30 Jun
2004
30 Jun
'04
1:24 a.m.
I'm aware of the following up for disposal (I think they're off to
landfill at the end of next week by the sounds of it) in Cambridge, if
anyone's interested:
17 HP Xterminals
5 HP 700RX (Xterminals)
3 Vaxstation 3100
4 Large SCSI boxes
4 Medium SCSI boxes
6 BBC Bs
16 BBC type monitors
4 NCD Xterms
1 HP Entria Xterm
8 Dot matrix printers
1 DEC 3000
1 Sparc 4
1 Extremely spiky thing
1 Olivetti drive of some description
1 huge monitor box of cables
Lots of random software
I should be meeting with the chap tomorrow as I'm picking up some other
stuff from him, so hopefully I can look over everything. I *may* grab
the software and cable boxes just so I can take a proper inventory,
although I have no desire to hang onto anything other than a SCSI cable
or two.
Note 1: this is the *UK* Cambridge (I always put that in the subject,
and people always miss it :-)
Note 2: various people know about this stuff, so it's a case of first
come, first served. I can put you in touch with the chap if there is
anything you want from the list.
ps. I too am curious to know what the spiky thing is!
cheers
Jules
30 Jun
30 Jun
10:26 p.m.
On Thu, 2004-07-01 at 00:35, Tony Duell wrote:
Dammit, spoil my surprise why don't you? :-P
Still hoping somebody wants some Xterms! I think everything else has now
found a home (unless anyone *really* wants an old dot matrix printer!)
I used to have a plan to get hold of a decent Xterm and then stick all
the noisy hard disks on a server in a cupboard somewhere - nice and
quiet then! Lack of audio support on any Xterm I've come across knocked
that idea on the head unfortunately...
cheers
Jules
ps. I too am
curious to know what the spiky thing is!
Knowing the source, and knowing what they had, I am pretty sure this is a
DEC Unibus backplane of some flavour. 
1 Jul
1 Jul
1:47 a.m.
At 11:26 01/07/2004, Jules Richardson wrote:
Still hoping somebody wants some Xterms! I think
everything else has now
found a home (unless anyone *really* wants an old dot matrix printer!)
I'd take one or two, if you or somebody can arrange shipping (to Salford,
UK, I'd cover costs), just to play with. I have no use for all of them
though! Which are the best sort to have?
I hope the BBC Micros have found a good home. I have a soft spot for these
machines. :-) Back in the day, after having seen one, I always used to
want to make up a video wall out of BBC monitors (Microvitec Cubs are
nicely stackable) but never had anything to drive it with, nor enough
monitors! Maybe that's a project for somebody, assuming the "16 BBC type
monitors" are of this sort.
I used to have a plan to get hold of a decent Xterm and
then stick all
the noisy hard disks on a server in a cupboard somewhere - nice and
quiet then! Lack of audio support on any Xterm I've come across knocked
that idea on the head unfortunately...
Microsoft's "remote desktop" under Windows XP seems to manage to send sound
to the remote client (as long as you use the right version of the client)
so I assume it must be possible.. Just needs implementing under X by
somebody..
Rob
3:08 a.m.
>Still hoping somebody wants some Xterms! I think
everything else has now
>found a home (unless anyone *really* wants an old dot matrix printer!)
If the NCD's have interfaces *other* than: 10Base2+AUI or 10BaseTX
(that's two different interfaces) -- say, perhaps, a TR interface, ROM card
or PCMCIA card -- I'd be interested in them (working or not) just for
the sake of having a physical device to document. Which NCD models
are they?
Likewise, *photos* (good quality) of the keyboards would be a win...
I'd take one or two, if you or somebody can
arrange shipping (to Salford,
UK, I'd cover costs), just to play with. I have no use for all of them
though! Which are the best sort to have?
Whichever you can find *software* for! :>
If you're looking for *performance* (Xstones), you'll be disappointed.
Most of this hardware is quite old/slow. Any modern machine running
a newer version of the server will put them to shame.
But, I *really* like the crispness of the display on a 19r (monochrome)
when I'm just writing code...
[snip]
>I used to have a plan to get hold of a decent
Xterm and then stick all
>the noisy hard disks on a server in a cupboard somewhere - nice and
>quiet then! Lack of audio support on any Xterm I've come across knocked
>that idea on the head unfortunately...
Been there, done that. With the exception of the Windows machine, here,
every other box effectively runs headless -- I can't afford the space for
monitors "waiting" to be used. Nor can I stand the *noise* from the
various machines (disks, fans).
Support for audio *service* is available on most NCD's -- though machines
without audio *outputs* (i.e. connections) are a waste of time. E.g., you
can
listen to audio on a 19r though you'd best be in an anechoic chamber to
"appreciate" (ha!) it. I think NCD's MCX, ECX and Explora's made audio
a first class feature (though I may be wrong on that).
Microsoft's "remote desktop" under
Windows XP seems to manage to send
sound
to the remote client (as long as you use the right
version of the client)
so I assume it must be possible.. Just needs implementing under X by
somebody..
Done long before MS. See NAS.
--don
4:13 a.m.
On Thu, 2004-07-01 at 13:47, Rob O'Donnell wrote:
At 11:26 01/07/2004, Jules Richardson wrote:
Well I've seen them now today. There's a big stack of HP ones which look
*old*. The Entria's still there, then there are a couple of NCD ones
that look to be 88k units. What I didn't see was any screens for them
:-/
I'll drop the chap an email and see whether there are displays lurking
elsewhere.
I have completely filled up the car with other stuff that was there
though - there were a few oddball Cromemco cards and manuals for
instance which looked worth saving. I need to unload the car and do a
proper inventory, as I was just throwing stuff into piles to take as
time was tight. Watch this space as save for a few items that are going
to the museum, the bulk of it I just need to find homes for :-)
Still hoping somebody wants some Xterms! I think
everything else has now
found a home (unless anyone *really* wants an old dot matrix printer!)
I'd take one or two, if you or somebody can arrange shipping (to Salford,
UK, I'd cover costs), just to play with. I have no use for all of them
though! Which are the best sort to have? Back in the day, after having seen one, I always used
to
want to make up a video wall out of BBC monitors (Microvitec Cubs are
nicely stackable) but never had anything to drive it with, nor enough
monitors! Maybe that's a project for somebody, assuming the "16 BBC type
monitors" are of this sort.
Now you've spooked me. A 16 screen video wall is the plan as a museum
exhibit - bar a few last minute arrangements I've got 16 Cubs lined up
that I can have from another source. I've been chatting about this over
on the BBC mailing list for a few weeks!
My plan is to Econet 16 BBCs together in a rack, with something
controlling them. Of course the hardware (and network!) is too slow for
anything like moving video, but I'm thinking I can get away with hooking
a video camera up to the controlling machine and let the public take
still captures.
Running numbers through my head, it seems to be a viable project anyway.
Just a case of finding the time to actually implement it! (It started
out as a simple scrolling message system, but then it had occurred to me
just how stackable Cubs are too! :-)
Microsoft's "remote desktop" under
Windows XP seems to manage to send sound
to the remote client (as long as you use the right version of the client)
so I assume it must be possible.. Just needs implementing under X by
somebody..
Well the other option is to network-boot Linux with a diskless PC. Given
the low cost of RAM these days and the speed of networks, I assume I
could just have a RAM disk of a few MB to hold the OS once running, and
that could contain all drivers for the local sound card (so it's
actually a diskless workstation, rather than a remote X display).
I just don't have the time to put something together, and I haven't seen
a good tutorial document that says how to do this (I've got a EPROM
burner of course, but I have no idea what I need to actually put in the
EPROM for a network card, or what I do in terms of making an OS image
file on the server which is presumably then transferred to the client by
the code in the network boot ROM)
cheers
Jules
4:56 a.m.
At 17:13 01/07/2004, you wrote:
lol. :-) I didn't know, honest! Where is this list, might be of interest
to me. Although this one is about the only mailing list I actually read
daily, out of the several I am subscribed to.
I imagine that would work. I've used several single-floppy linux and unix
distros that work in a similar way (unpack into a ramdisc)
[xterms]
Well I've seen them now today. There's a big stack of HP ones which look
*old*. The Entria's still there, then there are a couple of NCD ones
that look to be 88k units. What I didn't see was any screens for them
:-/
I'll drop the chap an email and see whether there are displays lurking
elsewhere.
Well no worries if they are no good (someone else mentioned software is
needed?? I've never played with an x-term, so was just something else ot
put in the pile of "cool things I should play with someday when I have
infinate time" !
Back in the
day, after having seen one, I always used to
want to make up a video wall out of BBC monitors (Microvitec Cubs are
nicely stackable) but never had anything to drive it with, nor enough
monitors! Maybe that's a project for somebody, assuming the "16 BBC type
monitors" are of this sort.
Now you've spooked me. A 16 screen video wall is the plan as a museum
exhibit - bar a few last minute arrangements I've got 16 Cubs lined up
that I can have from another source. I've been chatting about this over
on the BBC mailing list for a few weeks! My plan is to Econet 16 BBCs together in a rack, with
something
controlling them. Of course the hardware (and network!) is too slow for
anything like moving video, but I'm thinking I can get away with hooking
a video camera up to the controlling machine and let the public take
still captures.
Sounds good :-) Why not do some simple games too? Something as basic as
'pong' should be easy? or ... I've got a touch-screen for a cub... find
15 more and you can do a "hit the pop-up beastie" game :-)
Running numbers through my head, it seems to be a
viable project anyway.
Just a case of finding the time to actually implement it! (It started
out as a simple scrolling message system, but then it had occurred to me
just how stackable Cubs are too! :-)
16 monitors makes a nice 4x4 matrix - probably what made us both think of it.
Microsoft's "remote desktop" under Windows XP seems to manage to send
sound
to the remote client (as long as you use the
right version of the client)
so I assume it must be possible.. Just needs implementing under X by
somebody..
Well the other option is to network-boot Linux with a diskless PC. Given
the low cost of RAM these days and the speed of networks, I assume I
could just have a RAM disk of a few MB to hold the OS once running, and
that could contain all drivers for the local sound card (so it's
actually a diskless workstation, rather than a remote X display). I just don't have the time to put something
together, and I haven't seen
a good tutorial document that says how to do this (I've got a EPROM
burner of course, but I have no idea what I need to actually put in the
EPROM for a network card, or what I do in terms of making an OS image
file on the server which is presumably then transferred to the client by
the code in the network boot ROM)
http://www.etherboot.org/ looks like it may help you here, at least for x86
clients.
Rob.
2 Jul
2 Jul
7:04 a.m.
On Thu, 2004-07-01 at 16:56, Rob O'Donnell wrote:
Yep. I wondered about a 5x5 matrix, but the numbers don't add up to make
it viable when you look at Econet speeds and the expected data size.
cheers,
Jules
At 17:13 01/07/2004, you wrote:
Well no worries if they are no good
waiting to hear back at the mo re. keyboards / displays...
(someone else mentioned software is needed??
They need a boot image on the server. For my NCD 88k one this is about
1.5MB from memory (I have a copy somewhere!) and is transferred using
TFTP to the Xterm on startup. All the NCD boot files were readily
available a few years ago for sure, although I've no idea about Xterms
from other vendors.
I've never played with an x-term, so was just
something else ot
put in the pile of "cool things I should play with someday when I have
infinate time" !
Ha ha! They are pretty cool to play around with - as mentioned it was
really the sound situation which stopped me seriously using mine in the
last few years (that and only 8 bit colour)
lol. :-) I didn't know, honest! Where is this
list, might be of interest
to me. Although this one is about the only mailing list I actually read
daily, out of the several I am subscribed to.
As quoted by the list manager:
] Try emailing majordomo(a)cloud9.co.uk with the message body:
]
] subscribe bbc-micro
it's low traffic, but there's some really clued-up people on there when
it comes to BBC stuff (and a lot of the other Acorn 8 bit machines)
[ Cub screen wall ]
Sounds good :-) Why not do some simple games too? Something as basic as
'pong' should be easy?
hmm, now that's an interesting idea. Wonder how well it'd work in
practice - there'd probably be about 1.5" of dead space between each
screen, so I'm not sure if that'd make it feel odd or not. Worth a try,
though :)
or ... I've got a touch-screen for a cub...
find
15 more and you can do a "hit the pop-up beastie" game :-)
Ha ha! Those might be a bit harder to track down...
Running numbers
through my head, it seems to be a viable project anyway.
Just a case of finding the time to actually implement it! (It started
out as a simple scrolling message system, but then it had occurred to me
just how stackable Cubs are too! :-)
16 monitors makes a nice 4x4 matrix - probably what made us both think of it.
8:04 a.m.
On Fri, 02 Jul 2004 19:04:43 +0000
Jules Richardson <julesrichardsonuk(a)yahoo.co.uk> wrote:
I have 8 of them here -- half monochrome, half color.
They are a win for letting me access the same set of
servers regardless of where I am located in the house.
Some are in the "office", another in the work-room,
another on the back porch, another supports my PBX
and server farm, another for my "other half" to use
to view JPEGs while painting, etc.
Sound has never been an issue here. That's what the
HiFi is for! :>
[snip]
Pioneer makes (made?) a flat-faced (rear projection?)
screen specifically designed for end-to-end stacking.
I believe 1/4" gap exists between adjacent images.
Also, the sets include signal processing hardware that
allows you to pipe a video signal (RS-170?) to the
"monitor bank" and each set will take it's "slice"
of the video stream out and scale it to fit the display.
Of course, computer generated video doesn't *need*
this luxury... split the signal in software and run
it out N video cards :-/
Hmmm... I can't recall if the monitors are 4:3 or 9:4,
though...
Regardless, probably way too rich for your budget? ;-)
--don
On Thu, 2004-07-01 at 16:56, Rob O'Donnell wrote:
The 19c (*an* 88K model) images run from ~2M to ~6M,
depending on the features compiled into the image.
At 17:13 01/07/2004, you wrote:
Well no worries if they are no good
waiting to hear back at the mo re. keyboards /
displays...
(someone else mentioned software is needed??
They need a boot image on the server. For my NCD 88k one
this is about
1.5MB from memory (I have a copy somewhere!) and is transferred using
TFTP to the Xterm on startup.
Depending on how you have the terminal configured, you may
also need to set up BOOTP (later boot monitors also support
DHCP -- but don't count on it!) and probably NFS to serve
up configuration files (unless you want to treat them as
R/O and rely on TFTP for those). Likewise, xfs comes in
handy (though you can serve up the fonts via TFTP or
NFS, as well -- depends on how many terminals you are
running, how many fonts you support, etc.)
All the NCD boot files were readily
available a few years ago for sure, although I've no idea
about Xterms from other vendors.
You can probably scrounge a copy from some non-NCD site.
NCD still sells NCDware for ~$350 a copy -- despite the
fact that it hasn't been supported for *many* years.
I've never
played with an x-term, so was just something
else ot
put in the pile of "cool things I should
play with
someday when I have
infinate time" !
Ha ha! They are pretty cool to play around with - as
mentioned it was
really the sound situation which stopped me seriously
using mine in the
last few years (that and only 8 bit colour) [ Cub screen
wall ]
Sounds good :-) Why not do some simple games too?
Something as basic as
'pong' should be easy?
hmm, now that's an interesting idea. Wonder how well it'd
work in
practice - there'd probably be about 1.5" of dead space
between each
screen, so I'm not sure if that'd make it feel odd or
not. Worth a try,
though :) 
1 Jul
1 Jul
7:17 a.m.
New subject: Whatta you do with all these durned PeeCees?
Just as a matter of note, while collecting PC's for some linux work, I
accumulated nearly 10, 2 of which I really needed. Some great monitors
too, all from local dumps. So, what do you do all the extras?
National Cristina Foundation, http://www.cristina.org
said it could take up to 2 weeks to place my machines.
Instead it took only one day... They found a local charity who themselves
want to send 1000 PC's to South Africa. No crushing, no melting, no eBay.
I'm happy. Any the recipients will be doing Linux, not MS. ;}
John A.
Sorry to make it look like an
advert, but the experience went well.
4:44 a.m.
Still hoping somebody wants some Xterms!
Well, heck, I want some Xterms.
I just don't want Xterms badly enough to pay shipping acros the pond.
/~\ The ASCII der Mouse
\ / Ribbon Campaign
X Against HTML mouse(a)rodents.montreal.qc.ca
/ \ Email! 7D C8 61 52 5D E7 2D 39 4E F1 31 3E E8 B3 27 4B
1:11 p.m.
On Thu, Jul 01, 2004 at 10:26:02AM +0000, Jules Richardson wrote:
On Thu, 2004-07-01 at 00:35, Tony Duell wrote:
Dammit, spoil my surprise why don't you? :-P
What's the label on the side say? "DD11-DK" is the bog-standard 9-slot
Unibus backplane, but it could be something specialized like an RK611
backplane or something.
-ethan
--
Ethan Dicks, A-130-S Current South Pole Weather at 02-Jul-2004 01:10 Z
South Pole Station
PSC 468 Box 400 Temp -94.0 F (-70.0 C) Windchill -135.7 F (-93.2 C)
APO AP 96598 Wind 10.4 kts Grid 080 Barometer 672.1 mb (10925. ft)
Ethan.Dicks(a)amanda.spole.gov http://penguincentral.com/penguincentral.html
ps. I too
am curious to know what the spiky thing is!
Knowing the source, and knowing what they had, I am pretty sure this is a
DEC Unibus backplane of some flavour.
9:57 p.m.
New subject: DEC Backplane (Was: Re: XTerms + DEC stuff + misc available (Cambridge, UK))
On Fri, 2004-07-02 at 01:11, Ethan Dicks wrote:
On Thu, Jul 01, 2004 at 10:26:02AM +0000, Jules
Richardson wrote:
Looks to be DDIIPK, part number 70-11523.
There's a smaller sticker reading 2963167/79 (given the date on it of
1979 I expect that's just a factory batch number though)
Curiously the hand-written date's 1/17/79 - so either the board was
built in the US and shipped over here, or DEC imposed US-style dates on
factory workers this side of the pond!
cheers,
Jules
On Thu, 2004-07-01 at 00:35, Tony Duell wrote:
Dammit, spoil my surprise why don't you? :-P
What's the label on the side say? "DD11-DK" is the bog-standard 9-slot
Unibus backplane, but it could be something specialized like an RK611
backplane or something. ps. I too
am curious to know what the spiky thing is!
Knowing the source, and knowing what they had, I am pretty sure this is a
DEC Unibus backplane of some flavour.
2 Jul
2 Jul
1:12 p.m.
New subject: DEC Backplane (Was: Re: XTerms + DEC stuff + misc available (Cambridge, UK))
On Fri, Jul 02, 2004 at 09:57:33AM +0000, Jules Richardson wrote:
Looks to be DDIIPK, part number 70-11523.
That would be DD11PK... it's a CPU backplane for an 11/34.
-ethan
--
Ethan Dicks, A-130-S Current South Pole Weather at 03-Jul-2004 01:00 Z
South Pole Station
PSC 468 Box 400 Temp -95.4 F (-70.8 C) Windchill -136.7 F (-93.8 C)
APO AP 96598 Wind 10 kts Grid 057 Barometer 669 mb (11042. ft)
Ethan.Dicks(a)amanda.spole.gov http://penguincentral.com/penguincentral.html
5 Jul
5 Jul
2:01 a.m.
New subject: DEC Backplane (Was: Re: XTerms + DEC stuff + misc available (Cambridge, UK))
Ethan Dicks wrote:
On Fri, Jul 02, 2004 at 09:57:33AM +0000, Jules
Richardson wrote:
Also a CPU backplane for a 11/04.
/wai-sun
Looks to be DDIIPK, part number 70-11523.
That would be DD11PK... it's a CPU backplane for an 11/34. 
2 Jul
2 Jul
9:08 a.m.
New subject: DEC Backplane (Was: Re: XTerms + DEC stuff + misc available (Cambridge, UK))
Looks to be DDIIPK, part number 70-11523.
I seem to remember (though may be wrong) that the DD11-PK is the
backplane used in an 11/34.
Megan Gentry
Former RT-11 Developer
+--------------------------------+-------------------------------------+
| Megan Gentry, EMT/B, PP-ASEL,ST| email: mbg at world.std.com |
| Member of Technical Staff | megan at savaje.com |
| SavaJe Technologies, Inc. | (s/ at /@/) |
| 100 Apollo Drive | URL: http://world.std.com/~mbg/ |
| Chelmsford, MA 01824 | "pdp-11 programmer - some assembler |
| (978) 256 6521 (DEC '77-'98) | required." - mbg KB1FCA |
+--------------------------------+-------------------------------------+
30 Jun
30 Jun
2:36 a.m.
damn, wrong side of the pond. =/
would have been nice to get scsi boxes and cables. probably wouldn't work
on US power anyhow.
spiky thing sounds interesting too. maybe it was to keep physical hackers
away (instead of software hackers)? heh.
-John Boffemmyer IV
At 09:24 AM 6/30/2004, you wrote:
I'm aware of the following up for disposal (I think
they're off to
landfill at the end of next week by the sounds of it) in Cambridge, if
anyone's interested:
17 HP Xterminals
5 HP 700RX (Xterminals)
3 Vaxstation 3100
4 Large SCSI boxes
4 Medium SCSI boxes
6 BBC Bs
16 BBC type monitors
4 NCD Xterms
1 HP Entria Xterm
8 Dot matrix printers
1 DEC 3000
1 Sparc 4
1 Extremely spiky thing
1 Olivetti drive of some description
1 huge monitor box of cables
Lots of random software
I should be meeting with the chap tomorrow as I'm picking up some other
stuff from him, so hopefully I can look over everything. I *may* grab
the software and cable boxes just so I can take a proper inventory,
although I have no desire to hang onto anything other than a SCSI cable
or two.
Note 1: this is the *UK* Cambridge (I always put that in the subject,
and people always miss it :-)
Note 2: various people know about this stuff, so it's a case of first
come, first served. I can put you in touch with the chap if there is
anything you want from the list.
ps. I too am curious to know what the spiky thing is!
cheers
Jules
----------------------------------------
Founder, Lead Writer, Tech Analyst
and Web Designer Boff-Net Technologies
http://boff-net.dhs.org/index.html
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allain＠panix.com -
ard＠p850ug1.demon.co.uk -
auryn＠GCI-Net.com -
classiccmp.org＠irrelevant.fsnet.co.uk -
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