Oi, I've got dibs on the first one of those that comes up :D Cheers a

Jules, yes a large hard drive seeing would be very interesting. Thought of doing that with one of the old monster drives but seem to have problem finding something nice with the glass lid on it. It would be a trick to keep it running too.. I remember the 20 meg iss drive with the hp 2883 label on it.... the size of a washing machine but all glassed in top... lots of power lots of heat...... ----- Original Message ----- From: "Jules Richardson" <julesrichardsonuk(a)yahoo.co.uk> To: "ed sharpe" <esharpe(a)uswest.net>et>; "General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts" <cctalk(a)classiccmp.org> Sent: Tuesday, September 07, 2004 3:08 AM Subject: Re: *** Ideas needed for developing interactive displays....

yes.... the visual of seeing the heads seek in and out.... I suppose you could pared the heads so they do not land and do not even hardly spin the thing up just make the heads seek...... ----- Original Message ----- From: "David V. Corbin" <dvcorbin(a)optonline.net> To: "'ed sharpe'" <esharpe(a)uswest.net>et>; "'General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts'" <cctalk(a)classiccmp.org> Sent: Tuesday, September 07, 2004 8:03 AM Subject: RE: *** Ideas needed for developing interactive displays....

Pick one of the stepper-motor drives -- they don't have servo information to worry about!. Some of them, Rodime being one that I remember. do still take _some_ information off the platter (like the position of the index pulse -- the hall sensor generates several pulses per revolution, it takes a single pulse from the disk at power-up to determine which of them is the index), but I guess you can find one that doesn't actually need to read anything. Try an ST506 or ST412. Certainky on the latter the spindle motor driver is a separate PCB, and the _only_ connections to the rest of the drive are +5V and ground. That's also a stepper-motor drive... Can you find a dead/dying ST412? -tony

NO!!!! Sorry, but I object to technical museums that present replicas (and emulators hidden inside the case of an older machine, and...) as the real thing. You would not accept an art gallery that showed copies of the famous paintings, you shouldn't accept it for computers either. If I go to a museum it's because I want to see the real machine -- one I don't happen to already have. I don't want to see a fake. -tony

Tony Duell wrote: I agree with you that the representation of a replica as an original is reprehensible. But, if the choice is a replica or nothing? I am thinking of Sellams PDP-1 replica in Tokyo, by all accounts they tried but could not secure an original, so they did the next best thing. In any case had they succeeded in getting an original it would not have been able to run any software so in some sense the replica could be considered "better". I would sincerely hope that do not represent Sellams work as an original PDP-1, there again it is original in the other sense of the word ;-) Another example : the baby machine in Manchester. It also a replica, built with original components where those could be found. It is not represented as an original, but as a reconstruction. I think that, properly represented, replicas do have a place in a museum. They allow the demonstration of working machines where the originals are too far gone to continue functioning. Regards, -- HansP

On Fri, 2004-09-10 at 02:43 -0700, Vintage Computer Festival wrote: We need a Tony simulator :-) (Running on classic hardware, of course!)

The Science Museum in London (England) is arranging a series of tours of its storerooms of items not normally on display. see: http://www.sciencemuseum.org.uk/collections/ingenioustours.asp The one on March the 16th next year is on the computing collection <quote> Wednesday 16 March 2005, 14:00 - 15:30 Britain has always played an important role in the development of computing technology. This tour will take you from an era when computers occupied whole rooms and Britain was at the forefront of computer research, to a new generation of programmers created by personal computers such as the BBC Micro and the Sinclair. <end quote> An hour and a half isn't much time for this but it could well be interesting. I hope I've booked a place on this, but I haven't had confirmation yet. Andy

Rumor has it that Vintage Computer Festival may have mentioned these words: When? Google's already got 563 hits for it, there's a webmag there (split between Florida and BC, Canada)... ... Altho google did ask me: "Did you mean: fasciculation?" ;-) =-=-= Or are you just looking to patent it, a la M$ patenting using a tab key in a browser, or somesuch? :-P Or - if even they *could* be brought back to life for a short time, if it would break them in such a way to make it harder yet to restore, IMHO it's best to say point to the original and say "This is the original, in as good of shape as we could get." Then point to the replica and say "If this machine could run without damage, things it would do would look like what we display on this replica." Right. I'd much rather see a working replica next to a nearly working original, compared to a pile of rubble with a sign: "This is what happened when we tried to run this" and an irreplaceable machine destroyed forever. Laterz, Roger "Merch" Merchberger -- Roger "Merch" Merchberger | JC: "Like those people in Celeronville!" sysadmin, Iceberg Computers | Me: "Don't you mean Silicon Valley???" zmerch(a)30below.com | JC: "Yea, that's the place!" | JC == Jeremy Christian

What's the point in having a working machine if you never run it? 99.9% of failures do no visible damage to the machine (I would, of course, recomend keeping a careful eye on PSUs, insulation resistance, etc), so what's the difference between having a working machine you never run because it might do damage and a machine that's got some custom chip failed becuase you did actually run it? -tony

On Fri, 10 Sep 2004, Roger Merchberger wrote: I don't know. I use Merriam-Webster's Online, which has slowly degraded over time in terms of good results since they want you to pay for better access I guess. At any rate, they didn't have that form of the word, though it seems perfectly valid to me. Well, if there's money to be made then sure :) -- Sellam Ismail Vintage Computer Festival ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ International Man of Intrigue and Danger http://www.vintage.org [ Old computing resources for business || Buy/Sell/Trade Vintage Computers ] [ and academia at www.VintageTech.com || at http://marketplace.vintage.org ]

I don't think I'd call that a replica. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I thought it was based on a PC running an emulator. To me a replica of a PDP1 would be a machine built as far as possible to the original schematics (using more modern components if appropriate, like more common tranasistors). But IMHO even the PSU should be built to the original design. I have no problem with true replicas _provided they're identified as such_. But I don't think I really approve of museums showing emulators running on PCs (mainly because I could run those if I wanted to at home, I guess). -tony

On Sat, 11 Sep 2004, Vintage Computer Festival wrote: This gives me a crazy idea of building an all transistor replica of a simple CPU (with maybe a serial ALU) on a large single surface mount card (suitable for framing). Maybe even with SMT LEDs on most of the collector loads - lots of blinkenlights! Peter Wallace

On Sat, Sep 11, 2004 at 10:29:49PM -0600, Ben Franchuk wrote: There are approximately 1000 transistors in a PDP-8/S (plus lots of diodes and resistors and the core stack). Even with SMT, that's a lot of square footage. -ethan -- Ethan Dicks, A-130-S Current South Pole Weather at 12-Sep-2004 05:20 Z South Pole Station PSC 468 Box 400 Temp -64.0 F (-53.4 C) Windchill -92 F (-68.90 C) APO AP 96598 Wind 6.8 kts Grid 328 Barometer 668.5 mb (11062. ft) Ethan.Dicks(a)amanda.spole.gov http://penguincentral.com/penguincentral.html

On Sun, Sep 12, 2004 at 02:29:16PM -0700, vrs wrote: Turn the problem around - the PDP-8/S has a backplane that is approximately 16" x 30" with over 100 Flip Chips. If you were to attempt to turn that particular design into a single planar board of the same size, the contents of each Flip Chip would have to fit into the same square area as one back- plane slot (about 0.5" x 3.5"). I don't doubt that any of those circuits would fit in 2 sq in, that's for a 16"x30" board. Of course, a significant volume of the PDP-8/S is devoted to the core plane and core circuits, so perhaps it would fit in 16"x16". Just keep in mind how many square feet of thru-hole space is _in_ a PDP-8... SMT will reduce the amount of space required, but there is a lot of space to reduce. -ethan -- Ethan Dicks, A-130-S Current South Pole Weather at 12-Sep-2004 23:10 Z South Pole Station PSC 468 Box 400 Temp -45.1 F (-42.9 C) Windchill -73.40 F (-58.6 C) APO AP 96598 Wind 9.80 kts Grid 312 Barometer 671.1 mb (10965. ft) Ethan.Dicks(a)amanda.spole.gov http://penguincentral.com/penguincentral.html

The PDP-8/s seems dense, but it is mostly air! While DEC made some nice architectures, their mechanical people were a little behind the times. The integration density of those old Flip Chips is pretty horrible, compared with most other computer manufacturers. Think of the precentage of those 100+ Flip Chips that is blank board. I am sure you could get a PDP-8/s come onto a 12 by 12 board, but I bet that would be one expensive assembly! William Donzelli aw288(a)osfn.org

Exactly. I think a six layer board would be needed, but maybe with some extremely optimized routing, maybe a four layer. Either way, I doubt there would be a whole bunch of unused real estate left (or money in your pocket). William Donzelli aw288(a)osfn.org

One could perhaps build it out of modules -- make SMT versions of Rxxx modules, etc., then use those to build up the CPU. Then one could debug at the module level before tackling the whole thing. Vince

On Mon, 13 Sep 2004, Ethan Dicks wrote: BTW, this would probably make for an award winning exhibit at the VCF ;) -- Sellam Ismail Vintage Computer Festival ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ International Man of Intrigue and Danger http://www.vintage.org [ Old computing resources for business || Buy/Sell/Trade Vintage Computers ] [ and academia at www.VintageTech.com || at http://marketplace.vintage.org ]

On Sun, 12 Sep 2004, vrs wrote: Thats something I could do as a feasability experiment Are the schematics of the (say dual FF that used for the registers) on line anywhere? I could sneek that on my next mixed 4 layer panel Peter Wallace Mesa Electronics

On Mon, 13 Sep 2004, vrs wrote: I'll take a look at that one, Maybe with right angle .050" or 2mm connector so I could plug it onto a full size flip-chip adapter... Peter Wallace

Ethan Dicks wrote: Remember to use 1 GHZ transistors too!

Ed> At 10:51 PM 9/14/2004, you wrote: Ed> I think the original proposal included scattering some LED's Ed> around for blinkenlights also. Guess you'll need some 1GHz LED's Ed> then too. Only if you have 1 GHz eyeballs! paul

Ed Kelleher wrote: But if you ever did a copy of a PDP 8/S the tricky part is I think DEC used PNP transistors and ge diodes rather than NPN transistors and si diodes.. Note the voltage levels I think are -3 volts and GND so you could use modern CMOS and get almost the same functions but a flip/chip I guess would be 1/3 the size if you could get the sockets shrunk down. Also the core memory could be replaced with a non-volatile magnetic memory. ( 3.3v logic )

On Sun, Sep 12, 2004 at 09:37:08PM -0700, Peter C. Wallace wrote: That's a nice change from the past (not that it affects most commercial designs, I'm sure). How is gold priced these days? The last board I had made in bulk was the GG2 Bus+ board - huge by many standards - big enough for a 100-pin Zorro edge plus a full ISA bus (36 + 62 pins). At q. 100, I was getting them for about $15 blank, plus shipping, after setup charges (2 layer) I've always wanted to make a successor to the Qbus COMBOARD (since I have exactly one working one left, one blank PCB, and one assembled unit I pried off the trade show booth that was probably DOA in 1985). The trick would be cost - a 1 sq ft 6 layer board with lots of gold at the bottom - I'm sure I couldn't afford to make more than a proto run, just because it would be for personal use, not a commercial product (what I _wish_ I could find would be a couple original ones with our Qbus boards as, say, Simpact, so nobody trades our old stuff). I'd probably redesign it to replace the parallel port with a SCSI port. 2 x serial + SCSI is more interesting these days than 2 x serial + line printer. -ethan -- Ethan Dicks, A-130-S Current South Pole Weather at 13-Sep-2004 04:40 Z South Pole Station PSC 468 Box 400 Temp -53 F (-47.3 C) Windchill -85.7 F (-65.40 C) APO AP 96598 Wind 11.6 kts Grid 342 Barometer 671.7 mb (10941. ft) Ethan.Dicks(a)amanda.spole.gov http://penguincentral.com/penguincentral.html

Ethan> On Sun, Sep 12, 2004 at 10:31:39PM -0400, William Donzelli Ethan> wrote: Ethan> True. Ethan> With both sides in play, that seems likely, but a 12"x12" Ethan> board is going to be pricy (at least there won't be many Ethan> through-holes, just vias; those things add up). If you have a PCB shop that charges for vias, that is. The ones I've looked at do not, they just charge for square inches. For example, up to 80 square inches, 4 layers, quantity 5, $50 each from one company. Judging by the other prices, 144 square inches might be $70-$80 or so. paul

Peter> On Sun, 12 Sep 2004, Ethan Dicks wrote: Peter> Ignoring memory, I'm pretty sure could get 1000 transistors + Peter> support parts/diodes on a 12x12" card. Doing the component Peter> placement would be a pain however. Why? A good light, magnifying glass or small stereo microscope, fine tip soldering iron, fine solder, and flux -- plus patience. No sweat. paul

Ed> At 11:52 AM 9/13/2004, you wrote: Peter> Ignoring memory, I'm pretty sure could get 1000 transistors + Peter> support parts/diodes on a 12x12" card. Doing the component Peter> placement would be a pain however. Ed> Placement is still a pain, but the soldering part might have been Ed> relieved some. Placement: tweezers and tooth picks. Ed> Since it's getting tougher and tougher to find through hole Ed> components, next PCB design I do, I'm planning on doing as much Ed> SMT as I can. Ed> I'm going to investigate the toaster oven solder method also: Ed> http://www.pcbexpress.com/stencils/index.php I saw that. It makes sense for BGA parts where you have no choice (short of sending it to a pro). I wouldn't use it for anything else. It's hard to believe that there is enough temperature control to keep without dislodging any. Far easier to place individual parts one by one and solder them as you go. I watched a professional technician assembling prototype boards that way -- several hundred small passive parts, active components up to 240 lead flatpacks. I applied her approach on a somewhat smaller scale -- perhaps 150 capacitors, a few dozen resistors and resistor arrays, ASICs up to 120 leads. Again, no sweat. paul

On Sat, 11 Sep 2004, Ben Franchuk wrote: Memory is a problem, one thing is to have only a little (say 16X12) with transistors or core. The other thing would be to cheat and black box it with a memory chip SMT transistors can be had for around $.01 each, diodes about the same, resistors around $.005, LEDs are still about $.03. (Assembly costs would be more than component costs) Peter Wallace

yes the "A' series used RTE a. xx will NOT run rte 4. ----- Original Message ----- From: "Peter C. Wallace" &lt;pcw(a)mesanet.com&gt; To: "General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts" &lt;cctalk(a)classiccmp.org&gt; Sent: Sunday, September 12, 2004 10:02 AM Subject: HP 1000s Classic?

Yes we are planning on having the hp 2000 emulator! cheaper to have tsb this way compared to running the whole system which will eventually break and need repair...... I have NO spares for 2100 processors...... ed sharpe archivist for smecc ----- Original Message ----- From: "John Allain" &lt;allain(a)panix.com&gt; To: "General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts" &lt;cctalk(a)classiccmp.org&gt; Sent: Tuesday, September 07, 2004 4:26 PM Subject: Re: *** Ideas needed for developing interactive displays.... and the not

the machine running the emulator can be any pc white box.... does not even need to be all that fast.... heck the homeless around here bring me stuff the emulator would run on,,,, however,,,, if we had enough hp 2000 parts I would like to have the system functional..... we do not have a drive for it as the orig. got tossed eons ago ( not by me) ----- Original Message ----- From: "Tony Duell" &lt;ard(a)p850ug1.demon.co.uk&gt; To: &lt;cctalk(a)classiccmp.org&gt; Sent: Wednesday, September 08, 2004 3:31 PM Subject: Re: *** Ideas needed for developing interactive displays.... will

hi jay need a drive 2883 or a controller and a 79xx drive(s) will have to fire up the processors and see what happens there... if I was to run this system I would want a good stash of 2100s on hand... do you have any extra? ed ----- Original Message ----- From: "Jay West" &lt;jwest(a)classiccmp.org&gt; To: "General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts" &lt;cctalk(a)classiccmp.org&gt; Sent: Wednesday, September 08, 2004 8:40 PM Subject: Re: *** Ideas needed for developing interactive displays.... for system.

Hi Jay...yes we had discussed the 7905 7906 issue... I think yu had indicated that the 06 only will look like the 05 though.... have you ever tried a 7925 or a 7920? they probably would only address out as a 05 also... but... yes the power supplies should be tested on the 2100's first.... I work best with a wicker basket of parts to sub after that point though. Thanks Ed Sharpe archivist for SMECC Please check our web site at http://www.smecc.org to see other engineering fields, communications and computation stuff we buy, and by all means when in Arizona drop in and see us. address: coury house / smecc 5802 w palmaire ave glendale az 85301 ----- Original Message ----- From: "Jay West" &lt;jwest(a)classiccmp.org&gt; To: "General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts" &lt;cctalk(a)classiccmp.org&gt; Sent: Thursday, September 09, 2004 8:37 PM Subject: 2100 at smecc

On Wed, 2004-09-08 at 23:31 +0100, Tony Duell wrote: That's when you throw it out and get another one, though! (Sorry, indulging in a bit of "Tony baiting" there ;-) On a serious note though, a museum might not have a complete old machine (of whatever type) - experience is that for the big stuff things tend to arrive as parts here and there, so often all there is may be a rack with bits missing, or a console for a mainframe etc. In that case the item either has to sit in storage where nobody can see it, or live as a static exhibit. I'd say that's a perfect case where emulation is acceptable though as it adds something to the item for the public - of course the golden rule is not to modify the original item in any way, such that if the missing bits do ever turn up they can be added to the system in the hope of having an *original* working machine. Even then having the original working might not be practical though - whilst the skills might be there to fix the hardware, the time might not be. That's all too common at Bletchley; even if I have the skills to fix items there's only one of me (and sometimes less than that :) - the best I can do is collect together missing technical documentation where possible in the hope that someone else will have the time to work on items at a later date... Plus of course, as well as space & time, power and heat considerations may come into play; some of the bigger machines are expensive to run for a non-profit museum, and the heat they chuck out can be considerable (have a couple of DECs, the Marconi, and 20 or so micros running at once and it soon gets unbearably warm in our room!) cheers Jules

If not then you find a machine with a simulator, that will simulate the machine that the simulator ran on to simulate the machine. A few years later you.. Find a machine with a simulator that can simulate the machine that simulated the machine that simulated the machine that you wanted.... This repeats until the cat eats the rat that eats the malt that was in the house that Tony built!

This is good, but a clock usually costs less to run than a computer (and a lot less to run than an *old* computer). There are also many more people willing and/or able to sit down and understand a clock than there seem to be who are willing/able to do the same for electronics. My clock experience is limited to one modern mechanical alarm clock and one electro-mechanical clock/radio/alarm thing. Both had mechanical problems, both came apart (given a little time and effort) and both went back together and worked. Plus there was not much difference between them (at least in principle, at least to the depth that mattered in getting them functional again). Computers seem to vary much more in design and have evloved quite considerably. There is also plenty that, potentially at least, you cannot tell just by looking. (PALs, ASICs, custom parts, parts for which you have no datasheet etc.). So it is certainly impressive that a clock museum can keep many clock operational; but I doubt that any sort of computer museum would have the resources available to do that for old computers. It is possible to build your own valves, but is it possible to build a replacement valve for a specific (but now unobtainable) valve for some old mainframe? Antonio -- --------------- Antonio Carlini arcarlini(a)iee.org

My point is that once you have rebuilt your clock, it does not cost much to make it available to the public in good working order. Put it in a display case, wind it up and off you go. You'll need to pay for maintenance (and someone to wind the clocks as necessary) but that's it. Computers (including modern PCs) come with a power bill attached (the older, the bigger - in general). Running a PDP-10 would not be cheap. Running Big Ben (if I had the space :-)) would just need me to wind it up now and then. (I'm ignoring the maintenance costs of both BB and a DEC-10, because I assume they are both too much for me!) In the UK at least, there has been a long tradition of mechanical engineering. Add to that, the fact that many people find it easier to comprehend things that they can see and I suspect you have the answer. For thee and me, maybe. But for the majority of people they are a black box. No moving parts. Somewhat unlikely. I expect any reasonably practical person can do what you do with you there telling them what to do in detail. It's the umpteen years of experience that you have that help you decide what to do next. I don't think there was ever a Golden Age when everyone wanted to understand X (substitute any reasonably technical subject for X). This doesn't worry me: we don't need that many people to take an interest. Just enough so that there are local resources available to help and encourage. I have no experience of any of those jobs, so I would get on quite badly. I'd hope to have a go though, and if all I'm doing is building a replacement part, all I would need to believe (for an item of historical interest - basically anything old :-)) with some reasonable confidence is that my replacement part not cause any harm to the original components. When it comes to (for example) bushing a plate hole on an original part, I would certainly want to have practiced on some non-historical parts first! True. OTOH, how many old clocks are truly impossible to repair? How many of them were constructed in such a manner that they could not be dismantled to determine how it was meant to work in the first place? (And for those with bigger budgets, how impossible does the repair remain when you can push the clock through an appropriate MRI scanner). With computers there are many parts whose internal function would be very difficult to determine without a datasheet. (And, obviously, PALs, [E]PROMs etc. make things even harder). None of this makes computers impossible to fix, but it does look to be harder (and I say that as someone who would have far more confidence in his abilities to fix electronics than something fine and mechanical). This is certainly true. I know that most of the datasheets for high-end parts that I've seen at work lately (say since 2000) have been made available through an NDA. That's fair enough at the start (since being on the cutting edge means using the latest parts and noone wants the competition to know what they are doing) but with the shorter component lifetimes, I'm not sure that these parts ever come out of the NDA process. Getting these datasheets won't be impossible, but it will be harder than finding data on a BC108 or an NE555 fifty years from now! There are factories still churning out valves, so it is certainly possible. There are university labs that let you build your own transistors. These things will hopefully eventually filter down to the hobbyist on the street (if we're lucky). Still harder to do at home at the moment than, say, grinding a crankshaft or resleeving a cylinder. And more expensive to have it done as a one-off special than it would be to find a machine shop to do a special part for you. Antonio -- --------------- Antonio Carlini arcarlini(a)iee.org

How about, 'type you name here' and it spits out paper tape with it punched as text? (I have C code for this). Paper tape is cheap even today, as you'd only need a foot or two per visitor. (And if the tape had their name also coded as machine-readable, you could use it as a 'ticket' for other displays or activities...) Cards would work, but are more cumbersome to make just one, and tape readers can be nice and little and non-threatening (and harder to harm).

Peaceful revolution is possible. Coming this November 2, with your help. John A. Put away that mercury bottle and vote.

I like the core one! sounds great Stan! ed! ----- Original Message ----- From: "Stan Sieler" &lt;sieler(a)allegro.com&gt; To: "ed sharpe" &lt;esharpe(a)uswest.net&gt;et>; "General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts" &lt;cctalk(a)classiccmp.org&gt; Sent: Thursday, September 09, 2004 7:17 PM Subject: Re: *** Ideas needed for developing interactive displays....