On 21/04/07, Chuck Guzis <cclist at sydex.com> wrote: [...] Actually, somewhere about 1985 I made my first money programming: fixing the business app my dad's boss was running on a C64 (can't remember what it did; database, I guess). This was in germany and I was 11. I saw plenty of C64's and C128s in business settings until I left europe in 88. In Canada (and I guess the same was true for the US) it was a wholly different thing, and by that time, PCs had taken over. Joe.

Chuck Guzis wrote: If the entire system was designed around the NTSC frequency (and one would assume the 60Hz AC power to match) then how did a "euro" IBM PC work? Did it have 60Hz CGA as well? -- Jim Leonard (trixter at oldskool.org) http://www.oldskool.org/ Help our electronic games project: http://www.mobygames.com/ Or check out some trippy MindCandy at http://www.mindcandydvd.com/ A child borne of the home computer wars: http://trixter.wordpress.com/

Chuck Guzis wrote: I wonder how many of the PC-compatible-yet-goofy-hardware 808x clones have been lost to the ages. I still own my AT&T PC 6300, proprietary 640x400 (not a typo) monitor and all, and consider it just barely compatible enough to hold onto. (I have pretty high standards; I can count the number of apps/games that will never run on it on both hands). Then again, who am I kidding; it was the first PC that our family personally owned (father was AT&T employee) so I'd probably try to keep it going no matter what. A friend had a Sperry machine capable of many more colors than CGA could produce, although the monitor (also proprietary connector IIRC) was some sort of slow-response phosphor -- it was like working in front of a "color" monochrome monitor, if that makes any sense. It ran "best" with it's OEM-customized version of MS-DOS, and ran about 90% of the apps out there. It's level of compatibility was incredibly frustrating; hardware bangers like Music Construction Set (heavy timer usage, direct writes to screen RAM, direct disk sector loads, etc.) worked perfectly, while Sorcim's SuperWriter word processor -- a fairly creampuff app -- would lock the machine up. Crazy machine!! -- Jim Leonard (trixter at oldskool.org) http://www.oldskool.org/ Help our electronic games project: http://www.mobygames.com/ Or check out some trippy MindCandy at http://www.mindcandydvd.com/ A child borne of the home computer wars: http://trixter.wordpress.com/

On Apr 22, 2007, at 2:44 AM, Jim Leonard wrote: I sold and serviced 6300s (and 7300s, and a few non-AT&T machines) at my first job. I really liked those 6300s. They were built by Olivetti, who did a great job on them...they were built like tanks! This was around 1985 or so. The computer store I worked for had an interesting deal going. We were a small independent computer store in a mall, but we had a corporate sales group which did pretty good business. We had an odd deal going in which we were selling AT&T computers to...AT&T. :-) We delivered dozens upon dozens of 6300s to the AT&T Basking Ridge facility in NJ, which we affectionately knew as "Taj Mahal"...that building is HUGE. -Dave -- Dave McGuire Port Charlotte, FL

On Sun, 2007-04-22 at 01:44 -0500, Jim Leonard wrote: At the risk of starting a religious flame-war, my favorite of the not-quite-compatibles was the HP-150. Sleek, stylish, small, hard-shell diskettes, use of HPIB for disks and peripherals, and a touch screen. SEXY! About that 6300... I was an independent consultant to the Oldsmobile division of General Motors for a year. I signed a contract about three days before they purchased EDS, which made me, immediately, the competition, so I didn't get the contract renewed.. One of my tasks was to evaluate computer usage (which included a LOT of 3270 Color Terminal access to the IBM mainframes for CAD/CAM, etc.) and suggest the most reasonable way to move forward. I did what I thought was a thorough study, and suggested maintaining a 3270-PC base, albeit NOT expanding them by buying stuff from IBM until it worked. EDS was doing a parallel study. Their idea was to go with AT&T 6300 machines, and put IRMA cards in them for 3270 connectivity (never mind that they weren't even in COLOR, let alone hi-res.) Since GM used various IBM packages for text modification and authoring, they suggested DisplayWrite... Three, I think, at that time. AT&T had been stuck with a literal boat-load of the 6300 PCs, which were going "stale," and they were quite anxious to sell them, and at a VERY cheap price. That was all that EDS heard. EDS charged some outrageous sum, I'm remembering $7 million. When the "verdict" came down, I sighed, as I was one of the folks who would have to support this mess. The first thing I did was go get one of all the above components from stores, and set it up... if one is going to support it, one should have one at hand. Imagine my surprise when DisplayWrite would not even run. Seven million for a study, and they didn't bother to even set it up. Sheesh. Anyway, I ended up talking to Mort Myerson, the V.P. of EDS within a few minutes, and I explained the situation to him. He said he would take care of it. In the meanwhile, I was using a debugger to try to find out what actual problem was causing the failure. It turns out that DisplayWrite checked the BIOS ROM, and if it did NOT find "IBM" it shut down. I figured we would get IBM to change the program... but, no. Within a couple of hours about five Bell Labs techs showed up asking for me, and got to work on the BIOS. I explained what I had found, and they verified it. They then re-assembled the BIOS with a nonsense trademark notice about IBM, and started cranking out copies of the new chip. DisplayWrite then found "IBM" in the BIOS, and was happy. Yeah... I'm keeping my IMSAI for the same reason. Peace, Warren E. Wolfe wizard at voyager.net

Thread was: Re: Lack of 8-bit threads (was Re: Linux question) On Mon, 2007-04-23 at 22:55 +0100, Tony Duell wrote: I've got an HP-150 which just developed a video problem. Any chance the TechRef is downloadable somewhere? I agree. There are only three instances of companies failing which actually bothered me. First, Processor Technology, with their gorgeous, years-ahead-of-its-time SOL series, Digital Research, Inc., the source of almost all software innovation in personal computers, and HP. Yes, I know HP is still here, but, ending somewhere in the 1990s, they lost that "magic touch." Previously, EVERYTHING they did was close to miraculous. I don't think ANY company has come so close to doing engineering perfectly for the state of the science (and art) involved. Even more amazing was the CONSISTENCY with which they cranked out one amazing feat of engineering after another. Now they are just another manufacturer of PCs. Not that they are bad, or anything even like that, but one no longer wonders if they have secret access to alien technology. (The preceding is a statement of personal opinion, I*S*GWS.) Peace, Warren E. Wolfe wizard at voyager.net

I don;t think it is. The obvious place to look would be http://www.hpmuseum.net/ . I think the service manual is there, but that's a boardwsapper guide, no schematics. The Techref 150 Techref contains schematics of the whole machine _apart touchscreen. The -II supplement includes the 150-II mainboard scheamtic, but not the PSU/video board, keyboard or touchscreen (the last 2 are standard HP-HIL devices). I did trace put the schematics of the PSU/video board in my -II, though. What's the problem with your unit? Does it appear to be a digital problem, or a problem with monitor circuit? We've discussed this many times at HPCC meetings. My feeling is that the 'golden years' of HP were about 1965 to 1987. The real 'death' came when they split off the test equipment division as Agilent. At one time HP were known for making some of the best test gear available [1], now they're known for cheap and nasty inkjet printers. A great pity if you grew up with their great products. [1] Although I always thought Tektronix made better 'scopes :-) I have an _old_ -- over 40 eyars old -- HP frequncy counter. Apart from a very clever design (how about making a decade counter, latch and nixie tube driver in 8 transistors (and no ICs), I am always amused by the fact that the _low precision_ timebase is the intenral oven-stabilised crystal oscillator, good to 3 parts in 10^9 after warmup and calibration. The high precision add-on was, of course, a rubidium beam. That's the HP I knew and loved :-) Needless to say I am addicted to their (old) calculators. I still routinely use HP41s. There's an HP16C on my workbench. I regard the HP9100 as the most elecgant piece of electronics that I've ever had the pleasure to work on. THe HP98xx series (all of them -- 98x0 and 98x5 machines -- are interesting, ingenious, and still work well with minor repairs30 years after them were made. And as I mentioend I like the 9000/200 series. I am not a great fan of the HP80 series. Yes, they work. They do what they claim (which is more than I could say of some manufacturer's offerings!). But there's too much custom silicon inside, the expansion bus is plain strange (and at 6V voltage levels), etc. Not really my first choice. -tony

I am not sure quite what you mean here. Do yuo mean that all characters (other than space) appear as solid blocks? Boy do you need the schmatics! I've looked at the 150 'Video Alpha Display Sybsystem' and the overall design is what you'd expect, but the details are odd. And I susepct it's one of those odd bits that's causing the problems OK, the basic dsegin is a CRT controller -- here an SMC9007 (U315) which addreeses the video RAM. The output of the video RAM is 16 bits wide (character and attrboutes), the character part -- 10 bits of it -- goes to the address lines of a character generator ROM U512. The output of that goes to a shift register (U511 and U612, 'S195) which does the obvious dot serialisation. The attribute logic is compiclated, but based round a 16L6 HAL (mask programmed PAL) U314. I do _not_ have the PAL equatiuons. The outputs of that are latced (U614, '174) and feed the 'Dot Stream Mixer', a 'S153 mux which combines the alpha dots and the graphics system dots, and which then produses the Full Brightness and Half Brightness signals to the 'Sweep' (monitor) PCB. The complicated bit is round those shift registers I mentioned. There's some logic to, I think, make the line-drawing characters touch on-screen. This is controlled bu U46b ('S74) and is based rounf U78b ('S112) and U713b and a ('S09),, U712d ('LS00) and U610a ('S32) There's even a couple of gates between the 2 shift register ICs, but I think if that was the problem you'd get half of each character displayed correctly. I think I'd start by looking at pin 3 of U713. That's the alpha dot stream going into the mixing logic. What you're looking for is fine enough pulses to be character dots, rather htan complete character cells. If You've got that, suspect a problem round U715. If not (and I think you won't have it), go back to U78b, etc. Oh, I quited like Nicolet and LeCroy :-). Not that I own any of their instrumnets, alas.. Exactly. Well, it could also have been a 5243L, which is the 10MHz version (the 5245 being 50MHz). I have one of each. Actually, a fair number of the PCBs are common to both instruemtns. I also have some, but certianly not all, of the plug-ins Alas I have to 'make do' with the internal crystal. I am told that HP sold a rubidium beam (sub)standard that was in a 19" rack module, and which you simply cabled up to the external oscillator input on the 5245L. I don't hjave it, thouhg. That's the problem. Unless you have a Rb or CS beam reference, it's almost impossible to calibrate the crystal, and the crystal can and will drift slightly over time. Not enough to bother me (I am darn sure the instruemnt is more accurate than any modern thing that I could afford), but still. -tony

So, if you disable PAM and just get na MS-DOS screen, what you're saying is that the screen is mostly white, with black blocks where the prompt would be ? THat's really strange... Ypu're lucky (or I'm stupid). Most of the time I find I do need schematics. I wouldn't. I'd want to go back a stage to that dot-expansion logic I mentioned later. I think, if that was malfucntioning, it could hold the dotstram line to that 'S153 in either state. I can't see how the 'S153 would slow the signal down sufficiently to remove all the character pattern data. Indeed it was. As I keep on saying, that's what I loved about the old HP and what I miss in the mdoern stuff. Built like a brick outhose, easy to work on, reliable, accurate. I am suprised. What on earth is the mechanism for that, and how do you adjust it. What actually controls the frequency of the Rb beam standard, and how does it drift -tony

On Apr 28, 2007, at 3:13 PM, Warren Wolfe wrote: That is nowhere near how a rubidium oscillator works. Actually, it sorta describes how a cesium oscillator works, but not quite...the beam in a Cs oscillator is a beam of Cs-133 atoms, not electrons, and the beam is steered magnetically, not electrically. A rubidium oscillator servo-controls its frequency around the opacity/transparency of a glass cell containing Rb-87 in a gaseous state. Drift in this system is primarily a function of impurities of time, and to a much greater extent, degradation of the lamp used to illuminate the sensor on the other side of the cell. Fortunately the lamps are easily replaced in most designs. In practice, Rb oscillators are very long-lived devices, in terms of both functionality and stability. -Dave -- Dave McGuire Port Charlotte, FL

On Sat, 2007-04-28 at 22:21 +0100, Tony Duell wrote: I'm away from the HP-150 for a couple days. I will certainly check that, first thing, when I see it again. I certainly hope you've guessed it right on this. What a lovely problem THAT would be to fix.00 Oh, sure, but, in any case, I've generally found that a functional understanding of the boards involved usually gives one a good idea for a couple "Easter Eggs" to try, often with cheap parts, to try for a schematic-free solution. Obviously, some problems are resistant to this kind of solution. Also, sometimes the most likely "Easter Eggs" involve expensive parts, and I want to be sure before I lay down some real cash. Still, I'd say most problems can be solved, rather quickly, without a schematic. On the other hand, if I'm able to contact you, and you have one, that is almost as good as having one myself... assuming I don't cheese you off somehow. They don't. It is as if all characters were spaces. I was using my knowledge of Cs standards for this, which has been corrected by Dave McGuire. (Thanks Dave!) Sorry. My bad. I assumed they functioned similarly. Since it's a different process, and we didn't use them, I don't know how they work, and should probably add a period to this text, and quit typing. That's the WAY a Cs standard works... The electronic oscillator's frequency is minutely adjusted to keep the Cs beam on target. The adjustments are tiny, and keeping them in range means that the oscillator's drift is being canceled by the adjustments by the PLL obtained through aiming the Cs beam correctly. Within a small range, the circuitry keeps adjusting the frequency to aim the beam, thus ensuring that any normal drift is compensated. On the HP models, the Cs Beam Frequency Reference has a meter that shows where the "range" sits. Occasionally, the "coarse" adjustments are changed, in order to keep the current level of adjustment at about the center of the range over which the electronics can lock. And, yes, as long as the PLL is maintained, the accuracy is maintained. Peace, Warren E. Wolfe wizard at voyager.net

Warren Wolfe wrote: Hopefully you're not blaming the AT&T 6300 for that mess... I think the "IBM-string-in-the-BIOS-check" by the software is completely arbitrary and the real dunce of the story... -- Jim Leonard (trixter at oldskool.org) http://www.oldskool.org/ Help our electronic games project: http://www.mobygames.com/ Or check out some trippy MindCandy at http://www.mindcandydvd.com/ A child borne of the home computer wars: http://trixter.wordpress.com/

There wasn't. I'm in Europe (and have 50Hz mains), I also have an IBM CGA card. It's just like the one in the Techref, it takes all the timing from the 14.xxx MHz oscillator on the mainboard. I can't comemnt on the second part, but for the first part I will say that whoever told you that was a total idiot. Period... There were, I admit, several types of PSU used in the 5150 (and related machines), and they were made by various companies. The schematics aren't in the Techrefs, but I've been inside a fair frw of them and _not one_ would ogject to 50Hz mains of the appropriate voltage. Most of them do insist on AC, since they have a little mains-frequency transformer to provide the startup supply to the SMPSU, but that would work find on 50Hz mains. The 5105 Techref _does_ imply that the 115V PSU is for 60Hz mains and the 230V one for 50Hz mains, but I can see no good reason why that would be the case. The 5160 Techref contains the IMHO meaninless spec of '50/60Hz +/- 3Hz' The 5155 (Portable PC) PSU is electrically similar to the supplies I've found in PCs and XTs, and was user-selectable (slide switch on the back) betweem 115V and 230V mains, and needless to say it works fine on 50 or 60Hxz. The other system PSUs that I've seen (and remember I've only seen supplies used in 230V machins) have intneral lings, in general 'fitted for 115V, cut for 230V' to set the voltage. Actuaally, all the fans I've seen have been 12V DC ones, oftne run off the -12V rail -tony

Hi, Jim Leonard said: Yes. Got a card somewhere, but no colour monitor. -- Cheers, Stan Barr stanb at dial.pipex.com The future was never like this!