12 Jan
2003
12 Jan
'03
10:21 a.m.
Guys,
After fighting (with no success) my 11/780 again today and wasting a
buttload of electricity doing it, it looks like I'm going to have to bite
the bullet and create a diagnostic application to help me figure what is
wrong with the beast.
I originally thought about writing a JAVA-based application that would
communicate with the console (card on the 750 and 11/03 on the 780) and by
using the minimal troubleshooting commands available, and at least isolate
what sections of the startup routines were failing or examine the memory
space to figure out what may or may not be responding or is out-of-whack.
I would appreciate it if anyone here had some documentation for the 780
outside of the following manuals:
Diagnostic System User's Guide
Hardware Users Guide
Remote Diagnostic Option Guide
... available for purchase - please let me know. These manuals I already
have, and if I can't get any clear documentation describing the routines
that the 11/03 is executing, then I'll have to manually (with the help of
this application) disassemble the code to determine what's not happy.
The built in console diagnostics of the 780 do not really give a clear
enough picture to find out exactly what has failed just by looking at the
program counter value when the 11/03 stops during the boot process (at
least with the troubleshooting docs I currently have).
I was hoping to create an application that would simulate the boot process,
but by examining/depositing register contents as the 11/03 would normally
execute them, and provide more detailed information.
Of course, this application, being serial based, could certainly extend
beyond the realms of the 11/780 and 11/750. You could conceivably deposit
boot programs into memory if your boot media fails, or even extend the
application to work with other computers/manufacturers as well.
Any suggestions or additional comments would be welcome. I would probably
make this application available under a GPL- style license, even though I
do not agree with Mr. Stallman's religious beliefs regarding commercial
application development...
(but that is a different story for another day)
- Matt
P.S. - Gunther - did you get your 780 running yet? Hopefully I can help you
out as well.
Matthew Sell
Programmer
On Time Support, Inc.
www.ontimesupport.com
(281) 296-6066
Join the Metrology Software discussion group METLIST!
http://www.ontimesupport.com/subscribe_t&c.htmlhtml.
"One World, One Web, One Program" - Microsoft Promotional Ad
"Ein Volk, Ein Reich, Ein Fuhrer" - Adolf Hitler
Many thanks for this tagline to a fellow RGVAC'er...
12 Jan
12 Jan
10:59 a.m.
New subject: NextCube --- Take it or leave it?
I have an opportunity to trade a ThinkPad laptop straight across for a
N1000 NextCube, complete with monitor, mouse, keyboard, etc. The unit is in
good shape, and functions. I haven't had a lot of time to do research, so I
thought I'd ask the experts. Is this worth messing with? The laptop has
little value to me, and the shipping on the monitor (from Denver to Atlanta)
could be a tad painful. I'm not hurting for a NextCube, but it might be an
interesting item to toss in the warehouse until I get a house again.
The alternative is if there is a enough interest in the NextCube, I
would probably use as collateral in a trade for 1802 based gear, or perhaps
some S-100 (I recently acquired a SOL-20, and I'm thinking of looking for a
Tarbell DSDD controller to use in it, to talk to the two Qume DataTrak-8s
that are on my IMSAI).
--John
12:05 p.m.
New subject: NextCube --- Take it or leave it?
Depends what the processor and drive setup the Cube is equipped with.
I'd say it's a decent trade if the unit has a floppy and 040 system
board. If it's an 030 Cube with or without an OD, I'd pass it up as
it's fairly easy to come by these systems, probably for less than the
value of the laptop.
Jeff
On Sun, 2003-01-12 at 20:01, J.C.Wren wrote:
I have an opportunity to trade a ThinkPad laptop
straight across for a
N1000 NextCube, complete with monitor, mouse, keyboard, etc. The unit is in
good shape, and functions. I haven't had a lot of time to do research, so I
thought I'd ask the experts. Is this worth messing with? The laptop has
little value to me, and the shipping on the monitor (from Denver to Atlanta)
could be a tad painful. I'm not hurting for a NextCube, but it might be an
interesting item to toss in the warehouse until I get a house again.
The alternative is if there is a enough interest in the NextCube, I
would probably use as collateral in a trade for 1802 based gear, or perhaps
some S-100 (I recently acquired a SOL-20, and I'm thinking of looking for a
Tarbell DSDD controller to use in it, to talk to the two Qume DataTrak-8s
that are on my IMSAI).
--John
13 Jan
13 Jan
2:07 a.m.
New subject: NextCube --- Take it or leave it?
On Sun, 12 Jan 2003, J.C.Wren wrote:
I have an opportunity to trade a ThinkPad laptop
straight across for a
N1000 NextCube, complete with monitor, mouse, keyboard, etc. The unit is in
good shape, and functions. I haven't had a lot of time to do research, so I
thought I'd ask the experts. Is this worth messing with? The laptop has
little value to me, and the shipping on the monitor (from Denver to Atlanta)
could be a tad painful. I'm not hurting for a NextCube, but it might be an
interesting item to toss in the warehouse until I get a house again.
Yes, worth the trade.
Sellam Ismail Vintage Computer Festival
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
International Man of Intrigue and Danger http://www.vintage.org
* Old computing resources for business and academia at www.VintageTech.com *
4:18 p.m.
New subject: NextCube --- Take it or leave it?
At 08:01 PM 1/12/03 -0500, you wrote:
I have an opportunity to trade a ThinkPad laptop
straight across for
a N1000 NextCube, complete with monitor, mouse, keyboard, etc. The unit
is in good shape, and functions. I haven't had a
IMHO the monitor etc shippiing exceeds the value, before considering the
laptop which is a much easier to trade/sell item.
OTOH if it was a very complete and working system, AND it was something you
want to play with, what the heck.
12 Jan
12 Jan
11:14 a.m.
I would appreciate it if anyone here had some
documentation
for the 780 outside of the following manuals:
Diagnostic System User's Guide
Hardware Users Guide
Remote Diagnostic Option Guide
I sent a bunch to http://208.190.133.201/decimages/moremanuals.htm
and they are all up now. Near the bottom.
No sign of the Remote Diagnostic Option Guide
but I guess you'll scan that and send it along if you
find the others useful :-)
One of those 780 manuals lists a bunch of related manuals.
Most are up on that page, except for the schematics.
Antonio
--
---------------
Antonio Carlini arcarlini(a)iee.org
12:21 p.m.
Antonio,
Thanks a bunch for scanning those.
Do you have any tips for scanning books? Such as resolution, color
settings, etc...
- Matt
At 01:16 AM 1/13/2003 +0000, you wrote:
Matthew Sell
Programmer
On Time Support, Inc.
www.ontimesupport.com
(281) 296-6066
Join the Metrology Software discussion group METLIST!
http://www.ontimesupport.com/subscribe_t&c.htmlhtml.
"One World, One Web, One Program" - Microsoft Promotional Ad
"Ein Volk, Ein Reich, Ein Fuhrer" - Adolf Hitler
Many thanks for this tagline to a fellow RGVAC'er...
I would
appreciate it if anyone here had some documentation
for the 780 outside of the following manuals:
Diagnostic System User's Guide
Hardware Users Guide
Remote Diagnostic Option Guide
I sent a bunch to http://208.190.133.201/decimages/moremanuals.htm
and they are all up now. Near the bottom.
No sign of the Remote Diagnostic Option Guide
but I guess you'll scan that and send it along if you
find the others useful :-)
One of those 780 manuals lists a bunch of related manuals.
Most are up on that page, except for the schematics.
Antonio
--
---------------
Antonio Carlini arcarlini(a)iee.org 
12:40 p.m.
New subject: scanning notes (was RE: VAX 11/780 /750 Diagnostics - new project)
Matt asks:
Do you have any tips for scanning books? Such as
resolution, color
settings, etc...
300 to 400 DPI. B&W only, unless the originals make use of color.
Save B&W images as TIFF Class F Group 4, except for pages that
have photographs. Those should be saved as JPEG (either color or
grey scale). Text and line art should *never* be saved as JPEG,
because that makes it blurry [*]. I recommend saving any "mixed" pages
(containing text/line art AND photographs) as both TIFF Class F G4 and
JPEG.
Many programs only offer a vague "TIFF" option for saved files, without
telling you what kind of TIFF they will produce. That's like asking
a car salesman what kind of engine a car has, and being told "internal
combustion". It's true, but it hasn't told you anything useful. You
can use the "tiffinfo" program from the libtiff package to find out
what kind of compression a TIFF file really has.
Group 3 lossless compression is an acceptable alternative to Group 4,
but doesn't achieve quite as good a compression ratio.
More recently, JBIG and JBIG2 standards for lossless compression have
appeared. They offer even higher compression rations than G4. However,
JBIG and JBIG2 are currently encumbered by patents, so not much software
uses them yet. I recommend avoiding them.
If you plan to convert the scanned documents to PDF files, it is useful
to note that G3 and G4 compression are natively supported by the PDF
standard and all compliant viewer software.
Eric
[*] JPEG compression is designed specifically for lossy compression
of continuous tone images. The compression is achieved by throwing
away high frequency components of the image. Text and line art have
sharp edges with a lot of high-frequency components, so JPEG compression
causes blurring. Although you can adjust the degree of lossiness of
most JPEG compressors, if you turn it down enough to not cause noticable
blurring, you also don't get nearly as good a compression ration as
lossless Group 4 encoding.
7:32 p.m.
Do you have any tips for scanning books? Such as
resolution,
color settings, etc...
For most manuals 600dpi 1-bit (i.e. black and white) to
G4 encoded TIFF and then wrapped up in PDF will do nicely.
300 dpi will probably do as well but I used 600dpi in
the hope that future OCR technology will have a
happier time with it. The G4 encoding just gets the size
down even more and is not absolutely necessary.
If colour is involved then page size shoots up. I've not
yet found a good way of doing these. For some manuals the
colour does not matter too much and those I've scanned
in B&W. Where it did matter, I've tried OCRing the
colour pages. This is obviously fairly time consuming.
JPEG gets the page size down quite a bit but its effects
on text are really quite bad.
As for scanning books (that cannot be easily and reversibly
dismantled) then you'll have to experiment. I found that
scanning two pages at once (i.e. opening out flat and
scanning) worked reasonably well. Post processing into
LH and RH pages and stitching together was reasonably easy
to semi-automate.
Antonio
--
---------------
Antonio Carlini arcarlini(a)iee.org
13 Jan
13 Jan
1:39 a.m.
If colour is involved then page size shoots up...
JPEG gets the page size down quite a bit but its
effects on text are really quite bad.
Something probably should be said for GIF.
This format is good for images with 16 or 256 different levels of color
and won't spatially filter (IE distort high freqency detail) anything when
the number or colors is within these bounds. It's always good when
you can discretize the number of saved colors of the image to the
number of printed colors. For example B&W as two levels, and B&W
with a two color illustration as 4 levels, otherwise known as a 4 color
lookup table. All of these things can be done lossless with GIF.
John A.
3:01 p.m.
On Monday, January 13, 2003, Antonio Carlini wrote:
If colour is involved then page size shoots up.
I've not yet found a good
way of doing these.
Scan as B&W for now. Store the paper in a safe place. Wait for data storage
prices to decrease sufficiently. Scan in color.
--
Jeffrey Sharp
8017
days inactive
8019
days old
11 comments
9 participants
participants (9)
-
allain＠panix.com -
arcarlini＠iee.org -
eric＠brouhaha.com -
foo＠siconic.com -
jcwren＠jcwren.com -
jingber＠ix.netcom.com -
jss＠subatomix.com -
mikeford＠socal.rr.com -
msell＠ontimesupport.com