17 May
2017
17 May
'17
8:45 p.m.
I have both a pdp 11/34 and 11/23 and am trying to find some bbs software
to run. Preferably something that will run under an os and not monopolize
the whole machine.
Any suggestions? i have not had much luck finding anything.
--Devin
17 May
17 May
10:24 p.m.
There may have been Rainbow BBS programs, but I doubt anything for the
11/34. You may have to write this.
b
On Wed, May 17, 2017 at 8:45 PM, devin davison via cctalk <
cctalk at classiccmp.org> wrote:
I have both a pdp 11/34 and 11/23 and am trying to
find some bbs software
to run. Preferably something that will run under an os and not monopolize
the whole machine.
Any suggestions? i have not had much luck finding anything.
--Devin
18 May
18 May
7:49 a.m.
Well, that would depend on the OS in use. There are BBS programs for Unix.
I used one that came from one of the sources newsgroups decades ago and it
worked really well (I never tried on a PDP-11 but there was nothing in it that
would preclude this. I did it on a SYS III Xenix clone). BSD 2.11 should run
fine on a 34 or 23 and there is always Ultrix-11 which I have certainly run on
the 23.
bill
________________________________________
From: cctalk [cctalk-bounces at classiccmp.org] on behalf of william degnan via cctalk
[cctalk at classiccmp.org]
Sent: Wednesday, May 17, 2017 10:24 PM
To: devin davison; General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts
Subject: Re: BBS software for the PDP 11
There may have been Rainbow BBS programs, but I doubt anything for the
11/34. You may have to write this.
b
On Wed, May 17, 2017 at 8:45 PM, devin davison via cctalk <
cctalk at classiccmp.org> wrote:
I have both a pdp 11/34 and 11/23 and am trying to
find some bbs software
to run. Preferably something that will run under an os and not monopolize
the whole machine.
Any suggestions? i have not had much luck finding anything.
--Devin
10:59 a.m.
On Thu, May 18, 2017 at 9:14 AM, Systems Glitch via cctalk
<cctalk at classiccmp.org> wrote:
Yep.
BSD 2.11
should run fine on a 34 or 23
You need split I&D for 2.11BSD, that rules out the 11/23 and IIRC the 11/34 as well.
I want to say 2.9BSD will run though.
Yep, but you might not be happy running it on the 11/34 since it's
limited to 248K of RAM (back in the day, I ran 2.9BSD on an 11/24
because it was Unibus and I could put a couple of MB in it). It will
install and boot and run, but be tight. Same goes for using an RL02
as the install volume. You can install to it but it's really not
enough space to install everything and recompile the kernel. RK07 is
fine.
-ethan
11:51 a.m.
On Thu, 18 May 2017 09:14:24 -0400
Systems Glitch via cctalk <cctalk at classiccmp.org> wrote:
I run BSD 2.9 on my 11/34C (w/max. mem.) & DZ using (2) RL02s with up to
three TTY sessions. It's a bit "sluggish" (by today's standards). TSX
Plus with three TTY sessions runs much faster on the same hardware.
Cheers,
Lyle
--
73 AF6WS
Bickley Consulting West Inc.
http://bickleywest.com
"Black holes are where God is dividing by zero"
BSD 2.11
should run fine on a 34 or 23
You need split I&D for 2.11BSD, that rules out the 11/23 and IIRC the
11/34 as well. I want to say 2.9BSD will run though.
Thanks,
Jonathan 
19 May
19 May
3:59 a.m.
On Thu, 18 May 2017, Lyle Bickley wrote:
I run BSD 2.9 on my 11/34C (w/max. mem.) & DZ
using (2) RL02s with up to
three TTY sessions. It's a bit "sluggish" (by today's standards). TSX
I have a similar setup with our 11/34. 2.9BSD on one RL01 as root/swap,
the rest (/usr etc.) on a RA80 (with the backported MSCP driver); also a
couple of TTY lines. It's not the fastest system, and the kernel uses
overlays like crazy ;-) But hey, it runs...
I still have to add the cache and FPP boards and see how that improves the
performance.
Christian
18 May
18 May
11:02 a.m.
On Thu, 18 May 2017, Bill Gunshannon wrote:
would preclude this. I did it on a SYS III Xenix
clone). BSD 2.11
should run fine on a 34 or 23 and there is always Ultrix-11 which I have
No, it doesn't. 2.9BSD, yes, but not 2.11BSD as it requires split I/D and
more than 128 kwords of memory.
Christian
9:17 a.m.
On Wed, 17 May 2017, william degnan via cctalk wrote:
There may have been Rainbow BBS programs, but I doubt
anything for the
11/34. You may have to write this.
That reminds me of a bit of obscure trivia...
Back in the early days of FidoNet, one or more of the Fido BBS sysops had
DEC Rainbows. The machines could run Fido just fine, but the serial port
address/port didn't follow the convention laid down by the IBM PC. At the
time, there were other MS-DOS compatibles that also had a similar issue
with the serial port and some of those folks wanted to run Fido.
Tom Jennings, Wynn Waggoner III(sp?) and Thom Henderson(sp?) got together
to create the FOSSIL standard.
FOSSIL is Fido Opus Seadog Serial Interface Layer and provided a mechanism
via INT 14 for any MS-DOS compatible computer to run any BBS or mailer
software that had FOSSIL support and a FOSSIL driver available for it.
FOSSIL continued to be a thing long after the issue of serial port
incompatibility was a thing of the past. In fact there's modern software
out there now such as NetFossil that telnet-enables software that can talk
to a FOSSIL driver.
The two popular FOSSIL drivers that I recall from back in the day were
BNU and Ray Gwinn's X00.
As an aside, if anyone has or knows where I can find the source code for
Opus BBS, I'd be interested in hearing from you!
g.
--
Proud owner of F-15C 80-0007
http://www.f15sim.com - The only one of its kind.
http://www.diy-cockpits.org/coll - Go Collimated or Go Home.
Some people collect things for a hobby. Geeks collect hobbies.
ScarletDME - The red hot Data Management Environment
A Multi-Value database for the masses, not the classes.
http://scarlet.deltasoft.com - Get it _today_!
9:45 a.m.
There may have been Rainbow BBS programs, but I doubt anything for the
That's what I was thinking. I have some FidoNET files and mail from the
Rainbow. My guess the BBS would have been written in Pascal or C if for
the Rainbow (guess only) so if you wanted to attempt to port, after you
find a Rainbow BBS? I'd start with a Rainbow BBS disassembly/decompile and
see if you can convert to the PDP 11 running the same language/compile it.
11/34. You may have to write this.
That reminds me of a bit of obscure trivia...
Back in the early days of FidoNet, one or more of the Fido BBS sysops had
DEC Rainbows. The machines could run Fido just fine, but the serial port
address/port didn't follow the convention laid down by the IBM PC. At the
time, there were other MS-DOS compatibles that also had a similar issue
with the serial port and some of those folks wanted to run Fido.
Tom Jennings, Wynn Waggoner III(sp?) and Thom Henderson(sp?) got together
to create the FOSSIL standard.
FOSSIL is Fido Opus Seadog Serial Interface Layer and provided a mechanism
via INT 14 for any MS-DOS compatible computer to run any BBS or mailer
software that had FOSSIL support and a FOSSIL driver available for it.
FOSSIL continued to be a thing long after the issue of serial port
incompatibility was a thing of the past. In fact there's modern software
out there now such as NetFossil that telnet-enables software that can talk
to a FOSSIL driver.
The two popular FOSSIL drivers that I recall from back in the day were BNU
and Ray Gwinn's X00.
As an aside, if anyone has or knows where I can find the source code for
Opus BBS, I'd be interested in hearing from you!
10:10 a.m.
On Thu, 18 May 2017, william degnan wrote:
That's what I was thinking. I have some FidoNET files and mail from the
Rainbow. My guess the BBS would have been written in Pascal or C if for
the Rainbow (guess only) so if you wanted to attempt to port, after you
find a Rainbow BBS? I'd start with a Rainbow BBS disassembly/decompile and
see if you can convert to the PDP 11 running the same language/compile it.
Well a Rainbow specific bbs program isn't going to really help him at all
- technically, any bbs source he can find in a language that's available
on the 11/34 could be used for the purposes of porting.
g.
--
Proud owner of F-15C 80-0007
http://www.f15sim.com - The only one of its kind.
http://www.diy-cockpits.org/coll - Go Collimated or Go Home.
Some people collect things for a hobby. Geeks collect hobbies.
ScarletDME - The red hot Data Management Environment
A Multi-Value database for the masses, not the classes.
http://scarlet.deltasoft.com - Get it _today_!
11:16 a.m.
On 5/18/17 9:45 AM, william degnan via cctalk wrote:
Strongest comment on this is that a Rainbow ran DOS (like most PCs of
the day)
and there was no security context and barely a foreground background as
part
of DOS.
All a DOS BBS was was a user interface that provided security by
requiring user/password
and limiting the commands usable. The easy was to do that was a version
of the CMD module
rewritten to not have things like RMDIR and DEL.
FYI BBSs were running on CP/M z80 boxes before that using BYE.
The closest OS to DOS is RT11, no security and the FB monitor can do
background.
IF the UI for RT11 was rewritten to disallow some utilities and what not
it could then
stand as a limited BBS. Myself I'd consider RSX or RSTS as a better
platform as you can
easily control user prives and issue accounts based on privs with
libraries for global
access to software.
The real question is why BBS? What is it trying to fix or enable?
Allison
There may have been Rainbow BBS programs, but I doubt anything for the
That's what I was thinking. I have some FidoNET files and mail from the
Rainbow. My guess the BBS would have been written in Pascal or C if for
the Rainbow (guess only) so if you wanted to attempt to port, after you
find a Rainbow BBS? I'd start with a Rainbow BBS disassembly/decompile and
see if you can convert to the PDP 11 running the same language/compile it.
11/34. You may have to write this.
That reminds me of a bit of obscure trivia...
Back in the early days of FidoNet, one or more of the Fido BBS sysops had
DEC Rainbows. The machines could run Fido just fine, but the serial port
address/port didn't follow the convention laid down by the IBM PC. At the
time, there were other MS-DOS compatibles that also had a similar issue
with the serial port and some of those folks wanted to run Fido.
Tom Jennings, Wynn Waggoner III(sp?) and Thom Henderson(sp?) got together
to create the FOSSIL standard.
FOSSIL is Fido Opus Seadog Serial Interface Layer and provided a mechanism
via INT 14 for any MS-DOS compatible computer to run any BBS or mailer
software that had FOSSIL support and a FOSSIL driver available for it.
FOSSIL continued to be a thing long after the issue of serial port
incompatibility was a thing of the past. In fact there's modern software
out there now such as NetFossil that telnet-enables software that can talk
to a FOSSIL driver.
The two popular FOSSIL drivers that I recall from back in the day were BNU
and Ray Gwinn's X00.
As an aside, if anyone has or knows where I can find the source code for
Opus BBS, I'd be interested in hearing from you!
12:51 p.m.
So a 11/03 aka a lsi11 would be to slow for such things? Such as those
Heathkit h11 lsi11 macheans? Witch was a hobyist pdp11 for those that are
unfamiliar with the hearhkits
On May 18, 2017 11:45 AM, "Chuck Guzis via cctalk" <cctalk at
classiccmp.org>
wrote:
On 05/18/2017 08:16 AM, allison via cctalk wrote:
The real question is why BBS? What is it trying
to fix or enable?
You put the words into my mouth. Thank you.
--Chuck
1:45 p.m.
On Thu, 18 May 2017, Adrian Stoness via cctalk wrote:
So a 11/03 aka a lsi11 would be to slow for such
things? Such as those
Heathkit h11 lsi11 macheans? Witch was a hobyist pdp11 for those that are
unfamiliar with the hearhkits
The machine is plenty fast. There's been BBSes run on a VIC-20. You
can't get much slower than that. :)
g.
--
Proud owner of F-15C 80-0007
http://www.f15sim.com - The only one of its kind.
http://www.diy-cockpits.org/coll - Go Collimated or Go Home.
Some people collect things for a hobby. Geeks collect hobbies.
ScarletDME - The red hot Data Management Environment
A Multi-Value database for the masses, not the classes.
http://scarlet.deltasoft.com - Get it _today_!
1:55 p.m.
On 5/18/2017 10:52 AM, Mike Whalen via cctalk wrote:
I don't recall the storage
or the location, but I do recall some screen
shots or publicity claiming that.
The machine is
plenty fast. There's been BBSes run on a VIC-20. You
can't get much slower than that. :)
In New Orleans, there was a rumor someone ran a VIC-20 BBS with no
persistent storage.
Maybe true but you also might not be able to tell!
3:07 p.m.
On Thu, 18 May 2017, Mike Whalen wrote:
I seem to recall hearing the same thing.
g.
--
Proud owner of F-15C 80-0007
http://www.f15sim.com - The only one of its kind.
http://www.diy-cockpits.org/coll - Go Collimated or Go Home.
Some people collect things for a hobby. Geeks collect hobbies.
ScarletDME - The red hot Data Management Environment
A Multi-Value database for the masses, not the classes.
http://scarlet.deltasoft.com - Get it _today_!
The machine is
plenty fast. There's been BBSes run on a VIC-20. You
can't get much slower than that. :)
In New Orleans, there was a rumor someone ran a VIC-20 BBS with no
persistent storage.
Maybe true but you also might not be able to tell!
3:34 p.m.
On Thu, May 18, 2017 at 1:45 PM, geneb via cctalk <cctalk at classiccmp.org> wrote:
On Thu, 18 May 2017, Adrian Stoness via cctalk wrote:
The VIC-20 is just a 1MHz 6502. Lots of machines at that performance
point, including the Apple II and Atari 400/800, used for BBSing.
-ethan
So a 11/03 aka a lsi11 would be to slow for such
things?
The machine is plenty fast. There's been BBSes run on a VIC-20. You can't
get much slower than that. :)
3:50 p.m.
COSMAC Elf? :-)
bill
________________________________________
From: cctalk [cctalk-bounces at classiccmp.org] on behalf of geneb via cctalk [cctalk at
classiccmp.org]
Sent: Thursday, May 18, 2017 1:45 PM
To: General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts
Subject: Re: BBS software for the PDP 11
On Thu, 18 May 2017, Adrian Stoness via cctalk wrote:
So a 11/03 aka a lsi11 would be to slow for such
things? Such as those
Heathkit h11 lsi11 macheans? Witch was a hobyist pdp11 for those that are
unfamiliar with the hearhkits
The machine is plenty fast. There's been BBSes run on a VIC-20. You
can't get much slower than that. :)
g.
--
Proud owner of F-15C 80-0007
http://www.f15sim.com - The only one of its kind.
http://www.diy-cockpits.org/coll - Go Collimated or Go Home.
Some people collect things for a hobby. Geeks collect hobbies.
ScarletDME - The red hot Data Management Environment
A Multi-Value database for the masses, not the classes.
http://scarlet.deltasoft.com - Get it _today_!
9:50 p.m.
On 05/18/2017 03:50 PM, Bill Gunshannon via cctalk wrote:
COSMAC Elf? :-)
Why not, or a PdP-8. It really
is not a high load operation. It was
more about storage.
Allison
bill
________________________________________
From: cctalk [cctalk-bounces at classiccmp.org] on behalf of geneb via cctalk [cctalk at
classiccmp.org]
Sent: Thursday, May 18, 2017 1:45 PM
To: General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts
Subject: Re: BBS software for the PDP 11
On Thu, 18 May 2017, Adrian Stoness via cctalk wrote:
So a 11/03 aka a lsi11 would be to slow for such
things? Such as those
Heathkit h11 lsi11 macheans? Witch was a hobyist pdp11 for those that are
unfamiliar with the hearhkits
The machine is plenty fast. There's been BBSes
run on a VIC-20. You
can't get much slower than that. :)
g.
--
Proud owner of F-15C 80-0007
http://www.f15sim.com - The only one of its kind.
http://www.diy-cockpits.org/coll - Go Collimated or Go Home.
Some people collect things for a hobby. Geeks collect hobbies.
ScarletDME - The red hot Data Management Environment
A Multi-Value database for the masses, not the classes.
http://scarlet.deltasoft.com - Get it _today_!
1:53 p.m.
On 5/18/2017 9:51 AM, Adrian Stoness via cctalk wrote:
So a 11/03 aka a lsi11 would be to slow for such
things? Such as those
Heathkit h11 lsi11 macheans? Witch was a hobyist pdp11 for those that are
unfamiliar with the hearhkits
My take and extension on Chuck's and Allison's question is that you can
take a USB R232 dongle, and a 56k modem (if your pots line still
supports it, 33k if not (hopefully), and run a BBS on a Raspberry Pi if
nothing else for nothing in power and infrastructure cost.
An 11 is novel, but hard to see why running it on simh wouldn't be a
better deal if you want something on the pdp11 architecture.
Keeping any PDP11 up 24 / 7 so it is a useful BBS isn't an undertaking
for the faint hearted, nor is it something easy on the pocketbook in the
way of power. (not to mention space possibly).
Unless you are a couple of well known museums and others very few do the
real hardware.
thanks
Jim
On May 18, 2017 11:45 AM, "Chuck Guzis via cctalk" <cctalk at
classiccmp.org>
wrote:
On 05/18/2017 08:16 AM, allison via cctalk
wrote:
The real question is why BBS? What is it trying
to fix or enable?
You put the words into my mouth. Thank you.
--Chuck
3:14 p.m.
On 5/18/17 1:53 PM, jim stephens via cctalk wrote:
On 5/18/2017 9:51 AM, Adrian Stoness via cctalk wrote:
Actually a 11/23 with RQDX (or scsi) hard disks can be one paltry BA23
and fairly
low total power needs. I have such a beast, MicroPDP-11, 11/23+, 4MB ram,
RQDX3 with RD52(31mb), RX33(5.25 two side floppy). Its small and has
the pedestal
case to it is in the corner of a bedroom with a VT320 ( and I think
still I have a DF03).
Sucks down about the same power as an old 486 loaded tower with about
the same
disks (around 160-300W). Qbus machine help with that. One with an
11/73 board
would be fast.
A larger machine with Rk, RL or RM drives will be power hungry.
IF VAX based, a 3100 or related series would do that with minimal pain.
Older boxen like 11/34 or 11/40 are going to suck down watts and need AC.
Allison
So a 11/03 aka a lsi11 would be to slow for such
things? Such as those
Heathkit h11 lsi11 macheans? Witch was a hobyist pdp11 for those that
are
unfamiliar with the hearhkits
My take and extension on Chuck's and Allison's question is that you
can take a USB R232 dongle, and a 56k modem (if your pots line still
supports it, 33k if not (hopefully), and run a BBS on a Raspberry Pi
if nothing else for nothing in power and infrastructure cost.
An 11 is novel, but hard to see why running it on simh wouldn't be a
better deal if you want something on the pdp11 architecture.
Keeping any PDP11 up 24 / 7 so it is a useful BBS isn't an undertaking
for the faint hearted, nor is it something easy on the pocketbook in
the way of power. (not to mention space possibly).
Unless you are a couple of well known museums and
others very few do
the real hardware.
thanks
Jim
On May 18, 2017 11:45 AM, "Chuck Guzis via cctalk"
<cctalk at classiccmp.org>
wrote:
On 05/18/2017 08:16 AM, allison via cctalk
wrote:
The real question is why BBS? What is it trying
to fix or enable?
You put the words into my mouth. Thank you.
--Chuck
3:54 p.m.
________________________________________
From: cctalk [cctalk-bounces at classiccmp.org] on behalf of jim stephens via cctalk
[cctalk at classiccmp.org]
Sent: Thursday, May 18, 2017 1:53 PM
To: cctalk at classiccmp.org
Subject: Re: BBS software for the PDP 11
On 5/18/2017 9:51 AM, Adrian Stoness via cctalk wrote:
So a 11/03 aka a lsi11 would be to slow for such
things? Such as those
Heathkit h11 lsi11 macheans? Witch was a hobyist pdp11 for those that are
unfamiliar with the hearhkits
My take and extension on Chuck's and Allison's question is that you can
take a USB R232 dongle, and a 56k modem (if your pots line still
supports it, 33k if not (hopefully), and run a BBS on a Raspberry Pi if
nothing else for nothing in power and infrastructure cost.
An 11 is novel, but hard to see why running it on simh wouldn't be a
better deal if you want something on the pdp11 architecture.
Keeping any PDP11 up 24 / 7 so it is a useful BBS isn't an undertaking
for the faint hearted, nor is it something easy on the pocketbook in the
way of power. (not to mention space possibly).
Unless you are a couple of well known museums and others very few do the
real hardware.
_____________________________
I still do. I have an 11/93 in a pedestal standing right next to me now.
As for power, if you have a wife and/or kids, a PDP-11's power consumption
is not even above the noise floor in your electric bill. (Unless your trying to do
it with RA disks!!)
bill
4:06 p.m.
________________________________________
From: cctalk [cctalk-bounces at classiccmp.org] on behalf of Ali via cctalk [cctalk at
classiccmp.org]
Sent: Thursday, May 18, 2017 3:58 PM
To: 'General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts'
Subject: RE: BBS software for the PDP 11
As for power, if you have a wife and/or kids, a
PDP-11's power
consumption is not even above the noise floor in your electric bill.
(Unless your trying to do it with RA disks!!)
bill
Out of curiosity how much power do these wee beasties consume?
___________________________________
The plate on the back of my 11/93 says 345 Watts. That's about a fifth what your
wifes hair dryer draws. Or slightly more than 3 100 watt light bulbs (which your
kids leave on all over the house all the time!!)
bill
4:56 p.m.
On 5/18/2017 1:06 PM, Bill Gunshannon via cctalk wrote:
________________________________________
From: cctalk [cctalk-bounces at classiccmp.org] on behalf of Ali via cctalk [cctalk at
classiccmp.org]
Sent: Thursday, May 18, 2017 3:58 PM
To: 'General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts'
Subject: RE: BBS software for the PDP 11
The light bulbs maybe, but you also run things much higher than 350
watts from time to time. The hair drier is meaningless.
Most of the lights I leave on now are LED pulling 10 or less watts. The
entire population of light bulbs in my house left on now doesn't get to
100w anymore.
I have 2 dell 2950's that pull a large power bill. That is near your
345 watts each, and I am plotting to take them out and their
replacements are Intel NUC's @ 40w each, pretty much the same go power.
the 11/93 probably isn't running as much compute power as one core of
the 2950. Nor possibly a Raspberry Pi. Whatever you want to do to
convert $$ to radiant heat, I guess no one is stopping you. Running the
old stuff for fun even for extended periods is one thing, but a BBS has
possibly the mission to stay up. Depending on what the OP has in mind.
thanks
Jim
As for power, if you have a wife and/or kids, a
PDP-11's power
consumption is not even above the noise floor in your electric bill.
(Unless your trying to do it with RA disks!!)
bill
Out of curiosity how much power do these wee beasties consume?
___________________________________
The plate on the back of my 11/93 says 345 Watts. That's about a fifth what your
wifes hair dryer draws. Or slightly more than 3 100 watt light bulbs (which your
kids leave on all over the house all the time!!)
bill 
19 May
19 May
6:25 a.m.
On 18 May 2017 at 22:06, Bill Gunshannon via cctalk
<cctalk at classiccmp.org> wrote:
The plate on the back of my 11/93 says 345 Watts.
That's about a fifth what your
wifes hair dryer draws. Or slightly more than 3 100 watt light bulbs
Jesus wept.
Are you certain that this alleged "hair dryer" is not in fact a
hot-air paint stripper? And that the said "wife" is not in fact some
form of robot with a heatproof coating?
--
Liam Proven ? Profile: https://about.me/liamproven
Email: lproven at cix.co.uk ? Google Mail/Talk/Plus: lproven at gmail.com
Twitter/Facebook/Flickr: lproven ? Skype/LinkedIn/AIM/Yahoo: liamproven
UK: +44 7939-087884 ? ?R/WhatsApp/Telegram/Signal: +420 702 829 053
6:45 a.m.
On Fri, May 19, 2017 at 12:25:44PM +0200, Liam Proven via cctalk wrote:
Bill Gunshannon via cctalk <cctalk at
classiccmp.org> wrote:
The plate on
the back of my 11/93 says 345 Watts. That's about a fifth what your
wifes hair dryer draws. Or slightly more than 3 100 watt light bulbs
Jesus wept.
Are you certain that this alleged "hair
dryer" is not in fact a hot-air paint
stripper? And that the said "wife" is not in fact some form of robot with a
heatproof coating?
I was more thinking of the several tens of kilolumens that you'd get from 345W
of modern high-efficiency LED lighting. It'd give you a decent tan, for a
start.
7:39 a.m.
________________________________________
From: cctalk [cctalk-bounces at classiccmp.org] on behalf of Peter Corlett via cctalk
[cctalk at classiccmp.org]
Sent: Friday, May 19, 2017 6:45 AM
To: General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts
Subject: Re: BBS software for the PDP 11
On Fri, May 19, 2017 at 12:25:44PM +0200, Liam Proven via cctalk wrote:
Bill Gunshannon via cctalk <cctalk at
classiccmp.org> wrote:
The plate on
the back of my 11/93 says 345 Watts. That's about a fifth what your
wifes hair dryer draws. Or slightly more than 3 100 watt light bulbs
Jesus wept.
Are you certain that this alleged "hair
dryer" is not in fact a hot-air paint
stripper? And that the said "wife" is not in fact some form of robot with a
heatproof coating?
I was more thinking of the several tens of kilolumens that you'd get from 345W
of modern high-efficiency LED lighting. It'd give you a decent tan, for a
start.
__________________________________
But, seriously, just how many households do you think have made the move
to LED lighting? The amount of energy wasted in the average house, especially
those with wives and children (your wife never forget to turn off her curling iron?)
makes the power used by a QBUS PDP-11 pale in comparison.
bill
8:13 a.m.
On Fri, May 19, 2017 at 11:39:27AM +0000, Bill Gunshannon via cctalk wrote:
[...]
But, seriously, just how many households do you think
have made the move to
LED lighting? The amount of energy wasted in the average house, especially
those with wives and children (your wife never forget to turn off her curling
iron?) makes the power used by a QBUS PDP-11 pale in comparison.
I have certainly noticed that those who contribute the least to the household
finances are also those who consume the most, yes. If anybody would like a
couple of workshy stoner flatmates, don't hesitate to come and collect them.
Please. I'd appreciate the 80% slump in electricity consumption. (800 watt base
load! What are they doing in there!?)
Anyway, for those of us in Amsterdam who can actually be bothered to find and
hold down a job, go out and do the shopping, etc, we're replacing blown
incandescents with LED bulbs because that's what they sell in the shops.
Incandescent bulbs are exotic specialist items.
10:59 a.m.
________________________________________
From: cctalk [cctalk-bounces at classiccmp.org] on behalf of Peter Corlett via cctalk
[cctalk at classiccmp.org]
Sent: Friday, May 19, 2017 8:13 AM
To: General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts
Subject: Re: BBS software for the PDP 11
On Fri, May 19, 2017 at 11:39:27AM +0000, Bill Gunshannon via cctalk wrote:
[...]
But, seriously, just how many households do you think
have made the move to
LED lighting? The amount of energy wasted in the average house, especially
those with wives and children (your wife never forget to turn off her curling
iron?) makes the power used by a QBUS PDP-11 pale in comparison.
I have certainly noticed that those who contribute the least to the household
finances are also those who consume the most, yes. If anybody would like a
couple of workshy stoner flatmates, don't hesitate to come and collect them.
Please. I'd appreciate the 80% slump in electricity consumption. (800 watt base
load! What are they doing in there!?)
Anyway, for those of us in Amsterdam who can actually be bothered to find and
hold down a job, go out and do the shopping, etc, we're replacing blown
incandescents with LED bulbs because that's what they sell in the shops.
Incandescent bulbs are exotic specialist items.
_______________________________________
Incandescent are becoming rarer here, but we went thru a CDF phase
between them and LED's. Now there was an environmental nightmare!!
bill
3:46 p.m.
On 5/19/2017 5:13 AM, Peter Corlett via cctalk wrote:
Anyway, for those of us in Amsterdam who can actually
be bothered to find and
hold down a job, go out and do the shopping, etc, we're replacing blown
incandescents with LED bulbs because that's what they sell in the shops.
Incandescent bulbs are exotic specialist items.
The CFL lighting was subsidized by
the local California Utilities,
because the state has an incentive for Utilities to either build
efficient plants and expand capacity, or incentivize people to reduce
consumption by some amounts to offset that requirement.
They are doing the same for some LED lighting now, though not as much
as they did for CFL at this point.
At one point I could buy a flat of 60W CFL's for $2.00, which had maybe
20 bulbs in it. Still have it with bulbs.
I am however buying for every location I use lighting for any period of
time LED lighting. I think most of my spots have 8 to 10w bulbs which
are as bright as most the lighting which it replaced.
The main incandescent lighting I want to keep are lights which can be
used in either traffic lights or have connections to work in home
lighting. They are specially made to have much extended lifetimes for
such, and are handy where you do want to put in and leave an
incandescent light rather than either CFL or LED.
thanks
Jim
10:01 p.m.
________________________________________
From: cctalk [cctalk-bounces at classiccmp.org] on behalf of jim stephens via cctalk
[cctalk at classiccmp.org]
Sent: Friday, May 19, 2017 3:46 PM
To: General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts
Subject: Re: BBS software for the PDP 11
On 5/19/2017 5:13 AM, Peter Corlett via cctalk wrote:
Anyway, for those of us in Amsterdam who can actually
be bothered to find and
hold down a job, go out and do the shopping, etc, we're replacing blown
incandescents with LED bulbs because that's what they sell in the shops.
Incandescent bulbs are exotic specialist items.
The CFL lighting was subsidized by
the local California Utilities,
because the state has an incentive for Utilities to either build
efficient plants and expand capacity, or incentivize people to reduce
consumption by some amounts to offset that requirement.
They are doing the same for some LED lighting now, though not as much
as they did for CFL at this point.
At one point I could buy a flat of 60W CFL's for $2.00, which had maybe
20 bulbs in it. Still have it with bulbs.
__________________________________________
And if you break one you have to call HAZMAT. You did realize that,
didn't you? They contain mercury and any breakage requires professional
remediation by law!!
bill
10:21 p.m.
On 5/19/2017 7:01 PM, Bill Gunshannon via cctalk wrote:
And if you break one you have to call HAZMAT. You
did realize that,
didn't you? They contain mercury and any breakage requires professional
remediation by law!!
I bag and take to the disposal all fluorescent discard,
including CFL.
https://www.epa.gov/cfl/what-are-connections-between-mercury-and-cfls
20 May
20 May
7:05 a.m.
On Sat, May 20, 2017 at 02:01:12AM +0000, Bill Gunshannon via cctalk wrote:
[...]
And if you break one you have to call HAZMAT. You did
realize that, didn't
you? They contain mercury and any breakage requires professional remediation
by law!!
That's an "alternative fact". The EPA gives some clean-up guidelines for
CFLs:
https://www.epa.gov/cfl/cleaning-broken-cfl
The TL;DR is that you allow the (trivial amount of) mercury vapour to escape to
the atmosphere, clean up the broken glass, and recycle the electronics as
necessary. So just the same as any other domestic breakage, then.
It'd be hilarious if it wasn't so tragic that the USA worries about less than
5mg of mercury in a CFL bulb, yet burns vast quantities of mercury-laced coal
to power them.
Also, none of this applies to LED lighting, which doesn't contain glass and can
be dropped into the e-waste stream as-is when it fails.
22 May
22 May
8:12 a.m.
And if you break one you have to call HAZMAT. You did realize that,
didn't you? They contain mercury and any breakage requires professional
remediation by law!!
Uhm... No you don't. Stop the fearmongering please ...
9:20 a.m.
OK, I retract my statement. I researched it and apparently the government
no longer cares. I refused to use them when they first came out because
they were considered environmental nightmares and, at least in PA, there
were strict controls. I still wouldn't use them, but then I don't have to as
LED lights are avaialble. I still have flourescent lights, but as they die I will
be replacing them with LED as well.
bill
________________________________________
From: Alfred M. Szmidt [ams at gnu.org]
Sent: Monday, May 22, 2017 8:12 AM
To: Bill Gunshannon; General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts
Cc: jwsmail at jwsss.com; cctalk at classiccmp.org
Subject: Re: BBS software for the PDP 11
And if you break one you have to call HAZMAT. You did realize that,
didn't you? They contain mercury and any breakage requires professional
remediation by law!!
Uhm... No you don't. Stop the fearmongering please ...
10:21 a.m.
New subject: OT: Mercury (Was: BBS software for the PDP 11)
At least here in the EU, they banned mercury batteries, mostly used by
old photo gear, and then supported light bulbs containing mercury.
How many people will need and by these batteries and how many people
need and buy light bulbs?
Go figure...
regards,
chris
On 05/22/17 15:20, Bill Gunshannon via cctalk wrote:
OK, I retract my statement. I researched it and apparently the government
no longer cares. I refused to use them when they first came out because
they were considered environmental nightmares and, at least in PA, there
were strict controls. I still wouldn't use them, but then I don't have to as
LED lights are avaialble. I still have flourescent lights, but as they die I will
be replacing them with LED as well.
bill
________________________________________
From: Alfred M. Szmidt [ams at gnu.org]
Sent: Monday, May 22, 2017 8:12 AM
To: Bill Gunshannon; General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts
Cc: jwsmail at jwsss.com; cctalk at classiccmp.org
Subject: Re: BBS software for the PDP 11
And if you break one you have to call HAZMAT. You did realize that,
didn't you? They contain mercury and any breakage requires professional
remediation by law!!
Uhm... No you don't. Stop the fearmongering please ...
10:38 a.m.
New subject: OT: Mercury (Was: BBS software for the PDP 11)
On May 22, 2017, at 10:21 AM, Christian Groessler via
cctalk <cctalk at classiccmp.org> wrote:
At least here in the EU, they banned mercury batteries, mostly used by old photo gear,
and then supported light bulbs containing mercury.
How many people will need and by these batteries and how many people need and buy light
bulbs?
Go figure...
I could make all sorts of comments but since that's politics it would be off topic.
Mercury batteries seem to be banned in the USA also, or at least they aren't available
any longer. Annoying since I have some microphones that use them. I suppose I could make
an adapter to fit in some 3v lithium cells and get "close enough".
I'm not sure if "mercury" batteries contain metallic mercury or mercury
salts. Metallic mercury is actually pretty much harmless, even though bringing a
thermometer into a US school can cause a major panic. Mercury salts are a different
matter. Mercury vapor should also be avoided, at least in significant quantities and long
term exposure, as my father found out as a university student in chemistry.
paul
23 May
23 May
12:29 p.m.
New subject: OT: Mercury (Was: BBS software for the PDP 11)
On May 22, 2017, at 9:38 AM, Paul Koning via cctalk <cctalk at classiccmp.org>
wrote:
...I'm not sure if "mercury" batteries
contain metallic mercury or mercury salts. Metallic mercury is actually pretty much
harmless, even though bringing a thermometer into a US school can cause a major panic.
Mercury salts are a different matter. Mercury vapor should also be avoided, at least in
significant quantities and long term exposure, as my father found out as a university
student in chemistry.
To emphasize what Paul says, Mercury considered only as an element has a *very* wide
range of toxicity. It depends entirely on the compounds it is bound into. (Similar to,
say, Carbon and Nitrogen?.).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karen_Wetterhahn
http://i.imgur.com/0dXdc.jpg
Karen Wetterhahn spilled a drop of a Mercury compound on her latex glove, and died of it
10 months later.
I don?t know what happened to the guy who is pictured sitting in (on) a pool of Mercury,
but at least it?s clear that at the time, he considered elemental mercury not to be
lethally dangerous. I remember seeing the photo in National Geographic, and the caption
did say he was very careful to shake out his cuffs, etc after the photo was shot.
NatGeo itself also is now clearly aware there is some risk:
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/2016/05/160524-indonesia-toxic-toll/
One problem is that it?s hard to ensure that *all* of the Mercury will stay in the
non-toxic forms when handling it.
- Mark
2:57 p.m.
New subject: OT: Mercury (Was: BBS software for the PDP 11)
I have a hard time getting my head around Dr. Wetterhahn's poisoning. How
many molecules of the toxin could have possibly entered her body?
How many molecules does it take to kill or fatally disable a cell? After it
does its damage, does the molecule become available again to do
more damage? How many cells in her body were actually killed? Do the
molecules somehow target the cells required to kill an individual?
If you killed just the "right" cells, how many cells does it take to kill a
person?
-----Original Message-----
From: cctalk [mailto:cctalk-bounces at classiccmp.org] On Behalf Of Tapley,
Mark via cctalk
Sent: Tuesday, May 23, 2017 12:30 PM
To: General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts
Subject: Re: OT: Mercury (Was: BBS software for the PDP 11)
On May 22, 2017, at 9:38 AM, Paul Koning via cctalk <cctalk at classiccmp.org>
wrote:
...I'm not sure if "mercury" batteries
contain metallic mercury or mercury
salts. Metallic mercury is actually pretty much
harmless, even though
bringing a thermometer into a US school can cause a major panic. Mercury
salts are a different matter. Mercury vapor should also be avoided, at
least in significant quantities and long term exposure, as my father found
out as a university student in chemistry.
To emphasize what Paul says, Mercury considered only as an element
has a *very* wide range of toxicity. It depends entirely on the compounds it
is bound into. (Similar to, say, Carbon and Nitrogen..).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karen_Wetterhahn
http://i.imgur.com/0dXdc.jpg
Karen Wetterhahn spilled a drop of a Mercury compound on her latex
glove, and died of it 10 months later.
I don't know what happened to the guy who is pictured sitting in (on) a pool
of Mercury, but at least it's clear that at the time, he considered
elemental mercury not to be lethally dangerous. I remember seeing the photo
in National Geographic, and the caption did say he was very careful to shake
out his cuffs, etc after the photo was shot.
NatGeo itself also is now clearly aware there is some risk:
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/2016/05/160524-indonesia-toxic-toll/
One problem is that it's hard to ensure that *all* of the Mercury
will stay in the non-toxic forms when handling it.
- Mark
---
This email has been checked for viruses by Avast antivirus software.
https://www.avast.com/antivirus
7:42 p.m.
New subject: OT: Mercury (Was: BBS software for the PDP 11)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karen_Wetterhahn
http://i.imgur.com/0dXdc.jpg
Karen Wetterhahn spilled a drop of a Mercury compound on her latex
glove, and died of it 10 months later.
I have a hard time getting my head around Dr. Wetterhahn's poisoning. How
many molecules of the toxin could have possibly entered her body?
How many molecules does it take to kill or fatally disable a cell? After it
does its damage, does the molecule become available again to do
more damage? How many cells in her body were actually killed? Do the
molecules somehow target the cells required to kill an individual?
If you killed just the "right" cells, how many cells does it take to kill a
person?
8:56 p.m.
New subject: OT: Mercury (Was: BBS software for the PDP 11)
Thanks for the reply. I would never dream of "messing with it." Even
reading the NEJM article, it still amazes me to think of the Mercury
"bouncing around" in her body for almost a year before she finally passed.
It also "went through" the back of her hand without making some awful
lesion. 1.3 grams?! I've always gone with the mental crutch that a paper
clip weighs about 1/2 gram. So almost three paper clips "slipped" into her
body. Wow.
---
This email has been checked for viruses by Avast antivirus software.
https://www.avast.com/antivirus
24 May
24 May
1:05 a.m.
New subject: OT: Mercury (Was: BBS software for the PDP 11)
On 5/23/2017 5:56 PM, William Sudbrink via cctalk wrote:
Mercury
"bouncing around" in her body for almost a year before she finally passed.
It also "went through" the back of her hand without making some awful
lesion. 1.3 grams?! I've always gone with the mental crutch that a paper
clip weighs about 1/2 gram. So almost three paper clips "slipped" into her
body. Wow.
Useful to note this is not metallic mercury. It was dimethyl mercury,
which meant that the methyl radical tagged on the mercury was very
friendly with the material on the gloves she wore, and with her skin and
dragged the heavy metal rapidly to her blood stream. And eventually to
lots of places and killed her.
Metallic mercury isn't anything you want to ingest, but it won't go thru
your skin unless it has some other compound to drag it, or unless you
are very unlucky and jam it into an open wound.
Thanks
Jim
9:34 a.m.
New subject: OT: Mercury (Was: BBS software for the PDP 11)
Metallic mercury isn't anything you want to
ingest, but it won't go thru
your skin unless it has some other compound to drag it,
This isn't quite true. Elemental liquid mercury will pass through skin but
at a much slower rate. Vapourized elemental mercury via inhalation is, uh,
more "efficient."
--
------------------------------------ personal: http://www.cameronkaiser.com/ --
Cameron Kaiser * Floodgap Systems * www.floodgap.com * ckaiser at floodgap.com
-- MOVIE IDEA: The Never-Ending E-mail Signature ------------------------------
23 May
23 May
9:28 p.m.
New subject: OT: Mercury (Was: BBS software for the PDP 11)
On 05/23/2017 01:57 PM, William Sudbrink via cctalk wrote:
I have a hard time getting my head around Dr.
Wetterhahn's poisoning. How
many molecules of the toxin could have possibly entered her body?
How many molecules does it take to kill or fatally disable a cell? After it
does its damage, does the molecule become available again to do
more damage? How many cells in her body were actually killed? Do the
molecules somehow target the cells required to kill an individual?
If you killed just the "right" cells, how many cells does it take to kill a
person?
Yeah, this was sure a wake up call! I work in a chemistry
department, so we all have to go through a 1 hour
lab safety seminar every year. This case has been pretty
strongly pushed in those. She did everything everybody
thought was sufficient to protect her. Apparently, nobody
knew that methyl mercury could just soak through whatever
gloves she was wearing so quickly. As I understand it, she
immediately saw the drop of stuff drip on the glove, and she
completed what she was doing and removed the glove in much
less than one MINUTE!
Ummm, just a couple cells might be enough to kill you, if
they stopped your breathing or made you blood pressure go
haywire (high or low). But, she felt sick within minutes of
the exposure and went steadily downhill after that. So, she
apparently absorbed a lot of the methyl mercury, which WAS
known to be super-toxic and readily absorbed.
The Wikipedia article on Dr. Wetterhahn seems to indicate
this went a lot slower than we were told in the seminar.
Not sure who to trust, there.
Jon
24 May
24 May
12:55 a.m.
New subject: OT: Mercury (Was: BBS software for the PDP 11)
The Wikipedia article on Dr. Wetterhahn seems to
indicate
this went a lot slower than we were told in the seminar.
Not sure who to trust, there.
The NEJM article seems to say it was also not a precipitous decline.
--
------------------------------------ personal: http://www.cameronkaiser.com/ --
Cameron Kaiser * Floodgap Systems * www.floodgap.com * ckaiser at floodgap.com
-- The cost of living has not adversely affected its popularity. --------------
11:51 a.m.
New subject: OT: Mercury (Was: BBS software for the PDP 11)
On 05/23/2017 11:55 PM, Cameron Kaiser via cctalk wrote:
OK, then I guess the people who gave our seminar either
misremembered the situation or embellished it.
Still, pretty horrific situation when a highly skilled
person thinks they are doing everything right, and a couple
drops of something kills them.
Jon
The Wikipedia
article on Dr. Wetterhahn seems to indicate
this went a lot slower than we were told in the seminar.
Not sure who to trust, there.
The NEJM article seems to say it was also not a
precipitous decline.
19 May
19 May
9:10 a.m.
On Fri, 19 May 2017, Liam Proven via cctalk wrote:
On 18 May 2017 at 22:06, Bill Gunshannon via cctalk
<cctalk at classiccmp.org> wrote:
I just checked the one my wife uses and it's rated at 1875 watts. :)
g.
--
Proud owner of F-15C 80-0007
http://www.f15sim.com - The only one of its kind.
http://www.diy-cockpits.org/coll - Go Collimated or Go Home.
Some people collect things for a hobby. Geeks collect hobbies.
ScarletDME - The red hot Data Management Environment
A Multi-Value database for the masses, not the classes.
http://scarlet.deltasoft.com - Get it _today_!
The plate on the back of my 11/93 says 345 Watts.
That's about a fifth what your
wifes hair dryer draws. Or slightly more than 3 100 watt light bulbs
Jesus wept.
Are you certain that this alleged "hair dryer" is not in fact a
hot-air paint stripper? And that the said "wife" is not in fact some
form of robot with a heatproof coating?
2:01 p.m.
On 2017-05-19 9:10 AM, geneb via cctalk wrote:
On Fri, 19 May 2017, Liam Proven via cctalk wrote:
Mine's is rated 2000W. And has its own circuit breaker on the plug.
--Toby
On 18 May 2017 at 22:06, Bill Gunshannon via
cctalk
<cctalk at classiccmp.org> wrote:
I just checked the one my wife uses and it's rated at 1875 watts. :) The plate on the back of my 11/93 says 345 Watts.
That's about a
fifth what your
wifes hair dryer draws. Or slightly more than 3 100 watt light bulbs
Jesus wept.
Are you certain that this alleged "hair dryer" is not in fact a
hot-air paint stripper? And that the said "wife" is not in fact some
form of robot with a heatproof coating?
g.
3:44 p.m.
So, if it's authenticity you want, you'll have to incorporate some sort
of noise generator on the lines. Telco quality is much better today
than 40 years ago (although you may not think so). I recall that
calling Sunnyvale from Los Gatos (or vice-versa) was a real adventure in
connectivity. Los Gatos was GTE; Sunnyvale was AT&T. I think that
someone once told me that the network interconnect was acoustic (I don't
know if that was true). But you might as well have been calling
Boston, for the line quality.
--Chuck
18 May
18 May
8:29 p.m.
Allot of then can be run on a single 15 amp circuit with a some.other stuff
on it as well
On May 18, 2017 2:58 PM, "Ali via cctalk" <cctalk at classiccmp.org>
wrote:
As for power,
if you have a wife and/or kids, a PDP-11's power
consumption is not even above the noise floor in your electric bill.
(Unless your trying to do it with RA disks!!)
bill
Out of curiosity how much power do these wee beasties consume?
-Ali
8:36 p.m.
When I had my 11/34 (11/34, expansion chassis, RX01 and two RK05 drives) think I ran a
30a, 240v circuit for the power distribution box in the rack but it used way less when
running. Maybe 10a max.
Rich
Sent from Verizon/AOL Mobile Mail
On Thursday, May 18, 2017, Adrian Stoness via cctalk <cctalk at classiccmp.org>
wrote:
Allot of then can be run on a single 15 amp circuit with a some.other stuff
on it as well
On May 18, 2017 2:58 PM, "Ali via cctalk" <cctalk at classiccmp.org>
wrote:
As for power,
if you have a wife and/or kids, a PDP-11's power
consumption is not even above the noise floor in your electric bill.
(Unless your trying to do it with RA disks!!)
bill
Out of curiosity how much power do these wee beasties consume?
-Ali
4:19 p.m.
On Thu, 18 May 2017, Bill Gunshannon via cctalk wrote:
As for power, if you have a wife and/or kids, a
PDP-11's power
consumption is not even above the noise floor in your electric bill.
(Unless your trying to do it with RA disks!!)
I used to have an 8250 with four RA-81s and a TU-81+. The power bills
were....impressive. :)
g.
--
Proud owner of F-15C 80-0007
http://www.f15sim.com - The only one of its kind.
http://www.diy-cockpits.org/coll - Go Collimated or Go Home.
Some people collect things for a hobby. Geeks collect hobbies.
ScarletDME - The red hot Data Management Environment
A Multi-Value database for the masses, not the classes.
http://scarlet.deltasoft.com - Get it _today_!
6:42 p.m.
________________________________________
From: cctalk [cctalk-bounces at classiccmp.org] on behalf of geneb via cctalk [cctalk at
classiccmp.org]
Sent: Thursday, May 18, 2017 4:19 PM
To: General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts
Subject: RE: BBS software for the PDP 11
On Thu, 18 May 2017, Bill Gunshannon via cctalk wrote:
As for power, if you have a wife and/or kids, a
PDP-11's power
consumption is not even above the noise floor in your electric bill.
(Unless your trying to do it with RA disks!!)
I used to have an 8250 with four RA-81s and a TU-81+. The power bills
were....impressive. :)
__________________________
8250 is a VAX, not a PDP-11. I doubt it even ran off of 120v single phase.
Mine at the University certainly didn't. I mentioned that RA's were tougher,
but I haven't used one (or owned one) for at least 10 years. TU-81+? I
don't remember them being real power hogs, but then I didn't power them
up unless I needed to use them.
bill
19 May
19 May
8:58 a.m.
On Thu, 18 May 2017, Bill Gunshannon via cctalk wrote:
8250 is a VAX, not a PDP-11. I doubt it even ran off of 120v single phase.
Um, yeah. It did. I bought the machine for $500 from Mannesmann Tally in
Kent, WA. A friend and I removed the 8250 from their machine room and
transported it to my home. I had two 30A services installed in the
upstairs of my house and that's where I set the machine up.
They'd wiped the drives before I got them, but they did give me the Ultrix
install media. I got it home on a Friday night and had it running Ultrix
by Sunday afternoon.
Some months later I traded it to a friend that an 8350 in his garage.
g.
--
Proud owner of F-15C 80-0007
http://www.f15sim.com - The only one of its kind.
http://www.diy-cockpits.org/coll - Go Collimated or Go Home.
Some people collect things for a hobby. Geeks collect hobbies.
ScarletDME - The red hot Data Management Environment
A Multi-Value database for the masses, not the classes.
http://scarlet.deltasoft.com - Get it _today_!
18 May
18 May
3:02 p.m.
On 5/18/17 12:51 PM, Adrian Stoness via cctalk wrote:
So a 11/03 aka a lsi11 would be to slow for such
things? Such as those
Heathkit h11 lsi11 macheans? Witch was a hobyist pdp11 for those that are
unfamiliar with the hearhkits
No, BBSs were run with 4mhz Z80s... compared to LSI-11 (H11 or PDP11/03)
The -11 is a bit faster. The H11 was not slower, the ram used didn't inject
bus waits.
Actually the limiting item back then as disk performance. The later
hard disks
(rd50 to 54, RD31, RD32, RZxxx) really can help.
Allison
On May 18, 2017 11:45 AM, "Chuck Guzis via cctalk" <cctalk at
classiccmp.org>
wrote:
> On 05/18/2017 08:16 AM, allison via cctalk wrote:
>
>> The real question is why BBS? What is it trying to fix or enable?
> You put the words into my mouth. Thank you.
>
> --Chuck
>
>
3:19 p.m.
On Thu, 18 May 2017, allison via cctalk wrote:
On 5/18/17 12:51 PM, Adrian Stoness via cctalk wrote:
...and 2Mhz Z-80s. The first Citadel appeared on a bone stock H-89 with a
pair of hard-sectored floppy drives. I think Ward's original S-100 box
was that clock or maybe slower, using an 8080.
g.
--
Proud owner of F-15C 80-0007
http://www.f15sim.com - The only one of its kind.
http://www.diy-cockpits.org/coll - Go Collimated or Go Home.
Some people collect things for a hobby. Geeks collect hobbies.
ScarletDME - The red hot Data Management Environment
A Multi-Value database for the masses, not the classes.
http://scarlet.deltasoft.com - Get it _today_!
So a 11/03 aka a lsi11 would be to slow for such
things? Such as those
Heathkit h11 lsi11 macheans? Witch was a hobyist pdp11 for those that are
unfamiliar with the hearhkits
No, BBSs were run with 4mhz Z80s... compared to LSI-11 (H11 or PDP11/03)
The -11 is a bit faster. The H11 was not slower, the ram used didn't inject
bus waits.
3:36 p.m.
On 5/18/17 3:19 PM, geneb via cctalk wrote:
On Thu, 18 May 2017, allison via cctalk wrote:
Wards S100 crate started with a 2mhz 8080 and not a full rack of ram
(64K for then was full rack.).
Most moved to Z80 at 4MHZ by 1979 as they were common by then.
The speed needed to handle one line at speeds below 2400 was not a
stress, there were 6800
based boards.
Allison
On 5/18/17 12:51 PM, Adrian Stoness via cctalk wrote:
...and 2Mhz Z-80s. The first Citadel appeared on a bone stock H-89
with a pair of hard-sectored floppy drives. I think Ward's original
S-100 box was that clock or maybe slower, using an 8080.
So a 11/03 aka a lsi11 would be to slow for such
things? Such as those
Heathkit h11 lsi11 macheans? Witch was a hobyist pdp11 for those
that are
unfamiliar with the hearhkits
No, BBSs were run with 4mhz Z80s... compared to LSI-11 (H11 or
PDP11/03)
The -11 is a bit faster. The H11 was not slower, the ram used didn't
inject
bus waits.
g.
3:50 p.m.
Do you have any idea how many PDP-11's were used by NASA for things
like controlling deep space probes and putting men on the moon? A BBS
is a vewry low demand task and could easily be handled by the smallest
of the LSI-11 family.
bill
________________________________________
From: cctalk [cctalk-bounces at classiccmp.org] on behalf of Adrian Stoness via cctalk
[cctalk at classiccmp.org]
Sent: Thursday, May 18, 2017 12:51 PM
To: General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts
Subject: Re: BBS software for the PDP 11
So a 11/03 aka a lsi11 would be to slow for such things? Such as those
Heathkit h11 lsi11 macheans? Witch was a hobyist pdp11 for those that are
unfamiliar with the hearhkits
On May 18, 2017 11:45 AM, "Chuck Guzis via cctalk" <cctalk at
classiccmp.org>
wrote:
On 05/18/2017 08:16 AM, allison via cctalk wrote:
The real question is why BBS? What is it trying
to fix or enable?
You put the words into my mouth. Thank you.
--Chuck
1:44 p.m.
On Thu, 18 May 2017, Chuck Guzis via cctalk wrote:
On 05/18/2017 08:16 AM, allison via cctalk wrote:
Because. That's why. :)
g.
--
Proud owner of F-15C 80-0007
http://www.f15sim.com - The only one of its kind.
http://www.diy-cockpits.org/coll - Go Collimated or Go Home.
Some people collect things for a hobby. Geeks collect hobbies.
ScarletDME - The red hot Data Management Environment
A Multi-Value database for the masses, not the classes.
http://scarlet.deltasoft.com - Get it _today_!
The real question is why BBS? What is it trying
to fix or enable?
You put the words into my mouth. Thank you.
3:14 p.m.
On 05/18/2017 10:44 AM, geneb wrote:
Because. That's why. :)
Well, okay--but then let's be period-correct. The PDP-11 dates from
1970, when, AFAIK, BBSes, if they existed, were far from what people
think they were.
I'm thinking of,say, Call Computer in Mountain View, frequented by the
HCC people. 300 baud, usually acoustic coupler-type (in 1970, the
implications of the Carterfone decision had just begun to set in.)
Mostly a real bulletin board in the sense of posting group messages.
That ran on what, an HP 3000? And whatever happened to Alex?
--Chuck
3:27 p.m.
On 5/18/17 3:14 PM, Chuck Guzis via cctalk wrote:
On 05/18/2017 10:44 AM, geneb wrote:
BBSs are really the thing from about 1978 to pre-internet (varied where
you lived).
Examples of the big BBS are Source, Delphi, Well, STD(software tool and
die), and
the big one Compuserve. Small ones like Sage and those mentioned by
inference
on the Walnutcreek CD are the more common small guys.
BBSs sorta were the big deal around 1980 to 19?? and the early ones were
mostly '
Either Z80 or 6502 based with a few others of the era. PCs were later
and kept it
going. They didn't offer speed but they were the platform of the day
and during
the clone wars (Tandy, and others) offered cheaper hardware it moved there.
Never forget, BBS were about storage and cheap which at that time were
mostly
opposed (disks weren't cheap!). The amount of Ram and CPU were less
important
considering what had to be done. Often the modem and hard disk were as
costly
as the basic system and we didn't exceed 2400 baud till '85or later.
Most anything
could keep up with IO at under 4800 baud.
Allison
Because. That's why. :)
Well,
okay--but then let's be period-correct. The PDP-11 dates from
1970, when, AFAIK, BBSes, if they existed, were far from what people
think they were.
I'm thinking of,say, Call Computer in Mountain View, frequented by the
HCC people. 300 baud, usually acoustic coupler-type (in 1970, the
implications of the Carterfone decision had just begun to set in.)
Mostly a real bulletin board in the sense of posting group messages.
That ran on what, an HP 3000? And whatever happened to Alex?
--Chuck
4:23 p.m.
On Thu, 18 May 2017, allison via cctalk wrote:
Never forget, BBS were about storage and cheap which
at that time were mostly
opposed (disks weren't cheap!). The amount of Ram and CPU were less
important
considering what had to be done. Often the modem and hard disk were as
costly
as the basic system and we didn't exceed 2400 baud till '85or later. Most
anything
could keep up with IO at under 4800 baud.
Here's what amounts to a canonnical(sp?) list of BBS programs for a number
of different platforms:
http://software.bbsdocumentary.com/
g.
--
Proud owner of F-15C 80-0007
http://www.f15sim.com - The only one of its kind.
http://www.diy-cockpits.org/coll - Go Collimated or Go Home.
Some people collect things for a hobby. Geeks collect hobbies.
ScarletDME - The red hot Data Management Environment
A Multi-Value database for the masses, not the classes.
http://scarlet.deltasoft.com - Get it _today_!
6:45 p.m.
________________________________________
From: cctalk [cctalk-bounces at classiccmp.org] on behalf of geneb via cctalk [cctalk at
classiccmp.org]
Sent: Thursday, May 18, 2017 4:23 PM
To: General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts
Subject: Re: BBS software for the PDP 11
On Thu, 18 May 2017, allison via cctalk wrote:
Never forget, BBS were about storage and cheap which
at that time were mostly
opposed (disks weren't cheap!). The amount of Ram and CPU were less
important
considering what had to be done. Often the modem and hard disk were as
costly
as the basic system and we didn't exceed 2400 baud till '85or later. Most
anything
could keep up with IO at under 4800 baud.
Here's what amounts to a canonnical(sp?) list of BBS programs for a number
of different platforms:
http://software.bbsdocumentary.com/
_____________________________________
UNAXCESS
That's the one I ran on SYSTEM III based XENIX on a Tandy Model 16.
bill
7:51 p.m.
I did not expect so much feedback, thanks to everyone who responded. I am
still reading over all the replies.
I am indeed looking to run the hardware for a extended duration or non stop
if I can manage to get a good bbs up and running.
Power consumption and heat output is not an issue. The machine is set up in
its own climate controlled area where it can be left to run for long
periods of time.
I am not much of a programmer. I thought about writing my own little dinky
bbs in assembly or something, but worried i would not understand how to get
information stored in a sane manner on the disks or backup to a common
format to tape. If i were to run something under 2.11bsd, i could just dump
something to tape with tar, which seems alot easier that writing everything
from scratch. It would be interesting to write it all
from scratch, but i
lack the knowledge to do so at them moment.
I would like to be able to possible run other tasks on the machine while it
is running, i have a couple of terminals attached, so unix looks like it
may be the way for me to go. I have a heavy investment in RSX too though, i
have all the documentation for it here in large binders, it certainly would
be interesting to run it on an os ive not seen much of.
Still looking over my options, i will post back after i read over all the
replys better.
--Devin
On Thu, May 18, 2017 at 6:45 PM, Bill Gunshannon via cctalk <
cctalk at classiccmp.org> wrote:
________________________________________
From: cctalk [cctalk-bounces at classiccmp.org] on behalf of geneb via
cctalk [cctalk at classiccmp.org]
Sent: Thursday, May 18, 2017 4:23 PM
To: General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts
Subject: Re: BBS software for the PDP 11
On Thu, 18 May 2017, allison via cctalk wrote:
Never forget, BBS were about storage and cheap
which at that time were
mostly
opposed (disks weren't cheap!). The amount
of Ram and CPU were less
important
considering what had to be done. Often the modem and hard disk were as
costly
as the basic system and we didn't exceed 2400 baud till '85or later.
Most
anything
could keep up with IO at under 4800 baud.
Here's what amounts to a canonnical(sp?) list of BBS programs for a number
of different platforms:
http://software.bbsdocumentary.com/
_____________________________________
UNAXCESS
That's the one I ran on SYSTEM III based XENIX on a Tandy Model 16.
bill
4:45 p.m.
On 05/18/2017 12:27 PM, allison via cctalk wrote:
BBSs are really the thing from about 1978 to
pre-internet (varied
where you lived). Examples of the big BBS are Source, Delphi, Well,
STD(software tool and die), and the big one Compuserve. Small ones
like Sage and those mentioned by inference on the Walnutcreek CD are
the more common small guys.
I know--I ran one myself initially with an MS-DOS base and eventually
with an NT 4.0 one. USR Couriers.
My point is that if you're talking about making something that resembles
something that was done on a PC (286/386/486), why not use a PC?
8-bit x80 BBS were generally along the lines of BYE510 affairs and were
pretty clunky.
Anyone remember Boardwatch magazine?
--Chuck
4:58 p.m.
On 5/18/2017 1:45 PM, Chuck Guzis via cctalk wrote:
Anyone remember Boardwatch magazine?
--Chuck
I had a subscription to Rickard's rag pretty much for the duration till
I got my first paid Shell account @ world.std.com and left dialup behind
for continuous connectivity (initially on a 56K ppp connection).
Mentioned that already in a separate thread. Someone answered that
someone may have scanned them as well in reply.
thanks
Jim
19 May
19 May
6:23 a.m.
On 18 May 2017 at 17:16, allison via cctalk <cctalk at classiccmp.org> wrote:
All a DOS BBS was was a user interface that provided
security by requiring
user/password
and limiting the commands usable. The easy was to do that was a version of
the CMD module
rewritten to not have things like RMDIR and DEL.
I was never into the BBS scene, because outside North America, local
phone calls cost money. So you paid for every minute you were online
-- quite a lot.
I used (and still use) CIX (www.cix.co.uk) which was a sort of UK
version of BIX, and used offline readers -- you dial up, it sends your
comments, zips & grabs all your messages, and disconnects, as fast as
possible to keep the phone bill down.
But AIUI later-era DOS BBSes often used DESQview to allow multiple
multitasking user sessions, and the BBS sysops were often early
adopters of OS/2 2.
So DOS <> no multitasking...
--
Liam Proven ? Profile: https://about.me/liamproven
Email: lproven at cix.co.uk ? Google Mail/Talk/Plus: lproven at gmail.com
Twitter/Facebook/Flickr: lproven ? Skype/LinkedIn/AIM/Yahoo: liamproven
UK: +44 7939-087884 ? ?R/WhatsApp/Telegram/Signal: +420 702 829 053
3:39 p.m.
On 5/19/2017 3:23 AM, Liam Proven via cctalk wrote:
On 18 May 2017 at 17:16, allison via cctalk <cctalk
at classiccmp.org> wrote:
I have news for you. (maybe) From 1976 until it petered out, the
phone
time cost a lot too. $200 or more a month at times.
Also a stupid charge for local calls where the PUC's didn't stand up to
the Bell system or successors and call bullshit to the charges. Calling
across a few blocks could cost a lot and you wouldn't know it unless you
were a phone nut due to zone usage metering.
Only with competition in the mid 80s did US long distance start to fall,
and now with the internet and voice over IP have the need to pay for
most such long distance gone away for small users.
I put in a couple of T1 based systems for large offices though as
recently as 7 years ago, and commercially the POTS or digital carrier
phone numbers carry a huge toll.
thanks
Jim
All a DOS BBS was was a user interface that
provided security by requiring
user/password
and limiting the commands usable. The easy was to do that was a version of
the CMD module
rewritten to not have things like RMDIR and DEL.
I was never into the BBS scene, because outside North America, local
phone calls cost money. So you paid for every minute you were online
-- quite a lot. I used (and still use) CIX (www.cix.co.uk) which was a
sort of UK
version of BIX, and used offline readers -- you dial up, it sends your
comments, zips & grabs all your messages, and disconnects, as fast as
possible to keep the phone bill down.
But AIUI later-era DOS BBSes often used DESQview to allow multiple
multitasking user sessions, and the BBS sysops were often early
adopters of OS/2 2.
So DOS <> no multitasking...
20 May
20 May
12:46 a.m.
My dad had some bills of 5 grand he told me but he was dialing out from a
remote location in northern Manitoba that had only microwave said made huge
difference when he went from 500 baud to 5000
On May 19, 2017 2:40 PM, "jim stephens via cctalk" <cctalk at
classiccmp.org>
wrote:
On 5/19/2017 3:23 AM, Liam Proven via cctalk wrote:
On 18 May 2017 at 17:16, allison via cctalk
<cctalk at classiccmp.org>
wrote:
I have news for you. (maybe) From 1976 until it petered out, the phone
time cost a lot too. $200 or more a month at times.
Also a stupid charge for local calls where the PUC's didn't stand up to
the Bell system or successors and call bullshit to the charges. Calling
across a few blocks could cost a lot and you wouldn't know it unless you
were a phone nut due to zone usage metering.
Only with competition in the mid 80s did US long distance start to fall,
and now with the internet and voice over IP have the need to pay for most
such long distance gone away for small users.
I put in a couple of T1 based systems for large offices though as recently
as 7 years ago, and commercially the POTS or digital carrier phone numbers
carry a huge toll.
thanks
Jim
All a DOS BBS was was a user interface that
provided security by
requiring
user/password
and limiting the commands usable. The easy was to do that was a version
of
the CMD module
rewritten to not have things like RMDIR and DEL.
I was never into the BBS scene, because outside North America, local
phone calls cost money. So you paid for every minute you were online
-- quite a lot.
I used (and still use) CIX (www.cix.co.uk) which
was a sort of UK
version of BIX, and used offline readers -- you dial up, it sends your
comments, zips & grabs all your messages, and disconnects, as fast as
possible to keep the phone bill down.
But AIUI later-era DOS BBSes often used DESQview to allow multiple
multitasking user sessions, and the BBS sysops were often early
adopters of OS/2 2.
So DOS <> no multitasking...
9:42 a.m.
On 19 May 2017 at 21:39, jim stephens via cctalk <cctalk at classiccmp.org> wrote:
I have news for you. (maybe) From 1976 until it
petered out, the phone time
cost a lot too. $200 or more a month at times.
What does "phone time" mean in this context?
I mean, POTS billing, for me, was always time-based, but the amount
billed per unit time varied according to distance.
AIUI, the UK system -- local calls cheapish, long-distance calls
within the country more but not vast, international calls VERY
expensive -- contrasted with the US system: local calls free,
unlimited time, but long-distance calls within the country very
expensive. Thus the development of various early
telephony-over-the-Internet systems. I never used these at all until I
had an international long-distance relationship. No real point inside
the British Isles.
Also a stupid charge for local calls where the
PUC's didn't stand up to the
"PUC"?
Bell system or successors and call bullshit to the
charges. Calling across a
few blocks could cost a lot and you wouldn't know it unless you were a phone
nut due to zone usage metering.
I don't know what "zone usage metering" is either.
Only with competition in the mid 80s did US long
distance start to fall, and
now with the internet and voice over IP have the need to pay for most such
long distance gone away for small users.
Well, yes, for everyone.
Now, in Europe, the problem is international mobile phone roaming. The
EU is slowly forcing this out, but in return, now, the cost of
roaming to non-EU countries is extortionate.
I put in a couple of T1 based systems for large
offices though as recently
as 7 years ago, and commercially the POTS or digital carrier phone numbers
carry a huge toll.
Wow...
--
Liam Proven ? Profile: https://about.me/liamproven
Email: lproven at cix.co.uk ? Google Mail/Talk/Plus: lproven at gmail.com
Twitter/Facebook/Flickr: lproven ? Skype/LinkedIn/AIM/Yahoo: liamproven
UK: +44 7939-087884 ? ?R/WhatsApp/Telegram/Signal: +420 702 829 053
2:12 p.m.
On Sat, May 20, 2017 at 7:42 AM, Liam Proven via cctalk <
cctalk at classiccmp.org> wrote:
In the bay area in california, and likely elsewhere too, there was a local
calling zone that was set based on the population patterns of the 1950's
and 1960's. This meant that calls to some numbers were free, while others
had a toll associated with them. There were zones around the central zone.
So it would cost money to call out of your zone, even if things were only a
few miles away. It was a total crock, but something that the PUCs allowed
because it has always been allowed before the suburbs grew up into one
contiguous population area. So fast forward to the 1980's or 1990's and you
found it impossible to know how much a call would cost. In Colorado, I
lived in an area just outside the metro calling area. I could call 20 miles
away to the far side of Longmont for free. But calling 2 miles to the pizza
joint was a long distance call because it was over the line in gunbarrel
which was in the metro calling area. Totally insane and bat **** crazy.
For everyone in major cities where there's competition. The picture is
still F'd up in rural areas where there's only one phone company.
On 19 May 2017 at 21:39, jim stephens via cctalk
<cctalk at classiccmp.org>
wrote:
Until the late 1990's or early 2000's, you paid per minute on long
distance, but typically not for local calls. Now it's all flat rate, or
almost flat rate no matter how much you use.
I have news for you. (maybe) From 1976 until it
petered out, the phone
time
cost a lot too. $200 or more a month at times.
What does "phone time" mean in this context?
I mean, POTS billing, for me, was always time-based, but the amount
billed per unit time varied according to distance.
AIUI, the UK system -- local calls cheapish, long-distance calls
within the country more but not vast, international calls VERY
expensive -- contrasted with the US system: local calls free,
unlimited time, but long-distance calls within the country very
expensive. Thus the development of various early
telephony-over-the-Internet systems. I never used these at all until I
had an international long-distance relationship. No real point inside
the British Isles. Also a stupid charge for local calls where the
PUC's didn't stand up to
the
"PUC"?
Public Utilities Commission. That's the folks that in most states set the
tariffs under which phone companies operated. The tariffs set the rates for
long distance, what constitutes long distance, etc.
Bell system or successors and call bullshit to
the charges. Calling
across a
few blocks could cost a lot and you wouldn't
know it unless you were a
phone
nut due to zone usage metering.
I don't know what "zone usage metering" is either. Only with competition in the mid 80s did US long
distance start to fall,
and
now with the internet and voice over IP have the
need to pay for most
such
long distance gone away for small users.
Well, yes, for everyone.
Now, in Europe, the problem is international mobile
phone roaming. The
EU is slowly forcing this out, but in return, now, the cost of
roaming to non-EU countries is extortionate.
Yea. It was a regulated monopoly here, and all kinds of crazy pricing
things were in play to prop up a failing business model unable to compete
with new technology.... Of course, there's still forces here in the US that
are trying to leverage their failing telco business into a toll-gate on the
internet, so time will tell...
Warner
I put in a couple of T1 based systems for large
offices though as
recently
as 7 years ago, and commercially the POTS or
digital carrier phone
numbers
carry a huge toll.
Wow....
5:05 p.m.
On 05/20/2017 11:12 AM, Warner Losh via cctalk wrote:
In the bay area in california, and likely elsewhere
too, there was a local
calling zone that was set based on the population patterns of the 1950's
and 1960's. This meant that calls to some numbers were free, while others
had a toll associated with them. There were zones around the central zone.
So it would cost money to call out of your zone, even if things were only a
few miles away. It was a total crock, but something that the PUCs allowed
because it has always been allowed before the suburbs grew up into one
contiguous population area. So fast forward to the 1980's or 1990's and you
found it impossible to know how much a call would cost. In Colorado, I
lived in an area just outside the metro calling area. I could call 20 miles
away to the far side of Longmont for free. But calling 2 miles to the pizza
joint was a long distance call because it was over the line in gunbarrel
which was in the metro calling area. Totally insane and bat **** crazy.
Yes--and in addition, if you were willing to pay a monthly subscription
fee, you could add a city in the calling area that exempted you from
metered service for that city. I remember doing this for Menlo Park.
Not only that, but sometimes the tariffs were set up such that A's calls
to B were free, but B's calls to A were toll. And things were even
weirder when the destination was a non-AT&T carrier. GTE, for example,
serviced Boulder Creek and Los Gatos.
In the early days of BBS, one of the ways for a sysop to save money was
to specify that a line was "answer only"--you couldn't dial out from it.
I know of at least one case where Pacific Bell insisted that a modem on
such a line constituted a "data line", for which there was a much higher
charge. It was a wacky world.
Even by 1990s, a lot of the RBOCs hadn't completely shed their habits.
I learned from an installer that a service call to "check the line" was
free, but one to "check equalization" was a substantial charge, even
though the former usually included the latter.
--Chuck
--Chuck
5:16 p.m.
On 5/20/2017 6:42 AM, Liam Proven via cctalk wrote:
Public Utility Commissions in every state control the billing
structures. In some states, sanity wins over the utilities, but usually
utilities bribe and engage in any tactic they can to pack them with
sympathetic folks who allow them to charge all the can, and be totally
unresponsive to any need to deliver product.
Subject for a huge posting on an entirely different list.
In local metropolitan areas, the phone companies will make
up a grid of
zones. They set a matrix of tolls between each. Calls are way over
priced, and calling across some zones could cause 500' calls to cost as
much as long distance calls.
Where I grew up in the Kansas City, Mo area, the PUC (see above) in both
Ks and Mo had gotten together to force the Bell system to create a
single "free" zone across the entire 30 mile dia area with no zone
charges in the early 60's. The tradeoff was they were given free reign
in other nonsense in the states.
But many areas had or still have this if you don't have a flat rate plan
of some sort.
I have not made calls on any cell
there, the few times I have traveled
recently, but am aware. The place I see it is with my worldwide Vonage
plan, with some coverage in some countries of all phones, and in some no
cell, others no POTS. But for the same rate as I used to pay for US /
Canada / Mexico, I now get global coverage with same cost / month, $27
or so. Send your Phone# I can call.
Businesses still look like the bad old days for
tolls.
Also had several fights with the "hamsters" who would tack on "fees'
for
such as WWW advertising. The phone companies claim that you can sign up
as a vendor and send arbitrary charges to be added to phone bills and it
isn't their responsibility.
Frontier, a carrier here as well as one of the third party service
parasites here are total aholes about it.
I had to file a complaint with the PUC here several times to force Pac
Bell to take off charges to the company I'm referring to. Prior to me
getting the billing to manage, they were paying about 800 / month for
service. After revision, i got it cut in half by dumping crap like the
above and other services that were useless.
Companies who send their bills to accounting departments usually get
screwed over badly because they don't know how or what to question.
But on individual bills one usually notices crap so the third party
folks have largely quit annoying them.
BTW, the long distance here isn't "free" it is just flat rate for
individuals. Most carriers have flat rate plans for businesses, but are
quite a bit higher than for individuals.
thanks
jim
On 19 May 2017 at 21:39, jim stephens via cctalk
<cctalk at classiccmp.org> wrote:
Long distance tolls vs. the zone usage mentioned below. Not a
lot of
variable vs. distance here, pretty much was so many cents / min.
I have news for you. (maybe) From 1976 until it
petered out, the phone time
cost a lot too. $200 or more a month at times.
What does "phone time"
mean in this context? I mean, POTS billing, for me, was always time-based,
but the amount
billed per unit time varied according to distance.
AIUI, the UK system -- local calls cheapish, long-distance calls
within the country more but not vast, international calls VERY
expensive -- contrasted with the US system: local calls free,
unlimited time, but long-distance calls within the country very
expensive. Thus the development of various early
telephony-over-the-Internet systems. I never used these at all until I
had an international long-distance relationship. No real point inside
the British Isles.
local calls were flat rate within zones from when i was born in
the
60's. I do know you used to be able to pay per call, but I am not aware
of anyone that had that measured billing in my family or associates.
Just one relative who even had one of the old crank phones, but they
could just take the mic off hook, and crank and have a call placed.
Also a stupid
charge for local calls where the PUC's didn't stand up to the
"PUC"? Bell system or
successors and call bullshit to the charges. Calling across a
few blocks could cost a lot and you wouldn't know it unless you were a phone
nut due to zone usage metering.
I don't know what "zone usage
metering" is either. Only with
competition in the mid 80s did US long distance start to fall, and
now with the internet and voice over IP have the need to pay for most such
long distance gone away for small users.
Well, yes, for everyone.
Now, in Europe, the problem is international mobile phone roaming. The
EU is slowly forcing this out, but in return, now, the cost of
roaming to non-EU countries is extortionate. I put in a
couple of T1 based systems for large offices though as recently
as 7 years ago, and commercially the POTS or digital carrier phone numbers
carry a huge toll.
Wow... 
18 May
18 May
11:43 a.m.
On 18/05/2017 14:45, william degnan via cctalk wrote:
Tom
wrote it in C .Lattice I think. He lost most of the source in a disk
crash some years back.
I may a copy of the run time version on one of my Rainbows.
Rod
--
There is no wrong or right
Nor black and white.
Just darknessand light
There may have been Rainbow BBS programs, but I doubt anything for the
That's what I was thinking. I have some FidoNET files and mail from the
Rainbow. My guess the BBS would have been written in Pascal or C if for
the Rainbow (guess only) so if you wanted to attempt to port, after you
find a Rainbow BBS? I'd start with a Rainbow BBS disassembly/decompile and
see if you can convert to the PDP 11 running the same language/compile it. 11/34. You may have to write this.
That reminds me of a bit of obscure trivia...
Back in the early days of FidoNet, one or more of the Fido BBS sysops had
DEC Rainbows. The machines could run Fido just fine, but the serial port
address/port didn't follow the convention laid down by the IBM PC. At the
time, there were other MS-DOS compatibles that also had a similar issue
with the serial port and some of those folks wanted to run Fido.
Tom Jennings, Wynn Waggoner III(sp?) and Thom Henderson(sp?) got together
to create the FOSSIL standard.
FOSSIL is Fido Opus Seadog Serial Interface Layer and provided a mechanism
via INT 14 for any MS-DOS compatible computer to run any BBS or mailer
software that had FOSSIL support and a FOSSIL driver available for it.
FOSSIL continued to be a thing long after the issue of serial port
incompatibility was a thing of the past. In fact there's modern software
out there now such as NetFossil that telnet-enables software that can talk
to a FOSSIL driver.
The two popular FOSSIL drivers that I recall from back in the day were BNU
and Ray Gwinn's X00.
As an aside, if anyone has or knows where I can find the source code for
Opus BBS, I'd be interested in hearing from you!
17 May
17 May
11:58 p.m.
On May 17, 2017, at 5:45 PM, devin davison via cctalk
<cctalk at classiccmp.org> wrote:
I have both a pdp 11/34 and 11/23 and am trying to find some bbs software
to run. Preferably something that will run under an os and not monopolize
the whole machine.
Any suggestions? i have not had much luck finding anything.
--Devin
There may be something for RSTS/E. That seems like the OS most likely to have such
software. You might also find some old UNIX source code that might compile on BSD2.11.
Zane
18 May
18 May
12:53 a.m.
There were 2 Unix BBS programs that I played with back in the 80s. One of them I think was
called XBBS. The other one which was a lot better was called Waffle (89 timeframe). Waffle
was a lot more configurable and snazzier and ran well on SysV (and others). XBBS was
targeted for Xenix, was older & may run better on older hardware but would require
some porting.
Kirk
On May 17, 2017, at 8:58 PM, Zane Healy via cctalk
<cctalk at classiccmp.org> wrote:
On May 17, 2017, at 5:45 PM, devin davison via
cctalk <cctalk at classiccmp.org> wrote:
I have both a pdp 11/34 and 11/23 and am trying to find some bbs software
to run. Preferably something that will run under an os and not monopolize
the whole machine.
Any suggestions? i have not had much luck finding anything.
--Devin
There may be something for RSTS/E. That seems like the OS most likely to have such
software. You might also find some old UNIX source code that might compile on BSD2.11.
Zane
1:21 a.m.
On 18/05/2017 04:58, Zane Healy via cctalk wrote:
I ran Fido on a DEC Rainbow in the early 80's.
Almost all of the BBS's were on PC's and accessed by telephone dial up.
Mail was sent by toll free zone hopping.
It was purely an amateur hobby thing.
The mini and mainframe world was too much of an expensive place for the
happy hobby hacker!!
Hence little or nothing by way of BBS's on PDP-11 and above.
Rod Smallwood
Rod Small
--
There is no wrong or right
Nor black and white.
Just darknessand light
On May 17,
2017, at 5:45 PM, devin davison via cctalk <cctalk at classiccmp.org> wrote:
I have both a pdp 11/34 and 11/23 and am trying to find some bbs software
to run. Preferably something that will run under an os and not monopolize
the whole machine.
Any suggestions? i have not had much luck finding anything.
--Devin
There may be something for RSTS/E. That seems like the OS most likely to
have such software. You might also find some old UNIX source code that might compile on
BSD2.11.
Zane
7:58 a.m.
________________________________________
From: cctalk [cctalk-bounces at classiccmp.org] on behalf of Rod Smallwood via cctalk
[cctalk at classiccmp.org]
Sent: Thursday, May 18, 2017 1:21 AM
To: Zane Healy; General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts
Subject: Re: BBS software for the PDP 11
On 18/05/2017 04:58, Zane Healy via cctalk wrote:
I ran Fido on a DEC Rainbow in the early 80's.
Almost all of the BBS's were on PC's and accessed by telephone dial up.
Mail was sent by toll free zone hopping.
It was purely an amateur hobby thing.
The mini and mainframe world was too much of an expensive place for the
happy hobby hacker!!
Hence little or nothing by way of BBS's on PDP-11 and above.
______________________________________
Maybe in your neck of the woods. I had Unix in my house from 1984 on.
And, I ran a BBS (over a local lan using Sytek boxes which were serial
connections) at the place I worked, a campus. Worked quite well.
bill
On May 17,
2017, at 5:45 PM, devin davison via cctalk <cctalk at classiccmp.org> wrote:
I have both a pdp 11/34 and 11/23 and am trying to find some bbs software
to run. Preferably something that will run under an os and not monopolize
the whole machine.
Any suggestions? i have not had much luck finding anything.
--Devin
There may be something for RSTS/E. That seems like the OS most likely to
have such software. You might also find some old UNIX source code that might compile on
BSD2.11.
Zane
1:26 a.m.
On Wed, May 17, 2017 at 08:45:39PM -0400, devin davison via cctalk wrote:
I have both a pdp 11/34 and 11/23 and am trying to find
some bbs software
to run. Preferably something that will run under an os and not monopolize
the whole machine.
A krillion years ago I wrote about half of a BBS for my 11/34a, which
ran (as an RTS) under RSTS V7.0-07. I'd love to finish it ...
John Wilson
D Bit
1:38 a.m.
On 18/05/2017 06:26, John Wilson via cctalk wrote:
On Wed, May 17, 2017 at 08:45:39PM -0400, devin
davison via cctalk wrote:
So whats stopping you?
Rod
--
There is no wrong or right
Nor black and white.
Just darknessand light
I have both a pdp 11/34 and 11/23 and am trying
to find some bbs software
to run. Preferably something that will run under an os and not monopolize
the whole machine.
A krillion years ago I wrote about half of a BBS for my 11/34a,
which
ran (as an RTS) under RSTS V7.0-07. I'd love to finish it ...
John Wilson
D Bit
2:13 a.m.
I have both a pdp 11/34 and 11/23 and am trying to
find some bbs software
to run. Preferably something that will run under an os and not monopolize
the whole machine.
A krillion years ago I wrote about half of a BBS for my 11/34a, which
ran (as an RTS) under RSTS V7.0-07. I'd love to finish it ... 
2:24 a.m.
I too wrote half a BBS back in the early 80's for MU-BASIC on RT-11v4 when
I was in mid secondary school. I ended up running GBBS on an apple2
instead. That seems like a lifetime ago :-)
BTW this is my first post to the list, so, I'll introduce myself. I'm a C#
.net developer these days, but, I cut my teeth on a Websters PDP-11 (Q-bus)
mini computer in the early 80s. Recently I purchased a similar model from
one of the members on this list which I intend to resurrect RSN.
On Thu, May 18, 2017 at 4:13 PM, Cameron Kaiser via cctalk <
cctalk at classiccmp.org> wrote:
So whats stopping you?
Retirement?
--
------------------------------------ personal:
http://www.cameronkaiser.com/ --
Cameron Kaiser * Floodgap Systems * www.floodgap.com *
ckaiser at floodgap.com
-- select unique ("Just another SQL hacker") jash from id_rec order by 1;
-----
> > I
have both a pdp 11/34 and 11/23 and am trying to find some bbs
software
> > to run. Preferably something that will
run under an os and not
monopolize
the whole machine.
A krillion years ago I wrote about half of a BBS for my 11/34a, which
ran (as an RTS) under RSTS V7.0-07. I'd love to finish it ...
8 a.m.
________________________________________
From: cctalk [cctalk-bounces at classiccmp.org] on behalf of Cameron Kaiser via cctalk
[cctalk at classiccmp.org]
Sent: Thursday, May 18, 2017 2:13 AM
To: rodsmallwood52 at btinternet.com; cctalk at classiccmp.org
Subject: Re: BBS software for the PDP 11
So whats stopping you?
Retirement?
____________________________
John, retire? Fat chance of that.
bill
I have both a pdp 11/34 and 11/23 and am trying to
find some bbs software
to run. Preferably something that will run under an os and not monopolize
the whole machine.
A krillion years ago I wrote about half of a BBS for my 11/34a, which
ran (as an RTS) under RSTS V7.0-07. I'd love to finish it ...
11:37 a.m.
Paul Koning via cctalk wrote:
As an RTS? Wow, that's doing it the hard way. In
either RT or RSX
emulation it would be easier, you have a friendlier development
environment that way. I've done an application as an RTS in the long-ago
past (an implementation of QUBIC, 3D 4x4x4x tic-tac-toe for a classmate)
but that was on V5B, where an RTS was the only way to do assembly
programming on RSTS.
This was for the command-line interface, which I needed to be absolutely,
totally, seriously ^C and ^^C proof if I was going to let random outsiders
dial up my RSTS machine. It worked nicely ...
John Wilson
D Bit
11:55 a.m.
On May 18, 2017, at 11:37 AM, John Wilson via cctalk
<cctalk at classiccmp.org> wrote:
Paul Koning via cctalk wrote:
Oh yes, that would be a possible reason. Binary mode I/O will also do that, though at a
price that may be too high. Finally, in V9.0 and later, you can use a captive account to
ensure that it can't escape the login.com file, which means that control/c may abort
the program but it won't let the user into places you don't want to allow.
paul
As an RTS? Wow, that's doing it the hard
way. In either RT or RSX
emulation it would be easier, you have a friendlier development
environment that way. I've done an application as an RTS in the long-ago
past (an implementation of QUBIC, 3D 4x4x4x tic-tac-toe for a classmate)
but that was on V5B, where an RTS was the only way to do assembly
programming on RSTS.
This was for the command-line interface, which I needed to be absolutely,
totally, seriously ^C and ^^C proof if I was going to let random outsiders
dial up my RSTS machine. It worked nicely ...
8:48 a.m.
On 2017-05-18 1:26 AM, John Wilson via cctalk wrote:
On Wed, May 17, 2017 at 08:45:39PM -0400, devin
davison via cctalk wrote:
Throw it up on github and invite contributors?
--T
I have both a pdp 11/34 and 11/23 and am trying
to find some bbs software
to run. Preferably something that will run under an os and not monopolize
the whole machine.
A krillion years ago I wrote about half of a BBS for my 11/34a, which
ran (as an RTS) under RSTS V7.0-07. I'd love to finish it ...
John Wilson
D Bit
9:03 a.m.
On May 18, 2017, at 1:26 AM, John Wilson via cctalk
<cctalk at classiccmp.org> wrote:
On Wed, May 17, 2017 at 08:45:39PM -0400, devin davison via cctalk wrote:
As an RTS? Wow, that's doing it the hard way. In either RT or RSX emulation it would
be easier, you have a friendlier development environment that way. I've done an
application as an RTS in the long-ago past (an implementation of QUBIC, 3D 4x4x4x
tic-tac-toe for a classmate) but that was on V5B, where an RTS was the only way to do
assembly programming on RSTS.
paul
I have both a pdp 11/34 and 11/23 and am trying
to find some bbs software
to run. Preferably something that will run under an os and not monopolize
the whole machine.
A krillion years ago I wrote about half of a BBS for my 11/34a, which
ran (as an RTS) under RSTS V7.0-07. I'd love to finish it ...
1:47 a.m.
On 5/17/2017 5:45 PM, devin davison via cctalk wrote:
I have both a pdp 11/34 and 11/23 and am trying to
find some bbs software
to run. Preferably something that will run under an os and not monopolize
the whole machine.
Any suggestions? i have not had much luck finding anything.
--Devin
You might troll for copies of Boardwatch magazine. It was the center of
the BBS universe (in some people's minds, there were others who despised
it).
I do recall vaguely people saying they were running larger systems, but
it was mostly people who wanted to be friendly to the technical talent
they were getting and have support machines for companies. They would
hire 18 or 20 somethings, who would be able to log on to a BBS find
files, etc., but take forever to figure out how to get into some of the
crap systems that were around that were not BBS like interfaces.
Of course that was rare, but was around for businesses with the use case
to need that sort of patch / support.
http://www.bbsdays.com/people/jack_rickard/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boardwatch
If someone had done such, it might have been in boardwatch if anywhere.
I tossed tons of those in previous moves, so can't help with that. Plus
as has been stated it would have been rare, and looking thru paper
copies would be a long process and probably turn up little.
hopefully if you find Boardwatch digitally somewhere, or information
derived from there you can turn up some things.
thanks
Jim
9:55 a.m.
On Wed, 17 May 2017, jim stephens via cctalk wrote:
If someone had done such, it might have been in
boardwatch if anywhere. I
tossed tons of those in previous moves, so can't help with that. Plus as has
been stated it would have been rare, and looking thru paper copies would be
a long process and probably turn up little.
hopefully if you find Boardwatch digitally somewhere, or information derived
from there you can turn up some things.
http://www.bombjack.org/generic/generic-magazines-telecommunications.htm
If anyone out there reading this has more copies of Boardwatch or those
other magazines, please consider sending them to bombjack.org for
scanning. He does excellent non-destructive scanning.
g.
--
Proud owner of F-15C 80-0007
http://www.f15sim.com - The only one of its kind.
http://www.diy-cockpits.org/coll - Go Collimated or Go Home.
Some people collect things for a hobby. Geeks collect hobbies.
ScarletDME - The red hot Data Management Environment
A Multi-Value database for the masses, not the classes.
http://scarlet.deltasoft.com - Get it _today_!
3:42 a.m.
On Wed, May 17, 2017 at 08:45:39PM -0400, devin davison via cctalk wrote:
I have both a pdp 11/34 and 11/23 and am trying to
find some bbs software
to run. Preferably something that will run under an os and not monopolize
the whole machine.
Any suggestions? i have not had much luck finding anything.
--Devin
Not PDP-11 but some might find it interesting nontheless. A group of
Swedes ran a BBS on a VAX-11/730:
https://www.retrodatorer.se/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/bbs-1-CT-dmz-1-1986.…
/P
9:07 a.m.
On Wed, 17 May 2017, devin davison via cctalk wrote:
I have both a pdp 11/34 and 11/23 and am trying to
find some bbs software
to run. Preferably something that will run under an os and not monopolize
the whole machine.
Any suggestions? i have not had much luck finding anything.
I'd be surprised if you did. This is however, an excellent opportunity to
write your own. :) (At least to me, it would be a fun project.)
g.
--
Proud owner of F-15C 80-0007
http://www.f15sim.com - The only one of its kind.
http://www.diy-cockpits.org/coll - Go Collimated or Go Home.
Some people collect things for a hobby. Geeks collect hobbies.
ScarletDME - The red hot Data Management Environment
A Multi-Value database for the masses, not the classes.
http://scarlet.deltasoft.com - Get it _today_!
11:28 a.m.
On Thu, 18 May 2017, Pontus Pihlgren wrote:
On Thu, May 18, 2017 at 06:07:03AM -0700, geneb via
cctalk wrote:
You can run, but you can't hide. :)
g.
--
Proud owner of F-15C 80-0007
http://www.f15sim.com - The only one of its kind.
http://www.diy-cockpits.org/coll - Go Collimated or Go Home.
Some people collect things for a hobby. Geeks collect hobbies.
ScarletDME - The red hot Data Management Environment
A Multi-Value database for the masses, not the classes.
http://scarlet.deltasoft.com - Get it _today_!
I'd be surprised if you did. This is however, an excellent opportunity to
write your own. :) (At least to me, it would be a fun project.)
FACEBK-11
*ducks*
2620
days inactive
2626
days old
96 comments
32 participants
participants (32)
-
abuse＠cabal.org.uk -
allisonportable＠gmail.com -
ams＠gnu.org -
andrew＠cerberus-software.com.au -
bill.gunshannon＠hotmail.com -
billdegnan＠gmail.com -
cc＠informatik.uni-stuttgart.de -
cclist＠sydex.com -
cctalk＠ibm51xx.net -
chris＠groessler.org -
elson＠pico-systems.com -
ethan.dicks＠gmail.com -
geneb＠deltasoft.com -
healyzh＠aracnet.com -
imp＠bsdimp.com -
jwsmail＠jwsss.com -
kirkbdavis＠me.com -
lbickley＠bickleywest.com -
lproven＠gmail.com -
lyokoboy0＠gmail.com -
mikew＠thecomputervalet.com -
mtapley＠swri.edu -
paulkoning＠comcast.net -
pontus＠Update.UU.SE -
rich.cini＠verizon.net -
rodsmallwood52＠btinternet.com -
spectre＠floodgap.com -
systems.glitch＠gmail.com -
tdk.knight＠gmail.com -
toby＠telegraphics.com.au -
wh.sudbrink＠verizon.net -
wilson＠dbit.com