22 Nov
2007
22 Nov
'07
9:32 p.m.
Hi,
Oh I don't know. If you hate PCs so much....
Quite honestly, the *ONLY* reason I use PC's is because of the availability
of software (and the speed obviously). If it wasn't for that I'd probably
still be running my old MegaST.
....you should have designed your own motherboard, so
you
could haevve done things properly...
....but if I'd done that I'd have used a 68K instead of that Intel garbage
IBM chose.... ;-)
TTFN - Pete.
22 Nov
22 Nov
11:26 p.m.
Hi,
>....you should have designed your own motherboard,
so you
>could haevve done things properly...
.....but if I'd done that I'd have used a 68K
instead....
Although I was being facetious....on reflection that's not actually such a
bad idea.
It struck me, that if you were to design a "generic enough" 68K based
motherboard (pretty much just processor/RAM/expansion bus) then, by making
up the appropriate expansion cards, you could quite easily turn it into an
Atari ST, or an Amiga, or a Mac, or.... - and of course, these days, you
could harvest the required custom parts from discarded/broken machines.
Just an idle thought....
TTFN - Pete.
23 Nov
23 Nov
4:12 a.m.
On Friday 23 November 2007 02:32:29 Ensor wrote:
Hi,
I'm just about to go and steal my Mega ST back from a mate of mine, purely so
I can run Cubase on it. I'm looking forward to some old-school sequencing.
Gordon
Oh I don't know. If you hate PCs so much....
Quite honestly, the *ONLY* reason I use PC's is because of the availability
of software (and the speed obviously). If it wasn't for that I'd probably
still be running my old MegaST. 
1:02 p.m.
On Thursday 22 November 2007 21:32, Ensor wrote:
Ditto.
--
Member of the toughest, meanest, deadliest, most unrelenting -- and
ablest -- form of life in this section of space, ?a critter that can
be killed but can't be tamed. ?--Robert A. Heinlein, "The Puppet Masters"
-
Information is more dangerous than cannon to a society ruled by lies. --James
M Dakin
Hi,
While software is a lot of it, the "commodity" aspect of things and how far
down that's tended to push prices is more the case in the peecee world than
anywhere in the rest of computing, which all tends toward being somewhat
more specialized. And being a cheap kinda guy, that factor has a lot of
weight for me. :-)
Oh I don't know. If you hate PCs so much....
Quite honestly, the *ONLY* reason I use PC's is because of the availability
of software (and the speed obviously). If it wasn't for that I'd probably
still be running my old MegaST. ....you should
have designed your own motherboard, so you
could haevve done things properly...
....but if I'd done that I'd have used a 68K instead of that Intel garbage
IBM chose.... ;-) 
1:42 p.m.
Roy J. Tellason wrote:
No No No ... Use the CPLD design I am working on ( No floating point :( )
and have a machine at 5.33 MHZ (750 ns memory cycle).
See faster than a Pee-cee at 4.77 MHZ :)
Hard to say if it is faster than a Pee-cee as who knows how fast the PC
runs with its pre-fetch buffer.
Ben alias woodelf
PS. And with every byte you get a free extra nibble over the PC.
With octal digits your 256 KB of memory looks even more impressive
than 5 hexadecimal digits. Well ok you could have 23 bits of address
but I want to keep this in era of 16K dram chips and 256Kb is very large.
....but if
I'd done that I'd have used a 68K instead of that Intel garbage
IBM chose.... ;-)
Ditto.
2:18 p.m.
On Friday 23 November 2007 13:42, woodelf wrote:
Roy J. Tellason wrote:
No No No ... Use the CPLD design I am working on ( No floating point :( )
and have a machine at 5.33 MHZ (750 ns memory cycle).
See faster than a Pee-cee at 4.77 MHZ :)
Hard to say if it is faster than a Pee-cee as who knows how fast the PC
runs with its pre-fetch buffer.
Ben alias woodelf
PS. And with every byte you get a free extra nibble over the PC.
With octal digits your 256 KB of memory looks even more impressive
than 5 hexadecimal digits. Well ok you could have 23 bits of address
but I want to keep this in era of 16K dram chips and 256Kb is very large.
You're welcome to, if that's what you wanna do, but even old CP/M boxes were
much nicer when you had a whole bunch of RAM to work with. And there's this
division between stuff I play with, on the one hand, and stuff I just
*use*, on the other...
A guy sent me 1G of ram, sitting here in 4 sticks. I haven't decided yet
which box I'm gonna put it in, but I can't even picture how much bigger a
pile that would amount to (never mind suppor hardware, board space, and
power requirements) if one wanted to implement that in 16K parts.
--
Member of the toughest, meanest, deadliest, most unrelenting -- and
ablest -- form of life in this section of space, ?a critter that can
be killed but can't be tamed. ?--Robert A. Heinlein, "The Puppet Masters"
-
Information is more dangerous than cannon to a society ruled by lies. --James
M Dakin
....but
if I'd done that I'd have used a 68K instead of that Intel
garbage IBM chose.... ;-)
Ditto.
2:48 p.m.
Roy J. Tellason wrote:
A guy sent me 1G of ram, sitting here in 4 sticks. I haven't decided yet
which box I'm gonna put it in, but I can't
even picture how much bigger a
pile that would amount to (never mind suppor hardware, board space, and
power requirements) if one wanted to implement that in 16K parts.
Thank GOD that is
not CORE. This small city here is the main memory ... :)
6:19 p.m.
On Friday 23 November 2007 14:48, woodelf wrote:
Roy J. Tellason wrote:
A guy sent me 1G of ram, sitting here in 4 sticks. I haven't decided
yet
Yeah, not to mention what it would take to power it...
I notice that even those guys that are building relay computers "cheat" and
use a single small solid-state chip for RAM. :-)
--
Member of the toughest, meanest, deadliest, most unrelenting -- and
ablest -- form of life in this section of space, ?a critter that can
be killed but can't be tamed. ?--Robert A. Heinlein, "The Puppet Masters"
-
Information is more dangerous than cannon to a society ruled by lies. --James
M Dakin
which box I'm gonna put it in, but I
can't even picture how much bigger
a pile that would amount to (never mind suppor hardware, board space,
and power requirements) if one wanted to implement that in 16K parts.
Thank GOD that is not CORE. This small city here is the main memory ... :)
6:36 p.m.
Roy J. Tellason wrote:
I notice that even those guys that are building relay
computers "cheat" and
use a single small solid-state chip for RAM. :-)
Could CORE be developed to just
use relay switching speeds and logic?
Zuse's mechanical memory is a marvel.
10:23 p.m.
On 23 Nov 2007 at 16:36, woodelf wrote:
Could CORE be developed to just use relay switching
speeds and logic?
Zuse's mechanical memory is a marvel.
> http://www.epemag.com/zuse/part6a.htm
There are many kinds of mechanical memory. In particular, I recall
an early TTY device that used a large rotating drum with cams
embedded in the surface. One could flip a cam one way or the other
and then read them out. I'm trying to remember what sort of machine
this was used on and its application, but my memory sadly fails me.
Cheers,
Chuck
26 Nov
26 Nov
12:47 p.m.
On Friday 23 November 2007 22:23, Chuck Guzis wrote:
On 23 Nov 2007 at 16:36, woodelf wrote:
This stirs a vague recollection of an old mechanical adding machine I once
had, the kind that had a big rectangular array of buttons instead of just
a "10-key" set of numbers. I have *no* idea how it stored a number in there,
though.
Going back even earlier, I had the occasional chance to play with some
mechanical calculators. These were about the size of an old typewriter, and
there were a couple of different sets of readouts that consisted of digits
that showed through small windows on the front of the machine. It had
a "carriage" of sorts that would shift back and forth at times, though my
fuzzy recollection isn't clear on when it did that. And when you told it to
multiply, it'd really take off! :-)
--
Member of the toughest, meanest, deadliest, most unrelenting -- and
ablest -- form of life in this section of space, ?a critter that can
be killed but can't be tamed. ?--Robert A. Heinlein, "The Puppet Masters"
-
Information is more dangerous than cannon to a society ruled by lies. --James
M Dakin
Could CORE be developed to just use relay
switching speeds and logic?
Zuse's mechanical memory is a marvel.
> http://www.epemag.com/zuse/part6a.htm
There are many kinds of mechanical memory. In particular, I recall
an early TTY device that used a large rotating drum with cams
embedded in the surface. One could flip a cam one way or the other
and then read them out. I'm trying to remember what sort of machine
this was used on and its application, but my memory sadly fails me.
1:38 p.m.
On 26 Nov 2007 at 12:47, Roy J. Tellason wrote:
This stirs a vague recollection of an old mechanical
adding machine I once
had, the kind that had a big rectangular array of buttons instead of just
a "10-key" set of numbers. I have *no* idea how it stored a number in there,
though.
My recollection of this device was that a drum with cams was used to
store a message that could then be sent later. I don't recall if
this was an attempt to provide buffering for typeahead--it's very
easy for a touch typist to type faster than the old TTY machines
could send--or just a way to record a message for later sending.
Cheers,
Chuck
2:46 p.m.
Chuck Guzis wrote:
On 26 Nov 2007 at 12:47, Roy J. Tellason wrote:
What about the "Who are you" id message used on some teletype networks, so one
could
confirm that you were talking to the desired recipient terminal? I believe the
ASCII control code 'ENQuiry' was originally intended for eliciting that message.
This stirs a vague recollection of an old
mechanical adding machine I once
had, the kind that had a big rectangular array of buttons instead of just
a "10-key" set of numbers. I have *no* idea how it stored a number in there,
though.
My recollection of this device was that a drum with cams was used to
store a message that could then be sent later. I don't recall if
this was an attempt to provide buffering for typeahead--it's very
easy for a touch typist to type faster than the old TTY machines
could send--or just a way to record a message for later sending.
4:06 p.m.
On 26 Nov 2007 at 11:46, Brent Hilpert wrote:
What about the "Who are you" id message used
on some teletype networks, so one could
confirm that you were talking to the desired recipient terminal? I believe the
ASCII control code 'ENQuiry' was originally intended for eliciting that message.
Wasn't that just a perforated tape loop?
Cheers,
Chuck
4:42 p.m.
New subject: TTY answerback (was: Re: *updating* 8088's)
Chuck Guzis wrote:
On 26 Nov 2007 at 11:46, Brent Hilpert wrote:
As I recall on the model 33 family it was the so-called answerback drum,
which was a drum of tabs with tabs snapped off for the relevant bit
positions.
--
Chris Kennedy
chris at mainecoon.com AF6AP
http://www.mainecoon.com PGP KeyID 108DAB97
PGP fingerprint: 4E99 10B6 7253 B048 6685 6CBC 55E1 20A3 108D AB97
"Mr. McKittrick, after careful consideration..."
What about the "Who are you" id message
used on some teletype networks, so one could
confirm that you were talking to the desired recipient terminal? I believe the
ASCII control code 'ENQuiry' was originally intended for eliciting that message.
Wasn't that just a perforated tape loop?
5 p.m.
New subject: TTY answerback (was: Re: *updating* 8088's)
On 26 Nov 2007 at 13:42, Chris Kennedy wrote:
As I recall on the model 33 family it was the
so-called answerback drum,
which was a drum of tabs with tabs snapped off for the relevant bit
positions.
That would make it a read-only memory, as would paper tape. What I
recall is much larger and was read-write.
Cheers,
Chuck
6:35 p.m.
On Mon, Nov 26, 2007 at 01:06:39PM -0800, Chuck Guzis wrote:
On 26 Nov 2007 at 11:46, Brent Hilpert wrote:
Not in my ASR-33 - it's a "finned drum" - you break off the tabs to turn
ones to zeroes (or the other way 'round?) and when the terminal receives
the ENQ from the host, it spins the drums which "types" back the reply.
I forget how many character positions it has, but it's on the order of 12
to 16.
Mine are both intact. I might consider encoding one if I had a spare,
but I never worked in an environment where I wanted my TTY identified. ;-)
Perhaps some models of TTY did use a tape loop, but I can't place one that
did.
-ethan
--
Ethan Dicks, A-333-S Current South Pole Weather at 26-Nov-2007 at 23:30 Z
South Pole Station
PSC 468 Box 400 Temp -25.6 F (-32.0 C) Windchill -48.3 F (-44.6 C)
APO AP 96598 Wind 9.2 kts Grid 9 Barometer 681.7 mb (10564 ft)
Ethan.Dicks at usap.gov http://penguincentral.com/penguincentral.html
What about the "Who are you" id message
used on some teletype networks, so one could
confirm that you were talking to the desired recipient terminal? I believe the
ASCII control code 'ENQuiry' was originally intended for eliciting that message.
Wasn't that just a perforated tape loop?
6:58 p.m.
Ethan Dicks wrote:
Mine are both intact. I might consider encoding one
if I had a spare,
but I never worked in an environment where I wanted my TTY identified. ;-)
You
might consider it, if Penquiuns can learn to type... Don't want any ilegal
logins you know. :)
-ethan
Do any systems still use ASCII control
characters for network
control or device control?
7:07 p.m.
Date: Mon, 26 Nov 2007 23:35:00 +0000> From:
ethan.dicks at usap.gov> To: cctalk at classiccmp.org> Subject: Re: *updating*
8088's> > On Mon, Nov 26, 2007 at 01:06:39PM -0800, Chuck Guzis wrote:> >
On 26 Nov 2007 at 11:46, Brent Hilpert wrote:> > > > > What about the
"Who are you" id message used on some teletype networks, so one could> >
> confirm that you were talking to the desired recipient terminal? I believe the>
> > ASCII control code 'ENQuiry' was originally intended for eliciting that
message.> > > > Wasn't that just a perforated tape loop?> > Not in
my ASR-33 - it's a "finned drum" - you break off the tabs to turn> ones
to zeroes (or the other way 'round?) and when the terminal receives > the ENQ from
the host, it spins the drums which "types" back the reply.> I forget how many
character positions it has, but it's on the order of 12> to 16.> > Mine are
both intact. I might consider encoding one if I had a spare,> but I never worked in an
environment where I wanted my TTY identified. ;-)> > Perhaps some models of TTY did
use a tape loop, but I can't place one that> did.> > -ethan> > -- >
Ethan Dicks, A-333-S Current South Pole Weather at 26-Nov-2007 at 23:30 Z> South Pole
Station> PSC 468 Box 400 Temp -25.6 F (-32.0 C) Windchill -48.3 F (-44.6 C)> APO AP
96598 Wind 9.2 kts Grid 9 Barometer 681.7 mb (10564 ft)> > Ethan.Dicks at usap.gov
http://penguincentral.com/penguincentral.html
Didnt X-ON, X-OFF start and stop the tape reader? If so you could have your tape loop end
with X-OFF and it would stop itself. Sending X-ON to the tty would start the tape
loop....
Randy
_________________________________________________________________
Put your friends on the big screen with Windows Vista? + Windows Live?.
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27 Nov
27 Nov
5:11 p.m.
Didnt X-ON, X-OFF start and stop the tape reader? If
so you could have you=
r tape loop end with X-OFF and it would stop itself. Sending X-ON to the t=
ty would start the tape loop....
On an ASR33, that was an option called, IIRC, remote reader control. It
involved a couple of levers in the function box behind the carriage,
contacts that said levers operated, a different reader manual control
switch lever/contacts and some circuitry, including at least one relay,
in the call control unit.
Neither of my ASR33s have it. From what I've heard it was not common in
ASR33s ued with computers, for those it was more common to add a relay in
series with the reader control circuit (using the normal
manual-controlled reader), and control the coil of that relay directly
from the computer interface. DEC, HP and Intel all had
versions of this
modification which are remarkably similar. But of course said
mofification is not useful for making the reader act as an answerback.
-tony
26 Nov
26 Nov
6:43 p.m.
My recollection of this device was that a drum with
cams was used to
store a message that could then be sent later. I don't recall if
this was an attempt to provide buffering for typeahead--it's very
easy for a touch typist to type faster than the old TTY machines
could send--or just a way to record a message for later sending.
THis sounds like the 'answerback drum'. It was an option in the Teletype
model 33, It was standard on some other teleprinters (my Creed 7E, for
example, has it, I think all of said model do).
I've never seen one that could be programmed from the keyboard. Normally
you had to break off the appropraite tines at installation to encode the
message you wanted to send. The Teletype Mdoel 33 one was a one-piece
plastic drum, if you broke off the wrong tine, or wanted to change the
message, you had to replace the whole thing. Creed had separate strips of
metal for each character that you slotted into a drum that was part of
the machine (and a lot harder to remove than the strips of metal),
obviously with that type you could replace just the strip(s) for the
characters you wanted to change.
-tony
6083
days inactive
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21 comments
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ard＠p850ug1.demon.co.uk -
bfranchuk＠jetnet.ab.ca -
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chris＠mainecoon.com -
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ethan.dicks＠usap.gov -
gordonjcp＠gjcp.net -
hilpert＠cs.ubc.ca -
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