On Mon, 16 Apr 2012, Bogdan Barbu wrote: You won't just TELL us what you want??!? Based on assuming that we can't view a fixed width fone??!? Nor even what general category they are??!? (EAM, 360, engineering, 5150, etc.) We've probably got most of them, but you need to avoid adding hurdles to your request.

OK, I claim my $500 now. I am able to find that document. It's in a O&A binder on the bottom shelf at the top of the stairs here. You said nothing about providing copies of it, after all :-) -tony

The title page says 6280131 SS34-0007-00 March 18, 1986 That said, there is no way I am selling it. Period. Not matter what you offer me.

I am not ssure I want to let it out of my sight ;-). That said, for $500 (or $250) I could be persuaded to stand in front of a photocopier...

I am almsot sure I don't. I have a good set of PC family TechRefs (PC, XT/Portanle, AT (several versions) and PCjr -- the only System one I am missing is the XT/286 AFAIK). And soem of the O&A stuff, I didnt;' buy all the supliements for various hard drives or obscure adapters though. But the only PS/2 manual I have is the 'Hardware Interface Technical Reference'. I certianly didn;'t buy any of the suplements for that.

Actually, I do have a photcopier... It'smodern, and yesm, the cotnrol electroncis is based on one ASCI, presuably a microcontroller at least in part. But it;'s old-fashioned in that it's an optical thing, the ligt frelected off the original is focussed on the photoconductiove drum, there is no CCD or anything like that. And I feel I could rebuild the complete control system if I ahd to (a lot easier than driving a random CCD anyhow).

It was a manual electrostatic plain paper photocopier. I think Xerox produced them in limited numbers to trial the concept, before making an automatic machine, hence the interest from the Science Museum. The thing to be copied was placed behind a vertical glass plate, lit by a couple of 200W lamps, opposite which was a huge bellows camera. The camera could be moved along a graduated slide, to give an image between 50% and 200% of the original. After setting the copy ratio, you put a ground glass screen into the back of the camera, to set the focus. You then put a coated flat plate, mounted in a wooden frame, into an electrostatic charging chamber, ran the charging cycle and slid a lightproof shield over the coated side, before removing the plate from the chamber. The plate then replaced the ground glass screen and you withdrew the lightproof shield for the required exposure time, which IIRC was quite long. Once exposure was over, the lightproof shield went back in place and the coated plate went on top of another chamber, which contained a mixture of beads and toner powder. The shield came off again and the whole chamber was turned upside down and rocked to and fro on a central pivot, to run the beads and toner over the exposed plate. The toner stuck to the areas that had not been exposed to light in the camera (i.e. the black bits on the image of the original). Once that was done, the plate could be removed from the toner chamber (after turning it the right way up) and a sheet of paper placed, very carefully, over the coated surface. I think there was something to hold it in place. the whole lot now went back into the electrostatic chamber and the charge reversed, so that the toner was drawn onto the paper. ISTR there was a plus and minus control, although I forget which charged the plate and which transferred the toner to the paper. With a bit of luck, you now had a piece of paper covered with black toner powder, which was very delicate and easily smudged. That went into an oven in the apparatus for a few minutes. When it was cooked, you had your photocopy. It took about a quarter of an hour to do a single copy, although multiple copies could be done a bit faster per copy, as you could be preparing another plate while the first was being exposed and be doing the toner for that while the first page was cooking.

On the subject of old-fashioned photocopiers, someone sent the text below to uk.d-i-y a few weeks ago - I suspect that you (and potentially a few others here) might enjoy reading about it, even though it's rather OT (and hence apologies to everyone else, who can stop reading now...)

That said, there is no way I am selling it. Period. Not matter what you offer me. I've got a couple of such EGA cards here, not in this machine (after all ,ther ?are 5 ASICs on them, so it doens't meet the requirements for p850ug1), but I do run them occasionally. I need the manual...

I do not have a scanner or anything to conenct one to (and to avoid the comments I often get when I say things like that, I am quite happy as I am, I do not want a scanner. And I do not have the tools, test gear or skills to maintain a modern PC).

I'm sure that with the right incentives (think CAREFULLY about what to offer!), he could arrange a few hours use of the dining room table, garage floor, or an extension cord and a picnic table on a nice day, for somebody else to drop by with a portable scanner and a laptop. I have a "Scan Wand" that is about 1" x 1" x 12" that does a mediocre job of battery powered scanning onto MicroSD. Surely Tony would let that into his house for an hour. Or ride along to somewhere where there is a good scanner available for use.

It has nothing to do with any other reasons to not get a scanner (of which it sounds as though you have plenty), but you do not necessarily need a "modern PC". I've got at least one scanner which speaks SCSI...or is that enough to count as "modern" to you? :)

I'll have to reduce the reward for the two 8514/A documents to $50, as I've been able to locate copies of those as well. Anyone in Florida? Cheers, Bogdan 2012/4/20 Bogdan Barbu <l4b.bogdan.barbu at gmail.com>: -- Cheers, Bogdan

On 04/20/2012 10:39 AM, Bogdan Barbu wrote: ?I am in Port Charlotte, Florida at the moment, and will be for a few days. ?My schedule is very tight (unless you want to help me load my truck ;)) but I will help if I can. ?What's up?

Hi, Thanks for all the trouble so far. I am now in possesion of the EGA documentation. Still $2,000 waiting to be claimed and I might have to

OK... suppose we pick the one machine I use regularly with a bitpmapped display -- a classic PERQ. I would have to make a SCSI interface (quit simple). Write the microcode to drive it (all I/O has to be done from the CPU microcode). Agian, I think I could manange that Port the SANE stuff, presumably written in C, to PERQ Pascal, get it to compile and run. I suspect that is decidedly non-trivvial

Find soem way to store the images and get them off the machien onto something mroe useful. 8" floppies or DC300 tapes anyone?

On Tue, 17 Apr 2012, Tony Duell wrote: Tony, Tony, Tony, . . . If he DOES need the original (legal evidence, or some such),

what if he offered you a high-quality double sided bound Xerox of it, plus cash, plus some interesting hardware from that period or before?

I mostly skipped from CGA to VGA on PCs, but I ran EGA on all of my Compaq

portables - the internal monitor was happy with EGA, and the Compq EGA board (and the adapter for ATI EGA) had the 6? 8? pin dual row connector in mid board.

I was merely suggesting that, for a sufficient incentive, that you might even give up the original, in exchange for a copy of adequate quality to have all the information content, plus suitable [large] compensation,

When I fist saw the board, I was seriously disappointed that neither of those was wired to provide a composite (RS170?) signal.

But, probably due to the long persistance phosphor of the original IBM "Monochrome" monitor, IBM never provided a light pen for any of their [PC video] cards that supported one.

From what I rememebr reading the the O&A Techref,m the MDA card did not

We've probably got most of them, but you need to avoid adding hurdles to your request.