CP/M version 2.1 found
I found an 8-inch floppy disk labeled with "CP/M V2.0 9/4/79" which is crossed out and replaced below with "CP/M V2.1 7/13/80". I don't see mention of version 2.1 at http://www.cpm.z80.de. Do I have something unique? Who can I trust to image this and put the contents on the net? -- David Griffith d...@661.org A: Because it fouls the order in which people normally read text. Q: Why is top-posting such a bad thing? A: Top-posting. Q: What is the most annoying thing in e-mail?
R: CP/M version 2.1 found
Where do you live? I guess I'm too far to help, but I'd like to have that image and look into it... Messaggio originale Da: David Griffith Data:29/02/2016 09:24 (GMT+01:00) A: cctalk Oggetto: CP/M version 2.1 found I found an 8-inch floppy disk labeled with "CP/M V2.0 9/4/79" which is crossed out and replaced below with "CP/M V2.1 7/13/80". I don't see mention of version 2.1 at http://www.cpm.z80.de. Do I have something unique? Who can I trust to image this and put the contents on the net? -- David Griffith d...@661.org A: Because it fouls the order in which people normally read text. Q: Why is top-posting such a bad thing? A: Top-posting. Q: What is the most annoying thing in e-mail?
Re: Techno-savvy...
On 2016-02-29 2:43 AM, drlegendre . wrote: "Techno-savvy" is essentially a media / marketing term. For the most part, it means whatever the speaker(s) wish it to mean, within the context in which it is used. So I wasn't the only one who cringed. The term isn't always complimentary; it can just as well be a pejorative. For the most part, the populace-at-large seems to define the term as meaning "conversant in both the established, as well as the nascent technologies of the day". Or "the family member you go to when you can't print". --Toby On Sun, Feb 28, 2016 at 7:01 PM, Murray McCullough < c.murray.mccullo...@gmail.com> wrote: What is a techno-savvy student? ...
Re: MM11-U/UP core memory backplanes
> From: Bill Degnan > I will see what else I have available. As far as I have been able to determine, the only backplane that supports the MM11-UP is the MF11-U backplane. Does anyone know of anything else that does? Noel
Re: 3B2 Diagnostics
* On Sun, Feb 28, 2016 at 05:24:17PM -0500, Alan Hightower wrote: > > > Seth, > > 'filledt' comes on every Essential Utilities Disk 1 along with the unix > kernel and OS install routines. Get a SVR3 3.0 Essential Utilities Disk > 1 and run filledt from there. I just went through this last week. > > You can grab the image from here: > > http://www.3b2archive.org/archive/disks/3.0/essential_utils_r3.0/disk1 > > -Alan Thanks Alan, Great news! The version of "filledt" on this floppy image works perfectly with my 3B2 emulator! So the version on the disk image "3B2-DIAG.imd" that's floating around out there is probably NOT meant for a 3B2/300 or 3B2/400. "dgmon" doesn't run, for some reason. Or, rather, it runs and then just silently exits. There don't appear to actually be any diagnostics on the disk (nothing under /dgn except the EDT data files), so I'm not sure if that's why it's failing or not. I borrowed a 3B2 from Ian Finder this weekend (upon pain of death if I don't return it!) that came with three floppy disks that may or may not contain diagnostics. I'll image them today and see if they work on the emulator. -Seth
Re: 'motherboard' etymology
On Sun, 28 Feb 2016, Jules Richardson wrote: > > Computers existed way before 1980, and had many boards plugged into > > wire-wrapped backplanes or motherboards. > > Backplane was certainly a term from way back, I just don't recall seeing > motherboard before somewhere around the 1980 timeframe. Maybe you're right > though and it was in use too, but only by certain companies... FWIW I wouldn't call a motherboard a backplane and vice versa. I'm not a native English speaker, but my technical background tells me these are simply different terms, at least as far as contemporary hardware is concerned. A motherboard in my understanding is a piece of circuitry which architecturally constitutes a computer system. It may be lacking a direct way to connect a CPU or memory even, which may have to be plugged as daugthercards, one or more -- e.g. for a SMP or NUMA system -- and which may support different CPU architectures but the core architecture of the system itself, like buses, bridges between them, bus arbitration circuitry, maybe some essential peripherals -- it's all there, and in particular preventing daughtercards from operating on their own. The majority of Intel x86 PC computer boards is a trivial modern example (and the computer boards of DEC DECstation and VAXstation lines is a classic computing example; some actually had their CPU on a daughtercard). A backplane OTOH is just an interconnect with no substantial circuitry, where it's the cards plugged in that constitute the system or systems. The interconnect provides a way for cards to communicate between each other, but the core architecture of the system is on one or more of the cards, which in some cases may be able to fully operate on their own, without a backplane present. A modern example is CompactPCI (while DEC Q-bus backplanes are a classic example). I gather there's some room for debate around some border cases, however I wouldn't ever call an x86 PC computer board a backplane just as I wouldn't call a CompactPCI backplane a motherboard. Maciej
Re: 'motherboard' etymology
> > Computers existed way before 1980, and had many boards plugged into > wire-wrapped backplanes or motherboards.I'm guessing the terminology > was company-specific. IBM had their own name for EVERYTHING, for > instance. They did NOT use the term motherboard, as far as I know. The > SMS systems like 709x, 1401, etc. had totally passive backplanes. The SLT > systems (System/360, 1130/1800, etc.) had passive backplanes, but the local > interconnect was done mostly with etched traces on multilayer PC boards, > which also distributed power to the cards. They just called these > backplane sections "boards" and the SLT circuit boards that plugged into > them were "cards". Not sure where I first saw the term motherboard, or if > it really implied it had substantial active circuitry on it. > > FWIW, the IBM term for "motherboard" was "planar", at least in the era of the PC, PC/XT, PC/AT, etc. The first computer to which I had access was my father's 5150 in approximately 1984; I remember the machine came with dual floppy drives and a 64K system planar with an Intel 8088. At some point, a technician came out and put in a different planar with 256K on-board, added an additional 256K via expansion board, and configured it with a 30MB half-height Winchester drive and controller. This second planar had an AMD D8088 at the same 4.77MHz speed as the original. Having this machine handed down to me in about 1991 sparked my interest in programming; many hours of BASICA silliness and PC-DOS batch file frustration followed.
Re: R: CP/M version 2.1 found
I found an 8-inch floppy disk labeled with "CP/M V2.0 9/4/79" which is crossed out and replaced below with "CP/M V2.1 7/13/80". I don't see mention of version 2.1 at http://www.cpm.z80.de. Do I have something unique? Who can I trust to image this and put the contents on the net? DRI released several updates to 2.0 to OEMs. I think I still have the update bulletins somewhere. I don't know if I still have the code itself. It was a comparatively short period before 2.2 was released. I don't recall if the result was 'officially" called 2.1 or not. --Chuck
RE: 'motherboard' etymology
> > FWIW, the IBM term for "motherboard" was "planar", at least in the era of > the PC, PC/XT, PC/AT, etc. But IBM (at that time) also used the term 'Planar' for 'backplane'. The backplane in the 5161 expansion unit [1] is labelled 'I/O Planar' or something very similar in the silkscreen. [1] This is what I would term a backplane rather than a motherboard. It is a passive bus. The only real electronics on it is a 14.3..MHz oscillator to provide the one signal they didn't take (with good reason) from the machine the expanison unit was connected to. I agree with the distincton drawn by others. a 'motherboard' contains significant parts of the computer circuitry, whereas a 'backplane' is either entirely passive or contains simple bits of circuitry like buffers, address decoders, clock, reset logic, etc. In the HP150, the boards slid in from the rear and connected to a PCB at the front of the case containing the printer interface and bus connectors. This (owing to its position) is called the 'frontplane' in the HP techincal manuals. -tony
Re: 'motherboard' etymology
On Mon, 29 Feb 2016, John Willis wrote: FWIW, the IBM term for "motherboard" was "planar", at least in the era of the PC, PC/XT, PC/AT, etc. The first computer to which I had access was my father's 5150 in approximately 1984; I remember the machine came with dual floppy drives and a 64K system planar with an Intel 8088. At some point, a technician came out and put in a different planar with 256K on-board, added an additional 256K via expansion board, and configured it with a 30MB half-height Winchester drive and controller. This second planar had an AMD D8088 at the same 4.77MHz speed as the original. Having this machine handed down to me in about 1991 sparked my interest in programming; many hours of BASICA silliness and PC-DOS batch file frustration followed. IBM also, at that time, sometimes called it, "System Board". When IBM announced the 5150 in August 1981, I tried to get my uncle, who worked for IBM, to get me the "employee family discount". He refused. So, I was delayed a couple of months in ordering one. I bought, retail at Compurland: system unit, Floppy disk controller, CGA video board, Async (RS232 & 20ma), parallel printer board, and PC-DOS 1.00. (RAM, floppy drives, composite monitor were all commodity items that I had for TRS80s, and readily available at less than 20% of IBM's prices) My uncle (a generally unreliable source) said that the reason that IBM didn't call it, "motherboard" was that that was "street slang", specifically mentioning TV broadcasts of Black Panther speeches at Merritt College in the late 1960s (when I was playing with 1620 and 1401 there!). The speeches had very frequent use of the word "motherfucker", which of course was changed to "mother[bleep]" or "mother" by the TV people. I do not think that the Black Panthers ever used the word "Planar". (There was a New Yorker cartoon of a biddy watching TV saying to her friend, "I just love the way that he says 'Mother'." I'd love to draw a cartoon of a Panther speaker saying, "Up against the wall, Planar_!") -- Grumpy Ol' Fred ci...@xenosoft.com
Re: 'motherboard' etymology
> Does anyone know the origins of the term 'motherboard'? > > I've always associated it with computers and assumed that it started > appearing somewhere around 1980, with the fading out of passive backplane > systems and arrival of machines which put more functionality onto a 'core' > PCB into which other cards were plugged. I don't recall ever seeing it used > when referencing earlier big iron, but maybe I've just missed it. > Here’s a little more muddying of the “motherboard” term. When Tandy introduced the Model II in 1980, they named what is essentially a passive backplane as the “Motherboard” (note the capital M). This was the main bus for all of the Z80 functions that were provided on plug-in cards, including the CPU card, the floppy controller card, the memory cards and the video/keyboard card. Then, when they introduced the Model 12/16B a few years later, they had consolidated almost all of the Z80 architecture onto a single board which they referred to as the "Main Logic" board. The 16B provided a variant of the original passive backplane, to support various additional cards, that plugged into the Main Logic board and they still referred to this as the Motherboard. So, even though the Main Logic board was what we think of as a motherboard today, the kept the “Motherboard” naming convention for the backplane.
Re: 'motherboard' etymology
Didn't Intel use what it called "daugherboards" on some of its line of Multibus products? That is, the "offspring" products plugged into the Multibus card, not the backplane. Am I remembering correctly? --Chuck
Re: 'motherboard' etymology
On Mon, 29 Feb 2016, Chuck Guzis wrote: Didn't Intel use what it called "daugherboards" on some of its line of Multibus products? That is, the "offspring" products plugged into the Multibus card, not the backplane. Am I remembering correctly? And, could it be that SOME use of the word "motherboard" was originated to differentiate from "daughterboard", rather than intended to be a stand-alone term? Those who hold that a "motherboard" had substantially more on it than a "backplane" should look at the "Godbout Motherboard Instructions" http://www.classiccmp.org/cini/pdf/random/Godbout%20backplane%20manual.pdf
Re: 'motherboard' etymology
Yes... The SBX cards! Sent from my iPhone geo...@rachors.com > On Feb 29, 2016, at 12:18 PM, Chuck Guzis wrote: > > Didn't Intel use what it called "daugherboards" on some of its line of > Multibus products? That is, the "offspring" products plugged into the > Multibus card, not the backplane. > > Am I remembering correctly? > > --Chuck >
Needs help w/ diagnosing and hopefully repairing of a DEC Tape Drive
In my continuing quest for a 9-track drive I got my hands on DEC TSZ07-CA w/ a narrow SCSI interface that was supposedly "tested working". On arrival to me I found it wrapped in a thin layer of bubble wrap w/ some broken piece of Styrofoam thrown in for "packing". As one can imagine the drive did not farewell. The outer desktop housing is cracked in multiple places but still serviceable. The drive itself came with parts rattling on the inside. I opened it up, cleaned things up a bit, and put things back together so that now the drive powers up, starts self test, and then errors out w/ a "50 - Motor Fault" error. I have checked the wires and reseated everything that I can see. I've also cleaned all the sensors, blown out the dirt, etc. etc. The problem persists so I am going to assume a component was damaged in the shipping. I ran the tests indicated in the tech manual and I get the following results: generally the supply motor starts to turn but stops even before making a full revolution. Incidentally if I manually turn the reel it turns fine and the tape securing arms open and close appropriately. When running the dx tests sometimes I can get the uptake motor to spin up at full speed and once even had the supply motor spin up at full speed. Per the tech manual if restarting the system does not make the problem go away the next step would be to replace the motor Google fu has not turned up much - so before I declare this a very heavy paper weight anyone have any ideas? Thanks! -Ali
Re: 'motherboard' etymology
On 2016-02-28 7:32 PM, Jules Richardson wrote: Does anyone know the origins of the term 'motherboard'? ... I was amused to learn that other languages sometimes translate it literally. Portuguese uses "placa mãe" - "board mother". (Pt takes lots of other technical terms from English and verbs them too.) --Toby cheers Jules
Re: 'motherboard' etymology
On Mon, 29 Feb 2016, John Willis wrote: > FWIW, the IBM term for "motherboard" was "planar", at least in the era of > the PC, PC/XT, PC/AT, etc. I believe I saw it on Lenovo ThinkPad part lists some 5 years ago, so the term must have survived well beyond the PC/AT, etc. Maciej
PDP-10 programming [was RE: Dumb Terminal games (was Re: Looking for a small fast VAX development machine)]
From: David Griffith Sent: Friday, February 26, 2016 4:05 PM > One of my ongoing wish projects is to learn to program a pdp-10 so I can > port Frotz to it. The canonical textbook is Ralph Gorin's _Introduction to DECSYSTEM-20 Assembly Language Programming_ (Digital Press, 1981). Lots of examples, well thought out presentation. It's a shame that Ralph's book has become so rare. (Seriously, who does the seller asking $1,441.25 for a copy think he's talking to???) Probably remaindered in the 1990s at any library that had a copy. If you were near Seattle, I'd say make an appointment and I'd give you an afternoon's worth of overview. Rich Rich Alderson Vintage Computing Sr. Systems Engineer Living Computer Museum 2245 1st Avenue S Seattle, WA 98134 mailto:ri...@livingcomputermuseum.org http://www.LivingComputerMuseum.org/
Re: Techno-savvy...
"Or "the family member you go to when you can't print"." A functional niche definition, for sure. "When you can't get your email" is equivalent. On Mon, Feb 29, 2016 at 7:43 AM, Toby Thain wrote: > On 2016-02-29 2:43 AM, drlegendre . wrote: > >> "Techno-savvy" is essentially a media / marketing term. For the most part, >> it means whatever the speaker(s) wish it to mean, within the context in >> which it is used. >> >> > So I wasn't the only one who cringed. > > The term isn't always complimentary; it can just as well be a pejorative. >> >> For the most part, the populace-at-large seems to define the term as >> meaning "conversant in both the established, as well as the nascent >> technologies of the day". >> > > Or "the family member you go to when you can't print". > > --Toby > > >> >> >> On Sun, Feb 28, 2016 at 7:01 PM, Murray McCullough < >> c.murray.mccullo...@gmail.com> wrote: >> >> What is a techno-savvy student? ... >>> >>
Re: PDP-10 programming [was RE: Dumb Terminal games (was Re: Looking for a small fast VAX development machine)]
On Feb 29, 2016 5:07 PM, "Rich Alderson" wrote: > > From: David Griffith > Sent: Friday, February 26, 2016 4:05 PM > > > One of my ongoing wish projects is to learn to program a pdp-10 so I can > > port Frotz to it. > > The canonical textbook is Ralph Gorin's _Introduction to DECSYSTEM-20 > Assembly Language Programming_ (Digital Press, 1981). Lots of examples, > well thought out presentation. > > It's a shame that Ralph's book has become so rare. (Seriously, who > does the seller asking $1,441.25 for a copy think he's talking to???) > Probably remaindered in the 1990s at any library that had a copy. > FWIW Amazon lists used copies of ISBN-13 978-0932376121 around $100. I bought a used copy a couple of years ago that turned out to be an ex-library copy. Don't think I paid too much at the time. Still haven't gotten around to looking at it much.
Re: Needs help w/ diagnosing and hopefully repairing of a DEC Tape Drive
On 02/29/2016 01:59 PM, Ali wrote: In my continuing quest for a 9-track drive I got my hands on DEC TSZ07-CA w/ a narrow SCSI interface that was supposedly "tested working". On arrival to me I found it wrapped in a thin layer of bubble wrap w/ some broken piece of Styrofoam thrown in for "packing". Ali, that's too bad! I saw the drive on eBay and wondered how well shipping would be carried out. Not well, unfortunately. --Chuck
Re: PDP-10 programming [was RE: Dumb Terminal games (was Re: Looking for a small fast VAX development machine)]
There is a copy on archive.org: https://archive.org/details/introductiontode00step Regards, Mark. On 01/03/16 01:07, Rich Alderson wrote: From: David Griffith Sent: Friday, February 26, 2016 4:05 PM One of my ongoing wish projects is to learn to program a pdp-10 so I can port Frotz to it. The canonical textbook is Ralph Gorin's _Introduction to DECSYSTEM-20 Assembly Language Programming_ (Digital Press, 1981). Lots of examples, well thought out presentation. It's a shame that Ralph's book has become so rare. (Seriously, who does the seller asking $1,441.25 for a copy think he's talking to???) Probably remaindered in the 1990s at any library that had a copy. If you were near Seattle, I'd say make an appointment and I'd give you an afternoon's worth of overview. Rich Rich Alderson Vintage Computing Sr. Systems Engineer Living Computer Museum 2245 1st Avenue S Seattle, WA 98134 mailto:ri...@livingcomputermuseum.org http://www.LivingComputerMuseum.org/
