Johns Hopkins is in Baltimore. -- Tony -----Original Message----- From: cctalk-bounces(a)classiccmp.org [mailto:cctalk-bounces@classiccmp.org] On Behalf Of John Boffemmyer IV Sent: Wednesday, April 07, 2004 7:01 AM To: General Discussion: On-Topic Posts Only Subject: Re: FREE: NetFRAME NS400 Anyone have more info on the NetFRAMEs? They sound interesting, but most of what I get swamped with when I google is memory modules for it or press releases of some company making a clone or using one for their operations. BTW: isn't Johns Hopkins in NYC? Thanks. -John Boffemmyer IV At 07:53 PM 4/6/2004, you wrote: ---------------------------------------- Founder, Lead Writer, Tech Analyst and Web Designer Boff-Net Technologies http://boff-net.dhs.org/index.html ---------------------------------------

----- Original Message ----- From: "Mark Firestone" <pdp11_70(a)retrobbs.org> To: "General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts" <cctalk(a)classiccmp.org> Sent: Wednesday, April 07, 2004 11:31 AM Subject: IBM Engineers 200 in Its the same for every tech profession, nobody wants to get their hands dirty learning the basics. Everything it taught by computer simulations where the user has no clue what is really going on at the basic level anymore. The techs you are referring to probably know everything about how a raid is supposed to work inside and out, they just don't know plugging a cable in backwards causes problems because they don't do it enough or usually get it correct on the first guess. I would imagine that its more cost effective to have inexpensive techs who can just swap parts when there is a problem then to have 100's of better paid knowledgeable engineers who actually know what they are doing go out and take time troubleshooting a problem.

Tony> s/nobody/nobody except ARD/ Tony> :-) Tony> I remember a quote attributed to I.K. Brunell : 'Any third-rate Tony> engineer can make a complicated device more complicated. It Tony> takes a genius to go back to first principles'. That certainly explains the difference between the CDC 6600 and the IBM 360. paul

William> It also explains why the Cyber line is dead (as is all of William> CDC, basically), and IBM keeps rolling out "new" S/360s. As a former DEC guy, I certainly know the power of marketing, and the damage a CEO can do to a company if he claims that marketing doesn't matter. But I wouldn't confuse marketing excellence with engineering excellence. CDC and IBM had one each -- opposite ones. paul

Even better, once heard a saying for a retiring IBM'er at my father's job (sub-contractor for Power Parallel Systems Div. in mid 90's) - "There's no tomorrow without today, unless you're Fred, getting his final pay, he gets out of the cave, an AS400 slave, his tomorrow starts today." They then wheeled out this cake that had a baker's rendition of an AS400 towering out of it. Odd, but semi-amusing. This occurred at IBM East Fishkill. -John Boffemmyer IV At 10:10 AM 4/8/2004, you wrote: ---------------------------------------- Founder, Lead Writer, Tech Analyst and Web Designer Boff-Net Technologies http://boff-net.dhs.org/index.html ---------------------------------------

At 01:51 PM 4/8/2004, you wrote: I worked for IBM at the time and if they did not get orders immediately it is because they were not yet accepting orders. Once the window was opened they got over two years of production ordered on the first day ================================= Gene Ehrich gehrich(a)tampabay.rr.com

My point was not really the marketing aspect (although it is probably the biggest aspect), but the engineering aspect. As someone pointed out, the CDC 6600 does one thing well - speed. The same is true for just about any CDC mainframe. The things, however, were crap in most other aspects. They were not as reliable as IBMs, the operating systems were nothing to brag about, and worst of all, CDC painted themselves into corners every machine the brought out by not making the things easily expandable to the next generation. When the issue came to a head with the 170 line, with customers screaming about "what comes next?", the solution, the 180 line, was a complete kludge. The CDC answer was always "put another bag on the side". I don't know what happened with the line after the 180 machines (Cyber 1000 and 2000 - information on the net is extremely vague), but I would not be suprised if they were kludges as well. IBM did things fairly properly, even if it did take an army of people. William Donzelli aw288(a)osfn.org

Yes, but ... That was a special-purpose TS application - comparable, say, to airline booking (which I understood that both IBM and Honeywell (and Univac?) managed to do reasonably competently). Those who tried to use "Respond" (I think that is what it was called) for general purpose timesharing on a CDC6600 were oft inclined to dub it "Despond". Tho' I did manage to teach someone BASIC in an afternoon at such a terminal - there were languages other than FTN. (or MNF.) (and yes, the full stops - "periods" to most readers of this group - were very significant) Andy

Ah, yes, ULCC changed from Respond to Telex ... it _was_ an improvement (!) Those must have been the 1st and second time-sharing systems I used (other than 5 minute plays with PDP systems at exhibitions and perhaps a go on the GE system). Andy

Heh. You're talking to the kid who got belted for taking apart all the radios, televisions, and other eletrical goods in the house when I was five. Many of the SCSI select cables are keyed. Some of them are not. I meet both kinds of service people, those who got into it because they love computers and are interested in how they work, and everybody else. I think I fall in to the first category, or at least I hope I do. CALL -151 mark ----- Original Message ----- From: "Teo Zenios" <teoz(a)neo.rr.com> To: "General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts" <cctalk(a)classiccmp.org> Sent: Wednesday, April 07, 2004 4:31 PM Subject: Re: IBM Engineers a there "I guess that every form of refuge has its price." --The Eagles -------------------------------------------------------------- Website - http://www.retrobbs.org Tradewars - telnet tradewars.retrobbs.org BBS - http://bbs.retrobbs.org:8000 IRC - irc.retrobbs.org #main WIKI - http://www.tpoh.org/cgi-bin/tpoh-wiki

On Thu, 8 Apr 2004, J.C. Wren wrote: I was wondering how many people would get it if I got a license plate with: 3D0G -- 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 Fri, 9 Apr 2004, Tony Duell wrote: Yes, the "proper" re-entry point to BASIC through DOS (it makes sure that the DOS hooks are there so that the DOS BASIC commands interpreter will be properly hooked in). -- 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 ]

Well, I can't remember the first mains shock I received. I think I was less than 2 years old -- certainly I couldn't really walk or talk. I'd manageds to unscrew some electrical device without unplugging it first. I think at that point my parents realised that I was going to be an electical/electronic person (possibly even a hacker...) What worries me is that there are people who work on electronics, computer hardware, etc who didn't grow up taking things apart and tryign to work out how they operate... -tony

Reminds me of the time a system manager at a place I was working ordered a failed servoid off the site. He wanted to replace every PCB in some expensive piece of equipment because they all failed diagnositcs. I'd just turned up, slapped a meter on the 5V line and found it was sitting at 4.2V.... On which planet have you been living for the last 20 years???? I've never met a field servoid who had any sort of clue whatsoever about the operation and troubelshooting of computers -- they just replace seemingly random parts until the fault goes away. Certainly I've never seen oue use a multimeter, let alone a 'scope... Needless to say I am not happy about this, this is no way to fix a computer. I've given the arguments many times before, so suffice it to say you'll never trace an intermittant fault that way. And you may not even correctly diagnose a steady fault (if module A has gone out of tolerance, then replacing module B (which is still good) with one that's got a slightly different margin might get the machine working again -- that is untile A drifts some more. Seen it happen!). I was once taught that the really good troubleshooter is the guy who makes some measurements, thinks _a lot_ about the problem, and then replacees exactly one part, and the machine works again for 10 more years. I am not that good! And don't give me the crap that proper troubleshooting is too expensive. Firstly, the modern way flatly doesn't work!. I've lost count of the number of times a machine has had to be 'repaired' several times for the same fault because the idiot servoid hadn't a clue about what was really wrong. All that downtime costs money!. And I am also not convinced that replacing rather than repairing a PCB is the way to go. I've also lost count of the number of times an expensive motherboard -- say in a workstation -- has been replaced for a serial port problem. Anyone with half a brain could find the dead buffer chip in 5 minutes, even without schematics. And it would take not much longer to solder in a replacement. Oh, what the heck... Here's a filk that might cheer you up... This is dedicated to all those who called out DEC field service for a simple problem, and wished you hadn't.......... It was on a Monday morning The DEC man came to call, My system wouldn't boot There was no prompt at all He pulled out all my SPC's To try a new backplane And I had to get the hardware guys to put them back again Oh it all makes work for field service men to do! It was on a Tuesday morning The hardware man came round He soldered and he fiddled And he said 'Look what I've found' 'Your ECOs are years behind' 'But I'll put it all to rights' Then he shorted out the power supply and out went all the lights Oh it all makes work for field service men to do! It was on a Wednesday morning The power supply came 'It's newer and it's better' 'But it works just the same' He could not fit the unit without stripping half the rack then he dropped my boot HDA so He called Peripherals back Oh it all makes work for field service men to do! It was on a Thursday morning The HDA came along with a blocklist and a cable and a list of what goes wrong He put it into my drive It took no time at all But I had to get the software guys to come and re-install Oh it all makes work for field service men to do It was on a Friday morning That Software made a start With BACKUP and SYSGEN He configured every part Every track and every sector But I found when he was gone He had overwritten the boot track and I couldn't turn it on On saturday and Sunday They do no work at all So It was on a Monday morning that the DEC man came to call -tony

I'll second that. Eighties were the heyday of DEC service. I was the keeper of a small Dec-net(work) that had an 11/44 as the boss hog. It was, IIRC, the first field install of RSX-11M+. There were a few s/w problems. DEC didn't hesitate to send an engineering team out from Maynard (to San Diego). Wrote the necessary patches sitting in my office. The FSE (Roy) that looked after the systems never (I repeat, NEVER) showed up without the proper parts, diagnostics and knowledge to fix the problem. (How did he know to have a spare HDA for that dead RA-80?) To all the (real) DEC employees on the list, THANK YOU! You built a great product and took care of your customers. Jim Arnott 78-94 GD/C San Diego On Wednesday, Apr 7, 2004, at 16:47 US/Pacific, Antonio Carlini wrote:

On Thu, Apr 08, 2004 at 12:47:06AM +0100, Antonio Carlini wrote: That was my experience as well... the guys we had working on our 11/750 were pretty good (c. 1984-1988). I wasn't quite as impressed with the MicroVAX guys, though... they were a bunch of board swappers. -ethan -- Ethan Dicks, A-130-S Current South Pole Weather at 08-Apr-2004 02:21 Z South Pole Station PSC 468 Box 400 Temp -56.5 F (-49.2 C) Windchill -92.7 F (-69.3 C) APO AP 96598 Wind 9 kts Grid 047 Barometer 669.6 mb (11022. ft) Ethan.Dicks(a)amanda.spole.gov http://penguincentral.com/penguincentral.html

You are _not_ a field servoid! Yes, there are people who know how to fix computers. Many of them are on this list, others are on another private mailing list that I frequent. None of them are field servoids :-). Let me see if I can explain the difference : Field servoids : -- Replace random parts until the problem appears to go away Real computer repairers : -- Use a 'scope, multimeter, logic analyster, etc to actually find the cause of the fault -- Are not happy replacing a part unless they can show that was the cause of the fauly -- Regard schematics, microcode source listings, firmware source listings, databooks, etc as light bedtime reading. [1] -- Write the service manual if none exists [2] -- Make special tools and test boards, etc as appropriate [3] [1] What, you mean you don't have a pile of service manuals by your bed :-) [2] This was certainly done with the HP9100, 9810, and 9830... [3] How else do you get the pullers to repair the card readers in the 9100 and 9810? All of [1]. [2]. [3] apply to at least one person on this list :-). I believe, BTW, that I am more of a 'Real Computer Repairer' than a 'Field Servoid', but I'll let others be the judge of that. I doubt very much if Apple would approve of what I did to my Mac+ (repaired it to component level), if IBM would approve of what I did to this PC/AT (it's got extra chips and kludge-wires soldered to the motherboard), or if HP would approve of what I do to 9100s and 98x0s. Still, it's not for them to approve :-) When I go to HPCC meetings I carry a multimeter and a logicdart. So there ^2 :-) :-) :-) FWIW, I am entirely self-taught. I have never had one official lesson or course in electronics or computing. I have no electronics or computing qualifications at all. IMHO self-taught people are often the best. They _want_ to know something so they make darn sure they understand it properly. They don't give up until they do... There is nothing wrong with not knowing something. Heck, I know very little, and am quite happy to admit it. There is also nothing wrong with making mistakes. I'll admit to that too. If you claim to have never made a mistake you're either a liar or have never done anything. Of course you try to be careful when working on an irreplaceable machine (like an HP95C, and yes, I have repaired one of those, and no it's not mine), or when working with an irreplacable disk or tape. But yes, I'll even admit to have occasionally corrupted the only known copy of something while trying to back it up, and then having to spend a good few days undoing the mess I made. -tony

Try the Flanders and Swann song that starts Twas on the Monday morning The gas man came to call ... chorus: It all makes work for the working man to do. Andy

Now that is a very funny song. Myself, I always remember, it "must have been someone he ate!" -- ---------------------------------- personal: http://www.armory.com/~spectre/ -- Cameron Kaiser, Floodgap Systems Ltd * So. Calif., USA * ckaiser(a)floodgap.com -- When weaving nets, all threads count. -- Charlie Chan ----------------------

The PSU problem I mentioned was actually due (as ever) to dried-up electrolytics on the output side of the PSU. Yes, I ended up having to fix it... Evil!!!! I used to use 3MHz xtals (available from RS components). Gave a somewhat low-pitched output, but it was useable. Most SPO256s will work at 3.2768MHz, which is another easy-to-find xtal frequency. Finding 3.12MHz xtals was almost imposible in my experience... I have at least one CTS256 chip in stock. This is a programmed microctroller (TMS7000/PIC7000 series IIRC) that connects to an SPO256 and which does text-to-speech conversions. It takes a serial or parallel ASCII input IIRC. I used one for the IMS (Interactive message system) terminal for my CoCo 2 that I had on my door as a student so people could leave me messages (the speech syntheiser for output and the keyboard from an Atari 400 -- selected as there were no keycaps to get 'borrowed' for input). Of course the CoCo's own speech/sound cartridge contains an SPO256, an AY-3-891x (I thin 8913, but I would have to find the schematics) and a microcontroller (8048 I think) which does both text-to-speech and allows you to control the AY-3-8913 sound chip. Interesting design... -tony

Have yuou checked _all_ the electrolytics, even the low-value ones? On both sides of the isolation barrier. Have you looked for a current sense resistor that's gone high? This may mean they didn't actually design it, but bought it in from somebody like Astec who didn't supply schematics. I've seen this before with PSUs, and with things like disk drives. Great pain if you actually have to fix the thing!. I know the CTS256 was copy-protected (or at least all the ones I have are...). There is some info in the data sheet on the algorithm (it's pretty simple) since you can extend it with your own rules in an external EPROM. I guess I now need to find that data sheet... LA = 'Logic Array'??? Maybe a ULA for address decoding, etc? I assume these are some add-on module for a common home computer (the list of the 3 chips sounds like something Greenweld were selling about 15 years ago...) -tony

Philip Pemberton wrote: I've seen that sort of thing happen on wall-wart type PSUs. I think the long-term effect of heat makes the plastic brittle. -- John Honniball coredump(a)gifford.co.uk

In message <m1BC2pD-000JAXC@p850ug1> you wrote: I've just swapped out the cap with a cheapo 85C 1uF and the PSU is working again. Now I need to find some way of repairing the casing. Two of the screw-posts seem to be OK, but the other two have disintegrated. Only one of the two remaining screw-posts seems to work - the screw keeps slipping out of the other. So on the one hand I've got a working Acorn A4 power supply. On the other hand, the casing is knackered :-/ Thanks. -- Phil. | Acorn Risc PC600 Mk3, SA202, 64MB, 6GB, philpem(a)dsl.pipex.com | ViewFinder, 10BaseT Ethernet, 2-slice, http://www.philpem.dsl.pipex.com/ | 48xCD, ARCINv6c IDE, SCSI ... Beauty is in the eye of the beer holder....

In message <m1BCRT9-000JCPC@p850ug1> ard(a)p850ug1.demon.co.uk (Tony Duell) wrote: Well, what do you expect them to do if the electrolyte dries out? :) That's quite easy - cut most of it off with a cut-down hacksaw blade, then sand it down to the level of the surrounding plastic. Maybe. It'll be a bit of a challenge to get some plastic rod of that size though - not even the (fairly) well-stocked model shop has much selection in plastics. I've also yet to find a plastics supplier that sells direct to the public, too. :-/ I suppose I could use a different case. Only problem is, I haven't seen any nice-looking plastic cases of the right sort of size. That and I'd need stand-offs for the PCB - more expense. Thanks. -- Phil. | Acorn Risc PC600 Mk3, SA202, 64MB, 6GB, philpem(a)dsl.pipex.com | ViewFinder, 10BaseT Ethernet, 2-slice, http://www.philpem.dsl.pipex.com/ | 48xCD, ARCINv6c IDE, SCSI ... Hardware: The part you kick.

What about wooden dowel ? Geoff. ----- Original Message ----- From: "Philip Pemberton" &lt;philpem(a)dsl.pipex.com&gt; To: &lt;cctalk(a)classiccmp.org&gt; Sent: Sunday, April 11, 2004 12:37 AM Subject: Re: Acorn A4 PSU (was Re: IBM Engineers) (say in the of any 6GB, 2-slice,

I may have one or two spare SCSI2's, what size you looking for? -John Boffemmyer IV At 11:19 AM 4/7/2004, you wrote: ---------------------------------------- Founder, Lead Writer, Tech Analyst and Web Designer Boff-Net Technologies http://boff-net.dhs.org/index.html ---------------------------------------