http://www.blackbox.nl/techweb/connect/db15hd.htm it's a DB15HD, if you go to google and search, a heckuva lot of hits come up for it. looking in a "Pocket PC-Ref" book I have also referrs to it as DB15HD. the D shell looks to be the same size as a DB-9 At 06:43 PM 3/31/01 +0100, you wrote:

You're certainly correct in that publishing a bit of information in a particular place doesn't make it fact. However, calling the small serial port connector commonly seen on some DEC and all PC/AT equipment a DB9 is definitely wrong. As always, it's easier to find nomenclature that's quite obviously wrong than it is to find out what is right. However, it's a matter of finding out what is right, not of inventing it, as folks in the business BlackBox is in are often inclined to do, not only be cause they have to "do something ... even if it's wrong" in order to give their product a name and description, but in order to communicate to their customers what, more or less, it is they'd like to sell. The fact that none of us seem to be able to make up our minds doesn't help a thing. The notion of naming sub-d connectors for the shape, shell size, and number of pins certainly went down the toilet when they started packaging the same shell with pins of differring position density. This notion was started by one connector manufacturer and was resisted by a couple of their major competitors. It did work much better than the 30-digit part number you'd have had to look up that we're still kicking this thing around after so many years is an indication of how sticky a problem it really is. Please see additional remarks embedded below Dick ----- Original Message ----- From: "Tony Duell" <ard(a)p850ug1.demon.co.ukTo: <classiccmp(a)classiccmp.orgSent: Monday, April 02, 2001 12:05 PM Subject: Re: D connector tirade (was: Re: Age-old ethernet equipment) Based on the notion I mentioned above, and the very example you pointed out, there should, indeed have been just such a part descriptor. Under that scheme, however, there could have been quite a number of other combinations that also got the same moniker, even though the pin arrangement was quite different. [1] Apart from the non-serious suggestion of mine that it should be used > for a DB25-size connector with only pins 1-8 and 20 fitted. This > connector was used on RS232 cables at one time. But I digress. > So the 'correct' name for the VGA monitor connector can't be a DB > _anything_. It must be a DE something. DE15HD or HDE15, or just plain > DE15 would seem logical. > Incidentally, because a name is commonly used by the PC-crowd, or because > it's printed in PC 'hardware' books [2] doesn't make it correct. I can > name a dozen things that are incorrectly named by such people (my > favourite being 'going into the BIOS' when they mean the BIOS parameter > table. The BIOS is a program in ROM). > [2] I am not sure how anyone can write a hardware book without a single > schematic or timing diagram, but the PC-crowd seem to manage it. They have to write what their intended readers can understand. After all, lots of people have made lifelong carreers of hooking up computer equipment without ever concerning themselves with a schematic or logic diagram. Conflicting practices made this difficult, but by staying with a single vendor, one could eventually figure out what each connector at the bulkhead represented, e.g. DB25S meant DTE, DB25P meant DCE, and so on, and do pretty well with that. However, another vendor might have the convention differently implemented, i.e. DB25S implies RS232, and if pin 20 is populated, it's DTE, etc. You get what I mean (I hope). -tony

Could someone please email me the MS-DOS utility SHIP.COM or PARK.COM (it differed in name depending on who's OEM DOS it was). I need to park a MFM hard disk prior to shipment. Thanks and take care. Jeff -- Collector of Classic Microcomputers and Video Game Systems: Home of the TRS-80 Model 2000 FAQ File http://www.geocities.com/siliconvalley/lakes/6757

The drive is a Tandon TM-501 or 502 in a TRS-80 Model 2000 running DOS 2.00. I know neither the machine itself or the drive automatically parks on shutdown or after a timeout and Tandy's OEM version of DOS didn't include the utility either. My personal preference in the machine is the ST-225, but the Tandon in this one is still going strong as it only saw light use. Jeff -- Collector of Classic Microcomputers and Video Game Systems: Home of the TRS-80 Model 2000 FAQ File http://www.geocities.com/siliconvalley/lakes/6757

This has nothing to do with this other than being the most evil practical joke I ever played. A couple years back someone on this list posted an HP control sequence for changing the READY message on HP printers. So I wrote a script that found every printer on campus, changed the READY message to INSERT 5 CENTS, ran the script on April Fools' day and sent a message to the campus announcement echo saying that all printers now would require a five cents' per page charge with charge accounts required from all offices (coin acceptors to be installed that same day). I nearly got in trouble with the Financial VP but it was a great joke! I still have some archived voice mail from people who took the joke completely seriously :-) Of course, when my boss got back and found billions of angry messages it was the new Ice Age for some time afterwards ... They still talk about that joke in the programmers' nest and the original message I sent to the echo is now posted on the system admin's wall. :-) -- ----------------------------- personal page: http://www.armory.com/~spectre/ -- Cameron Kaiser, Point Loma Nazarene University * ckaiser(a)stockholm.ptloma.edu -- Long live the Commodore 64 -- eight bits are enough! -----------------------

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Jerome Fine replies: I would appreciate some help with the COMPOSE key on a VT220 LK201 keyboard, more specifically what it can do with the VT220 and the details of how it can be done. My actual problem is when I run an old PDP-11 operating system (RT-11), one of the application keypad keys (the keypad zero key - "<ESC>Op") sends out the same characters as the <GOLD> key ("<ESC>OP") except that the last character is upper/lower case. While the SL: (Single Line Editor) is running and the TTLC$ bit is on in the JSW (Job Status Word), it is possible to distinguish between both keys, but when an application program runs which turns off the TTLC$ bit, both keys look the same to the SL: if type ahead is used while the application program is running. Is it possible to change the <GOLD> key to output a different sequence of characters, or more specifically, either change the last character to "I" or have the <GOLD> key produce "<ESC>[36~" so it in effect becomes F22. I would then make the ENTER key = F21, PF1= F22 (as I just said), PF2=F23, PF3=F24 and PF4=F25. Alternatively, I would consider any other solution - probably even modifying RT-11 so that after an SS3 ("<ESC>O" sequence), the third character is not modified if the TANSI$ bit is on (a bit reserved for TECO) which could be a new command: "SET TT: [NO]ANSI". Note that when using RT-11 under Ersatz-11 from John Wilson, it is almost trivial to modify the ENTER, PF1, PF2, PF3, PF4 keys. So even if the temporary solution is to make these changes to the characters generated by these 5 keys, at least under Ersatz-11 it will work very well. Probably, such changes could be controlled via a FLAGn variable so that they could easily be toggled on and off. Note that Any comments would be appreciated. Sincerely yours, Jerome Fine

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On Tue, 3 Apr 2001, Cameron Kaiser wrote: You're welcome. (; You're lucky nobody actually tried to drop a nickel into one of the printers... I almost did the same thing but was worried, given my user community, that somebody would try it. I eventually settled on" "71 COLON BLOCKED" ok r.

What praytell is the escape sequence :) i have about a dozen hp 2's 3's and 2p/3p printers here :) At 12:14 PM 4/3/01 -0400, you wrote:

At 4/3/2001 11:30 AM, you wrote: When I was in the seventh grade, the school had a shiny new mac lab, and they tried to teach QuickBasic to everyone. I found it fun to write a simple QuickBasic program that created a small modal window completely concealed underneath the menu bar. After researching various ways of getting the program run by unsuspecting students, it was fun to watch the computer-challenged teacher/students try to figure out why the machine(s) had frozen up. The teacher gradually grew suspicious of the machines as the year progressed. -- Jeffrey S. Sharp jss(a)ou.edu

Hi Curt, I've never heard back from you concerning whether or not I was inline for the second cube, but based on what you've written below, I'm going to assume you're keeping both of them then? If so, I'd be interested in one of the complete laser printers, hopefully with trays, as well as any NeXT application CD's, such as SoftPC or just about anything else. Thanks Jeff -- Collector of Classic Microcomputers and Video Game Systems: Home of the TRS-80 Model 2000 FAQ File http://www.geocities.com/siliconvalley/lakes/6757

John, You got it, will set one aside for you, just give me a fews days to get back to you. Curt ----- Original Message ----- From: "John R. Keys Jr." &lt;jrkeys(a)concentric.net&gt; To: &lt;classiccmp(a)classiccmp.org&gt; Sent: Saturday, April 07, 2001 2:42 PM Subject: Re: The NeXT's have been saved!!!

Curt, I was one of the early contenters for a slab and monitor. Still want one. Zip 14008. Thanks, Brian. Curt Vendel wrote: -- ??????

Put me down for a slab, keyboard/mouse/OS/etc and monitor, to zip code 92350. Thanks! :-) -- ----------------------------- personal page: http://www.armory.com/~spectre/ -- Cameron Kaiser, Point Loma Nazarene University * ckaiser(a)stockholm.ptloma.edu -- "The Internet is, once again, your friend" (I wrote this *before* PacBell!)

Thanks! If you have NeXTStep CDs, I'd love them too -- if there's an extra cost for that, I'll gladly absorb it. Let me know where to send the green! I appreciate this greatly! -- ----------------------------- personal page: http://www.armory.com/~spectre/ -- Cameron Kaiser, Point Loma Nazarene University * ckaiser(a)stockholm.ptloma.edu -- The older a man gets, the farther he had to walk to school as a boy. -------

I think I'm already on the list, but I'm in for a slab/monitor/keyboard/mouse. Thanks! It'll look good on the desk next to my Lisa 2...... Paul Paul Braun WD9GCO Cygnus Productions nerdware_nospam(a)laidbak.com "A computer without a Microsoft operating system is like a dog without a bunch of bricks tied to its head."

Actually, the ST412 physical interface is, unless I've missed something in the (insert ridiculously large number here) times I've done it in every way identical to the ST506. The only difference I've noted is that the ST412-series drives were capable of buffering the step pulses in order to compute fast seek velocity profiles. This is a firmware effect, not a hardware one, though the hardware had to be somewhat different. The controller local to the drive could, therefore implement some sort of PID algorithm. Dick ----- Original Message ----- From: "Tony Duell" &lt;ard(a)p850ug1.demon.co.uk&gt; To: &lt;classiccmp(a)classiccmp.org&gt; Sent: Monday, April 02, 2001 3:25 PM Subject: Re: D connector tirade (was: Re: Age-old ethernet equipment) particular connector of shell lots The people willing to buy and rely on such things get what they deserve. Most of them don't read the things anyway. A catchy title will sell products so abysmally lacking in both value and underlying knowledge that anybody who would actually read such a thing would be appalled. Frankly, I've yet to see a good book on PC-anything. without could The PC-generation wasn't when this started. I'm about (once I have time) to sit down with my S-100 hardware and produce logic analyzer snapshots and import them into my PC so I can use them in documenting what REALLY happens on the bus with each of a number of CPU boards. My experience has been that the documentation provided with CP/M-era hardware was often fraught with error and even with disinformation. The situation with PC-generation stuff seems to have been that the mfg's simply saved themselves the trouble of publishing disinformation about their products, since the PC was designed for people who'd see a logic diagram as being a foreign language anyway.

Both of my kit systems (Heath/Zenith Z-100 and SWTPc 6809) have excellent manuals that go into the timing, schematics, and chip datasheets. Tandy used to have available seperately some excellent tech manuals on their various systems. I've got a number of them, including the nearly 400page service manual for the Model 2000. Osborne had a pretty serious set of tech manuals for their products as well, the ones for the Executive spanning 5 volumes, including the source for it's ROM monitor and BIOS. Atari did a similar manual for the 400/800. With most of today's systems, you're lucky to get any kind of manual at all. It's just as likely to be a flyer of just a few pages as it is to be a PDF file on the system CD. Certainly nothing that goes too in-depth into the actual hardware. Jeff -- Collector of Classic Microcomputers and Video Game Systems: Home of the TRS-80 Model 2000 FAQ File http://www.geocities.com/siliconvalley/lakes/6757

I didn't deal with DEC mauals, nor did I often deal with Heath/Zenith stuff. In fact, Heath and Zenith hadn't "merged" by the timeframe I'm remembering. Nevertheless, I can remember more than one case wherein I had board revisions a, b, and c of a given board, and the same error, on schematic revisions a, b, and c appeared. That convinced me the mfg's were trying to "protect" something. It's true, the Tandy doc's that I saw were about as good as any of the time, though the underlying designs were often about as poor as any of the time. Dick ----- Original Message ----- From: "Tony Duell" &lt;ard(a)p850ug1.demon.co.uk&gt; To: &lt;classiccmp(a)classiccmp.org&gt; Sent: Tuesday, April 03, 2001 11:49 AM Subject: Re: D connector tirade (was: Re: Age-old ethernet equipment)

Yes, it has that impact, but it has no effect at all on the physical interface. Sadly, a few controllers in the "old" days were built to the original ST506 spec, meaning that, like their 8" predecessors, they stepped at a fixed rate of 3 ms per step. You could, of course, devise a scheme for changing the rate at which the pulses were generated, but I never had a taste for that much self-abuse. The earliest HDC's seemed to favor using an FDC chip to control head positioning. They didn't ramp the seek rate up and down on longer seeks, though it seems some do in today's floppy drives. Unfortunately, PC-BIOS based firmware steps the floppy drives too slowly and doesn't make provision for the drives' capability to step faster. Dick ----- Original Message ----- From: "Tony Duell" &lt;ard(a)p850ug1.demon.co.uk&gt; To: &lt;classiccmp(a)classiccmp.org&gt; Sent: Monday, April 02, 2001 5:53 PM Subject: Re: D connector tirade (was: Re: Age-old ethernet equipment) the hardware single all, Most be sit them with documentation that about diagram

Isn't it just a DE-16 with pin 9 missing? Eric