I wrote earlier: Oh! There may be a ground wire attaching the upper metal case to the lower metal case. Watch for it. Hope this helps, Bill Sudbrink

chris [osicollector(a)btinternet.com] wrote: Hmmm... that doesn't seem to be the factory configuration. The C4 SAMS (sitting in my lap right now) and both of my own examples show the top inside (left as you are facing the rear of the machine and the machine is right side up) as video, below it (only on a C4P NOT mf) are cassette out and in. There is no cassette I/O on a C4Pmf. Top outside is audio, below that is DAC out and below that is AC. That looks about right but to avoid confusion, it should be noted that in the factory configuration only pins 2, 5, 6, 11 and 12 are used. 2 goes to the rear mounted pot for color adjustment, 5 and 6 to video out and 11 and 12 to AC CONTROL (which I think is an early form of X10 appliance control). Bill

Ethan Dicks wrote: ... The Compukit was a functional clone of the OSI superboard. There is a web site & emulator for it at: http://www.compukit.org/ I haven't messed around with it in a couple years, but at the time there were different ROM images you could configure the thing to boot with, so you could have either the UK version of things or the OSI version.

On Sun, 1 Aug 2004, John Allain wrote: Maybe some enterprising left coasters could get together and buy it to keep it open? I was looking into buying Mike Quinn Electronics to keep it was resigned to closing MQE forever because he didn't think he'd find a buyer. Fortunately, someone else came in and bought the place and is keeping it alive (for now). I think it's really important to try to keep these places open. Someone should make the effort, but know what they're getting themselves in to. Running a surplus electronics business is challenging. -- Sellam Ismail Vintage Computer Festival ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ International Man of Intrigue and Danger http://www.vintage.org [ Old computing resources for business || Buy/Sell/Trade Vintage Computers ] [ and academia at www.VintageTech.com || at http://marketplace.vintage.org ]

On Mon, 2 Aug 2004, William Donzelli wrote: Perhaps ;)~ You're in luck! Electronics Barn includes a FREE warehouse :) -- Sellam Ismail Vintage Computer Festival ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ International Man of Intrigue and Danger http://www.vintage.org [ Old computing resources for business || Buy/Sell/Trade Vintage Computers ] [ and academia at www.VintageTech.com || at http://marketplace.vintage.org ]

On Mon, 2 Aug 2004, Dan Veeneman wrote: That's pretty much the same siutation with most electronics surplus stores. It's a sad fact: kids are, indeed, not building anything anymore. We're raising a nation of end-users, thanks to a number of factors, all boiling down to selfish indifference. Either them or Excess Solutions. They both seem to be going pretty strong, and I hope to have them around for a long while yet as they have stuff you just can't find anywhere else on the planet. -- Sellam Ismail Vintage Computer Festival ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ International Man of Intrigue and Danger http://www.vintage.org [ Old computing resources for business || Buy/Sell/Trade Vintage Computers ] [ and academia at www.VintageTech.com || at http://marketplace.vintage.org ]

On Mon, 2 Aug 2004, Teo Zenios wrote: True, although there is a definitive shift towards software creativity, rather than hardware. I am a borderline case.. when I was in uni. I was playing with hardware ("Fred? Yeah, he's here.. look for two short legs sticking out from under one of those PDP-11 racks down the hall.. those are likely to be his.") but most of my classmates were doing software-only, and, which is I assume what Sellam was pointing out, they did not CARE what hardware their stuff was on. These days, kids get taught Programming course in *java* .. when I asked several teaching professors about that, they claimed this is what both the industry (which will eventually take in those newly graduated students..) *and* the kids themselves want.. they want to learn about things, but not tied to any specific hardware platform. He got red in the face when I asked him how he's teaching kids any base OS principles such as state-saving and interrupting. Meaning, kids don't go there, pretty much. The next major version of a known OS will probably be without interrupts, as none of the programmers will have any knowledge about them anymore ;-) --f

DOS is an operating system? ;) -- ---------------------------------- personal: http://www.armory.com/~spectre/ -- Cameron Kaiser, Floodgap Systems Ltd * So. Calif., USA * ckaiser(a)floodgap.com -- May I join your mind? -- Sarek, Star Trek III ------------------------------

Joseph S. Barrera III wrote: Well I guess you have never used a SERIAL PORT under DOS! Can we say 300 BAUD! Grumpy PROGRAMER!

Teo Zenios wrote: Read the fine print under Telix and DOS! Ben, the grumpy programer.

On Mon, 2 Aug 2004, ben franchuk wrote: Hmmmm. I was able to get 9600 bits per second out of the IBM serial card (8250 UART) on 4.77 MHz PCs, without TOO much difficulty. One of the nice things about MS-DOS, as opposed to the W word, was that it wasn't very hard to shove it out of the way when you wanted to talk to the hardware. ("well behaved" v performance) But, admittedly, if you tried to do serial I/O using the BIOS routines, then you might very well be limited to not much over 300 baud. Joe Campbell's "C Programmer's Guide to Serial Communications" has plenty of good info, although he and I didn't completely agree about his level of "data hiding". -- Grumpy Ol' Fred cisin(a)xenosoft.com

Fred Cisin wrote: Well that is the point of a OS, is it not that you DON'T have to write I/O routines. Grumpy old Ben.

On Tue, 3 Aug 2004, Fred N. van Kempen wrote: Huh? I guess maybe if you went through the BIOS? I always used serial port libraries that ran the serial ports on their respective interrupts. -- Sellam Ismail Vintage Computer Festival ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ International Man of Intrigue and Danger http://www.vintage.org [ Old computing resources for business || Buy/Sell/Trade Vintage Computers ] [ and academia at www.VintageTech.com || at http://marketplace.vintage.org ]

On Mon, 2 Aug 2004, ben franchuk wrote: I designed a state-machine based application that handled 3 serial ports (mutli-port serial card sharing on interrupt) simultaneously downloading data files at up to 19.2Kbps per channel. I also designed a system that used 2 standard COM ports simultaneously: one for remote access and one for transferring data. Worked fine at up to 19.2Kbps (the fastest cheap modems of the day, e.g. USR Sportsters). Under MS-DOS 6.22. So I have no idea what you're talking about really :/ -- Sellam Ismail Vintage Computer Festival ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ International Man of Intrigue and Danger http://www.vintage.org [ Old computing resources for business || Buy/Sell/Trade Vintage Computers ] [ and academia at www.VintageTech.com || at http://marketplace.vintage.org ]

On Tue, 3 Aug 2004, David V. Corbin wrote: Of course! Who would try to write a serious serial application going throgh DOS?? I would have never dreamed of doing so. ;) -- Sellam Ismail Vintage Computer Festival ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ International Man of Intrigue and Danger http://www.vintage.org [ Old computing resources for business || Buy/Sell/Trade Vintage Computers ] [ and academia at www.VintageTech.com || at http://marketplace.vintage.org ]

On Mon, 2 Aug 2004, Teo Zenios wrote: I wasn't talking about the kids. The kids are all right. It's the adults that bother me. This is the biggest aspect of the problem. But if that's all it was, it would be easy to solve. The main issues are that we have a) dumbed-down school and educational requirements, b) stifled creativity in ways too numerous to mention (i.e. kids being arrested for writing fantasy essays about killing other students, teachers, etc.), c) have gotten so busy in life that we have little spare time for hobbies, d) removed the hands-on science classes from school because of budgetary reasons, e) generally de-emphasized do-it-yourself and supplanted it with "Collect all 8! BUY ME NOW YOU MINDLESS CONSUMER!!" I'll bet an electronics surplus store would be very successful in a third-world but emerging country like China for instance. India for sure I'd imagine (John?) -- Sellam Ismail Vintage Computer Festival ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ International Man of Intrigue and Danger http://www.vintage.org [ Old computing resources for business || Buy/Sell/Trade Vintage Computers ] [ and academia at www.VintageTech.com || at http://marketplace.vintage.org ]

----- Original Message ----- From: "Vintage Computer Festival" <vcf(a)siconic.com> To: "General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts" <cctalk(a)classiccmp.org> Sent: Monday, August 02, 2004 3:25 PM Subject: Re: Electronics Barn closing if a to Festival A) The school system has always been producing kids with the skills employers are demanding for the future workforce. The newest generation will have skills designed for the service industry which is where 80% of the jobs of today are. Why should Johnny go to tech school and spend $20,000 on loans to get an ITT tech degree and make $8 an hour when he can get just about the same rate moving boxes in a warehouse with nothing but a HS diploma. Accounting, law, business, and IT is where the money is to be made today, engineering and science along with programming is a waste of time. B) Society in general is 100% reactive, kids go to school and kill a few people so society clamps down with no tolerance school policies. Its the same with government, people hijack a few planes and fly them into a skyscraper and we pour billions of dollars to hassle passengers while doing nothing to seal our borders or even inspect the billions of packages that fly in our airplanes every year. C) I agree with what you said. Americans are the most overworked and have the least vacation time used then any other workforce in the industrial world (this does not include CEO's of course). D) I don't know if they are skimping in chemistry or physics in schools today since they are still college prep classes. Computers are probably pushed more today then when I was in school. Maybe they cut back on some woodshop and metalshop classes, I wouldn't know. I do know that a school district has to be on the verge of bankruptcy to get rid of football, baseball, and basketball since these activities draw in too many parents who do pay local taxes. E) Do it yourself is still very big in the home renovating area, probably bigger then ever since a house is the biggest investment most people make and is still the largest sinkhole for money for repairs. Humans ARE mindless consumers. Go look at a 1930's mail-order catalog and see all the nonessential junk being sold to people even back then. The only difference is today that there are catalogs targeting the very poor just like there are always catalogs targeting the middle class and rich. Companies have done their homework on marketing their junk better, consumers have not changed at all.

Reading that suddenly made me think - do they still have chemical gardens in school ? Made with waterglass ( for preserving eggs IIRC ) and chemical crystals ? Geoff. Festival ---- http://www.vintage.org mputers ] http://marketplace.vintage.org ]

Agreed... Exams the emphasise rote-learning rather than thought don't exactly help here. And at least over here, kids are treated with suspeicion if they want to use 'dangerous' tools like knives, soldering irons, etc. Again, over here, a lot of the good bits of school science have been removed for 'safety reasons' (not that anyone ever got seriously harmed by doing them, and now kids are so darn bored that they turn to crime of illegal drugs, but anyeay). Much of what I did at school, like making a CRT, fooling around with 3 phase mains, etc, would be banned :-( -tony

The only problem with working on surface mount stuff is that people think it's hard. It's not. As for special tools, yes, a hot-air soldering tool is useful (but one of those butane-powered irons with the hot air tip is OK for repairs). But I just used a normal soldering iron with the finest bit made, and take a little care. I've done PQFPs, SOICs, transistors, passives, etc with no problem at all. Now BGAs are a problem (I wonder what the cheapest setup for doing those is -- I've seen a protoryping rig, but it's about \pounds 5000). But components where you can get to each individual connection are no trouble at all. -tony

Do you have any recomendations for the tool or any references for how to do it? RIght :-(. -tony

jpero(a)sympatico.ca wrote: Another way to reflow SM boards is to use an iron set high enough to melt the solder and get it to flow. While I've never worked with BGAs, I am curious if the iron would do the same thing and get things hot enough to just lift the BGAs off?

On Thu, 5 Aug 2004 jpero(a)sympatico.ca wrote: Heat from the bottom of the card.... Peter Wallace Mesa Electronics

Alas not over here. The common attidude seems to be 'Why bother to program when you can download it from the net' (whether it's PD/open source stuff, or 'Warez'). In fact over here kids rarely seem to create anything much any more, and I can't say I really blame them (note, this is not the same as saying that I am not worried by this). You do not get a well-paid job (or even a job at all) by being able to program, or do engineering, or... You get one by being able ot kick a football or strum a guitar badly. In fact people are actively discouraged from hardware hacking. The 'no user serviceable parts' label doesn't help of course. Nor does the fact that schematics/service manuals are difficult/impossible to obtain even for quite simple things (I can remember when radios and hi-fi equipment came with a schemaitc in the handbook, in fact I have an old, valve, FM tuner where the first page of the manual tells you how to use it, the rest of the manual describes the complete alignment procedure, gives component layouts and schematics, etc). Nor dows the fact that a lot of modern sutff is made deliberately hard to dismantly non-destructively. We've had this before, and I still don't believe it. If you can honstly tell me that it's cheaper (and quicker) to replace some large PCB costing several hundreed pounds/dollars than to find the dead I/O buffer chip (which sould cost a few 10s of pence, and which would take me about 10 minutes to find at most), then I have to wonder what planet you're on. Yes, iut's getting to be a prohlem for those few of us who still do spend most of our time with a soldering iron ;-) -tony

The actual job of soldering in a surface mount device (or even easier a pin-trough-hole device) doesn't take much skill. The skill is in finding the dead component. And alas, I will _never_ believe you can fix a machine unless you actually know what component has failed (even if you then have to replace the board because it's a direct-on-board chip or something horrible). I've seen problems caused by randomly replacing parts too many times. Look back through the archives for the stories, I don't feel like posting them again tonight,,, Which is why you'd think the customer would want it fixed right first time.... I have never understood how you can trust diagnostics running on a machine that's malfunctioning (and yes, I have seen this problem too). -tony

On Tue, 3 Aug 2004 02:19:24 +0200 (MEST) "Fred N. van Kempen" <waltje(a)pdp11.nl> wrote: Sadly, I find myself surrounded in professional life by a lot of people who don't do anything dramatic or non-standard at all, but thrive on conforming. They don't play a guitar or kick a football. But they got through school well, and with high marks, by knowing the right answers to give, the proper hoops to leap through to attain approval and high marks, etc. In professional life they are highly rewarded for sitting through meetings politely, knowing how to 'work well on a team' in gantt-chart directed efforts toward developing mediocre products driven by mainstream trends. There isn't room anymore in such circles for generalists, for people who ask 'why' at inappropriate times in the meetings, nor for people who want to understand the whole machine. It's hard as hell to get the total picture, or even a good deep approximation, of how a 'current' PC works, for instance. Going back to my first exposure to computers, on HP Timesharing systems in the mid 70's running BASIC programs, I wanted to know what was 'under the hood.' There was a period, in the 80's when it was almost possible to get all the docs, the era when the IBM Technical Reference manuals had schematics and the complete commented source code for the BIOS chip contents, the era when they printed the schematics right in the manual for the Commodore 64. It used to be able to troubleshoot and repair about any clone 8088-XT motherboard, from the schematic that was included in one of the little manuals that came with MBs then (the days of the TRUE clones, when every Taiwanese motherboard was based on one knockoff copy of the IBM original, down to the part numbers and layout of the TTL chips) Those days are long gone, though. I've got a BUNCH of books and reference materials, i.e. the Mindstorm book series up to the Pentium and the PCI bus, but the tech rolls ever forward, and people look at you funny when you raise questions about punch through abstraction layers like the APIs to talk to a USB device to wrangle the actual bits in question. And it's not really that interesting anymore to know how a PC works. It's such a piled-on design, more fit for study by anthropologists studying the engineering culture of compromise and lowest-common-denominator design than anybody with an appreciation of technical excellence.

On Mon, 2 Aug 2004, William Donzelli wrote: Yep, everyone who's doing stuff today does it mostly digital, and more over, increasingly with surface mount components. -- Sellam Ismail Vintage Computer Festival ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ International Man of Intrigue and Danger http://www.vintage.org [ Old computing resources for business || Buy/Sell/Trade Vintage Computers ] [ and academia at www.VintageTech.com || at http://marketplace.vintage.org ]

Uh, URL? I've googled a couple of different ways and don't seem to see you site. Yea, I have tons of OSI stuff I want to scan and put up. The SAM'S are a bear because of the fold-out pages. I've messed around with trying to just lay them out and photograph them with a digital camera. The results are unusable so far.

Bill Sudbrink wrote: ... One thing I've done with mixed success is to go to kinkos, scan the thing on a large scanner but reduce it to something that fits onto my scanner, then scan it at a higher resolution than I normally would to compensate for the reduction during the copy. It is less than ideal, but far better than being paralyzed to inaction by waiting for the perfect solution.