26 Apr
2018
26 Apr
'18
5:47 a.m.
A lengthy interview with the later great Rick Dickinson, product designer
of basically every Sinclair computer, who sadly died of cancer on Tuesday.
https://medium.com/@ghalfacree/an-interview-with-rick-dickinson-3fea60537338
He not only did the ZX 80, ZX 81, ZX Spectrum and the QL, but also the Z88,
the Spectrum Next and others -- along with a lot of other stuff.
I know this is a rather USA-centric list, so probably most of you started
off with things like the Apple II, the first sub-$1000 home computer. But
in Britain and Europe back then, we were a lot poorer, and $1000 was an
impossibly large amount of money -- many months of pay in a good job.
I think in my early home-computer days, I never saw a single Apple II --
they were exotic, expensive foreign machines. I have only seen them in
recent years, as collectible antiques.
In the UK, the revolution was the first sub-?100 home computer, the ZX 81.
I first used a Commodore PET. Later, a few of my richer friends had
Commodore 64s. The super-wealthy might have a BBC Micro. In either case, a
working setup with mass storage -- floppy drives -- was nearing ?1000.
Nobody owned a _monitor_ -- they were exotica for professionals.
Whereas a Spectrum with a Microdrive was a quarter of that and a highly
usable system, with tens of thousands of games, plus mutiple programming
languages, word processors, databases and more.
I think if you ask virtually any British person in their late 30s, 40s or
50s, in anything connected with IT, what their first computer was, the
answer would be a ZX 81 or a ZX Spectrum. It was the single range of
machines that drove the entire computer revolution over here, and also in
the form of a myriad clones in the Communist Bloc.
Later, imitators came along -- the Oric (6502) and Dragon (6809) ranges,
for instance. And of course there were many machines that aspired to be
better: Memotech. Camputers Lynx, Elan Enterprise, etc. All flopped to some
degree.
The only thing that displaced Sinclair was Amstrad, who made more expensive
computers but with much better specifications -- an integrated tape drive,
or floppies, even a printer, and a real monitor. They cost more but still
less than Commodore or Acorn: you got a lot for your money. Amstrad
eventually bought Sinclair's models and name, and later still, it launched
the first _cheap_ PC clones and kick-started the IBM-compatible industry
over here. But it did it standing on Sinclair's shoulders.
Part of the joy of Sinclair machines (like Apple and Commodore) was their
very distinctive look -- black, slablike, with tiny discrete bits of
colour, unlike the grey or beige boxes of virtually all the competition.
And that was down to Rick Dickinson, who only discovered years later how he
had inspired whole generations of people.
--
Liam Proven ? Profile: https://about.me/liamproven
Email: lproven at cix.co.uk ? Google Mail/Hangouts/Plus: lproven at gmail.com
Twitter/Facebook/Flickr: lproven ? Skype/LinkedIn: liamproven
UK: +44 7939-087884 ? ?R (+ WhatsApp/Telegram/Signal): +420 702 829 053
26 Apr
26 Apr
6:38 a.m.
Just to add some info to the excellent Liam's post, it was a revolution in
south america too. The first computers in Brazil were ZX80 clones (TK82C is
a ZX80 clone, not a ZX81...ZX81 were cloned just in the TK85 computer) and
it was a revolution! I was a very poor guy, my father was a Militar Police
soldier and he was able to afford (in 24 installments) a TK85 for me. It
was the only affordable computer for the poor for YEARS.
Another interesting thing is that the exterior designs of sinclair
computers were never completely copied in Brazil. TK82C had a case inspired
(but not directly cloned) from ZX80. TK83 was a complete innovative design.
TK85 was a clone of the externals of the ZX spectrum (being a ZX81 clone)
BUT had vents on top and the entire enclosure is taller. TK90X uses mostly
the same enclosure of the TK85 with the vents on diagonal, and TK95 cloned
the commodore Plus4 enclosure.
2018-04-26 9:47 GMT-03:00 Liam Proven via cctalk <cctalk at classiccmp.org>:
A lengthy interview with the later great Rick
Dickinson, product designer
of basically every Sinclair computer, who sadly died of cancer on Tuesday.
https://medium.com/@ghalfacree/an-interview-with-
rick-dickinson-3fea60537338
He not only did the ZX 80, ZX 81, ZX Spectrum and the QL, but also the Z88,
the Spectrum Next and others -- along with a lot of other stuff.
I know this is a rather USA-centric list, so probably most of you started
off with things like the Apple II, the first sub-$1000 home computer. But
in Britain and Europe back then, we were a lot poorer, and $1000 was an
impossibly large amount of money -- many months of pay in a good job.
I think in my early home-computer days, I never saw a single Apple II --
they were exotic, expensive foreign machines. I have only seen them in
recent years, as collectible antiques.
In the UK, the revolution was the first sub-?100 home computer, the ZX 81.
I first used a Commodore PET. Later, a few of my richer friends had
Commodore 64s. The super-wealthy might have a BBC Micro. In either case, a
working setup with mass storage -- floppy drives -- was nearing ?1000.
Nobody owned a _monitor_ -- they were exotica for professionals.
Whereas a Spectrum with a Microdrive was a quarter of that and a highly
usable system, with tens of thousands of games, plus mutiple programming
languages, word processors, databases and more.
I think if you ask virtually any British person in their late 30s, 40s or
50s, in anything connected with IT, what their first computer was, the
answer would be a ZX 81 or a ZX Spectrum. It was the single range of
machines that drove the entire computer revolution over here, and also in
the form of a myriad clones in the Communist Bloc.
Later, imitators came along -- the Oric (6502) and Dragon (6809) ranges,
for instance. And of course there were many machines that aspired to be
better: Memotech. Camputers Lynx, Elan Enterprise, etc. All flopped to some
degree.
The only thing that displaced Sinclair was Amstrad, who made more expensive
computers but with much better specifications -- an integrated tape drive,
or floppies, even a printer, and a real monitor. They cost more but still
less than Commodore or Acorn: you got a lot for your money. Amstrad
eventually bought Sinclair's models and name, and later still, it launched
the first _cheap_ PC clones and kick-started the IBM-compatible industry
over here. But it did it standing on Sinclair's shoulders.
Part of the joy of Sinclair machines (like Apple and Commodore) was their
very distinctive look -- black, slablike, with tiny discrete bits of
colour, unlike the grey or beige boxes of virtually all the competition.
And that was down to Rick Dickinson, who only discovered years later how he
had inspired whole generations of people.
--
Liam Proven ? Profile: https://about.me/liamproven
Email: lproven at cix.co.uk ? Google Mail/Hangouts/Plus: lproven at gmail.com
Twitter/Facebook/Flickr: lproven ? Skype/LinkedIn: liamproven
UK: +44 7939-087884 ? ?R (+ WhatsApp/Telegram/Signal): +420 702 829 053
7:55 a.m.
On Apr 26, 2018, at 5:47 AM, Liam Proven via cctalk
<cctalk at classiccmp.org> wrote:
He not only did the ZX 80, ZX 81, ZX Spectrum and the QL, but also the Z88,
the Spectrum Next and others -- along with a lot of other stuff.
I know this is a rather USA-centric list, so probably most of you started
off with things like the Apple II, the first sub-$1000 home computer. But
in Britain and Europe back then, we were a lot poorer, and $1000 was an
impossibly large amount of money -- many months of pay in a good job.
My first computer was supposed to be a ZX81. I worked all Summer painting the house to
earn it. As it happens, my payment was a VIC-20 with a tape recorder. The ZX Spectrum
has always fascinated me, and nearly 20 years ago, I traded a Tek cartridge with a list
member for a ZX Spectrum 2+. I still dream of having time to get that system up and
running. Even though I?ve never run it, it?s still one of my favorite pieces in my
collection.
Zane
8:55 a.m.
There was a very large Timex 1000 / ZX81 user base in the US. I have quite
a lot of newsletters and documents from these groups. I even did an exhibit
on the subject of SIGs for the Timex 1000 ZX81 at VCF MW a few years ago.
You can see stacks of newsletters in stands flanking the machines and
tapes.
http://vintagecomputer.net/vcfmw-ECCC_2010/SinclairSIG/
Personally, the $99 Timex 1000 was the only computer I could have afforded
back then. Schools had Apple II's but not so many people in their homes
then, at least where I lived.
Bill
On Thu, Apr 26, 2018 at 10:55 AM, Zane Healy via cctalk <
cctalk at classiccmp.org> wrote:
On Apr 26, 2018, at 5:47 AM, Liam Proven via
cctalk <
cctalk at classiccmp.org> wrote:
He not only did the ZX 80, ZX 81, ZX Spectrum and the QL, but also the
Z88,
the Spectrum Next and others -- along with a lot
of other stuff.
I know this is a rather USA-centric list, so probably most of you started
off with things like the Apple II, the first sub-$1000 home computer. But
in Britain and Europe back then, we were a lot poorer, and $1000 was an
impossibly large amount of money -- many months of pay in a good job.
My first computer was supposed to be a ZX81. I worked all Summer painting
the house to earn it. As it happens, my payment was a VIC-20 with a tape
recorder. The ZX Spectrum has always fascinated me, and nearly 20 years
ago, I traded a Tek cartridge with a list member for a ZX Spectrum 2+. I
still dream of having time to get that system up and running. Even though
I?ve never run it, it?s still one of my favorite pieces in my collection.
Zane
9:46 a.m.
On Thu, 26 Apr 2018 at 17:55, Bill Degnan via cctalk <cctalk at classiccmp.org>
wrote:
There was a very large Timex 1000 / ZX81 user base in
the US. I have
quite
a lot of newsletters and documents from these groups.
I even did an
exhibit
on the subject of SIGs for the Timex 1000 ZX81 at VCF
MW a few years ago.
You can see stacks of newsletters in stands flanking the machines and
tapes.
Personally, the $99 Timex 1000 was the only computer I
could have afforded
back then. Schools had Apple II's but not so many people in their homes
then, at least where I lived.
That's very cool. Thanks for sharing.
I knew the TS1000 (and TS1500?) did better in the USA than the TS2068 did,
but I didn't realise that they were that popular.
I was about 12 when they came out, and I have to confess, lacking colour or
sound or graphics, they were of little to no interest to me. It was the
later Spectrum that grabbed me.
But my uncle's ZX81 was the first computer I ever used that was owned by a
private individual. He was probably in his 60s when he got it, and he never
learned to operate it. I managed to enter a simple Lunar Lander game from
the manual, save it and get it running, which hugely impressed him -- he'd
failed repeatedly to get that far.
I suppose that was my first entry into the world of computing, in which I
still work...
--
Liam Proven ? Profile: https://about.me/liamproven
Email: lproven at cix.co.uk ? Google Mail/Hangouts/Plus: lproven at gmail.com
Twitter/Facebook/Flickr: lproven ? Skype/LinkedIn: liamproven
UK: +44 7939-087884 ? ?R (+ WhatsApp/Telegram/Signal): +420 702 829 053
10:17 a.m.
On 4/26/2018 11:46 AM, Liam Proven via
cctalk wrote:
Very interesting to see this perspective
Personally,
the $99 Timex 1000 was the only computer I could have afforded
back then. Schools had Apple II's but not so many people in their homes
then, at least where I lived.
That's very cool. Thanks for sharing.
I knew the TS1000 (and TS1500?) did better in the USA than the TS2068 did,
but I didn't realise that they were that popular.
I was about 12 when they came out, and I have to confess, lacking colour or
sound or graphics, they were of little to no interest to me. It was the
later Spectrum that grabbed me.
But my uncle's ZX81 was the first computer I ever used that was owned by a
private individual. He was probably in his 60s when he got it, and he never
learned to operate it. I managed to enter a simple Lunar Lander game from
the manual, save it and get it running, which hugely impressed him -- he'd
failed repeatedly to get that far.
I suppose that was my first entry into the world of computing, in which I
still work... from the UK!
Located in the U.S. (Washington, D.C), I
started with an Apple II+ in 1979 as a
12 year old.
Out of curiosity, I later bought the
Sinclair ZX-80, but coming from the
Apple, I thought the
ZX-80 was horrid and not useable.
I later also tried the Timex Sinclair
1000.. better.. but still seemed like a
waste of time toy.
Mind you, I had a monitor, and (2) disk
drives on the Apple and had had exposure to
HP, DEC, and IBM minicomputers by the
age of 16.
Always with my nose into my own
business, I'd no idea how fortunate I
was until reading
of others' experiences here.
Thanks for sharing.
- John
11:55 a.m.
On Thu, 26 Apr 2018 at 19:17, js at cimmeri.com <js at cimmeri.com> wrote:
Very interesting to see this perspective from the UK!
Oh good. :-)
Located in the U.S. (Washington, D.C), I started with
an Apple II+ in
1979 as a 12 year old.
This confirms the sort of thing I read. US users had specifications of kit
we couldn't _dream_ of... big (for the time) high-end machines like the
Apple II and Atari 8-bits, with full-size full-travel keyboards, internal
expansion slots, monitors, floppy disk drives -- even multiple ones!
It took me years, as a teenaged university student, to save up enough to
add a disk interface and a single 5.25" DS/DD 80-track drive to my
Spectrum. That cost me about ?150, and it gave me a Centronics printer
port, so I could add a Panasonic KX-P 1080 9-pin dot matrix printer --
another ?75 or so.
I still used a portable TV, though. Monitors remained out of reach and the
Spectrum didn't even have a monitor port anyway.
Before that I struggled along with ZX Microdrives. I just bought a used
one, to try to 3D print replicas of the case, one for an SD card drive, one
for a Raspberry Pi...
They were crappy things -- 100 kB of not-very-reliable storage on an
endless tape loop in a tiny (postage-stamp sized) miniaturised 8-track
cassette -- but one drives and the interface were ?80.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ZX_Microdrive
Stuff like expansion slots, disk controllers as a standard offering,
monitor and printer ports -- they were luxuries for rich people with
high-end micros.
Out of curiosity, I later bought the Sinclair ZX-80,
but coming from the
Apple, I thought the
ZX-80 was horrid and not useable.
Compared to an Apple II, it probably was, to be fair.
I later also tried the Timex Sinclair 1000.. better..
but still seemed
like a waste of time toy.
Slightly uprated version of the same machine, basically.
I guess the thing to try to imagine is that the ZX81 -- the basis of the
TS1000 -- was around a tenth of the price of the Apple II, and entirely
usable with a cassette recorder and a portable B&W TV.
In a country where people had say a quarter of the buying power of the USA,
*that* was an affordable machine. The Apple II wasn't.
The differential hasn't entirely gone, but nobody notices it or mentions it
now. Most don't know.
US petrol gasoline today: $2.80 per gallon. (?2 per 3.78 litres, or ?0.52
per litre)
https://gasprices.aaa.com/
UK petrol today: ?1.23 per litre.
http://www.petrolprices.com/
We pay 2.5 x more than you for petrol.
Much the same applies to many ordinary groceries -- bread, beer, clothing,
etc.
"Median household income in the U.S. rose to an estimated $59,055 in
January 2018"
https://seekingalpha.com/article/4152222-january-2018-median-household-inco…
"The Office for National Statistics Salary statistics show and average
earning of ?26,500"
https://www.icalculator.info/news/UK_average_earnings_2014.html
US: ?42,415 versus UK ?26,500
That's why Sinclair did so well.
Mind you, I had a monitor, and (2) disk drives on the
Apple and had had
exposure to
HP, DEC, and IBM minicomputers by the age of 16.
Always with my nose into my own business, I'd no
idea how fortunate I was
until reading
of others' experiences here.
For comparison, I now live in Czechia. Still in the EU and not one of the
poorest.
The average cost of living here in the capital is about 1/3 of what it is
in London. In the 2nd city, Brno, where I used to live, it was about 1/4 of
London.
"Wages in Czech Republic increased to 31646 CZK/Month in the fourth quarter
of 2017"
https://tradingeconomics.com/czech-republic/wages
That's a little over ?1,000 per month, ?13,000 a year.
Or $1,500 per month, $18,000 a year.
The USA has it a *lot* better off than most Americans realise.
As my former flatmate put it, when I put an iPad in his hands: "this is the
first time I have ever touched an Apple product. Nobody I know has an Apple
computer, or ever had."
Here in Prague, iPhones are common and I see MacBooks everywhere -- but of
course the city is full of tourists. By local standard, Apple kit today is
nearly as unaffordably remote as an Apple II was to me in 1982 when I got
my ZX Spectrum, second hand for ?80.
--
Liam Proven ? Profile: https://about.me/liamproven
Email: lproven at cix.co.uk ? Google Mail/Hangouts/Plus: lproven at gmail.com
Twitter/Facebook/Flickr: lproven ? Skype/LinkedIn: liamproven
UK: +44 7939-087884 ? ?R (+ WhatsApp/Telegram/Signal): +420 702 829 053
3:06 p.m.
On Thu, 26 Apr 2018 at 16:55, Zane Healy <healyzh at avanthar.com> wrote:
My first computer was supposed to be a ZX81. I worked
all Summer
painting the house to earn it. As it happens, my payment was a VIC-20
with
a tape recorder.
I guess the VIC had colour and sound, but that 22-column screen always
looked too much like one of those first-generation Atari consoles to me. I
never could get past that too-chunky text.
Nowadays, looking back, the computer I _would_ have wanted from that era
was the Acorn Atom...
The ZX Spectrum has always fascinated me, and nearly
20 years ago, I
traded a Tek cartridge with a list member for a ZX Spectrum 2+. I
still
dream of having time to get that system up and running. Even though I?ve
never run it, it?s still one of my favorite pieces in my collection.
There are two different models of +2 -- the grey +2 and the black +2A.
The +2 -- I have one myself -- is the Sinclair PCB in an Amstrad case. It
is basically 100% compatible with a real Sinclair Research 128K+.
The +2A is a cut-down Amstrad Spectrum +3, with the disk interface removed.
Amstrad promised an add-on disk interface, the "SI-1", but never made one.
Now, remarkably, there's a 3rd party one:
https://www.8bits4ever.net/product-page/sdi-1
An essential addon for any +2A! :-D
So it depends which one you have.
There are lots of resources for getting them working again -- some people
might even be on this list. There are replacement ULA chips, circuit
diagrams, ROM disassemblies, everything you could want.
This is the single most impressive Spectrum-based modification I've seen,
adding 64-column text, high density floppy drives, CP/M compatibility and a
switchable faster CPU:
https://www.secarica.ro/index.php/en/zx-zone/plus3-hardware/the-plus3s-proj…
--
Liam Proven ? Profile: https://about.me/liamproven
Email: lproven at cix.co.uk ? Google Mail/Hangouts/Plus: lproven at gmail.com
Twitter/Facebook/Flickr: lproven ? Skype/LinkedIn: liamproven
UK: +44 7939-087884 ? ?R (+ WhatsApp/Telegram/Signal): +420 702 829 053
10:26 a.m.
On 26 Apr 2018, at 13:47, Liam Proven via cctalk
<cctalk at classiccmp.org> wrote:
I think if you ask virtually any British person in their late 30s, 40s or
50s, in anything connected with IT, what their first computer was, the
answer would be a ZX 81 or a ZX Spectrum. It was the single range of
machines that drove the entire computer revolution over here, and also in
the form of a myriad clones in the Communist Bloc.
My first was a ZX80 which my Dad borrowed from my physics teacher at school. That spurred
me on to get my own ZX81 which had just come out, then the Research Machines 380Z at later
school, then the 48K ZXSpectrum. Amazing little machines for the money but I never
discovered the name of the designer until much later.
Later, imitators came along -- the Oric (6502) and
Dragon (6809) ranges,
for instance. And of course there were many machines that aspired to be
better: Memotech. Camputers Lynx, Elan Enterprise, etc. All flopped to some
degree.
You could?ve stopped after ?flopped? though the Oric went on to do very well in France and
the Dragon still has a good userbase today. Strictly speaking they all do apart from the
Lynx, but the Dragon is alive and well. The biggest Enterprise group is still in Hungary
where the unsold machines were dumped after Enterprise Computers went bust in 1986.
And that was down to Rick Dickinson, who only
discovered years later how he
had inspired whole generations of people.
Yep. RIP. I missed him doing ?an evening with?? last year at the Computer Museum in
Cambridge, naturally I thought there?d be another one.
--
adrian/witchy
Owner of Binary Dinosaurs, the UK's biggest home computer collection?
t: @binarydinosaurs f: facebook.com/binarydinosaurs
w: www.binarydinosaurs.co.uk
noon
On Thu, 26 Apr 2018 at 19:26, Adrian Graham via cctalk <
cctalk at classiccmp.org> wrote:
My first was a ZX80 which my Dad borrowed from my
physics teacher at
school. That spurred me on to get my own ZX81 which had just come
out, then
the Research Machines 380Z at later school, then the 48K ZXSpectrum.
Amazing little machines for the money but I never discovered the name of
the designer until much later.
Same here!
You could?ve stopped after ?flopped? though the Oric
went on to do very
well in France and the Dragon still has a good userbase today.
Strictly
speaking they all do apart from the Lynx, but the Dragon is alive and well.
The biggest Enterprise group is still in Hungary where the unsold machines
were dumped after Enterprise Computers went bust in 1986.
I'm in the Hungarian Enterprise owners group on FB -- machine translation
is an amazing thing -- and I still hope to own one.
The Oric did relatively well, yes -- better than the Dragon. But neither
achieved more than a _fraction_ of the success of the Sinclair range, and
as for the others -- Camputers, Memotech, Jupiter, Newbrain, even
foreigners such as Mattel, Spectravideo, Sord -- they all put together
probably sold fewer than Sinclair.
In fact, I suspect that Sinclair and Commodore together outsold every other
home micro vendor put together. And there were a _lot_.
Yep. RIP. I missed him doing ?an evening with?? last
year at the Computer
Museum in Cambridge, naturally I thought there?d be another
one.
:-(
--
Liam Proven ? Profile: https://about.me/liamproven
Email: lproven at cix.co.uk ? Google Mail/Hangouts/Plus: lproven at gmail.com
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UK: +44 7939-087884 ? ?R (+ WhatsApp/Telegram/Signal): +420 702 829 053
12:33 p.m.
Over here in the US, I remember seeing the Sinclair QL in a magazine (probably Byte?) and
thinking it looked exotic and interesting. I thought the little tape drives looked neat,
and didn?t know enough to appreciate how much better a floppy drive would have made the
system.
I have no regrets at all about getting an Amiga 1000 to take to college, and now I
appreciate even better than then just how lucky I was. But to this day, I?d still like to
play with a QL and get an idea of what it would have been like to head off to college with
a shiny new one of those. There are a few other UK computers which I?m also curious about,
since they?re not so common over here in the US.
--
Mark J. Blair <nf6x at nf6x.net>
http://www.nf6x.net
1:37 p.m.
On Thu, 26 Apr 2018 at 21:33, Mark J. Blair via cctalk <
cctalk at classiccmp.org> wrote:
Over here in the US, I remember seeing the Sinclair QL
in a magazine
(probably Byte?) and thinking it looked exotic and interesting. I
thought
the little tape drives looked neat, and didn?t know enough to appreciate
how much better a floppy drive would have made the system.
I have no regrets at all about getting an Amiga 1000
to take to college,
and now I appreciate even better than then just how lucky I was.
But to
this day, I?d still like to play with a QL and get an idea of what it would
have been like to head off to college with a shiny new one of those. There
are a few other UK computers which I?m also curious about, since they?re
not so common over here in the US.
Speaking of Byte, that reminds me -- I've put a bunch of Smalltalk-80
related material on Scribd, including Byte's August 1981 special on
Smalltalk.
https://www.scribd.com/user/38728867/Liam-Proven
The QL was a weird machine. It predated the Mac by a matter of weeks and in
crude spec terms was comparable -- 128 kB RAM, 68008 vs 68000, 2 x 100 kB
Microdrives versus 1 x 400 kB floppy. The QL did sound and colour, mind.
But Sinclair totally failed to spot that the next big thing was the GUI.
The QL didn't have one. It was an enhanced 1980s 8-bit -- with limited
colour and sound, limited storage and expansion, but a big flat memory
space (for the time), multitasking, a ROM BASIC and so on.
I tried to evaluate the relative strengths and weaknesses of the QL, the ST
and the Amiga here:
https://liam-on-linux.livejournal.com/46833.html
The Mac brought the GUI to the masses, albeit in far more limited form than
Xerox PARC had intended -- or even than the Lisa.
The Amiga added stunning multimedia to that, at a price, although still a
fraction of the Mac's.
The ST cut the Amiga's amazing abilities down to something more like the
Macs, but still offered better-than-any-8-bit graphics and sound, enough
for great games.
I looked at all of them and bought an Archimedes. :-D
FAR more CPU power than any of them, a pretty good GUI, an excellent BASIC
programming environment, and better sound and graphics than the ST, near
the Amiga's but not quite. It hit the sweet spot for me.
It was a _great_ machine, IMHO. But so was the Amiga, and so in its way was
the Mac and the ST.
The QL... not so much, I'm afraid.
But I remain intrigued by them. I am hoping to learn enough Object Pascal
that, via Ultibo, I can do a bare-metal QL emulator for the Raspberry Pi.
The QL had a very interesting, unique OS, and 2 forks of it are now FOSS.
I'd love to bring them to the Pi.
--
Liam Proven ? Profile: https://about.me/liamproven
Email: lproven at cix.co.uk ? Google Mail/Hangouts/Plus: lproven at gmail.com
Twitter/Facebook/Flickr: lproven ? Skype/LinkedIn: liamproven
UK: +44 7939-087884 ? ?R (+ WhatsApp/Telegram/Signal): +420 702 829 053
2:04 p.m.
On Thu, Apr 26, 2018 at 2:37 PM, Liam Proven via cctalk <
cctalk at classiccmp.org> wrote:
The QL was a weird machine. It predated the Mac by a
matter of weeks and in
crude spec terms was comparable -- 128 kB RAM, 68008 vs 68000, 2 x 100 kB
Microdrives versus 1 x 400 kB floppy. The QL did sound and colour, mind.
Those Microdrives were such a Cheese design.
2:13 p.m.
On Thu, Apr 26, 2018 at 3:11 PM, Fred Cisin via cctalk <
cctalk at classiccmp.org> wrote:
On Thu, 26 Apr 2018, Eric Smith via cctalk wrote:
I was referring to a different, non-comestible Cheese. What I stated about
the Microdrives was literally true, not a metaphor.
Those Microdrives were such a Cheese design.
The American Cheese Society (industry association) would probably resent
that comparison
2:29 p.m.
On 26 Apr 2018, at 22:13, Eric Smith via cctalk
<cctalk at classiccmp.org> wrote:
On Thu, Apr 26, 2018 at 3:11 PM, Fred Cisin via cctalk <
cctalk at classiccmp.org> wrote:
On Thu, 26 Apr 2018, Eric Smith via cctalk
wrote:
I was referring to a different, non-comestible Cheese. What I stated about
the Microdrives was literally true, not a metaphor. Those Microdrives were such a Cheese design.
The American Cheese Society (industry association) would probably resent
that comparison From my own Sinclair page
(http://www.binarydinosaurs.co.uk/Museum/Sinclair/index.php
<http://www.binarydinosaurs.co.uk/Museum/Sinclair/index.php>):
"Interesting, if sad, trivia: courtesy of Andrew Owen comes a sad note - Ben Cheese,
one of the QL Engineers has passed on.....a small reminder of Ben is in this paragraph:
The Microdrives whirred at different speeds too. If you
took eight,
carefully selected for tone, and hooked them up to a QL (I guess an
Interface 1 would do just as well, but never saw it) you could play tunes by
turning the appropriate motors off and on. Christmas carols were popular...
this particular silliness was cooked up by Ben Cheese, an incredibly
talented and even more incredibly nice chap who was one of the QL engineers.
He also did mildly subversive cartoons for the Sinclair in-house newsletter
(WHAM!, or What's Happening At Milton), and played saxophone. With Shakatak,
on one occasion. He went on to work at Flare with some other SInclair
engineers (Martin Brennan and John Mc? um*), who had their own Z80
Spectrumalike for a while, then did various oddities including the Atari
Jaguar <http://www.binarydinosaurs.co.uk/Museum/Atari/jaguar.php> and a disk drive
chip for Amstrad that fully explored various
out-of-spec conditions in the ASIC process used to fab it."
(*John Mathieson)
--
adrian/witchy
Owner of Binary Dinosaurs, the UK's biggest home computer collection?
t: @binarydinosaurs f: facebook.com/binarydinosaurs
w: www.binarydinosaurs.co.uk
1:41 p.m.
My first computer was a Timex 2068 just before Timex got out of computers. I
had seen advertisements for the 1000 model but it looked like junk at the
time (no real keyboard, you needed to have the 16K RAM cart to do anything).
Still the 1000 was CHEAP.
When I vacationed in Greece for a summer between HS and college in the 80's
I remember seeing all the advertisements for the Sinclair models with the
wafer drives and thought they were cool looking. I think I even seen a few
real models at the airport shops.
Still using anything other then a disk drive was a pain and that device
seemed too expensive for Europe at that time.
Even after I promptly purchased a used C64 from a friend I still looked at
the mailing lists for Timex/Sinclair products sold out of NYC shops. They
had all kinds of add-ons and some software to make the units workable but
most of it was for the 1000 model which must have sold quite a few units
before being discontinued compared to my 2068.
-----Original Message-----
From: Mark J. Blair via cctalk
Sent: Thursday, April 26, 2018 3:33 PM
To: General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts
Subject: Re: Rick Dickinson, ZX Spectrum designer, RIP
Over here in the US, I remember seeing the Sinclair QL in a magazine
(probably Byte?) and thinking it looked exotic and interesting. I thought
the little tape drives looked neat, and didn?t know enough to appreciate how
much better a floppy drive would have made the system.
I have no regrets at all about getting an Amiga 1000 to take to college, and
now I appreciate even better than then just how lucky I was. But to this
day, I?d still like to play with a QL and get an idea of what it would have
been like to head off to college with a shiny new one of those. There are a
few other UK computers which I?m also curious about, since they?re not so
common over here in the US.
--
Mark J. Blair <nf6x at nf6x.net>
http://www.nf6x.net
---
This email has been checked for viruses by Avast antivirus software.
https://www.avast.com/antivirus
2:11 p.m.
On Thu, 26 Apr 2018 at 22:41, TeoZ via cctalk <cctalk at classiccmp.org> wrote:
My first computer was a Timex 2068 just before Timex
got out of
computers. I
had seen advertisements for the 1000 model but it
looked like junk at the
time (no real keyboard, you needed to have the 16K RAM cart to do
anything).
Still the 1000 was CHEAP.
It was, but very limited. The UK model had 1 kB of RAM, no sound, no
graphics, no colour, 32*20 text, and a limited 8 kB ROM BASIC. Expansion at
the time was limited to a tiny cash-register-style printer and a 16 kB RAM
expansion, and that was it.
The Spectrum had 48 kB RAM, a slightly more flexible 16 kB BASIC with
graphics and sound commands, 256*192 graphics in 16 colours (kinda), and
could drive disk drives, printers, joysticks, modems, whatever you could
want.
For me, more interested in programming than games, it was better than a C64
-- the 64 was expensive in the UK, its disk drive slow and also expensive,
and its BASIC was rubbish. Better keyboard, though, and yes, much better
sound and graphics.
The big limitation of the Spectrum was the piezo beeper sound and the
limited graphics. The TS2068 fixed both: it added a AY-3-8910 sound chip, 2
more screen modes (512*192 and 256*192 with 32*192 colour resolution
instead of the Spectrum's 32*22) -- and the ROM could be paged out to run
CP/M.
It's a tragedy that Sinclar never adopted those enhancements for the
Spectrum 128... or that Amstrad didn't merge the Spectrum and CPC lines
when it bought the Sinclair product line.
When I vacationed in Greece for a summer between HS
and college in the
80's
I remember seeing all the advertisements for the
Sinclair models with the
wafer drives and thought they were cool looking. I think I even seen a few
real models at the airport shops.
Yep, probably.
But I'm told the Spectrum never made a profit for Sinclair Research,
whereas the ZX81 was very lucrative for them.
Still using anything other then a disk drive was a
pain
True.
and that device
seemed too expensive for Europe at that time.
Yep. :-(
Even after I promptly purchased a used C64 from a
friend I still looked at
the mailing lists for Timex/Sinclair products sold out of NYC shops. They
had all kinds of add-ons and some software to make the units workable but
most of it was for the 1000 model which must have sold quite a few units
before being discontinued compared to my 2068.
Apparently so!
--
Liam Proven ? Profile: https://about.me/liamproven
Email: lproven at cix.co.uk ? Google Mail/Hangouts/Plus: lproven at gmail.com
Twitter/Facebook/Flickr: lproven ? Skype/LinkedIn: liamproven
UK: +44 7939-087884 ? ?R (+ WhatsApp/Telegram/Signal): +420 702 829 053
10:54 a.m.
On Apr 26, 2018, at 7:47 AM, Liam Proven via cctalk
<cctalk at classiccmp.org> wrote:
I know this is a rather USA-centric list, so probably most of you started
off with things like the Apple II, the first sub-$1000 home computer. But
in Britain and Europe back then, we were a lot poorer, and $1000 was an
impossibly large amount of money -- many months of pay in a good job.
I think you'd find a few people this side of the pond whose first computer was a Timex
Sinclair 1000 (our equivalent of the ZX81). I know that was true in our household... My
dad purchased one brand-new at Albertson's (a supermarket chain in the southeast US)
for $100. We were enamored with it instantly despite its obvious drawbacks and that
eventually led to the purchase of a more capable machine, the TI 99/4a. Unfortunately much
to my dads chagrin that happening just a few months before its drastic price cut and
eventual discontinuation.
RIP. Definitely a very influential machine worldwide and an effort worth feeling proud of.
3:07 p.m.
On Thu, 26 Apr 2018 at 19:54, Geoff Oltmans <oltmansg at gmail.com> wrote:
I think you'd find a few people this side of the
pond whose first
computer was a Timex Sinclair 1000 (our equivalent of the ZX81). I
know
that was true in our household... My dad purchased one brand-new at
Albertson's (a supermarket chain in the southeast US) for $100. We were
enamored with it instantly despite its obvious drawbacks
:-) I'm pleased to hear this.
and that eventually led to the purchase of a more
capable machine, the TI
99/4a. Unfortunately much to my dads chagrin that happening
just a few
months before its drastic price cut and eventual discontinuation.
Now there was a machine that suffered an ill-deserved fate. Mind you, if TI
hadn't crippled it as they did, maybe it could have competed more
effectively with the CBM machines without the vicious price drops.
RIP. Definitely a very influential machine worldwide
and an effort worth
feeling proud of.
Yes indeed.
--
Liam Proven ? Profile: https://about.me/liamproven
Email: lproven at cix.co.uk ? Google Mail/Hangouts/Plus: lproven at gmail.com
Twitter/Facebook/Flickr: lproven ? Skype/LinkedIn: liamproven
UK: +44 7939-087884 ? ?R (+ WhatsApp/Telegram/Signal): +420 702 829 053
2:03 p.m.
On Thu, 26 Apr 2018, Liam Proven via cctalk wrote:
A lengthy interview with the later great Rick
Dickinson, product designer
of basically every Sinclair computer, who sadly died of cancer on Tuesday.
https://medium.com/@ghalfacree/an-interview-with-rick-dickinson-3fea60537338
He not only did the ZX 80, ZX 81, ZX Spectrum and the QL, but also the Z88,
the Spectrum Next and others -- along with a lot of other stuff.
I know this is a rather USA-centric list, so probably most of you started
off with things like the Apple II, the first sub-$1000 home computer.
Neither "first", nor "sub-$1000"
Apple][ was $1298, and discounts were very rare.
TRS-80 at $599 was less than half the price.
Pet at $795 was barely more than half the price.
Two price factors need to be considered:
MSRP V street price
entry price (VERY significant for US) V price by the time it was fully
equipped.
By connecting a CCTV monitor, I got my TRS80 new for $399.
"First" of course, involves date of announcement, date of working
prototype, date of release (and order acceptance), date of first
deliveries, date of first availability without pre-order.
Apple, TRS80, PET overlapped on all of those, and should reasonably be
considered to be simultaneous.
But in Britain and Europe back then, we were a lot
poorer, and $1000 was
an impossibly large amount of money -- many months of pay in a good job.
Not all americans are nor were idly wealthy.
The day before I bought my TRS80 was a typical 14 hour work day, with rice
and beans for dinner.
I had to choose between buying not skimping on groceries V a Mini-Cooper-S
(needed a little work) V Honda 600 V TRS80. Did I make the right choice?
But, exchange rate in those days was about 2:1!
You dealt with extreme markups, with many machines selling there for the
same number of pounds as their dollar price in USA!
~$500 GBP for TRS80, >1000 GBP for Apple
are twice what the MSRP should have been.
In the UK, the revolution was the first sub-?100 home
computer, the ZX 81.
Timex/Sinclair was $100, in keeping with the same industry specific
exchange rate that was gouging y'all.
It was amazing how much they accomplished with so little.
It had a picture of a keyboard on top, (as a suggested expansion?)
I got my assistant ("VP Of Marketing") a Timex.
Later, I bought a used Yamaha MSX (from Mitchell Waite) for him.
Then he bought a Mindset.
Here, also, Sinclair was a popular first computer for people who didn't
want to spend a significant part of their income for a computer, (and for
kids without wealthy parents)
Some Macs have been made into aquariums.
PCs can have individual parts upgraded for decades.
But, the Sinclair needed no work to be repurposed as an elegant doorstop.
--
Grumpy Ol' Fred cisin at xenosoft.com
2:11 p.m.
On Thu, Apr 26, 2018 at 3:03 PM, Fred Cisin via cctalk <
cctalk at classiccmp.org> wrote:
The Apple II at $1298 didn't include a monitor, either, so it was actually
closer to $1500 when compared to the $599 TRS-80 or $795 PET. One could
argue that the buyer did get significant additional value with the Apple II
in some regards, but if you were on a tight budget, the Apple II wasn't the
right machine.
By the US govt's figures, $1298 back then is equivalent to $5310 today.
Even if it was mostly better than the competition, how many of us would be
able to buy a $5300 computer today?
Apple][ was $1298, and discounts were very rare.
TRS-80 at $599 was less than half the price.
Pet at $795 was barely more than half the price.
By connecting a CCTV monitor, I got my TRS80 new for $399.
2:15 p.m.
On Thu, 26 Apr 2018 at 23:04, Fred Cisin via cctalk <cctalk at classiccmp.org>
wrote:
Neither "first", nor "sub-$1000"
Apple][ was $1298, and discounts were very rare.
TRS-80 at $599 was less than half the price.
Pet at $795 was barely more than half the price.
The TRS-80 line barely sold over here, so I tend to forget them.
But perhaps I have incorrectly remembered what the Apple II was marketed as.
Not all americans are nor were idly wealthy.
The day before I bought my TRS80 was a typical 14 hour work day, with rice
and beans for dinner.
I had to choose between buying not skimping on groceries V a Mini-Cooper-S
(needed a little work) V Honda 600 V TRS80. Did I make the right choice?
I'd go for a bike over a car any day. Well, when I was young, anyway. Now,
I'm getting kinda stiff and creaky... Because of all the bike crashes and
the scar tissue.
But, exchange rate in those days was about 2:1!
You dealt with extreme markups, with many machines selling there for the
same number of pounds as their dollar price in USA!
~$500 GBP for TRS80, >1000 GBP for Apple
are twice what the MSRP should have been.
Oh yes.
There was a Mac dealer who undercut Apple UK by literally sending an
employee to New York, walk on fare, who bought the Mac of your choice at
retail, flew back with it, and delivered it to you.
Not kidding.
Timex/Sinclair was $100, in keeping with the same
industry specific
exchange rate that was gouging y'all.
It was amazing how much they accomplished with so little.
Yep.
It had a picture of a keyboard on top, (as a suggested
expansion?)
Mean!
It worked. Not well, but it worked. No worse than an Atari 400 keyboard --
the same design.
I got my assistant ("VP Of Marketing") a
Timex.
:-)
Later, I bought a used Yamaha MSX (from Mitchell
Waite) for him.
Then he bought a Mindset.
I never got into MSX. They ended up very impressive by the MSX2+ era.
Mindset?
Here, also, Sinclair was a popular first computer for
people who didn't
want to spend a significant part of their income for a computer, (and for
kids without wealthy parents)
Conceded.
Some Macs have been made into aquariums.
PCs can have individual parts upgraded for decades.
But, the Sinclair needed no work to be repurposed as an elegant doorstop.
Harsh, but not new...
--
Liam Proven ? Profile: https://about.me/liamproven
Email: lproven at cix.co.uk ? Google Mail/Hangouts/Plus: lproven at gmail.com
Twitter/Facebook/Flickr: lproven ? Skype/LinkedIn: liamproven
UK: +44 7939-087884 ? ?R (+ WhatsApp/Telegram/Signal): +420 702 829 053
2:30 p.m.
On Thu, Apr 26, 2018 at 4:15 PM, Liam Proven via cctalk <
cctalk at classiccmp.org> wrote:
On Thu, 26 Apr 2018 at 23:04, Fred Cisin via cctalk
<cctalk at classiccmp.org
wrote:
I'd go for a bike over a car any day. Well, when I was young, anyway. Now,
I'm getting kinda stiff and creaky... Because of all the bike crashes and
the scar tissue.
I don't know what it's like around your home, but most places in the US
aren't terribly bike friendly. Since the advent of texting and smart phones
even less so. Still, I keep thinking I should trade my one way 4 mile car
commute for a bike ride... my fear of being struck while riding on a short
half mile long section of limited sight distance hilly roads between home
and work gives me some pause. We are starting to get some bike lanes and
more bike friendly roadways around here though (as well as some paved
greenways).
I did in my younger days bike extensively around town, not so much anymore
since I've got kids and a wife that count on me. :)
3:11 p.m.
On Thu, 26 Apr 2018 at 23:30, Geoffrey Oltmans <oltmansg at gmail.com> wrote:
I don't know what it's like around your home,
but most places in the US
aren't terribly bike friendly. Since the advent of
texting and smart phones
even less so. Still, I keep thinking I should trade my one way 4 mile car
commute for a bike ride... my fear of being struck while riding on a short
half mile long section of limited sight distance hilly roads between home
and work gives me some pause. We are starting to get some bike lanes and
more bike friendly roadways around here though (as well as some paved
greenways).
Well, since Fred stipulated a Honda 600, I took him to mean a motorbike.
But I rarely ride those now, whereas I cycle a lot.
I live in central Prague, Czechia, which is _extremely_ bike-unfriendly.
It's even worse than London. But I do the 4 miles to work, and 4 miles
back, most days in the summer.
I did in my younger days bike extensively around town,
not so much
anymore since I've got kids and a wife that count on me. :)
No wife, although working on it, no kids, but still... if I didn't bike,
I'd be even less fit and so less likely to stick around long.
I've been in 1 bad bicycle crash (compound comminuted Colley fracture right
ulna & radius), 1 bad motorcycle crash (multiple breaks to left ankle,
tibia, fibula, femur and hip, fracture to right shoulder, dislocated left
shoulder, whiplash), but I still ride both when I can.
--
Liam Proven ? Profile: https://about.me/liamproven
Email: lproven at cix.co.uk ? Google Mail/Hangouts/Plus: lproven at gmail.com
Twitter/Facebook/Flickr: lproven ? Skype/LinkedIn: liamproven
UK: +44 7939-087884 ? ?R (+ WhatsApp/Telegram/Signal): +420 702 829 053
3:48 p.m.
> I had to choose between buying not skimping on
groceries V a Mini-Cooper-S
> (needed a little work) V Honda 600 V TRS80. Did I make the right choice?
On Thu, 26 Apr 2018, Liam Proven wrote:
I'd go for a bike over a car any day. Well, when I
was young, anyway. Now,
I'm getting kinda stiff and creaky... Because of all the bike crashes and
the scar tissue.
The Honda 600 was NOT a bike. Well, mostly not. After demise of the mid
1960s Honda S600/S800 ("poor-man's-Ferrari" design exercise that got out
of hand and went into production), Honda engineers took a 360CC parallel
twin, detuned it and upped it to 600cc, added a differential, and a
reverse (tacked on to the outside of the case), and put it in a car body
that resembled the Mini. AN600 was the first Hondas officially imported
into USA (1970). A later Z600 had a "sportier" body, and one was cut in
half in the down-under movie "Malcolm"
Later, I
bought a used Yamaha MSX (from Mitchell Waite) for him.
I never got into MSX. They
ended up very impressive by the MSX2+ era. Then he bought
a Mindset.
Mindset?
11:52 p.m.
On Fri, 27 Apr 2018 at 00:48, Fred Cisin via cctalk <cctalk at classiccmp.org>
wrote:
*Googles*
Nifty but even in 1984 I think I could have told you that that was a
heavily-compromised design...
--
Liam Proven ? Profile: https://about.me/liamproven
Email: lproven at cix.co.uk ? Google Mail/Hangouts/Plus: lproven at gmail.com
Twitter/Facebook/Flickr: lproven ? Skype/LinkedIn: liamproven
UK: +44 7939-087884 ? ?R (+ WhatsApp/Telegram/Signal): +420 702 829 053
The Honda 600 was NOT a bike. Well, mostly not. After
demise of the mid
1960s Honda S600/S800 ("poor-man's-Ferrari" design exercise that got out
of hand and went into production), Honda engineers took a 360CC parallel
twin, detuned it and upped it to 600cc, added a differential, and a
reverse (tacked on to the outside of the case), and put it in a car body
that resembled the Mini. AN600 was the first Hondas officially imported
into USA (1970). A later Z600 had a "sportier" body, and one was cut in
half in the down-under movie "Malcolm"
Never heard of any of them. I guess they were not sold outside North
America and Japan.
Kei cars are extremely rare in Europe as there is no financial advantage or
incentive to own them, and without that, they're cramped and overpowered.
Oddly, the 600cc "supersport" motorcycle category is huge, in contract,
because insurance is much cheaper for machines of 600cc or less.
But I know little of cars. Evil tin boxes, to me as a bicyclist and
motorcyclist, generally driven by homicidal morons.
He was into music, and wanted MIDI, etc.
Then the Atari ST would have been a better bet, no? Although of course it
came some years later than MSX.
And, of course, he never mastered conversion of the
Ensoniq Mirage disks.
(each track had 1024 byte sectors numbered 0 through 4, and a 512 byte
sector #5)
O_o
Mindset?
Obscure 80186 MS-DOS machine with interesting graphics innovations and no
market. Designed by es-Atari engineers. 
27 Apr
27 Apr
8:42 a.m.
New subject: Kei cars and motorcycles (Was: Rick Dickinson, ZX Spectrum designer, RIP)
On 4/26/18 11:52 PM, Liam Proven via cctalk wrote:
On Fri, 27 Apr 2018 at 00:48, Fred Cisin via cctalk
<cctalk at classiccmp.org>
wrote:
The Z600 was sold on the Continent. Per Wikipedia, about a thousand were
sold.
The Honda 600 was NOT a bike. Well, mostly not.
After demise of the mid
1960s Honda S600/S800 ("poor-man's-Ferrari" design exercise that got out
of hand and went into production), Honda engineers took a 360CC parallel
twin, detuned it and upped it to 600cc, added a differential, and a
reverse (tacked on to the outside of the case), and put it in a car body
that resembled the Mini. AN600 was the first Hondas officially imported
into USA (1970). A later Z600 had a "sportier" body, and one was cut in
half in the down-under movie "Malcolm"
Never heard of any of them. I
guess they were not sold outside North
America and Japan.
Kei cars are extremely rare in Europe as there is no financial advantage or
incentive to own them, and without that, they're cramped and overpowered.
That mostly sums it up, but there are some kei cars that interest
enthusiasts, such as the Honda Beat and certain versions of the Suzuki
Alto. A local shop here has three Mazda/Autozam AZ-1s and I am very
tempted to get one.
Oddly, the 600cc "supersport" motorcycle category is huge, in contract,
because insurance is much cheaper for machines of 600cc or less.
But I know little of cars. Evil tin boxes, to me as a bicyclist and
motorcyclist, generally driven by homicidal morons.
Given the other people on the roads around here, I will take the
additional protection provided by my evil tin box. I won't ride my
motorcycle in the city unless it is to the dealer for service. Too many
very close calls. Then again, I saw a motorcyclist almost take out a
pedestrian (in a crosswalk, with the light) yesterday.
alan
P.S. To get this kinda back on topic, yesterday I managed to take the
two SPARCstation 20s that I got from Pete's and make one working
dual-processor SS20. I also passed on one of the SS5s to its new owner.
The person who originally spoke up for the SS20 has not responded to
subsequent e-mail, so it may be available. I will also have a SS1 and
SS2 available, but I need to order more IDPROMs before I can finish
refurb'ing them.
1:55 p.m.
New subject: SPARCstation rescue giveaway (Was: Kei cars and motorcycles (Was: Rick Dickinson, ZX Spectrum designer, RIP))
I wrote:
... yesterday I managed to take the two SPARCstation
20s that I gotfrom
Pete's and make one working dual-processor SS20. I alsopassed on one of
the SS5s to its new owner. The person who originally spoke up for the
SS20 has not responded to subsequent e-mail, so it may be available. I
will also have a SS1 and SS2 available, but I need to order more IDPROMs
before I can finish refurb'ing them.
An update - The person who spoke up for a SS20 responded this morning and
the one that I put together from the two broken ones from Pete's will soon
be on its way to its new home.
What I have left to give away are:
- SPARCstation 20 chassis. No top cover. The front left corner plastic
?cover is missing and the front right plastic cover has broken tabs and
?won't stay on. It has a working power supply and a motherboard that the
?firmware reports "replace motherboard" during diagnostics. It has no
?MBus (processor) or SBus cards nor any memory. It has the HDD backplane,
?cabling for the HDD and optical drive, and the drive cooling fan.
- SPARCstation 2. Complete and boots into SunOS 4. It has 48M memory, a
?Sun207 (nominal 207M) HDD, and a 3.5" floppy drive. It also has an extra
?SCSI SBus card (501-1759) and a GX CG6 frame buffer, dual-slot SBus card
?(501-1645). It has a bad IDPROM and the case needs to be cleaned. It has
?its hostname "smoked" written all over it; I don't know if there is a
?story that goes with that.
- SPARCstation 1. Chassis is intact. It has a bad IDPROM; aside from that
?it passes onboard diagnostics. It has 12M memory, no HDD now, and a 3.5"
?floppy drive. It has no SBus cards. Aside from the IDPROM, it doesn't
?have any issues (but I haven't run an OS on it yet). Like the SS2, it
?needs a bath. A small portion of the plastic cover over the rear of the
?case is broken off.
If you want one of these, the systems themselves are free. I just want
shipping costs and actual parts expenses (i.e., IDPROMs, HDDs, etc.). The
22x22x6 box that they fit in costs $15 (when bought one-at-a-time). I
haven't weighed a SS1/2, but the boxed SS20 weighed 30 lbs. The ship-from
zip is 98110. If you are local to Puget Sound, I will deliver.
What are these "actual parts expenses"? IDPROMs are around $25 on Mouser.
SCSI HDDs start around $70 shipped on eBay and SCSI2SD are $60 plus
shipping to me plus the SD price. Given the price of 25 year old HDDs with
a stated service life of 5 years (according to one spec sheet that I read),
SCSI2SD looks pretty attractive.
If no one chimes in NOW and says that he wants one to refurb himself, I
will start refurb'ing the SS1 and 2.
alan
3:03 p.m.
New subject: SPARCstation rescue giveaway (Was: Kei cars and motorcycles (Was: Rick Dickinson, ZX Spectrum designer, RIP))
On Fri, Apr 27, 2018 at 1:55 PM, Alan Perry via cctalk
<cctalk at classiccmp.org> wrote:
- SPARCstation 1. Chassis is intact. It has a bad IDPROM; aside from that
it passes onboard diagnostics. It has 12M memory, no HDD now, and a 3.5"
floppy drive. It has no SBus cards. Aside from the IDPROM, it doesn't
have any issues (but I haven't run an OS on it yet). Like the SS2, it
needs a bath. A small portion of the plastic cover over the rear of the
case is broken off.
What are these "actual parts expenses"? IDPROMs are around $25 on Mouser.
SCSI HDDs start around $70 shipped on eBay and SCSI2SD are $60 plus
shipping to me plus the SD price. Given the price of 25 year old HDDs with
a stated service life of 5 years (according to one spec sheet that I read),
SCSI2SD looks pretty attractive.
When you say IDPROM, is that a Dallas built-in battery NVRAM type of
thing? I have an SS1 with a dead NVRAM thing. Are the currently
available versions of those new at Mouser fully compatible? Those are
one of those things that the new versions aren't always fully
compatible with the old versions for some systems, even though they
are supposed to be.
My SS1 is also in the Seattle area. If there is much demand for those
it's probably one of those systems I'll never get around to doing
anything with it myself. I also have a 4/110. Those seem to be a lot
less common, and maybe more collectible.
3:15 p.m.
New subject: SPARCstation rescue giveaway (Was: Kei cars and motorcycles (Was: Rick Dickinson, ZX Spectrum designer, RIP))
Don't get the new MK48T02/MK48T08s from Mouser et al, they're not fully
compatible. They will retain NVRAM but the clock part is different and
you'll get an error on that (system won't autoboot). Rebuild your old
NVRAM! I made up some little boards to make the repair cleaner and faster
to do (I had about 50 NVRAMs to repair):
http://www.glitchwrks.com/2017/08/01/gw-48t02-1
There are other guides for tacking on a coin cell holder without cutting
off the entire top encapsulation, but if you do that, it may not fit under
SBus cards if you're doing it on a system that puts SBus slots over the
NVRAM.
Thanks,
Jonathan
On Fri, Apr 27, 2018 at 6:03 PM, Glen Slick via cctalk <
cctalk at classiccmp.org> wrote:
On Fri, Apr 27, 2018 at 1:55 PM, Alan Perry via
cctalk
<cctalk at classiccmp.org> wrote:
- SPARCstation 1. Chassis is intact. It has a bad IDPROM; aside from that
it passes onboard diagnostics. It has 12M memory, no HDD now, and a 3.5"
floppy drive. It has no SBus cards. Aside from the IDPROM, it doesn't
have any issues (but I haven't run an OS on it yet). Like the SS2, it
needs a bath. A small portion of the plastic cover over the rear of the
case is broken off.
What are these "actual parts expenses"? IDPROMs are around $25 on Mouser.
SCSI HDDs start around $70 shipped on eBay and SCSI2SD are $60 plus
shipping to me plus the SD price. Given the price of 25 year old HDDs
with
a stated service life of 5 years (according to
one spec sheet that I
read),
SCSI2SD looks pretty attractive.
When you say IDPROM, is that a Dallas built-in battery NVRAM type of
thing? I have an SS1 with a dead NVRAM thing. Are the currently
available versions of those new at Mouser fully compatible? Those are
one of those things that the new versions aren't always fully
compatible with the old versions for some systems, even though they
are supposed to be.
My SS1 is also in the Seattle area. If there is much demand for those
it's probably one of those systems I'll never get around to doing
anything with it myself. I also have a 4/110. Those seem to be a lot
less common, and maybe more collectible.
3:18 p.m.
New subject: SPARCstation rescue giveaway (Was: Kei cars and motorcycles (Was: Rick Dickinson, ZX Spectrum designer, RIP))
Tip on replacement hard drives: you can use a SCA drive with an adapter
inside some Sun boxes, or my personal favorite, a Sun "UniDisk" enclosure
with a SCA drive inside. SCA drives are really cheap, even for big ones
(they go up to 300 GB), and you can still get some of the later production
drives with 0 hours on them. You'll usually need to create a partition less
than 1 GB within the first 1 GB of the drive, or your Sun won't be able to
boot it. Larger partitions after that are OK.
Thanks,
Jonathan
On Fri, Apr 27, 2018 at 6:15 PM, systems_glitch <systems.glitch at gmail.com>
wrote:
Don't get the new MK48T02/MK48T08s from Mouser et
al, they're not fully
compatible. They will retain NVRAM but the clock part is different and
you'll get an error on that (system won't autoboot). Rebuild your old
NVRAM! I made up some little boards to make the repair cleaner and faster
to do (I had about 50 NVRAMs to repair):
http://www.glitchwrks.com/2017/08/01/gw-48t02-1
There are other guides for tacking on a coin cell holder without cutting
off the entire top encapsulation, but if you do that, it may not fit under
SBus cards if you're doing it on a system that puts SBus slots over the
NVRAM.
Thanks,
Jonathan
On Fri, Apr 27, 2018 at 6:03 PM, Glen Slick via cctalk <
cctalk at classiccmp.org> wrote:
On Fri, Apr 27, 2018 at 1:55 PM, Alan Perry via
cctalk
<cctalk at classiccmp.org> wrote:
- SPARCstation 1. Chassis is intact. It has a bad IDPROM; aside from
that
it passes onboard diagnostics. It has 12M
memory, no HDD now, and a
3.5"
floppy drive. It has no SBus cards. Aside from
the IDPROM, it doesn't
have any issues (but I haven't run an OS on it yet). Like the SS2, it
needs a bath. A small portion of the plastic cover over the rear of the
case is broken off.
What are these "actual parts expenses"? IDPROMs are around $25 on
Mouser.
SCSI HDDs start around $70 shipped on eBay and
SCSI2SD are $60 plus
shipping to me plus the SD price. Given the price of 25 year old HDDs
with
a stated service life of 5 years (according to
one spec sheet that I
read),
SCSI2SD looks pretty attractive.
When you say IDPROM, is that a Dallas built-in battery NVRAM type of
thing? I have an SS1 with a dead NVRAM thing. Are the currently
available versions of those new at Mouser fully compatible? Those are
one of those things that the new versions aren't always fully
compatible with the old versions for some systems, even though they
are supposed to be.
My SS1 is also in the Seattle area. If there is much demand for those
it's probably one of those systems I'll never get around to doing
anything with it myself. I also have a 4/110. Those seem to be a lot
less common, and maybe more collectible.
3:28 p.m.
New subject: SPARCstation rescue giveaway (Was: Kei cars and motorcycles (Was: Rick Dickinson, ZX Spectrum designer, RIP))
The ones from Mouser work well enough in every system that I have used
them in. I still get the IDPROM corrupt message on boot on some systems,
but it holds the MAC and the systems boot without intervention.
I tried to repair a few and botched most of them. I know that I should
be using the GlitchWorks stuff, but it has been easier to just buy
something that I can plug in.
alan
On 4/27/18 3:15 PM, systems_glitch via cctalk wrote:
Don't get the new MK48T02/MK48T08s from Mouser et
al, they're not fully
compatible. They will retain NVRAM but the clock part is different and
you'll get an error on that (system won't autoboot). Rebuild your old
NVRAM! I made up some little boards to make the repair cleaner and faster
to do (I had about 50 NVRAMs to repair):
http://www.glitchwrks.com/2017/08/01/gw-48t02-1
There are other guides for tacking on a coin cell holder without cutting
off the entire top encapsulation, but if you do that, it may not fit under
SBus cards if you're doing it on a system that puts SBus slots over the
NVRAM.
Thanks,
Jonathan
On Fri, Apr 27, 2018 at 6:03 PM, Glen Slick via cctalk <
cctalk at classiccmp.org> wrote:
> On Fri, Apr 27, 2018 at 1:55 PM, Alan Perry via cctalk
> <cctalk at classiccmp.org> wrote:
>> - SPARCstation 1. Chassis is intact. It has a bad IDPROM; aside from that
>> it passes onboard diagnostics. It has 12M memory, no HDD now, and a 3.5"
>> floppy drive. It has no SBus cards. Aside from the IDPROM, it doesn't
>> have any issues (but I haven't run an OS on it yet). Like the SS2, it
>> needs a bath. A small portion of the plastic cover over the rear of the
>> case is broken off.
>>
>> What are these "actual parts expenses"? IDPROMs are around $25 on
Mouser.
>> SCSI HDDs start around $70 shipped on eBay and SCSI2SD are $60 plus
>> shipping to me plus the SD price. Given the price of 25 year old HDDs
> with
>> a stated service life of 5 years (according to one spec sheet that I
> read),
>> SCSI2SD looks pretty attractive.
>>
> When you say IDPROM, is that a Dallas built-in battery NVRAM type of
> thing? I have an SS1 with a dead NVRAM thing. Are the currently
> available versions of those new at Mouser fully compatible? Those are
> one of those things that the new versions aren't always fully
> compatible with the old versions for some systems, even though they
> are supposed to be.
>
> My SS1 is also in the Seattle area. If there is much demand for those
> it's probably one of those systems I'll never get around to doing
> anything with it myself. I also have a 4/110. Those seem to be a lot
> less common, and maybe more collectible.
>
3:33 p.m.
New subject: SPARCstation rescue giveaway (Was: Kei cars and motorcycles (Was: Rick Dickinson, ZX Spectrum designer, RIP))
You can always send me the dead modules and I'll rebuild them (GlitchWorks
== me, my wife sometimes helps with assembly). Whatever you do, don't throw
out the dead NVRAMs -- I'll buy them or pay for you to ship them or
whatever, they're not making more and they're the only solution that's 100%
compatible.
Yeah, the "still works but pukes errors" is the typical symptom of the
newer, slightly incompatible 48T02s in Sun machines. I don't recall if mine
kept accurate time with the newer modules.
Thanks,
Jonathan
On Fri, Apr 27, 2018 at 6:28 PM, Alan Perry via cctalk <
cctalk at classiccmp.org> wrote:
The ones from Mouser work well enough in every system
that I have used
them in. I still get the IDPROM corrupt message on boot on some systems,
but it holds the MAC and the systems boot without intervention.
I tried to repair a few and botched most of them. I know that I should be
using the GlitchWorks stuff, but it has been easier to just buy something
that I can plug in.
alan
On 4/27/18 3:15 PM, systems_glitch via cctalk wrote:
Don't get the new MK48T02/MK48T08s from
Mouser et al, they're not fully
compatible. They will retain NVRAM but the clock part is different and
you'll get an error on that (system won't autoboot). Rebuild your old
NVRAM! I made up some little boards to make the repair cleaner and faster
to do (I had about 50 NVRAMs to repair):
http://www.glitchwrks.com/2017/08/01/gw-48t02-1
There are other guides for tacking on a coin cell holder without cutting
off the entire top encapsulation, but if you do that, it may not fit under
SBus cards if you're doing it on a system that puts SBus slots over the
NVRAM.
Thanks,
Jonathan
On Fri, Apr 27, 2018 at 6:03 PM, Glen Slick via cctalk <
cctalk at classiccmp.org> wrote:
On Fri, Apr 27, 2018 at 1:55 PM, Alan Perry via cctalk
> <cctalk at classiccmp.org> wrote:
>
>> - SPARCstation 1. Chassis is intact. It has a bad IDPROM; aside from
>> that
>> it passes onboard diagnostics. It has 12M memory, no HDD now, and a
>> 3.5"
>> floppy drive. It has no SBus cards. Aside from the IDPROM, it doesn't
>> have any issues (but I haven't run an OS on it yet). Like the SS2, it
>> needs a bath. A small portion of the plastic cover over the rear of
>> the
>> case is broken off.
>>
>> What are these "actual parts expenses"? IDPROMs are around $25 on
>> Mouser.
>> SCSI HDDs start around $70 shipped on eBay and SCSI2SD are $60 plus
>> shipping to me plus the SD price. Given the price of 25 year old HDDs
>>
> with
>
>> a stated service life of 5 years (according to one spec sheet that I
>>
> read),
>
>> SCSI2SD looks pretty attractive.
>>
>> When you say IDPROM, is that a Dallas built-in battery NVRAM type of
> thing? I have an SS1 with a dead NVRAM thing. Are the currently
> available versions of those new at Mouser fully compatible? Those are
> one of those things that the new versions aren't always fully
> compatible with the old versions for some systems, even though they
> are supposed to be.
>
> My SS1 is also in the Seattle area. If there is much demand for those
> it's probably one of those systems I'll never get around to doing
> anything with it myself. I also have a 4/110. Those seem to be a lot
> less common, and maybe more collectible.
>
>
3:40 p.m.
New subject: SPARCstation rescue giveaway (Was: Kei cars and motorcycles (Was: Rick Dickinson, ZX Spectrum designer, RIP))
I keep them all. Not counting the bad ones in the SS1 and 2, I have 7.
I can send them to you. I don't mind pick up the shipping costs for
something small like that. But the $70 that is it going to cost to ship
the SS20 to its new home is another matter.
alan
On 4/27/18 3:33 PM, systems_glitch wrote:
You can always send me the dead modules and I'll
rebuild them
(GlitchWorks == me, my wife sometimes helps with assembly). Whatever
you do, don't throw out the dead NVRAMs -- I'll buy them or pay for
you to ship them or whatever, they're not making more and they're the
only solution that's 100% compatible.
Yeah, the "still works but pukes errors" is the typical symptom of the
newer, slightly incompatible 48T02s in Sun machines. I don't recall if
mine kept accurate time with the newer modules.
Thanks,
Jonathan
On Fri, Apr 27, 2018 at 6:28 PM, Alan Perry via cctalk
<cctalk at classiccmp.org <mailto:cctalk at classiccmp.org>> wrote:
The ones from Mouser work well enough in every system that I have
used them in. I still get the IDPROM corrupt message on boot on
some systems, but it holds the MAC and the systems boot without
intervention.
I tried to repair a few and botched most of them. I know that I
should be using the GlitchWorks stuff, but it has been easier to
just buy something that I can plug in.
alan
On 4/27/18 3:15 PM, systems_glitch via cctalk wrote:
Don't get the new MK48T02/MK48T08s from Mouser et al, they're
not fully
compatible. They will retain NVRAM but the clock part is
different and
you'll get an error on that (system won't autoboot). Rebuild
your old
NVRAM! I made up some little boards to make the repair cleaner
and faster
to do (I had about 50 NVRAMs to repair):
http://www.glitchwrks.com/2017/08/01/gw-48t02-1
<http://www.glitchwrks.com/2017/08/01/gw-48t02-1>
There are other guides for tacking on a coin cell holder
without cutting
off the entire top encapsulation, but if you do that, it may
not fit under
SBus cards if you're doing it on a system that puts SBus slots
over the
NVRAM.
Thanks,
Jonathan
On Fri, Apr 27, 2018 at 6:03 PM, Glen Slick via cctalk <
cctalk at classiccmp.org <mailto:cctalk at classiccmp.org>> wrote:
On Fri, Apr 27, 2018 at 1:55 PM, Alan Perry via cctalk
<cctalk at classiccmp.org <mailto:cctalk at classiccmp.org>>
wrote:
- SPARCstation 1. Chassis is intact. It has a bad
IDPROM; aside from that
? it passes onboard diagnostics. It has 12M memory, no
HDD now, and a 3.5"
? floppy drive. It has no SBus cards. Aside from the
IDPROM, it doesn't
? have any issues (but I haven't run an OS on it yet).
Like the SS2, it
? needs a bath. A small portion of the plastic cover
over the rear of the
? case is broken off.
What are these "actual parts expenses"? IDPROMs are
around $25 on Mouser.
SCSI HDDs start around $70 shipped on eBay and SCSI2SD
are $60 plus
shipping to me plus the SD price. Given the price of
25 year old HDDs
with
a stated service life of 5 years (according to one
spec sheet that I
read),
SCSI2SD looks pretty attractive.
When you say IDPROM, is that a Dallas built-in battery
NVRAM type of
thing? I have an SS1 with a dead NVRAM thing. Are the
currently
available versions of those new at Mouser fully
compatible? Those are
one of those things that the new versions aren't always fully
compatible with the old versions for some systems, even
though they
are supposed to be.
My SS1 is also in the Seattle area. If there is much
demand for those
it's probably one of those systems I'll never get around
to doing
anything with it myself. I also have a 4/110. Those seem
to be a lot
less common, and maybe more collectible.
30 Apr
30 Apr
10:20 a.m.
New subject: SPARCstation rescue giveaway (Was: Kei cars and motorcycles (Was: Rick Dickinson, ZX Spectrum designer, RIP))
On Fri, Apr 27, 2018 at 5:40 PM, Alan Perry via cctalk <
cctalk at classiccmp.org> wrote:
I keep them all. Not counting the bad ones in the SS1
and 2, I have 7.
I can send them to you. I don't mind pick up the shipping costs for
something small like that. But the $70 that is it going to cost to ship the
SS20 to its new home is another matter.
alan
On 4/27/18 3:33 PM, systems_glitch wrote:
Last year some time I replaced the timekeeper in my first SPARC with one I
ordered off eBay. It's been a while since I tried it in that machine* but,
last I knew, it was slow at keeping time but time was still moving forward,
and it hadn't lost its MAC or hostid. Would that be caused by it being one
of the newer not-100%-compatible ones? Alternately, I read somewhere that
timekeeper/NVRAM/IDPROM chips need to either have power available to them
most of the time or need to have the computer powered up regularly (not
sure which it was) -- is there any truth to either of those?
* I did try the "new" timekeeper in a newer SPARC acquisition of mine a
week or so ago, because I knew the new workstation's battery was bad.
Unfortunately the computer failed to give any monitor signal when I did
that, and I haven't had a chance to hook it up via serial to see what's
working and what isn't. I wonder if that could be another failure mode of
those chips, or if it just means the workstation's not quite working (I was
told that it had just been booted recently using its original IDPROM, but
defaults had to be set at boot; I also haven't gotten a chance to try the
original IDPROM in it to see what would happen.)
--
Eric Christopherson
You can always send me the dead modules and
I'll rebuild them
(GlitchWorks == me, my wife sometimes helps with assembly). Whatever you
do, don't throw out the dead NVRAMs -- I'll buy them or pay for you to ship
them or whatever, they're not making more and they're the only solution
that's 100% compatible.
Yeah, the "still works but pukes errors" is the typical symptom of the
newer, slightly incompatible 48T02s in Sun machines. I don't recall if mine
kept accurate time with the newer modules.
Thanks,
Jonathan
On Fri, Apr 27, 2018 at 6:28 PM, Alan Perry via cctalk <
cctalk at classiccmp.org <mailto:cctalk at classiccmp.org>> wrote:
The ones from Mouser work well enough in every system that I have
used them in. I still get the IDPROM corrupt message on boot on
some systems, but it holds the MAC and the systems boot without
intervention.
I tried to repair a few and botched most of them. I know that I
should be using the GlitchWorks stuff, but it has been easier to
just buy something that I can plug in.
alan
On 4/27/18 3:15 PM, systems_glitch via cctalk wrote:
Don't get the new MK48T02/MK48T08s from Mouser et al, they're
not fully
compatible. They will retain NVRAM but the clock part is
different and
you'll get an error on that (system won't autoboot). Rebuild
your old
NVRAM! I made up some little boards to make the repair cleaner
and faster
to do (I had about 50 NVRAMs to repair):
http://www.glitchwrks.com/2017/08/01/gw-48t02-1
<http://www.glitchwrks.com/2017/08/01/gw-48t02-1>
There are other guides for tacking on a coin cell holder
without cutting
off the entire top encapsulation, but if you do that, it may
not fit under
SBus cards if you're doing it on a system that puts SBus slots
over the
NVRAM.
Thanks,
Jonathan
On Fri, Apr 27, 2018 at 6:03 PM, Glen Slick via cctalk <
cctalk at classiccmp.org <mailto:cctalk at classiccmp.org>> wrote:
On Fri, Apr 27, 2018 at 1:55 PM, Alan Perry via cctalk
<cctalk at classiccmp.org <mailto:cctalk at classiccmp.org>>
wrote:
- SPARCstation 1. Chassis is intact. It has a bad
IDPROM; aside from that
it passes onboard diagnostics. It has 12M memory, no
HDD now, and a 3.5"
floppy drive. It has no SBus cards. Aside from the
IDPROM, it doesn't
have any issues (but I haven't run an OS on it yet).
Like the SS2, it
needs a bath. A small portion of the plastic cover
over the rear of the
case is broken off.
What are these "actual parts expenses"? IDPROMs are
around $25 on Mouser.
SCSI HDDs start around $70 shipped on eBay and SCSI2SD
are $60 plus
shipping to me plus the SD price. Given the price of
25 year old HDDs
with
a stated service life of 5 years (according to one
spec sheet that I
read),
SCSI2SD looks pretty attractive.
When you say IDPROM, is that a Dallas built-in battery
NVRAM type of
thing? I have an SS1 with a dead NVRAM thing. Are the
currently
available versions of those new at Mouser fully
compatible? Those are
one of those things that the new versions aren't always fully
compatible with the old versions for some systems, even
though they
are supposed to be.
My SS1 is also in the Seattle area. If there is much
demand for those
it's probably one of those systems I'll never get around
to doing
anything with it myself. I also have a 4/110. Those seem
to be a lot
less common, and maybe more collectible.
10:51 a.m.
New subject: SPARCstation rescue giveaway (Was: Kei cars and motorcycles (Was: Rick Dickinson, ZX Spectrum designer, RIP))
On 4/30/18 10:20 AM, Eric Christopherson via cctalk wrote:
On Fri, Apr 27, 2018 at 5:40 PM, Alan Perry via cctalk
<
cctalk at classiccmp.org> wrote:
Jonathan the GlitchWorks guy has better experience with this than I do,
but I have new M48T02s/M48T08s from Mouser in all of the systems that I
have had to replace them in.? That would be in SPARCstation 1+, 5, 20,
IPC, IPX, Classic, and LX. They have worked good enough for me, but I
only occasionally power them on (which is why I was happy that VCF gave
me an excuse use them and network them all together).
I retrofitted an external battery to the one in my Axil 320, but never
found a satisfactory way to fix the battery in place. After I finish
clearing out the SPARCs that came from Pete's place, I will be giving
the Axil some attention and may go ahead and GlitchWorks it (since I am
out of M48T08s to just grab out if the tube).
alan
I keep them all. Not counting the bad ones in the
SS1 and 2, I have 7.
I can send them to you. I don't mind pick up the shipping costs for
something small like that. But the $70 that is it going to cost to ship the
SS20 to its new home is another matter.
alan
On 4/27/18 3:33 PM, systems_glitch wrote:
> You can always send me the dead modules and I'll rebuild them
> (GlitchWorks == me, my wife sometimes helps with assembly). Whatever you
> do, don't throw out the dead NVRAMs -- I'll buy them or pay for you to ship
> them or whatever, they're not making more and they're the only solution
> that's 100% compatible.
>
> Yeah, the "still works but pukes errors" is the typical symptom of the
> newer, slightly incompatible 48T02s in Sun machines. I don't recall if mine
> kept accurate time with the newer modules.
>
> Thanks,
> Jonathan
>
> On Fri, Apr 27, 2018 at 6:28 PM, Alan Perry via cctalk <
> cctalk at classiccmp.org <mailto:cctalk at classiccmp.org>> wrote:
>
> The ones from Mouser work well enough in every system that I have
> used them in. I still get the IDPROM corrupt message on boot on
> some systems, but it holds the MAC and the systems boot without
> intervention.
>
> I tried to repair a few and botched most of them. I know that I
> should be using the GlitchWorks stuff, but it has been easier to
> just buy something that I can plug in.
>
> alan
>
>
> On 4/27/18 3:15 PM, systems_glitch via cctalk wrote:
>
> Don't get the new MK48T02/MK48T08s from Mouser et al, they're
> not fully
> compatible. They will retain NVRAM but the clock part is
> different and
> you'll get an error on that (system won't autoboot). Rebuild
> your old
> NVRAM! I made up some little boards to make the repair cleaner
> and faster
> to do (I had about 50 NVRAMs to repair):
>
> http://www.glitchwrks.com/2017/08/01/gw-48t02-1
> <http://www.glitchwrks.com/2017/08/01/gw-48t02-1>
>
> There are other guides for tacking on a coin cell holder
> without cutting
> off the entire top encapsulation, but if you do that, it may
> not fit under
> SBus cards if you're doing it on a system that puts SBus slots
> over the
> NVRAM.
>
> Thanks,
> Jonathan
>
> On Fri, Apr 27, 2018 at 6:03 PM, Glen Slick via cctalk <
> cctalk at classiccmp.org <mailto:cctalk at classiccmp.org>> wrote:
>
> On Fri, Apr 27, 2018 at 1:55 PM, Alan Perry via cctalk
> <cctalk at classiccmp.org <mailto:cctalk at classiccmp.org>>
wrote:
>
> - SPARCstation 1. Chassis is intact. It has a bad
> IDPROM; aside from that
> it passes onboard diagnostics. It has 12M memory, no
> HDD now, and a 3.5"
> floppy drive. It has no SBus cards. Aside from the
> IDPROM, it doesn't
> have any issues (but I haven't run an OS on it yet).
> Like the SS2, it
> needs a bath. A small portion of the plastic cover
> over the rear of the
> case is broken off.
>
> What are these "actual parts expenses"? IDPROMs are
> around $25 on Mouser.
> SCSI HDDs start around $70 shipped on eBay and SCSI2SD
> are $60 plus
> shipping to me plus the SD price. Given the price of
> 25 year old HDDs
>
> with
>
> a stated service life of 5 years (according to one
> spec sheet that I
>
> read),
>
> SCSI2SD looks pretty attractive.
>
> When you say IDPROM, is that a Dallas built-in battery
> NVRAM type of
> thing? I have an SS1 with a dead NVRAM thing. Are the
> currently
> available versions of those new at Mouser fully
> compatible? Those are
> one of those things that the new versions aren't always fully
> compatible with the old versions for some systems, even
> though they
> are supposed to be.
>
> My SS1 is also in the Seattle area. If there is much
> demand for those
> it's probably one of those systems I'll never get around
> to doing
> anything with it myself. I also have a 4/110. Those seem
> to be a lot
> less common, and maybe more collectible.
>
Last year some time I replaced the timekeeper in my first SPARC with one I
ordered off eBay. It's been a while since I tried it in that machine* but,
last I knew, it was slow at keeping time but time was still moving forward,
and it hadn't lost its MAC or hostid. Would that be caused by it being one
of the newer not-100%-compatible ones? Alternately, I read somewhere that
timekeeper/NVRAM/IDPROM chips need to either have power available to them
most of the time or need to have the computer powered up regularly (not
sure which it was) -- is there any truth to either of those?
* I did try the "new" timekeeper in a newer SPARC acquisition of mine a
week or so ago, because I knew the new workstation's battery was bad.
Unfortunately the computer failed to give any monitor signal when I did
that, and I haven't had a chance to hook it up via serial to see what's
working and what isn't. I wonder if that could be another failure mode of
those chips, or if it just means the workstation's not quite working (I was
told that it had just been booted recently using its original IDPROM, but
defaults had to be set at boot; I also haven't gotten a chance to try the
original IDPROM in it to see what would happen.)
27 Apr
27 Apr
3:35 p.m.
New subject: SPARCstation rescue giveaway (Was: Kei cars and motorcycles (Was: Rick Dickinson, ZX Spectrum designer, RIP))
On 4/27/18 3:03 PM, Glen Slick via cctalk wrote:
On Fri, Apr 27, 2018 at 1:55 PM, Alan Perry via
cctalk
<cctalk at classiccmp.org> wrote:
Yes.
The better option is to repair the NVRAM to use a replaceable battery.
As noted elsewhere, the new ones on Mouser aren't completely compatible,
but they work good enough in my experience with the lunchbox systems and
SS5/20s.
- SPARCstation 1. Chassis is intact. It has a bad
IDPROM; aside from that
it passes onboard diagnostics. It has 12M memory, no HDD now, and a 3.5"
floppy drive. It has no SBus cards. Aside from the IDPROM, it doesn't
have any issues (but I haven't run an OS on it yet). Like the SS2, it
needs a bath. A small portion of the plastic cover over the rear of the
case is broken off.
What are these "actual parts expenses"? IDPROMs are around $25 on Mouser.
SCSI HDDs start around $70 shipped on eBay and SCSI2SD are $60 plus
shipping to me plus the SD price. Given the price of 25 year old HDDs with
a stated service life of 5 years (according to one spec sheet that I read),
SCSI2SD looks pretty attractive.
When you say IDPROM, is that a Dallas built-in battery NVRAM type of
thing? I have an SS1 with a dead NVRAM thing. Are the currently
available versions of those new at Mouser fully compatible? Those are
one of those things that the new versions aren't always fully
compatible with the old versions for some systems, even though they
are supposed to be.
My SS1 is also in the Seattle area. If there is much demand for those
it's probably one of those systems I'll never get around to doing
anything with it myself. I also have a 4/110. Those seem to be a lot
less common, and maybe more collectible.
I don't think there is much demand. The SS5s and 20s that I got from
Pete's place were claimed quickly. No takers yet for the SS1 or SS2. If
there ends up being no takers, I will still refurb them and make them
into nice running systems.
alan
8:47 a.m.
New subject: Early Honda cars - was: Rick Dickinson, ZX Spectrum designer, RIP
----- Original Message -----
From: "Fred Cisin via cctalk" <cctalk at classiccmp.org>
Sent: Thursday, April 26, 2018 6:48 PM
The Honda 600 was NOT a bike. Well, mostly not. After
demise of the mid
1960s Honda S600/S800 ("poor-man's-Ferrari" design exercise that got out
of hand and went into production), Honda engineers took a 360CC parallel
twin, detuned it and upped it to 600cc, added a differential, and a
reverse (tacked on to the outside of the case), and put it in a car body
that resembled the Mini. AN600 was the first Hondas officially imported
into USA (1970). A later Z600 had a "sportier" body, and one was cut in
half in the down-under movie "Malcolm"
-----------------------
Sounds like you never got the original N360 "Street Car" (360cc 'Mini'
before the 600cc 'upgrade') down there; not a big seller here in Canada either:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Honda_N360
Their first 4-wheeler was actually the T360 pickup truck; ridiculous as it sounds in North
America, a light 360cc truck actually found a market among golf clubs for course
maintenance:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Honda_T360
I loved my S600 roadster while it lasted; it wasn't very fast but sure sounded great
at 10,000 RPM. Not many cars have "adjust drive chains" as part of regular
maintenance ;-) :
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Honda_S600
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