would attribute the 1984 date to the //e. Never mind :) Sellam Ismail Vintage Computer Festival ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ International Man of Intrigue and Danger http://www.vintage.org

http://lancegs.a2central.com/ Be warned, the guy who wrote marinetti is a real ass. He and his followers are one of the reasons I am getting out of the apple2 world. -- Jim Strickland jim(a)DIESPAMMERSCUMcalico.litterbox.com ----------------------------------------------------------------------- BeOS Powered! -----------------------------------------------------------------------

--- Sellam Ismail &lt;foo(a)siconic.com&gt; wrote: Well... it's about 10x what I paid for my AppleIIGS, but I'm tempted. If I hadn't gotten off the Apple cart before the IIe, I'd probably be getting one, but I'd moved on by 1985 (traded up from the 6502 to the 68000 with the Amiga in 1986!) What I am curious about, though, is that since that webpage mentions the minimum system requirements for a GS as being ROM rev 1 or 3, and I know I have a rev 1, how could I go about getting a rev 3 ROM? Are they for sale anywhere? For download? Are they pin-compatible with a 2764/27128/27256? (I ask because I know in the Commodore line, the mask-programmed ROMs are *not* always JEDEC compatible, which is why I have a stash of 2532 EPROMS) -ethan ===== Visit "The Seventh Continent" http://penguincentral.com/penguincentral.html __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Get personalized email addresses from Yahoo! Mail http://personal.mail.yahoo.com/

Yeah, Anti-Christ Nathan flamed out a few years ago and took the HTML version of the faq (which in all fairness he DID write) with him. Turley's still around, or was last I looked, but that's been a couple years. Sheppy I owe a great debt of gratitude to because he was the one who first brought BeOS to my attention. (he works for Be for his day job, apparently). -- Jim Strickland jim(a)DIESPAMMERSCUMcalico.litterbox.com ----------------------------------------------------------------------- BeOS Powered! -----------------------------------------------------------------------

Sellam Ismail wrote: <snip> Mates, in true dramatic Mates style, left the a2 newsgroups a couple of years ago. Washed his hands of the whole thing - sold all of his Apple equipment and destroyed all of the software he was developing. Turley is still Turley, though the main enemy now is Quantum_Cat - this guy makes Mates and his rants look tame... Mike http://tarnover.dyndns.org Tarnover - The Apple II Repository

On Tue, 26 Jun 2001, Mike Ford wrote: Me too, someday. I loved writing stuff on the Apple ][, and there are still some ideas I had that I want to finally implement. One is a simple networking protocol that can be loaded resident into ProDOS and allow you to have a TCP/IP gateway to a Linux block. It'll have it's own simple packet protocol for sending and receiving data over a serial port. On top of that you'll be able to build device drivers for virtual Apple ][ disk drives (or in ProDOS speak, volumes) on a PC for transferring files. Someone has written a great utility that allows you to use your PC as a file server from your Apple ][ and I believe vice-versa. I forgot what it's called but I believe the website where the software can be found is listed in the Emulators subsection of the Apple Resources section of the VCF Link Library: http://www.vintage.org/cgi-bin/links.pl#apple Sellam Ismail Vintage Computer Festival ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ International Man of Intrigue and Danger http://www.vintage.org

On Wed, 27 Jun 2001, Mike Ford wrote: I think comp.sys.apple2.programmer (or something like that) should still be around. No assemblers for me...I program in hex! Sellam Ismail Vintage Computer Festival ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ International Man of Intrigue and Danger http://www.vintage.org

On Wed, 27 Jun 2001, Ethan Dicks wrote: I first started to learn assembly language when I noticed that the mnemonics in the assembly listings in the Apple II Reference Manual had hex codes next to them, which corresponded with what you'd see when you listed code in the Apple ][ monitor. I then had the brilliant idea to poke a byte into a location in the monitor and then list it to see if the hex code produced the associated mnemonic, and sure enough it did! I was flabbergasted. Of course this was a completely silly discovery, but for someone hacking on their lonesome and having to rely on themself to figure things out, it was a big breakthrough. I got really good at programming in hex code, and never moved on to assemblers. I tried a few, and had many of the ones popular during the day (EDASM, LISA, Orca/M, Big Mac, etc.) but never liked any of them. I preferred the immediacy of the monitor and hex codes. I got to the point where I rarely had to reference the manual. I knew all the opcodes for all the instructions in all their various addressing modes, etc. I even got good at calculating offsets for relative jumps in my head (like an idiot savant). To this day I can still pound out 6502 code in hex. It's so ingrained in my skull that it's scary. Sellam Ismail Vintage Computer Festival ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ International Man of Intrigue and Danger http://www.vintage.org

Before I got a proper assembler, I wrote all my Commodore programs in the FastLoad monitor. .c000: a9 93 20 d2 ff a9 10 a0 c0 4c 1e ab .c010: "hello world" 0d 00 .gc000 [screen clear] hello world .% ready. -- ----------------------------- personal page: http://www.armory.com/~spectre/ -- Cameron Kaiser, Point Loma Nazarene University * ckaiser(a)stockholm.ptloma.edu -- Conscience makes egotists of us all. -- Oscar Wilde ------------------------

Personally, I usually loaded the mini assembler into the language card. I even doctored it a bit to add some features. Since I started out on a vanilla ][ with INTBASIC, I couldn't stand it when the miniassembler went missing when I "upgraded" to a ][+. Eric

I think the one you're referring to is Apple II Oasis. Includes a Disk Server app that allows you to set up a virtual hard drive for the emulator; IIRC, also allows PC <-> Apple II communication via null modem cable (useful for converting your old floppies to disk images suitable for emulator consumption, and vice versa). Apple II Oasis homepage: http://www.geocities.com/SiliconValley/Lakes/4414/A4W.HTM Product is shareware, registration is $25 US. Mike http://tarnover.dyndns.org/ Tarnover - The Apple II Repository

On Mon, 25 Jun 2001, Curt Vendel wrote: Curt, any chance of getting a copy of the notes and the video? They would be a useful addition for the Cat that I also have. - don

It was thus said that the Great Don Maslin once stated: I too would like a copy of the notes, if possible. I'd even be willing to type the notes into digital format (if possible. Yes, I would *love* to see the notes). -spc (More interested in the software than the hardware ... )

Go back to the store and turn the place inside out. Don't be coy, wave money, and ask to look through ALL the floppies, manuals etc. they have around. Don't delay. Ask if you can put a card up by the cash register etc. offering to buy anything related.

On Mon, 25 Jun 2001, Michael Maginnis wrote: Did you take some time to dispell this guy of his ignorance? You could make things much easier for you in the future by establishing a good working relationship with him. Very nice. Sounds like a very nice thrift shop. I had one like that in my area that would regularly turn up something nice at least once a month but they closed down :( Sellam Ismail Vintage Computer Festival ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ International Man of Intrigue and Danger http://www.vintage.org

On Tue, 26 Jun 2001, Michael Maginnis wrote: Here's a suggestion: offer to volunteer to process their computer stuff in exchange for being able to have first stab at whatever comes in, and at a steep discount. That's good. The only places I usually find anything of interest anymore are thrift stores. The local ham fests have been drying up :( Sellam Ismail Vintage Computer Festival ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ International Man of Intrigue and Danger http://www.vintage.org