Vintage Computer Festival <vcf(a)siconic.com> wrote: Lyos, I'll explain to you why asking $25 for a non-working TI 99/4a is ludicrous: 1) They are quite common, and even $25 would be a stretch for a working one in good condition 2) Complete, WORKING systems can be found on eBay for under $15 3) Trying to sell a non-working unit with missing keys and case damage is pretty laughable Dang... I was hoping some one would want it either as spare parts or for a machine they can experiment with. Oh well. If anyone wants it make me an offer or a trade. You need to put a little bit more effort into understanding the economic realities of this hobby. I understand most of it... I just misjudged the price of this thing. Guess I shoulda done a little more research eh? And JUST because I'm a nice guy, send me your address and I'll send you a //c power supply since I just found a stash of them. You can keep your TI 99/4a. Thanks Sellam... I'll send it in a private message. Lyos Gemini Norezel Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Mail - More reliable, more storage, less spam

On Mar 18, 2004, at 8:36 AM, John Allain wrote: Just as a comparative data point - when Australia passed its blue laws, there were some concerns as to whether the Linux source would pass scrutiny. The "F Word" appears very frequently in the comments. Doc

I believe profanity is a common in most likely most source code. I have had the opportunity to examine extensive amounts of source code inside-jokes... I think its a way of blowing off steam for programmers and quite frankly it adds a more personal touch to code to see that it wasn't just written by a bunch of drones, but from creative, feeling people with a sense of humor. Curt

On Fri, Mar 19, 2004 at 12:52:02PM +0000, Philip Pemberton wrote: There's a great book c. 1980 by Osbourne Press, "PET CBM and the IEEE-488 Bus (GPIB)", Eugene and Jensen, C.W. Fisher, that focuses on the Commodore implementation of the GPIB, but nonetheless, has some good, basic, bit-level explanations of the GPIB. There are some freeware products you can use to experiment with the GPIB... VICE (a PET/C-64 emulator) is complete enough that you can write programs to set talkers and listeners, and develop application code in BASIC or assembler to "talk" to a Commodore device. If you are trying to talk to, say, an HP GPIB disk drive, you'll only find basic information, but it's a start. -ethan -- Ethan Dicks, A-130-S Current South Pole Weather at 20-Mar-2004 03:39 Z South Pole Station PSC 468 Box 400 Temp -56.4 F (-49.1 C) Windchill -84.7 F (-64.8 C) APO AP 96598 Wind 7.4 kts Grid 037 Barometer 681.3 mb (10575. ft) Ethan.Dicks(a)amanda.spole.gov http://penguincentral.com/penguincentral.html

In message <405B344B.50003(a)ecubics.com> emanuel stiebler <emu(a)ecubics.com> wrote: Also for the record - Amazon UK are listing it as "Limited Availability or Out of print". No hits on abebooks.com. Oh well, it was worth a shot. I might try Waterstones (big UK bookstore chain) tomorrow. I do, however, have a few Texas Instruments GPIB interface ICs (SN75160BN and SN75161BN) in my junkbox. The GPIB connectors are standard anyway - 24-way Centronics-style IIRC. Later. -- Phil. | Acorn Risc PC600 Mk3, SA202, 64MB, 6GB, philpem(a)dsl.pipex.com | ViewFinder, 10BaseT Ethernet, 2-slice, http://www.philpem.dsl.pipex.com/ | 48xCD, ARCINv6c IDE, SCSI ... Insanity doesn't just run in my family; it practically gallops

In message <E1B4QDu-000P0G-0Z(a)anchor-post-35.mail.demon.net> "Witchy" <witchy(a)binarydinosaurs.co.uk> wrote: Well, the title and author details match up. I just checked out IEC and IEEE - IEC want roughly ?150 for a PDF version of their equivalent to IEEE488. IEEE wanted roughly ?80 for what appears to be a paper copy. Ho hum. Later. -- Phil. | Acorn Risc PC600 Mk3, SA202, 64MB, 6GB, philpem(a)dsl.pipex.com | ViewFinder, 10BaseT Ethernet, 2-slice, http://www.philpem.dsl.pipex.com/ | 48xCD, ARCINv6c IDE, SCSI ... Where we operate at a 90? angle to reality

On Fri, Mar 19, 2004 at 08:03:54PM -0000, Witchy wrote: I am aware of at least two editions. -ethan -- Ethan Dicks, A-130-S Current met data unavailable South Pole Station PSC 468 Box 400 APO AP 96598 Ethan.Dicks(a)amanda.spole.gov http://penguincentral.com/penguincentral.html

On Sat, Mar 20, 2004 at 12:03:32AM +0000, Tony Duell wrote: Interesting... I had not thought of substitute line drivers, but it makes sense... unless you are trying to build a gargantuan PET system (the kind nobody could afford "back in the day"), most people had one disk drive box (2040/4040/2031/8050...) and _maybe_ a printer. These days, though, the most common thing for Commodore owners would be to hook up a disk drive to a modernish machine to extract floppies... using O.C. drivers and Schmitt trigger receivers would work just fine for that. Hmm... I had not thought of a state machine, but my experience with GPIB is 100% Commodore, so I'm perfectly comfortable with software-driven handshaking. Since all of C='s peripherals were 6502-family-based, it's not like you'd get the data any faster with a hardware solution. I have a couple of add-on IEEE-488 carts for the VIC-20 and C-64 - same basic design - a ROM (for the low-level protocol code), some form of PIA or VIA, and SN75160BN/SN75161BN line drivers wired up to the output ports of the VLSI I/O chip. The PET used different drivers that seperated the signals so that the host sees unidirectional lines, but that's just a minor implementation detail. With one exception, all of my GPIB hardware is C= or third-party for C= CPUs... I do have one HP 9-track tape drive with a GPIB interface, but I've never even powered it up. I should Google for some information on it when I get home... I have no idea how much buffer space it has onboard, or if you could drive it at the incredibly slow software-driven C= data rates, but it'd be cool to put a 9-track on a PET! I'm sure you could talk to it, but whether or not you could transfer real data to/from it would be another question entirely. Whenever I contemplate my own modular 6502 homebrew system, I always include a GPIB interface since I know I can roll one with a few chips and a couple of K of machine code, and then have access to a raft of existing peripherals, but then I remember that I could just go back and hack some PETs, and the urge to build from scratch subsides. :-) -ethan -- Ethan Dicks, A-130-S Current South Pole Weather at 20-Mar-2004 13:28 Z South Pole Station PSC 468 Box 400 Temp -61.9 F (-52.2 C) Windchill -106 F (-76.7 C) APO AP 96598 Wind 10.5 kts Grid 030 Barometer 683.1 mb (10508. ft) Ethan.Dicks(a)amanda.spole.gov http://penguincentral.com/penguincentral.html

Philip Pemberton wrote: Without IEEE488, no controller, no peripheral, no cable ? What are you trying to do ?!?!?

Well, a cable recently sold for US$1.00 on Vintage Computer Marketplace (I bought it). Deals are still to be found. --P

In message <20040320005346.GB18209(a)bos7.spole.gov> Ethan Dicks <dickset(a)amanda.spole.gov> wrote: Unfortunately, all the local colleges and universities that I know of have an "All surplus must be destroyed" policy. Destroying PCs I can understand (data protection), but destroying the cables too? Later. -- Phil. | Acorn Risc PC600 Mk3, SA202, 64MB, 6GB, philpem(a)dsl.pipex.com | ViewFinder, 10BaseT Ethernet, 2-slice, http://www.philpem.dsl.pipex.com/ | 48xCD, ARCINv6c IDE, SCSI Optimism looks up, counts the stars; pessimism looks down and counts cracks.

On Sat, Mar 20, 2004 at 07:12:56AM -0800, Fred Cisin wrote: I have seen tape drives from financial institutions destroyed (no joke) because they had been used to write confidential data. Sound like the same goobs work there. :-) -ethan -- Ethan Dicks, A-130-S Current South Pole Weather at 21-Mar-2004 03:09 Z South Pole Station PSC 468 Box 400 Temp -70.3 F (-56.8 C) Windchill -135.9 F (-93.3 C) APO AP 96598 Wind 16 kts Grid 024 Barometer 685.6 mb (10416. ft) Ethan.Dicks(a)amanda.spole.gov http://penguincentral.com/penguincentral.html

So end-users aren't the *only* ones swearing at Windows? That's refreshing to know... :-o On Thu, 18 Mar 2004, John Allain wrote: