Re: Who, on this list, Owns / Collects / Plays with an HP1000 A or L series ??
On Tue, 23 Feb 2016 23:48:52 +0100, you wrote: > >> -Oorspronkelijk bericht- >> Van: cctech [mailto:cctech-boun...@classiccmp.org] Namens Jay West >> Verzonden: dinsdag 23 februari 2016 21:09 >> Aan: 'GerardCJAT'; 'General Discussion: On-Topic Posts' >> Onderwerp: RE: Who, on this list, Owns / Collects / Plays with an HP1000 A >or L >> series ?? >> >> GerardCJAT wrote... >> --- >> It seems ( at first ) that most collections stops at 21MX ( M/E/F ) era. >> Am I correct in my view ? >> --- >> Not to minimize those that love the A/L stuff but I suspect you are >correct in >> general terms, statistically. But I do know there are some folks lurking >that are >> familiar with that era. >> >> I myself started to look at the A series as the instruction set had mostly >similar >> instructions (ie. A superset). But then I saw that was the sum total of >the >> similarity, and did not proceed further. I'm content to focus on 21MX and >prior ;) >> >> J >I've a few A-series systems, and like to have an L-system once (just because >of the technology jump to silicon on sapphire) >But at the moment, they're just waiting for attention ;) > The hardware unfortunately disappeared when my previous employer went broke (I would have offered to buy it, as I was freelancing by then) but the dear old HP-1000A brings back memories. We used to write laboratory systems software in FORTRAN-77 to interface with the LAS (Laboratory Automation System) and LABSAM (Laboratory Sampling and Management) packages which H-P sold as their combined laboratory software offering. Unfortunately Y2K put paid to LABSAM, H-P decided it wasn't worth updating it, although they kept LAS staggering along for a final year. We did a five man-year project for a major pharmaceutical company, writing an add-on chromatography calculations package with just the FORTRAN compiler and H-P's FORMS/1000 screen management library. Happy days! Brian.
Looking for Serial Terminals
Hi there, I've been wanting to get a nice serial terminal to use with my old systems (mostly UNIX) for a while now, but I haven't managed to find anything locally. Over the past few years I've been to thrifts, garage sales, surplus shops... But I haven't found any. This sort of surprises me, as Toronto isn't a small town. Is there anybody around the Toronto area that has a few extra dumb terminals lying around, or does anybody know of a good source for them around the Toronto area? Thanks -Brian
RE: Looking for Serial Terminals
A1 is rather nice, they had lots of neat stuff last time I was there... Don't remember anything terminal-ey though. -Brian -Original Message- From: cctalk [mailto:cctalk-boun...@classiccmp.org] On Behalf Of Mike Stein Sent: Monday, October 19, 2015 7:05 PM To: General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts Subject: Re: Looking for Serial Terminals - Original Message - From: "Toby Thain" To: ; "discuss...@classiccmp.org:On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts" Cc: Sent: Monday, October 19, 2015 6:28 PM Subject: Re: Looking for Serial Terminals > On 2015-10-19 6:11 PM, Mike Stein wrote: >> I've got a few (ADM-11, several Falco models) but would have to check >> to see which ones (if any) are still working; if you're patient, >> contact me off-list. >> >> You could also have a look through A-1 Electronics on North Queen; >> never know what you'll find there. > > Is that the de-facto Active Surplus, now that they've shut down? :( > > --Toby Pretty well, IMO; there's also Sayal for new stuff and of course Toronto Surplus if you're looking for something they've got and can afford it ;-) m - >> >> mike >> >> - Original Message - From: "Brian >> Adams" >> To: >> Sent: Monday, October 19, 2015 2:16 PM >> Subject: Looking for Serial Terminals >> >> >> Hi there, >> >> I've been wanting to get a nice serial terminal >> to use with my old >> systems (mostly UNIX) for a while now, but I >> haven't managed to find >> anything locally. >> Over the past few years I've been to thrifts, >> garage sales, surplus >> shops... But I haven't found any. This sort of >> surprises me, as Toronto >> isn't a small town. >> >> Is there anybody around the Toronto area that >> has a few extra dumb >> terminals lying around, or does anybody know of >> a good source for them >> around the Toronto area? >> >> Thanks >> >> -Brian >> >
Re: NeXT Cube - powers on briefly then off again
Even a 10W resistor will get really hot. I embed two 5W resistors into a pentium class CPU cooler for a good compromise on space/thermal concerns. You can see a pic on my site here: http://asterontech.com/Asterontech/next_adb_conversion.html Internal to the cube, I've found using a 5W appliance bulb to be the easiest. -- Brian Archer On Sun, Oct 25, 2015 at 7:46 PM, Toby Thain wrote: > On 2015-10-25 8:56 PM, Toby Thain wrote: > >> On 2015-10-25 8:42 PM, Ian Finder wrote: >> >>> No- if it works with the standard display, the supply is fine. >>> >>> Now that that's clear, I recall some cube supplies would do this >>> without a load for a display- I used to test them by triggering the >>> power-on pin, and seem to remember this behavior occurring if I didn't >>> have a big-ass resistor attached across the pins that normally >>> supplied power to the CRT. >>> >>> Try getting a dummy load on there, the circuitry you have may not be >>> putting enough load on the lines that usually run the CRT to keep the >>> supply in a steady state. >>> >>> >> >> Even though I'm an electronics noob, that seems pretty logical. Can you >> spell out what kind of resistor I'd need? >> >> Is it the 20 Ohm 20W between pin 12 (-12V) and GND that is mentioned here: >> >> >> http://www.nextcomputers.org/forums/viewtopic.php?t=1374&sid=80e5f0626eeb6a10eed066e21b61808d >> >> >> Is 20W the right rating? >> >> Thanks! >> --Toby >> >> > I got a really helpful response from Rob Blessin, from whom I bought the > splitter cable, along the same lines. My supply must be the 152 type that > requires a load. > > Boiling down all the info so far, it seems that a 20 Ohm resistor across > -12V and GND (maybe 12V and GND would work equally well?) would dissipate > 7.2W, which seems enough to keep the supply running (that other link talked > about a 5W load, so this seems a good margin). > > Now, 7.2W is more than one resistor in say a DB-19 shell could safely > dissipate, so I'm maybe looking at some kind of ambiently cooled board. Rob > provided these links: > > > Here: http://www.nextcomputers.org/forums/viewtopic.php?t=3736 and > version 1.0 megaload here: > http://www.nextcomputers.org/forums/viewtopic.php?t=3616&highlight=load+board > > > So I'm wondering what kind of thermal design is both easy and safe. A > single 10W resistor exposed to the air? Or should I spread it over a few > resistors on a little board that might have a DB-19 male at the Cube end. > > Just noob brainstorming here. > > --Toby > > >
Re: Model 152 PSU dummy loads - Re: NeXT Cube - powers on briefly then off again
Hi Toby, I'll try to post some photos in a week or 2. Rob has asked me to make some internal load boards for him so I can show more details while I'm at it. The bulb is the best option in my opinion and seems to work just fine without additional cooling in the cube. -- Brian On Mon, Oct 26, 2015 at 6:43 AM, Toby Thain wrote: > On 2015-10-26 1:02 AM, Brian Archer wrote: > >> Even a 10W resistor will get really hot. I embed two 5W resistors into a >> pentium class CPU cooler for a good compromise on space/thermal concerns. >> You can see a pic on my site here: >> http://asterontech.com/Asterontech/next_adb_conversion.html >> >> > Hi Brian > > I did see your mod while looking around for info. > > I'd prefer not to mod the soundbox so my options seem to be your internal > backplane load board ( > http://www.nextcomputers.org/forums/viewtopic.php?t=3616&highlight=load+board > ) or maybe a small load board inline to the monitor cable? > > It looks like ambient cooling is sufficient for the version shown here? > > Thanks very much for the excellent info you've posted so far! > > --Toby > > Internal to the cube, I've found using a 5W appliance bulb to be the >> easiest. >> >> -- >> Brian Archer >> \ >> >
Re: The list seems very quiet today
I saw a couple of posts; thought it seemed a little slow today as well. I did see Liam's post regarding Fortran, which I did have a semester of back in '93. Probably a little rusty as there just isn't a lot of need for it... On Fri, Oct 30, 2015 at 10:55 AM, Fred Cisin wrote: > On 30 October 2015 at 12:02, rod wrote: > >> The list seems very quiet to-day. >> I have had only one post this morning. >> Anybody know why? >> > > Is everybody off at the top-secret VCF-Paris? > > On Fri, 30 Oct 2015, Liam Proven wrote: > >> No replies to my message about NASA wanting Fortran programmers... >> > > extinct? or just too shameful? > > >
PDP 8a transformer capacitor replacement?
Having read all sorts of bad things about these older oil filled capacitors, I decided to replace the one on my 8a. I got what I think is a replacement - 6 microF, 660VAC, 50/60Hz, "NO PCB's" - but it is physically about 1/3 the size as the original. Did the tech for these get that much better? What purpose does this serve? It's hanging off the transformer. I see lots of links about motor start capacitors, but nothing relating to transformers. http://www.mouser.com/ProductDetail/Cornell-Dubilier/SFA66S6K288B-F Thanks, b
Looking for AS/400
Hi there, Recently, I've been reading up into AS/400s.. They seem like really neat machines, and look really sharp with those matching block terminals. I remember retail stores using those, and I always wondered what kind of a system they were running on... I figured it was DOS! I've been having trouble locating one, however. Anybody have one lying around, or know of where to find one in the Toronto area? It needn't be a high spec machine, just something to play with OS/400 and a terminal. Thanks! -brian
RE: Looking for AS/400
Yeah, I've got an account on an AS/400 right now. I like the OS, I probably couldn't do anything useful with it, but I like the look. But having an account on a remote system isn't the same as a physical system, ya know? And I don't have QSECOFR access of course. Maybe I can find one at a surplus or recycler, mm. -Brian -Original Message- From: cctalk [mailto:cctalk-boun...@classiccmp.org] On Behalf Of supervinx Sent: Tuesday, December 8, 2015 3:25 AM To: General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts Subject: R: Looking for AS/400 Can't help, since I live on the other side if the pond, but AS/400s are cool machines. I own a bunch of them (and some S/36s too) and I like them. OS/400 was and is a good OS (if you have clear in mind what it can and what it can't do). Meanwhile, you could request a free AS/400 access to the folks at pub1.rzkh.de and play with OS/400. It's fun to access such a beast from a... Smart Phone :) ---- Messaggio originale Da: Brian Adams Data:07/12/2015 21:58 (GMT+01:00) A: cctalk@classiccmp.org Oggetto: Looking for AS/400 Hi there, Recently, I've been reading up into AS/400s.. They seem like really neat machines, and look really sharp with those matching block terminals. I remember retail stores using those, and I always wondered what kind of a system they were running on... I figured it was DOS! I've been having trouble locating one, however. Anybody have one lying around, or know of where to find one in the Toronto area? It needn't be a high spec machine, just something to play with OS/400 and a terminal. Thanks! -brian
RE: List vs. community size
Yeah, ugh that post was baad. -brian -Original Message- From: cctalk [mailto:cctalk-boun...@classiccmp.org] On Behalf Of Jay West Sent: Tuesday, December 8, 2015 1:27 PM To: 'General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts' Subject: RE: List vs. community size Chris wrote... > I've got 13,000 on RetroBattlestations and I doubt very many of them know > about the cctalk mailing list. To which Will replied... >Wow, that is impressive. However, I suppose much of the PeeCee crowd really >does not integrate well with cctalk, and that is fine. Yep, 13,000 is both impressive and commendable. However, can't compare the two as the focus really isn't the same at all. Wasn't "retrobattlestations" where some "person" was happy about "modding" a HP 21MX into an raspi ntp server? J
RE: List vs. community size
Would be nice if more of you people with Kewl Machines posted pictures on there! It's been slow recently, not many posts, and boring stuff. -brian -Original Message- From: cctalk [mailto:cctalk-boun...@classiccmp.org] On Behalf Of et...@757.org Sent: Tuesday, December 8, 2015 1:29 PM To: General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts Subject: Re: List vs. community size > Wow, that is impressive. However, I suppose much of the PeeCee crowd > really does not integrate well with cctalk, and that is fine. Scanning the front page of retrobattlestations, SOL-20, DEC 1957 documentary, C64, POSIX Maze War, Vic 20... Yep full of PC stuff! -- Ethan O'Toole
RE: List vs. community size
Oh yeah? Well, my machines are boring. Beat that. -brian -Original Message- From: cctalk [mailto:cctalk-boun...@classiccmp.org] On Behalf Of couryho...@aol.com Sent: Tuesday, December 8, 2015 7:37 PM To: cctalk@classiccmp.org Subject: Re: List vs. community size mine are old enough to be bitchen! Ed# In a message dated 12/8/2015 3:33:34 P.M. US Mountain Standard Time, silent...@gmail.com writes: On Tue, Dec 8, 2015 at 4:32 PM, Chuck Guzis wrote: > On 12/08/2015 02:23 PM, William Donzelli wrote: >> >> Yes, keep the kewl machines elsewhere. Our machines are groovy, far >> out, or maybe even the Bomb. > > > > You forgot "rad" and "neat". Certain Crays were "totally tubular."
RE: List vs. community size
1? Not enough, come on. Hi-Res NCube pictures please. -Brian -Original Message- From: cctalk [mailto:cctalk-boun...@classiccmp.org] On Behalf Of JP Hindin Sent: Tuesday, December 8, 2015 4:26 PM To: General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts Subject: RE: List vs. community size On Tue, 8 Dec 2015, Brian Adams wrote: > Would be nice if more of you people with Kewl Machines posted pictures on > there! > > It's been slow recently, not many posts, and boring stuff. So I post a picture of my workshop with 13 racks, including half a dozen SGI Onyx2, a pair of SunFire 6800s, a Cray J98, a Sun E1, and a bunch of PDP11s, VAXes, Sun E450s/E4000s/386i, Sun 4/470s, MicroPDPs, MicroVAXes, oh, and an nCube2... and it's boring? (http://imgur.com/LRkTseU) Harsh, man. - JP > -Original Message- > From: cctalk [mailto:cctalk-boun...@classiccmp.org] On Behalf Of > et...@757.org > Sent: Tuesday, December 8, 2015 1:29 PM > To: General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts > > Subject: Re: List vs. community size > >> Wow, that is impressive. However, I suppose much of the PeeCee crowd >> really does not integrate well with cctalk, and that is fine. > > Scanning the front page of retrobattlestations, SOL-20, DEC 1957 documentary, > C64, POSIX Maze War, Vic 20... > > Yep full of PC stuff! > > -- > Ethan O'Toole > >
RE: Looking for AS/400
I was considering asking on that list, but I figured it was geared toward new machines. I'll take a look. -Brian -Original Message- From: cctalk [mailto:cctalk-boun...@classiccmp.org] On Behalf Of Kevin Monceaux Sent: Tuesday, December 8, 2015 6:51 PM To: General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts Subject: Re: Looking for AS/400 On Tue, Dec 08, 2015 at 06:53:31PM +0000, Brian Adams wrote: > Yeah, I've got an account on an AS/400 right now. I like the OS, I > probably couldn't do anything useful with it, but I like the look. I've had an account there for years, though I don't use it much these days. > But having an account on a remote system isn't the same as a physical > system, ya know? And I don't have QSECOFR access of course. > > Maybe I can find one at a surplus or recycler, mm. Having a box with full access is definitely a plus. I have a 9406-270 in my living room that I found on eBay for a fairly descent price. It's been encountering some memory errors for a while now, but seems to be hanging in there. I might have to find some replacement memory, or a replacement box, one of these days myself. There was a post on the Midrange-L list last month from someone with a couple of "old 525 systems" that he's looking to part with: http://Archive.Midrange.com/midrange-l/201511/msg00446.html I contacted him recently and as of a few days ago they were still available. I'd have grabbed one of them if I had the funds to spare at the moment. -- Kevin http://www.RawFedDogs.net http://www.Lassie.xyz http://www.WacoAgilityGroup.org Bruceville, TX What's the definition of a legacy system? One that works! Errare humanum est, ignoscere caninum.
Imaging RX02 disks for simh (was: Re: MU-BASIC V2 and RT-11 V03B distribution disks.)
How the heck do you copy an RX02 disk for use in simh? I've been trying to transfer RX02 images between simh and a real PDP11 (that has only two RX02's, console, and ethernet). So far, I've only attempted sending an RX02 image from the PDP to simh, but simh fails to read it: "?DIR-F-Invalid directory". Even after adding 13*512 bytes to the start for the missing track, I still get invalid directory. My process is to COPY/DEVICE/FILES DY1:/START:0/END:330 DY0:BLOCK1.DAT, then FTP that off the PDP, delete the file, and do the remaining two thirds of the disk. Once all are transferred, "cat *DAT > floppy.dsk". I can transfer RX50 images using the same recipe, though I haven't tried sending an RX50 image created on simh back to the PDP. For what it's worth, I'm having the same problem with Alan Baldwin's TCP/IP disk images from http://shop-pdp.net/rthtml/tcpip.htm. simh can't read the individual DSK images, but could read the *.PKG with the disks inside, and from that, I could (RT-11) MOUNT each disk to a logical device. b On Thu, Jan 28, 2016 at 11:50 AM, Mattis Lind wrote: > I found some 8 inch floppies with distribution kits for MU-BASIC V2 and > RT-11 V03B. I imaged those and put them here > http://www.datormuseum.se/documentation-software/rx01-and-rx02-floppy-disks > if anyone is interested in playing with MU-BASIC. There are both RAW disk > images and to be used in SimH and like and also DMK/IMD files. > > The system that floppies came with is this little ( > http://www.datormuseum.se/computers/digital-equipment-corporation/pdp1103-l > ) > system once used at Scania in Södertälje. >
Re: Imaging RX02 disks for simh (was: Re: MU-BASIC V2 and RT-11 V03B distribution disks.)
On Sun, Mar 6, 2016 at 3:33 PM, Mattis Lind wrote: > > Did you have problems with my RAW files as well? Which? I tested a few of > them right now and they seemed to work fine. > Nope, no problems. That was what triggered this...that someone else could do it. I jury rigged an RX50, and managed to get an image across that way. My end goal is to dump an RD52, but, sadly, I still am unable to access the disk. Not even a blip on the activity light. *Sigh* Back to reading manuals, I guess. Thanks to everyone for confirming I'm not insane, a moron, or both. b
Re: Imaging RX02 disks for simh (was: Re: MU-BASIC V2 and RT-11 V03B distribution disks.)
On Sun, Mar 6, 2016 at 5:06 PM, Don North wrote: > From the SIMH pdp11 RX driver (pdp11_rx.c) the disk size is computed as > follows, > and the byte offset into the file is computed by CALC_DA(trk,sec) given > the PHYSICAL > track (0..76) and sector (1..26) addresses used in accessing the > controller. > > So the SIMH disk image should be 77*26*128 = 256,256 bytes for an RX01 > format. > RX02 format is same number of tracks and sectors, but has 256 byte sectors. > > So if you image an RX disk using logical operating system 512B blocks > there are > 494 of them (76*26*128/512 = 494) numbered 0..493. Track 0 is skipped in > the > filesystem (block 0 is at track=1 sector=1) for legacy compatibility > reasons (with IBM). > > However, since the SIMH file is in physical track/sector order, if you > read the disk image > using logical device blocks, you have to know how the driver interleaves > logical blocks > onto physical track/sectors, as you must de-interleave to build the SIMH > file. > > Or else you must run a program on the PDP-11 side that reads the RX drive > as physical > tracks and sectors, not using file system access commands. > > It's not pretty, but if you think about it enough it is the only way for > SIMH to simulate the > RX/RY devices and be operating system agnostic. > > Don > > From PDP11/pdp11_rx.c: > > #define RX_NUMTR77 /* tracks/disk */ > #define RX_NUMSC26 /* sectors/track */ > #define RX_NUMBY128 /* bytes/sector */ > #define RX_SIZE (RX_NUMTR * RX_NUMSC * RX_NUMBY) /* bytes/disk */ > > #define CALC_DA(t,s) (((t) * RX_NUMSC) + ((s) - 1)) * RX_NUMBY > http://www.dbit.com/putr/putr.asm has the following: ; ; RX01 interleave routine. ; ; bplogical device rec ; chcylinder (0-75.) ; cllogical sector (0-25.) ; ; On return: ; chcylinder (1-76.) ; clsector (1-26.) ; ; From RT-11 V04 DY.MAC: ; ; ISEC=(ISEC-1)*2 ; IF(ISEC.GE.26) ISEC=ISEC-25 ; ISEC=MOD(ISEC+ITRK*6,26)+1 ; ITRK=ITRK+1 ; (and then some assembly code to implement that) I didn't try anything based on this. I was confused about "ISEC-1". Assuming sectors started at zero, this gave a negative result. Plus, I was wrong about the sector size. Thanks! This seems like enough hints to figure it out. b
Re: Here's what happens when an 18 year old buys a mainframe...
I'm still kicking myself for passing up an IBM mainframe and a Sun 2000 that my previous employer no longer needed. I reasoned that I didn't have space or power for them; never let logic and good sense dictate your actions :) Connor picked a great learning experience... EE, CS, and other disciplines such as civil engineering, all rolled into one experience. On Tue, Mar 29, 2016 at 8:09 PM, Matt Patoray wrote: > > > Sent from my iPhone > > > On Mar 29, 2016, at 7:28 PM, Jay West wrote: > > > > Evan wrote... > >> Connor is a member of our user group here in the Mid-Atlantic. He's > >> been learning at an astonishingly quick rate! > > > > He's been a member on this list for quite some time, and is a regular on > the evening crew of the #classiccmp irc channel as well. > > > > He was working on a DG Nova 3 before the Z machine arrived, hope he gets > back to it as well :) > > > > J > > I got to see that DG just after he picked it up in Akron. He stopped by > the Large Scale Systems Museum in New Kensington PA and we gave it a look > over and also discussed the docs he got with it and what to tackle first. > > Now if only it had come with some of those cool blue/green DG terminals :) > > I still remover the day he sat down in front of the HP 2116B, he had never > touched a blinking light front panel, he asked if Dave or I minded if he > erased the program in memory, we said no, he powered it on and 2 min later > was reading the programming docs for it and wrote a quick blinking lights > program in like 15 min. > > Connor is a good guy!
Re: Wanted: stand for NeXT monitor
I think you'll find the best upgrade for it besides the RAM is a faster hard drive. Also I wouldn't go higher than nextstep 3.3. Blackhole ( http://www.blackholeinc.com) is your best bet for the stand. If this is the one from eBay, would you mind sharing more details/pics of that next logo motherboard box? I've never seen one before. Thanks, Brian Archer On Tue, May 26, 2015 at 12:42 AM, Steven Stengel wrote: > Just acquired a NeXT 68040 cube computer. It's way cool, but the > responsiveness is unimpressive - I'd call it pokey. > > All 16 RAM slots are full for 16MB, but sixteen 4MB RAM sticks may help > the speed. > > It has an internal HD, as well as the magneto-optical drive. > > One things it's missing is the monitor stand - does anyone have a spare > stand for a NeXT N4000A monochrome monitor? > > Thanks- > Steve. > > > >
Re: RDI PowerLite 110 and OpenStep - watchdog-reset
Do you have another compatible sparc machine which you could install the OS and transfer the drive from? Also is it possible to update the ROM to a newer version on these? Just a gut feeling, but that would be my likely suspect. -- Brian Archer On Tue, May 26, 2015 at 1:33 PM, David Williams wrote: > On 26/05/2015 00:15, Ian Finder wrote: > >> So I recently made a very poor trade for an RDI PowerLite 110 under the >> assumption that it could run NeXTstep or OpenStep, as allegedly RDI >> supplied the PowerLite with this OS in some configurations. >> >> The PowerLite is essentially an SS5 in a chunky, ugly laptop. >> >> When I boot the OpenStep and NeXTstep installers however, at the second >> stage loader I get a "watchdog-reset" message from OBP. >> >> Ultimately it's the same issue as discussed here: >> >> http://www.nextcomputers.org/forums/viewtopic.php?t=3153&sid=b8cb75adb7245747301f9e82beef570a >> >> Any hope in getting this to run? Any ideas out there? >> >> Or am I stuck with a fat ugly wannabe SparcBook 3? (I have a few of the >> 3GX/3TX family which seem like far nicer machines, the only reason I wanted >> this RDI P.O.S. Is the weitek framebuffer in the SparcBooks isn't supported >> by OS/NS, but the CG6 in the RDI supposedly is. What a garbage machine RDI >> produced with this one... >> >> > Ian, > > I had the same problem with a PowerLite 110. Couldn't get either NS or OS > to boot. I'm not 100% certain but I've been led to believe the option RDI > provided was the OpenStep framework on top of Solaris. > > I actually quite like the machines though :) > > Cheers, > Dave > >
Re: De-yellowing results
I use 2 of these in a large plastic tub: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00HD6Y4VU?psc=1&redirect=true&ref_=oh_aui_search_detailpage I cut holes in the lid of the tub for them and used tin foil to line the insides. Seems to work very well for me. I coat the items in bblonde mixed with a little extra peroxide to make it thinner. Then I have a bottle of peroxide with a sprayer nozzle that I use to keep everything damp every hour or so. I usually get good results in < 4 hours. -- Brian Archer On Fri, Aug 28, 2015 at 12:36 PM, Geoffrey Oltmans wrote: > On Fri, Aug 28, 2015 at 11:28 AM, Evan Koblentz wrote: > > > Ah! That explains my lack of results. I soaked the keys for five or six > > hours. They got clean, but didn't change color very much. Sounds like I > > pulled them out too soon. Several days, you say? > > > > The keys float (as noted in T's link), so I just turned them upside-down > > in the peroxide. > > > > Yes, in my case I did it in a mostly dark room with a small UV light (that > I use for erasing EEPROMS), so it didn't get a full sun treatment, but it > did take the better part of a week. And, as you say, I had problems with > keys constantly wanting to float away. I figure next time I try it I may > get some silly putty to put in the underside to weigh them down or > something. >
LA120 ROM & new member intro
Hi. The original ROM request showed up just before I started receiving messages this morning, and I only got the tail end of the chatter. Instead of tacking a reply on to that, I thought I'd just start a new thread and introduce myself at the same time. Here's what I think is 23-038e4-00 from an LA120 (with a bad print head, and dead pin drivers as well). I couldn't find anything to compare it against, and the adapter is new. So it might be gibberish. I did see, at least, [A-Z] in the dump, so maybe it's good. As for the introduction, I started life on the Apple II in fourth grade or thereabouts, finally got a Commodore 128, then an Amiga, then jumped over to UNIX (BSD mostly) and stuck there for years doing software. After funding stopped being an issue, I decided to get back to more interesting and/or simple hardware, and electronics in general. I seem to have collected a rather complete HP86/87, under the illusion of using it for an GPIB controller. I'm now wrestling with an apparently dead PSU on a MicroPDP (actually, I just now gave up on it), and am slowly fixing up a PDP-8/a. It has two CPU boards, one of which ignores the HALT instruction. From the schematics, I think it's one faulty 74ls chip, but I haven't tried fixing it -- the machine has been down for cleaning/painting for many months. I just got it put back together this weekend. I also swapped out the fans for modern (quiet) 12v fans (driven off an isolated power supply powered by the original 120 vac fan supply)...and now hear the transformer buzzing away. Win some, lose some. Sigh. Congrats on making it to the end! Cheers! b
Re: LA120 ROM & new member intro
On Tue, Sep 22, 2015 at 9:29 PM, Paul Anderson wrote: What is the part number of the dead power supply you gave up on? > It's the H7864 (Astec aa12130) in the BA23 enclosure. It powered up a few times, but now only the switch light comes on. If I remember, it wouldn't power up with just the cpu board (or maybe just the cpu + memory), but with cpu, memory, disk controller + disks, it would power up. I was able to poke around in the 'boot menu' (enough to see that the machine and serial port worked), and the next morning it wouldn't power up. I checked for cold solder joints, and replaced one of the three line filter caps - the other two aren't the exploding type. I'm getting power out of the filter anyway and the rectifier is OK (voltage across the two caps). I don't know switching power supplies well enough to go poking around in there. What other DEC items do you have? > The MicroPDP (KDF11-BJ, 128 kw memory) VAXstation 3100 (m48 sounds right) running OpenVMS (probably well expired by now) DECstation 5000/120 (+ 2x disk expansion) running Ultrix. As I recall, this was a DNS server at BBN. I thought I saved the original bits, but I see I was in the mucking about before I made the copy. DECsystem 5000/200 - which I've been able to do nothing with. I should haul it out and see if I've gotten any smarter since the last time I tried it. LA120 DECwriter III (cleaned and repainted, NOS ribbon and a box of paper) LA120 DECwriter III (dead; print head is jammed, and the 'LSI printer' IC is bad) PDP 8a/400 - 3x m8315 (one that ignores HALT, one that doesn't work, one that hopefully works 100%), 2x m8316 & m8317 & 8k core) PDP 11/34a + 2x RL01's - a winter project. All I've done is clean out the dust and whatnot. I'm pretty sure I'm missing the cable to connect the controller to the disks. Annoyingly, one of the keypad buttons is busted off, and previous 'repairs' (not mine!) screwed up the joint enough that I had to make a bridge to glue it back together. The membrane button below it now feels weird - no 'click'. I _really_ don't want to take this apart. Did that on the 8a, and it was a nightmare. Where are you located? > Just north of Washington DC. Anyone else? b
Re: Cloud-cuckoo land
Don't forget about this one: http://www.ebay.com/itm/191698368565 $17k for a CRT and a keyboard in a (beat up) wood case. He's missing the box with the electronics, and, clearly, the cables... At least it isn't signed! b On Sat, Sep 26, 2015 at 9:49 AM, wrote: > Pocket change compared to what the seller wants for this Olivetti > Programma 101, priced to go! > > http://www.ebay.com/itm/Olivetti-PROGRAMMA-101-signed-by-one-of-the-authors-PRE-ALTAIR-8800-AND-C4004-/271973010365 > To me the signing on the top of the case sort of spoils the clean > appearance, I think if would have been better if it had been on the bottom > or inside the case. Not every > designer is as famous as Woz :) > > Steve. > >
Re: UNIBUS/QBUS interface chips Was: Re: MEM11 update
I did a bit of searching in the fall for an 8881 (to fix a busted HALT instruction on a PDP8a). I concluded the 7439 is a pin-for-pin replacement - I can't claim all credit for this, it's probably known by a few people here. My notes say the 8881 will handle 30mA loads. The 7401 will handle 16mA, while the 7439 will handle 80mA. Cheers! b On Mon, May 2, 2016 at 10:04 AM, Mattis Lind wrote: > > The following chips have been used by DEC to interface to the QBUS, and > > I have seen many of the above chips (e.g. 8641's) used there too, so I > > think chips seen on one bus could be used on the other: > > > > Drivers: > > > > 7439 - Various - Quad NAND > > > > Transceivers: > > > > 2908 - AMD - Quad latching transceiver with tri-state output > > > > I _believe_ the following chips are also usable as UNIBUS/QBUS interface > > chips, but I'm not sure if I've seen one used there: > > > > Transceivers: > > > > 8836 - National Semi - Quad NOR > > 8838 - National Semi - Quad transceiver (aka Signetics N8T38) > > > > Quite a zoo! > > > > DEC also used the DEC DC005 for the data and address lines on QBUS cards. > The Signetics code is C2324N > > /Mattis > > > > > > Noel > > >
Re: Hamvention
After Alex mentioned it, I'd thought about driving up if anyone saw anything of interest, but sounds like there isn't a great deal to pick from for older computers. I really can't justify the drive anyway, this year... Brian KI4GTD On Sat, May 21, 2016 at 11:48 PM, Jerry Weiss wrote: > I saw one Altair 8800 and one TRS-80 III out in the swap fest. Some more > recent power (5?) series, but that’s about it. > > Jerry WB9MRI > > > > On May 20, 2016, at 1:18 PM, Alex McWhirter > wrote: > > > > > > > > > > Anyone spot anything list related at hamvention? I'm around trying to > find anything cool. Particularly sun and ibm stuff. > > > > Sent from my T-Mobile 4G LTE Device > >
Re: Resurrecting the DB-19
You might check iec.net; I recently purchased several DB19M and DB19F connectors from them at a reasonable price. They were out of the male DB19 solder-tail type connectors but substituted the pin-insert type instead. For my purposes, either would work. They also had a 25 pin to 19 pin cable for the Apple Dual Disk drives that seems to be working perfectly and quite a bit cheaper than several alternatives I looked at. Melinda was very helpful in processing the order. Regards, Brian. On Sun, Jun 5, 2016 at 5:02 PM, Alexandre Souza < alexandre.tabaj...@gmail.com> wrote: > > http://tabajara-labs.blogspot.com.br/2015/05/fazendo-o-expletiva-cabo-da-duodisk.html > > Better than nothing :) > > 2016-06-05 14:34 GMT-03:00 Ali : > > > Sweet. No where can I order 10 or so at a reasonable price? There is a > guy > > one ebay selling one with hood at $22 a piece > > > > Original message > > From: Liam Proven > > Date: 6/5/2016 1:55 AM (GMT-08:00) > > To: "Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts" > > Subject: Resurrecting the DB-19 > > > > June 4, 2016 ↔ 10 comments > > > > *DB-19: Resurrecting an Obsolete Connector* > > > > Oh man, this is good! You’re looking at the first DB-19 connector to be > > made in the 21st century... > > > > > > > http://www.bigmessowires.com/2016/06/04/db-19-resurrecting-an-obsolete-connector/ > > > > -- > > Sent from my phone - please pardon brevity & typos. > > >
Eckert - Faster, Faster; books in general
Is there an electronic copy of this floating around? My (ex-library) copy is missing all of chapter 11, "What is there to calculate?. (And the last page of the previous chapter). The pages weren't ripped out, they were missing when it was bound. Very annoying, I enjoyed the book right up until it crashed, so to speak. Two, also ex-library, copies are listed on Amazon, and I hesitate to get another copy with the same problem. There are others, of course, at outrageous prices. Or maybe I don't realize the significance of '1st edition, not ex-library'. Just to make any discussion a bit more interesting, what would you suggest along similar lines? The two giant books on IBM (detailing "pre-360", and "360") were quite fun too. bri
Re: HP Series-80 computers - PRM-85 board case? ... maybe!
I have a printer - just finished putting a Rostock V2 together a week or so ago - and an 87xm (and 86b, fwiw) and some modules, but no PRM-85. If fit against a standard module board is sufficient, I can do an iteration or two. I haven't quite finished calibration, but it is printing sufficiently well so far. Is the PRM-85 still available? b On Mon, Jun 20, 2016 at 5:54 PM, Dave wrote: > I'm interested as well. > Dave > > > On Monday, June 20, 2016 2:16 PM, "alexmcwhir...@triadic.us" < > alexmcwhir...@triadic.us> wrote: > > > > On 2016-06-20 11:34, Pete Plank wrote: > >> On Jun 20, 2016, at 6:20 AM, martin.heppe...@dlr.de wrote: > >> > >> I read in this list that there are more people interested in such a > >> case. > > > > I don’t have a 3D printer either, but I’m on board for one when > > they’re ready to go - my PRM-85 is still in its anti-static bag. > > > > Pete > > I have a 3d printer, but not any of the boards in question. I don't mind > helping if there's anything i can do. > > > > >
Re: CDC 6600 - Why so awesome?
On Wed, Jun 22, 2016 at 12:01 PM, Noel Chiappa wrote: Werner Buchholz (editor), "Planning a Computer System: Project Stretch", > McGraw-Hill, New York, 1962 > http://ed-thelen.org/comp-hist/IBM-7030-Planning-McJones.pdf > Speaking of books, there's also a CDC 6600 book: > > Jim E. Thornton, "Design of A Computer: The Control Data 6600", > Scott, Foresman, Glenview, 1970 > http://www.textfiles.com/bitsavers/pdf/cdc/6x00/books/DesignOfAComputer_CDC6600.pdf (apologies for using the non-official link) Really gotta do that Bibliography! > > Noel > Ah, that's why my googling around the other day failed! The current pace of recommended books is already quicker than I can read. Where is this 'computer history wiki', anyway? b
multiflow trace in Austin
It's not as old as some would like, but it's definitely unique enough. http://www.ebay.com/itm/UBER-RARE-MULTIFLOW-TRACE-14-300-COMPILER-VINTAGE-COMPUTER-processor-compiler-/112050410557?hash=item1a16b9943d:g:r2EAAOSw3YNXbtaY b
Re: Signetics N8251 source?
On Sun, Jul 24, 2016 at 5:01 AM, Mattis Lind wrote: > After successfully repairing the G231 module of the MM11-L set I continued > with the next one. This one was not able to access addresses ending 0100 > (binary). Luckily it was not the transistors arrays that were bad but the > selector chip. A Signetics N8251 chip. > I suspect that since you've debugged it already, this won't help. Just in case, the datasheet is on page 52 of: https://archive.org/details/bitsavers_signeticsdcs8000SeriesTTLMSI_11847693 /Mattis > b
Re: the value of old test and repair equipment
I enjoy using vintage test equipment as well, but I'm not usually willing to pay more than $5 or $10 for a piece unless I know it works. Generally, the only time I'll pay more without testing is when it's an automated piece of equipment that included some computer interface capability as part of assembly line testing. On Thu, Jul 28, 2016 at 3:57 PM, Jay West wrote: > Cindy wrote... > - > does as-is old test and repair equip that won't be particularly cheap have > interest to you guys? > - > > Speaking just for me personally... yes it has interest. I use period gear > to > work on the computers and enjoy that combination. Not as in "I'm collecting > old test gear" but "I like using old test gear with the gear I'm > collecting". > > J > > >
Re: PDP-8 _Introduction_to_Programming_ & _Programming_Languages_(Scanned) Covers Needed
On Tue, Aug 2, 2016 at 8:20 PM, Bob Vines wrote: > Does anyone have DEC's PDP-8 _Introduction_to_Programming_, Editions 3 > and/or 4 and/or the PDP-8 _Programming_Languages_ handbooks? > > If you're not willing to part with your copy, could you scan the front > covers of these handbooks and tell me which Edition(s) they are from? I'm > especially looking for the front cover that had the "format generator > program" printed on it in the background. > I've got the 2nd and 3rd editions. The 2nd has 'skip to service routines' on the cover, and the 3rd has 'two's complement single precision multiply routine' on it. They're pretty beat up though, lots of faded spots and a few creases. I'm also looking for DEC's PDP-8 _Programming_Languages_. If you are not > willing to part with them, could you scan the front cover and tell me which > Edition(s) it/they are from? > I have the first edition, and it is in very good shape. I'll scan these a little later and send to you. b
Re: Looking for info on a CAMAC module - Kinetic 3912 Unibus Crate Controller
Pete, I think I might have a few Kinetic CAMAC brochures and user manuals. I'll have to dig around but if you don't have another source, maybe I can scan them. We had a 2 large crates in our testing lab that I kick myself for not taking. I had no use for them but it's still some interesting hardware. We had a couple of old IBM XTs interfaced to them. Regards, Brian. On Mon, Oct 31, 2016 at 2:04 PM, Pete Lancashire wrote: > Over the years I've played around with a few old CAMAC (*) modules, by > today's standard they pretty much have zero value, anyway that's another > story. Recently > I've been offered a CAMAC to Unibus board. A Kinetic 3912 Unibus Crate > Controller . > A Crate in CAMAC speak is just a chassis with a backplane. > > The problem with CAMAC is there is almost no information out there, > > Since I don't YET have a Unibus system, it more of a curiosity then > anything. > > So .. anyone have the manual ? > > (*) - > https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_Automated_Measurement_and_Control >
Looking for terminals again
The interest in video terminals has been awoken again, and I am again searching for one. I like the look/size of the VT220s, very nice and compact! Anybody have extra DEC or IBM terminals in Toronto (Canada) ? I’m probably somewhat interested! -brian
Looking for terminals again - oops
Whoops, looks like I sent this to the wrong cct*** email, apologies! My interest in video terminals has been awoken again, and I am again searching for one. I like the look/size of the VT220s, very nice and compact! Anybody have extra DEC or IBM terminals in Toronto (Canada) ? I’m probably somewhat interested! -brian
PDP8a CPU fixed! (was Re: DEC DELQA - seems not to work. Anyone got a spare?)
On Mon, Nov 7, 2016 at 11:44 AM, Ian S. King wrote: > I love reading stories of component-level repair. > Assuming my notes and sketchy memory make any sense: One of my PDP 8a CPU boards (the M8315) passed all the self tests I could toggle in, EXCEPT, it would ignore HLT instructions. It'd just blow right through them. That'll get you questioning your sanity real quick. Several hours of squinting at schematics said I'm looking for the STOPL signal - I found three or four places, one of which involved a ROM (at least my notes say there is a ROM involved). Uh oh. Page 3-17 of the microprocessor user manual lists when STOPL is asserted. Basically, front panel or HLT. Page 4-39 has the logic for the front panel, and that was enough to narrow it down to one instance of STOPL in the schematics, in the middle of page H-9. E39 (an 8881 aka 7439) or E33 (a 7402). I swapped those two out, repaired the trace that I busted, and viola! HLT now works. I vaguely remember it was the 8881 at fault. BTW, I'm open to suggestions as to how to even begin debugging an HP 1000 E Series. There seems to be a case holding a power supply in the way of any access to the motherboard. The machine fails to exit the 'counting' self test right after power up. I plan on writing up a better description once it gets cold and snowy out, so don't feel bad if you don't see this plea for help. Cheers! b
Re: Looking for terminals again
Yeah, unfortunately Ottawa is a bit too far for me. But if it wasn¹t I¹d be looking at that AS/400. -brian On 2016-11-11, 11:37 AM, "cctech on behalf of Mike" wrote: >On Monday, November 07, 2016 17:22:22 Brian Adams wrote: >> The interest in video terminals has been awoken again, and I am again >> searching for one. I like the look/size of the VT220s, very nice and >> compact! >> >> >> Anybody have extra DEC or IBM terminals in Toronto (Canada) ? I¹m >>probably >> somewhat interested! >> >> -brian > >Is Ottawa too far away? >I have a few AS400 (9404) and at least 1 terminal for it as well as >Volker >Craig and a few others. > > >-- >Collector of vintage computers http://www.ncf.ca/~ba600
Re: Looking for terminals again
>>> Anybody have extra DEC or IBM terminals in Toronto (Canada) ? >> Is Ottawa too far away? > >While we're speaking of Ottawa and terminals...it's neither DEC nor >IBM, but I do have a Hazeltine in Ottawa I would like to get rid of, >but I do not like the idea of just chucking it. Anyone interested? > >I think it's a 1500, but it might be a 1420. It's certainly got the >look of a 1500 in my memory. > >I don't know whether it still works. I'm pretty sure it worked last >time I tried it, but that was at least two moves ago. It _looks_ in >good shape, but I trust we all know how little that means. > >/~\ The ASCIIMouse >\ / Ribbon Campaign > X Against HTML mo...@rodents-montreal.org >/ \ Email! 7D C8 61 52 5D E7 2D 39 4E F1 31 3E E8 B3 27 4B > > > Hazeltines are nice, maybe I¹ll find one some day. -bran
Re: Macintosh Portable
Chris, I remembered seeing this post from a couple of years ago when I was looking at a Mac Portable. I ended up not buying it so I can't speak for whether this will work, but it might point in the right direction. See especially the links around the 4th post in the thread as it shows a 34 pin converter method. Regards, Brian. On Sat, Nov 26, 2016 at 5:16 AM, Alexandre Souza < alexandre.tabaj...@gmail.com> wrote: > Chris, is it a 40 pin cable? > > Enviado do meu Tele-Movel > > Em 26/11/2016 04:26, "Chris Pye" escreveu: > > > Does anyone know off hand what polarity that Mac Portable requires? I > know > > that the original was 7.5V @ 1.5A, but not sure of the polarity. > > > > I did have have a PB100 power supply that I used with mine, but > > (unfortunately) no longer have it. > > > > Also (if it still works) what is the easiest way to image the old Conner > > SCSI drive? It doesn’t appear to have a standard connector. > > > > I have googled this, but didn’t come up with anything useful. > > > > > > Thanks, > > Chris... > > > > > > > > >
Re: Local Pickup of PDP-11 Qbus Hardware, Software and Manuals
Hey there, I¹m in Toronto and have an interest in DEC / PDP hardware. I don¹t have a whole lot of space unfortunately, but I could probably help you with a BA23 unit and a terminal. If possible, would it be possible for me to visit and take a look? Not sure exactly where you¹re located. My number is (437) 345-6530 Before you ask, 437 is a new area code assigned to the Toronto area because the supply of 647 numbers is dwindling (they might even be exhausted at this point). Thanks! -Brian On 2016-12-11, 10:01 PM, "cctalk on behalf of Jerome H. Fine" wrote: >As I find that there is less and less need for my PDP-11 Qbus Hardware, >Software and Manuals, I wish to determine if there is any interest in my >local area to transfer everything using local pickup in Toronto. > >As some of you know, my interest is in RT-11 on the PDP-11 and I have >been doing it since the 1970s. If there is sufficient interest to come >by and >do a local pickup, then please send me an e-mail with a local phone number >in area code 416 or 647 (or 905 which can be called locally from 416) so >we can arrange something. > >The total volume of everything, including probably at least 30% junk, is >probably ten to twenty cubic meters (100 to 200 cubic feet), so there >will need to be some sorting done along the way. As for hardware, >the collection is mostly BA23 and BA123 boxes with PDP-11/73 >and one PDP-11/83 along with assorted Qbus boards. There are >many VT100, VT220 and VT320 terminals as well. There are many >PDP-11 manuals and DOC sets for RT-11. > >I download my e-mails rarely these days, so it may take even a few weeks >before I reply. > >Jerome Fine
Re: Unknown keyboard
I've got one in the metal case. On the back is a property tag: Teledyne Ryan Aeronautical E.T. "028400a" [<- the 'a' in pen] Gov't I.D. "MDA9729530013" Prop. of "USAF" R-5051-2-REV.5-93 Where the stuff in quotes is from a typewriter, the rest is form boilerplate. There are also some inventory control stickers from 1999 and 2001. I made a new EPROM that made it output a unique code for each key, but I'd have to dig up the notes to say anything useful. I never figured out what the daughter board was for and just removed it. b
Re: Soldapullt original vs III
On Mon, Jan 16, 2017 at 12:35 PM, Jon Elson wrote: > [...] a pump makes it work 10X better. The trick, as described in the Pace > manuals, is you heat the connection for several seconds, then apply vacuum > and orbit the tip so it moves the component pin in the plated through > hole. That orbiting gets ALL the solder out of the hole. > While I wholeheartedly agree with the tool advice and the trick, I lifted a bunch of traces on a PDP8a CPU board doing this. I don't know if it was the particular board or generally crappy manufacturing at issue here. All the HP test equipment I've fixed, most if not all from 1985+-7, survived worse punishment. I've also started reflowing and adding fresh solder before attempting to desolder. Could be better heat transfer, or just easier to suck up a larger blob. b
Re: What did computers without screens do?
On Mon, 12/14/15, Ethan Dicks wrote: > On Mon, Dec 14, 2015 at 2:05 PM, Mike wrote: >> On Dec 14, 2015, at 12:34 PM, Chuck Guzis wrote: >>> >>> The subject brought up the thought of how many display-less >>> computers we encounter every day without giving it a >>> thought. I think that probably 100 would be a safe bet. >> >> if you think about it almost everything we touch has some kind of a >> computer cycle! ! ! GREAT POINT!!! > > Even lighting... I've pulled (and reused!) 8-pin PIC microcontrollers > out of discarded emergency lighting. ... Along those lines, as I was preparing for a class I taught this quarter called Computing in the Small, I came across some interesting stats. Microchip crossed the 12 billion PICs shipped a few years ago and were running at nearly a billion a year then. ARM holdings quotes over 50 billion ARMs shipped. They estimate that about 60% of the Earth's population has daily contact with a device containing an ARM. That's not too far behind the 64% who have running water. And not all that long ago the 8051 was the most fabbed ISA in the world. The bottom line is that computers involving humans interacting through keyboards, mice, and screens are really just a niche in the computing world. Embedded systems are the predominant class of computing systems. Or to twist a line from Shakespeare, There's more in the universe of computing than is dreamt of in the PC philosophy. BLS
Re: [SPOILERS] Re: Targeting Computers in X wing fighters.
On Thu, 12/31/15, Fred Cisin wrote: > One quick [non-spoiler?] question: Is it a remake? Or is it > another in the "series"? (if so, earlier? later?) It's in the series, specifically Episode 7, taking place sometime after Revenge of the Jedi. BLS
Re: TU58 problems
On Sat, 1/16/16, tony duell wrote: > I tried a RS232 analyser between the TU58 and the VAX. Very odd. Either > my RS232 anaylser drops 00 bytes or the TU58 sets short result packets. The > meaningful bytes (response code, etc) are there, but things like the sequence > number are not. Odd... > > Does anyone have any sensible ideas as to what to try next. At the moment > I have no idea if it's the tape, heads, roller or what If it were me, I'd start by setting up some tests to determine what exactly the protocol analyzer is doing. If it really is dropping 0 bytes, then I'd probably hack up a home grown capture using a couple of serial ports. If the controller and the VAX really are speaking the right protocol to each other, then it's time to worry about the correctness of the data. On the other hand, if the controller really is not sending all the bytes it should, I'd check for bit rot in the EPROM. BLS
Re: PDP-11/03, LSI-11 KEV11-C CIS option
On Sat, 1/30/16, Eric Smith wrote: > Does anyone have a PDP-11/03 or LSI-11 with the KEV11-C CIS > (Commercial Instruction Set) option? It may have also been known as > DIS (Dibol Instruction Set). It apparently consists of two microcode > ROM chips (MICROMs), 23-004B5 and 23-005B5. Eric, It turns out my quad height LSI-11 card has the 23-004B5 and 23-005B5 chips on it. The full markings are: DEC 3025D 23-004B5 8030 B and DEC 3026 D (or maybe B) 23-005B5 8015 C I'll be glad to loan them to you for the good of the community and history. BLS
Re: XH558 - was Re: using new technology etc
On Fri, 6/19/15, William Donzelli wrote: > DEC architecture machines were in the serious minority when it came to > military computers in combat service. It turns out that was partly by design. Recently I was reading an interview with Ken Olsen that I hadn't seen before. In it he was saying that particularly in the early days DEC made a point of avoiding government, especially military, contracts. All of the special accounting and record keeping that was required was more trouble than it was worth. BLS
Re: Where to get a Vax or microvax
> they are known to multiply on their own... Clearly someone who has one (or better more) 780s (or 730s) needs to start breeding them for the rest of us. I guess to be fair I should offer that if anyone wants a 3600 and they can reproduce asexually, I'll see if I can breed the one I just got. :) BLS
Re: Where to get a Vax or microvax
On Tue, 6/30/15, Vincent Slyngstad wrote: > > > I'll see if I can breed the one I just got. :) > > Do *not* post pictures. I'm still trying to forget seeing > the ones from that other guy. Don't worry. I don't have any plans to cross breed it with myself. Besides I doubt VMS would run very well on a machine that shared any of my absent minded tendencies. BLS
Re: out-of-mainstream minis
> The problems revolve around the fact that instructions cannot be > properly restarted on the 68000. Not enough context is saved. This in > turn means you cannot do demand paging, a that will cause a memory > exception trap, from which you cannot recover. True, but IIRC the OP was talking about a system that ran 7th Edition UNIX, and 7th Edition didn't do demand paging. As long as you treat it more like a big PDP-11 rather than a small VAX, you can write a perfectly usable OS for a straight 68000. Remember that it's only a problem on bus error and address error interrupts. External interrupts, like a clock interrupt used for time sharing, don't get handled until after the current instruction is complete. Therefore, there's no need for instruction restarting. It was the extension of the exception stack frame in the 68010 for the group 0 exceptions that made it practical to support demand loading for the full instruction set. The stack frames for group 1 and 2 exceptions didn't change substantially. > Also, there is no MMU from Motorola for the 68000, so you would > have to design your own. There was the 68451, but you rarely saw those in the wild. Not having ever had to make the design decision of whether to use one, I can't really say whether the lack of design-in was primarily a function of cost or of speed. As far as designing your own goes, that's quite easy to do as long as you're not trying to do a large number of small pages with the capacity to recover from a page fault. Simple relocation and protection with a modest number of pages can be done with just a handful of latches and multiplexers. I recently did a small MMU for a 6809 that mapped 128K of physical memory into the lower 48K of the address space in the form of mapping 8-16K pages into 3-16K page frames. It just took 9 otherwise unused pins on a parallel port and a pair of 74153s. Things don't start getting particularly complicated until you start talking about putting page tables in main memory and requiring a TLB. > In addition, there is also a potential privilege escalation problem with > the 68K if I remember right. You always have full access to the > whole processor status word in that CPU. I can't remember what > the scope of that issue is. It might only be information leak, or it > might be that you can elevate yourself as well. It's only a leak. The move to sr and other sr modifying instructions were privileged on all members of the family. However, the move from sr was not privileged in the 68000, but was on the 68010. Plus what got leaked didn't amount to much. The system byte of the status register only had the interrupt mask, the supervisor state bit and the trace mode bit. BLS
Re: what IBM system is this?
On Sat, 7/4/15, Chuck Guzis wrote: >> found in the archives of CERN, this image is beautiful! but what IBM >> system is this. >> >> https://cds.cern.ch/record/1847692 > > I don't believe you're looking at a single system. Note the banks of > CDC 844 disk drives in the foreground (you can even make out the > "Control Data" logo. Definitely multiple systems. There's a VAX in the upper right hand corner that looks downright tiny compared to the rest of the iron. BLS
Re: out-of-mainstream minis
> Ok. I didn't know it was some version of 7th ed. I didn't even know that > managed to get much beyond the PDP-11. At least that's the way I read the original message. And there were a number of re-implementations/clones of 7th ed. > Anyway, it's sad, because the PDP-11 hardware can easily > handle demand paged memory. It's just that no one really > found it worth the effort to implement it when you only have > 8 pages, and have way more physical memory than the > virtual memory space can address. It turns out that at one time, there was an experimental version of UNIX at the labs that did do demand paging on an 11. They didn't continue that line of development because it didn't end up giving any significant benefits but ran slower than a swapping based approach. >> It's only a leak. ... > > Thanks. I was trying to remember which, but my brain failed me. You're welcome. I didn't remember for sure either, so I had to look it up. BLS
PDP-8 GTF question
I need to pick the brains of some PDP-8 experts. According to the references I can find, especially the Small Computer Handbook, the GTF instruction should include the M837 interrupt inhibit bit in AC3. However, maindec 8E-D1HA test 05 seems to depend on this not being true. Running the GTF instruction on my 8/M when the inhibit FF is set results in a 0 in AC3. Furthermore, both simh and Doug Jones' emulator omit the interrupt inhibit bit in the GTF instruction. In fact Dr Jones' emulator has a /*?*/ comment in the code. Does anyone know the origin of this discrepancy? Was the behavior the same on pre-Omnibus versions of the 8, or did earlier address extensions include that bit in the GTF result? I came across this oddity in the course of writing an emulator of my own, and I'd like understand what's going on here a little deeper than "ignore the documentation, and make it work like the real hardware." Thanks in advance, BLS
Re: PDP-8 GTF question
On Mon, 7/27/15, Vincent Slyngstad wrote: > > I need to pick the brains of some PDP-8 experts. According to > > the references I can find, especially the Small Computer Handbook, > > the GTF instruction should include the M837 interrupt inhibit bit > > in AC3. > > I can see where this happens in the M837 schematic (E50), > whenever DF is gated to AC9-11. That, in turn, seems to > be for GTF or RIB. Interesting. By the time I got this far last night, I decided to put off looking at the schematics to today. Thanks for the pointer. > > However, maindec 8E-D1HA test 05 seems to depend > > on this not being true. > > Can you tell us where you are seeing this? A pointer to the > copy of the diagnostic you're using, and perhaps an address? > There seem to be several GTF tests, if > http://svn.so-much-stuff.com/svn/trunk/pdp8/src/maindec/8e/d1ha-d.pdf > matches what you are running. It does indeed. In particular, in Test 05 on Page 35 of that PDF, at address 2342, we load the AC with 5200, do an RTF, set the AC to , and then do a GTF and compare the result to 5200. Although AC3 isn't set when executing the RTF instruction, one of the effects of the RTF is to always set the interrupt inhibit. So in my original code, the GTF resulted in a 5600, rather than a 5200. > > Running the GTF instruction on my 8/M > > when the inhibit FF is set results in a 0 in AC3. > > Curiouser. Indeed. In trying to sort this out, I single stepped through this part of the the maindec on my my actual machine making particular note of the inhibit shown in the "no int" indicator in the status switch setting. It does get set by the RTF, but after the GTF, the accumulator has 5200 in it. > I don't believe that the pre-Omnibus memory extensions > implement GTF. Good point. As I was about to head to bed last night, I took a look in the '67 small computer handbook and noticed that the same instruction (6004) was used for a A/D converter in the straight 8. BLS
Re: PDP-8 GTF question
> To Stuart - are you sure your code does it right. Could you post it? That's kind of what got me here. I was running the 8E-D1HA maindec on my emulator and it was failing at that point. My initial reaction was that I was misinterpreting the RTF behavior and that perhaps it wasn't setting the interrupt inhibit as I had thought. So I ran the diag on the real thing and single stepped through that part. Sure enough the RTF does set it, but GTF seems to not report it. That's when I got confused enough to break down and look at other people's code :) Here's my code for both the RTF and GTF instructions. Caveat: it's in MCPL, but it should be close enough to C that it'll be recognizable what's going on: : 0, 0, 4 =>// GTF ac := link << 11 | irq() << 9 | ie << 7 | sf // ac := link << 11 | irq() << 9 | ii << 8 | ie << 7 | sf : 0, 0, 5 =>// RTF ie := 1 ii := 1 link := ac >> 11 ub := (ac >> 6) & #o1 ib := (ac >> 3) & #o7 df := ac & #o7 The line that's commented out on the GTF is the original version I had where I did include the interrupt inhibit. For comparison, here's the version in simh: case 4: /* GTF */ LAC = (LAC & 01) | ((LAC & 01) >> 1) | (gtf << 10) | (((int_req & INT_ALL) != 0) << 9) | (((int_req & INT_ION) != 0) << 7) | SF; break; case 5: /* RTF */ gtf = ((LAC & 02000) >> 10); UB = (LAC & 0100) >> 6; IB = (LAC & 0070) << 9; DF = (LAC & 0007) << 12; LAC = ((LAC & 04000) << 1) | iot_data; int_req = (int_req | INT_ION) & ~INT_NO_CIF_PENDING; break; and the one in Doug Jones' emulator: case 04: /* GTF */ ac = (link >> 1) /* bit 0 */ #ifdef KE8E | (gt?) /* bit 1 */ #endif | ((irq > 0) << 9) /* bit 2 */ #ifdef KM8E | (0)/*?*/ /* bit 3 */ #endif | (enab << 7) /* bit 4 */ #ifdef KM8E | sf/* bit 5-11 */ #endif ; break; case 05: /* RTF */ link = (ac<<1)& 01; /* bit 0 */ #ifdef KE8E gt = ? /* bit 1 */ #endif /* nothing */ /* bit 2 */ /* nothing */ /* bit 3 */ enab = 1; /* bit 4 */ #ifdef KM8E ub = (ac & 00100) >> 6; /* bit 5 */ ib = (ac & 00070) << 9; /* bit 6-8 */ dfr = (ac & 7) << 12;/* bit 9-11 */ #endif /* disable interrupts until branch */ enab_rtf = 0; break; BLS
Re: PDP-8 GTF question
> I can see where this happens in the M837 schematic (E50), > whenever DF is gated to AC9-11. That, in turn, seems to > be for GTF or RIB. I wonder if there are differences in different versions of the schematics. If I'm reading the versions I got from bitsavers correctly, on E50, Pins 2, 5, 11, and 14 are gated on to DATA3, 9, 10, and 11 by a low on Pin 9. It looks like Pin 9 does identify the RIB and GTF instructions. But on this version, it looks like Pin 2 is pulled high through R8. The interrupt inhibit signal does come into Pin 1 which is gated onto DATA3 by a low on Pin 7, and it's controlled by the Omnibus IND signals for getting info to the front panel. So it appears that these versions of the drawings agree with the maindec and the observed behavior rather than the documentation. The versions I'm looking at appear to be for the Revs D and E. Are the drawings you have that agree with the documentation for an earlier rev, perhaps? BLS
Re: Classic programming
On Fri, 8/7/15, Eric Christopherson wrote: > Is there a subset of this group for people who like to program in > languages or language implementations or libraries that are no longer > in common mainstream use? Or other groups for such a thing? Funny you should mention that. I just recently wrote a PDP-8 simulator in MCPL. (It boots OS/8 as of about a week and a half ago). MCPL is a language developed by Martin Richards who originated BCPL (which inspired Thompson's B which of course Ritchie developed into C). I also spend some time here and there with Forth on a homebrew 6809 system. So the answer is yes, there are definitely people here who enjoy older languages. BLS
Re: Classic programming
On Fri, 8/7/15, Eric Christopherson wrote: > To Brian L. Stuart: What separates MCPL from CPL and BCPL? > I'm not finding much about it, although it looks like it has the benefit of > nice pattern matching. The pattern matching mechanism was, I think, the big thing he was experimenting with when he created it. He describes it as arising from his experience developing BCPL combined with teaching ML, C, and Prolog. When writing the simulator, it felt like there were also elements of similarity to AWK. I find I'm quite liking it. > Ah... text editors are another big interest of mine. That's very cool. > I should check TECO out some day. Back when I was an undergrad, my roommates and I were TAs for the freshman programming course. We had several students who accidentally deleted their source file but still had their listing file. So one of my roommates wrote a set of TECO macros that converted the listing file back into the original FORTRAN source. Fun stuff. BLS
RE: Classic programming
On Sat, 8/8/15, Kip Koon wrote: > I have often wondered what the inspiration for the C Language was. BCPL -> > MCPL -> B -> c, quite an interesting list of languages. Kip, As Noel mentioned, MCPL wasn't part of the evolution; it actually is pretty recent compared to the other three. > I had heard of B, but not BCPL and MCPL. Are there any write-ups, > manuals or articles on those three languages still around? Yes. There are copies of several different generations of BCPL reference manuals floating around online. I've come across at least three, not including the material in his current distribution of it: basically the original one by Richards, one by Gardner, and one done by XEROX. It's been a surprisingly widely used language for one that is so little known. The basic story is that Cambridge began developing a language calling it the Cambridge Programming Language. They joined forced with London University who was also working on language development and changed the name to Combined Programming Language. Richards defined a subset of the language with the intent that it be the implementation language for a CPL compiler and described it in his dissertation at Cambridge in '66. The following year he was at MIT and did the first implementation of this Basic CPL, or BCPL. This was at the same time as when the Multics project was in full force and Bell Labs was involved. If I'm not mistaken, there was a version of BCPL that ran on Multics, and I am guessing that's where Ken was exposed to it. When Bell Labs pulled out of Multics and Ken started playing around with the now famous "little used PDP-7" he created a language for it that was based on BCPL but I gather somewhat smaller because of the more limited resources on the PDP-7. That was B. Then Dennis decided to add types to B and the result was C. As near as I can tell, MCPL was something Richards was playing around with primarily about 10 years ago. I'm not sure, but from what I can tell, his most recent work has been on BCPL rather than MCPL, though as I mentioned, I'm finding I really like MCPL. Richards' pages for both languages are here: http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/users/mr/BCPL.html http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/users/mr/MCPL.html Among the resources he has there is a rather extensive document on running BCPL on the Raspberry Pi. http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/users/mr/bcpl4raspi.pdf > Forth running on a homebrew 6809 system? How interesting! Yeah, it started as a weekend diversion doing a paper design of a 6809 SBC, and I ended up doing a couple turns of the boards and have a few lying around I play with from time to time. One of them is dedicated to running a TU-58 emulator for one of my LSI-11s. > I'd like > to find out the details about your homebrew 6809 system. I've got a rather skeletal collection of material on it here: http://www.cs.drexel.edu/~bls96/6809sbc/ > I'm working on a Kipper SBC that is based on Grant's > Simple6809 6 Chip 6809 Computer that I'm in the middle of > troubleshooting and any ideas to make this Kipper SBC better > is most appreciated. The main things that you might find interesting here relative to Grant's are the inclusion of a microSD card for storage, a design and layout that allows for either a 6809 or 6809E (with appropriate jumpering), and a little MMU for using 128KB of memory mapped into the lower 48KB space in pages of 16KB. The whole thing ends up being 11 (or 12 if you're running on an E) chips: 1 - 6809 processor 1 - 6821 parallel interface 1 - 16550 UART 1 - MAX232 RS232 level converter 1 - 2864 EEPROM 1 - 628128 128KB static RAM 1 - 7404 2 - 74138 2 - 74153 The '138s are for address decoding as you'd expect. The '153s are the MMU. If you do get some material up on your system, I'd love to look at it. BLS
Re: RS-232 Tx / Rx monitoring LEDs?
On Thu, 8/20/15, Mouse wrote: > Maybe _rated_ current, but, even there, I don't think so (my TTL > doc hasn't been unpacked yet, or I'd go check, but I'm fairly sure > they are generally specced to sink more current to GND > than source from Vcc). It so happens I have a TTL handbook to hand at the moment. From the 1985 TI TTL data book: Ioh Iol 7400 -0.4 16 74H00 -0.5 20 74LS00 -0.4 8 74S00 -1 20 all in mA. So as rated, TTL devices can sink a solid order of magnitude more current than they can source. BLS
Re: More on manuals plus rescue
On Thu, 8/20/15, Fred Cisin wrote: > On Thu, 20 Aug 2015, Mouse wrote: > > Copyright violation is not theft. (That doesn't make it OK. I just > > get so sick of people tossing around emotionally loaded words like > > "theft" and "stealing" when discussing copyright violation I feel it > > incumbent on me to point out that they are not accurate.) > > So, "PIRACY" isn't accurate terminology? :-) Sure, if one is taking a physical copy without permission (with or without copyright protection) on the high seas. Otherwise, not so much... BLS
Re: internet blocking problem ?
On Thu, 9/10/15, Christian Gauger-Cosgrove wrote: > From a friend of mine on RoadRunner (I won't say where, but in the USA > of course); their trace dies as it leaves the Cogent Communications > network (since it bounces through a few of their servers before dying). I'm seeing the same behavior from Verizon-provided service. BLS
Re: strangest systems I've sent email from
On Mon, 4/25/16, Swift Griggs wrote: > So, the point is that the masses > don't often pick "great" languages to fixate on. IMHO, Just > because I point that out, doesn't make me "foolish, ignorant, narrow > minded, or short-sighted" I usually try to stay out of such discussions, but I think it's important to draw some distinctions here. First, it's not pointing out which languages/techniques are popular that's narrow- minded and short-sighted. It's the view that popularity and "commercial viability" is the primary consideration of value in education that's narrow-minded and short-sighted. Second, it's the perspective that's narrow-minded and short-sighted, not the person who expresses that perspective. Many people fail to appreciate the distinction between training and education and as a result see the primary purpose of the university to be job preparation. That so many people misunderstand the purpose of the university isn't a reflection on their individual intelligence or priorities. It's a reflection on the misplaced priorities of the secondary education system and of society as a whole. It's the same misplaced priorities that lead so many students to be so obsessed by the most meaningless part of the system: grades. BLS
Re: strangest systems I've sent email from
On Mon, 4/25/16, Swift Griggs wrote: >The idea is somewhat that if students learn a > "good" language that'll teach them some meta-structure that will help them > later. Certainly a lot of people do view it that way, but it's not what I was getting at or how I see it. Based on my experience, the virtues of any single language are pretty much irrelevant. What's vitally important is that the student emerge with a deep understanding of how a variety of languages actually work, how they're processed and how the computer executes code written in them. If you have that deep understanding with a sampling of languages that represent some of the variety of techniques and paradigms (for lack of a better term), then you'll be able to pick up and adapt to most any language that comes along. To tell you the truth, I'm not very likely to hire anyone who isn't conversant with at least half a dozen different languages. To summarize, my focus isn't on the skills of any particular lanugage; it's on the understanding of the fundamental concepts, principles, techniques, and mechanisms that make up the world of computing. >Then, let me say that the *idea* that I was attacking Pascal via > Oberon rather than the Ivory Tower Academics is ridiculous. I did understand the point in your first message to be anit-"Ivory Tower Academics." However, my point it is that viewing the people you have identified as such and dismissing their experience and expertise is a narrow-minded and short-sighted perspective. > Your point might be > logically valid, but ask a 23 year old if they care when they can't get a > job after giving the uni a quarter million bucks and 4-5 years of time > they spent being "educated" rather than "trained". It's interesting that you pick that age as the example. My daughter is 23. For her, the undergraduate experience wasn't about a job at all. It was about exploring the intellectual world and (to borrow from Thoreau) sucking the marrow out of that life. In the interest of full disclosure, however, I should point out that she's not typical of most college students (although I wish more were like her). She did grow up in a household that averages more than two degrees per person and she did triple major in her four undergrad years. (A proud daddy can't help but brag a little. :) ) > The underlying point I was making is that schools don't always > "train" a person ... I apologize if I misinterpret, but I also detect the suggestion that they are supposed to. I don't disagree that they don't train, but I do disagree that's what their purpose is. I'm not suggesting that some degree of training coming along with the education is a bad thing. However, I'm saying that's not the primary purpose of the university. > and that's what I wanted and actually needed. There seems to be an implication here of an XOR when I look for an AND. In particular, if I have a candidate sitting across the interview desk from me, I'm not interested unless they have both education and training. I expect the education to come from a formal environment where people of long experience can help the student understand many perspectives. I expect the training to come from self-directed experience. Unless a candidate shows both the ability to work in a rigorous intellectual manner and the self motivation to go beyond what they've been given, I'm not interested. > all but one of the profs had > turned off their brains in 1986 and it was the 90's. It's certainly true that does happen both in academics and in industry. However, more often than not, the ideas that were seen as "new" in the '80s, '90s, '00s, and '10s, are really ideas that the Computer Science community saw, studied, understood, etc in the '50s, '60s, and '70s. So what appears to be out of touch is often really a broader perspective and one worth understanding and learning from. > True. I wonder though, do you believe that teaching a > language with almost zero commercial value is justified > in the name of education because of it's superior "meta" > qualities ? I'm not sure I can answer the question as you've posed it. As I said, I tend to consider the choice of any single language to be mostly irrelevant. I'm much more interested in the neural pathways that the student builds as a result of the experience of coming to understand a large set of languages. As it turns out, I am currently involved with a restructuring of the introductory programming sequence at one university. Our choice of languages was driven by both pedagogical and vocational considerations. Were our environment different such that we should have looked at only one or the other, then we would have chosen differently. Regardless of what we did pick, we never intended for the freshman languages to be the only languages our students knew before graduation. No one or two languages will give the breadth and depth needed pedagogically. Neither will any one or two languages suffi
Re: strangest systems I've sent email from
On Wed, 4/27/16, Liam Proven wrote: > ... with a few weirdos saying that 6809 was better than > ... and a few weirdos maintained that Forth was better. > ... while the weirdoes use FreeBSD. I've never been more proud to be classified as a weirdo :) > The efforts to fix and improve Unix -- Plan 9, Inferno -- forgotten. Plan 9 and Inferno are still around. There are quite a few of us who still use them on a regular basis. In fact, the Plan 9 updates for the new Pi 3 should be out very soon, and I have a student currently working on a port of Plan 9 to the Allwinner A20 found in the Banana Pi and several of the low-end tablets. > That makes me despair. I feel much the same way, but it leads me to a little different place. While I'll probably never be there entirely, I am now at a point where I am giving serious thought to only running software I write myself. For example, the file system I run on my home file server (a Plan 9 box) is something I wrote myself. The version of Scheme I use on Inferno is one I wrote, etc. The truth is if you're willing to be one of the weirdos, there are still some pretty interesting places to be in the computing world. There are still interesting languages both old and new to learn. (I had a blast last summer working with MCPL, an experimental offshoot of BCPL, and the ENIAC simulator I'm developing is written in Go.) I find life to be much more enjoyable and my blood pressure to be much lower as long as I steer away from anything that's mainstream or popular. BLS
Re: The Ivory Tower saga was Re: strangest systems I've sent email
On Wed, 4/27/16, Sean Conner wrote: > > The bracketed note in the second paragraph of content on > > http://www.catb.org/jargon/html/personality.html is exactly the sort of > > thing I'm talking about here; ESR taught himself TeX by the simple > > expedient of reading the TeXBook. > > You mean not everybody does this? Alas, no, but that's really the point I was getting at with the comment about knowing multiple languages. It wasn't about the languages themselves or what value the variety itself brings. I pulled the half dozen number out of the air just because if I look back over any 6 to 12 month period of my career, I've used a good half dozen during that period. What's important to me isn't the effect on the candidate's programming; it's the independence, self-motivation, and curiosity that learning many languages represents. I also like to see evidence that the candidate recognizes that no skilled artisan's toolbox contains only a single tool. My biggest complaint about new grads is the view that all the world's a nail, because the only tool in their toolbox is a hammer. BLS
Re: Calling all typographers
On Thu, 4/28/16, Rod Smallwood wrote: > Every fancy curve there is but not a straight > forward line and circle method of creating lower case > characters I'm not sure if you count it as straightforward, but I'd suggest METAFONT. Straight lines are certainly straightforward. Circles are a little more fun, but once you get the hang of the math, most any curve is pretty easy to create. BLS
Re: strangest systems I've sent email from
On Thu, 4/28/16, Liam Proven wrote: > Oh, yes, indeed! I have a Plan 9 VM, and I intend to try it on my Pi. > But it's had relatively little impact on mainstream Unix. I would agree, given the qualification "relatively." There are several things that have made their way from the late research UNIX editions and Plan 9 to the mainstream UNIX world. The unfortunate part is that they're little bits and pieces and as a result miss the major advantages by not bringing in the big picture. For example, the proc file system that most UNIXs have today was originally in either 9th or 10th edition and is a central part of the design of Plan 9. The _clone() system call that now underlies good old fork() in Linux is basically the Plan 9 rfork() call. Several UNIXs are starting to graft in per-process name spaces. There are also a number of research systems that are bringing in a lot of Plan 9 influence. The only one whose name comes to mind at the moment, though, is Akaros. BLS
Re: Calling all typographers
On Thu, 4/28/16, Rod Smallwood wrote: > On 28/04/2016 16:32, Jon Elson wrote: >> Have you tried MetaFont? I've never actually created a font with it, >> just used it automatically within the TeX environment. But, there is >> a human-readable language that defines the characters. > > I haven't where would I find it? It should be part of pretty much any TeX installation. I don't know if anyone has packaged it up independently of TeX though. If you don't already have TeX installed, I'll warn you that the mainstream TeX distributions are pretty huge. There's a build-from-source distribution called kerTeX that I use. It's much closer to Knuth's original packaging and I find to be quite a bit more managable. If all you need is METAFONT, then that might be a nice way to go. BLS
Re: strangest systems I've sent email from
On Thu, 4/28/16, Rod Smallwood wrote: > How about morse by a key made in 1898 . Then cw to ascii serial > converter and normal program input after that. I've often thought of doing that! Though my key dates from more like the '40s or '50s. I see a weekend Raspberry Pi hack in my future... BLS
Plan9 and Inferno (was Re: strangest systems I've sent email from)
On Thu, 4/28/16, Liam Proven wrote: >>> The efforts to fix and improve Unix -- Plan 9, Inferno -- forgotten. > > It is, true, but it's a sideline now. And the steps made by Inferno > seem to have had even less impact. I'd like to see the 2 merged back > into 1. Actually, it's best not to think of Inferno as a successor to Plan 9, but as an offshoot. The real story has more to do with Lucent internal dynamics than to do with attempting to develop a better research platform. Plan 9 has always been a good platform for research, and the fact that it's the most pleasant development environment I've ever used is a nice plus. However, Inferno was created to be a platform for products. The Inferno kernel was basically forked from the 2nd Edition Plan9 kernel, and naturally there are some places that differ from the current 4th Edition Plan 9 kernel. However, a number of the differences have been resolved over the years, and the same guy does most of the maintenance of the compiler suite that's used for native Inferno builds and for Plan 9. Although you usually can't just drop driver code from one kernel into the other, the differences are not so great as to make the port difficult. So both still exist and both still get some development as people who care decide to make changes, but they've never really been in a position to merge. And BTW, if you like the objectives of the Limbo language in Inferno, you'll find a lot of the ideas and lessons learned from it in Go. After all, Rob Pike and Ken Thompson were two of the main people behind Go and, of course, they had been at the labs, primarily working on Plan 9, before moving to Google. BLS
Re: PDP-11/94-E
On Wed, 6/1/16, Rod Smallwood wrote: > On 01/06/2016 18:57, Charles Anthony wrote: > > On Wed, Jun 1, 2016 at 10:49 AM, Rod Smallwood > > wrote: > > > Apart from a personal 1202 alarm > > > > I have a habit of coding "can't happen" error checks with 1201 or 1202 > > error numbers. > > You may be close .. Do you know why you do that? > > Here's a clue "Garmin" You had me really confused there for a moment. I thought you were talking about the company that makes navigational devices at first and couldn't for the life of me figure out what they had to do with it. Obviously, I had the wrong Garmin... But "personal 1202 alarm" is the funniest thing I've seen all day. I'm going to have to start using that expression. My students won't have a clue what I'm talking about. Hopefully it'll be a good way to educate them a bit. BLS
Re: PDP-11/94-E
On Wed, 6/1/16, Rod Smallwood wrote: > On 01/06/2016 19:34, Brian L. Stuart wrote: >> On Wed, 6/1/16, Rod Smallwood wrote: >>> On 01/06/2016 18:57, Charles Anthony wrote: >>>> On Wed, Jun 1, 2016 at 10:49 AM, Rod Smallwood >>>> wrote: >>>>> Apart from a personal 1202 alarm >>>> I have a habit of coding "can't happen" error checks with 1201 or 1202 >>>> error numbers. >>> You may be close .. Do you know why you do that? >>> >>> Here's a clue "Garmin" >> >> You had me really confused there for a moment. I thought you were talking >> about the company that makes navigational devices at first and couldn't >> for the life of me figure out what they had to do with it. Obviously, I had >> the >> wrong Garmin... >> >> But "personal 1202 alarm" is the funniest thing I've seen all day. I'm going >> to have to start using that expression. My students won't have a clue what >> I'm talking about. Hopefully it'll be a good way to educate them a bit. >> > OK so answer this how many seconds were left and who wore a different > waistcoat every time? The different waistcoat (or vest on this side of the pond) was Gene Kranz's habit. I'd have to cheat and look up the number of seconds. My vague recollection is about 15, but that memory seems to have suffered from bit rot. My impression though is that Armstrong was determined to put that thing down no matter what and the main role of the fuel level was when to stop looking and take the best spot he could find. BLS
Re: Quadra 660AV what's with the "PowerPC" label?
On Thu, 6/16/16, Sean Conner wrote: > It was thus said that the Great Liam Proven once stated: > > And Plan 9 went one better, and (mostly) eliminated that nasty old > > unsafe mess, C, and it eliminated native binaries and brought > > platform-neutral binaries to the game. > > Um ... what? Plan 9 is written in C. And they still use binaries, just > fat binaries (that is, the binary contains multiple code and data segments > for each supported architecture0). I suspect he was referring to Inferno when talking about the byte code executables. But Plan 9 doesn't use fat binaries. It keeps each architecture's binaries in a directory named for the architecture. Then one uses the union mounts to build a /bin that has the appropriate mix of binaries and shell scripts for the machine hosting that process. BLS
[cctalk] (no subject)
> > The one I haven't found yet is: f29bdg00.boo The Google suggests: http://www.edm2.com/index.php/Common_User_Access which has working links to f29al000.boo and f29bdg00.boo on IBM servers I've done a lot of work converting technical documentation archives from DCF and Bookmaster to Word and XML, but always worked from source, never .BOO.
[cctalk] Re: (no subject)
> > Someone in IBM must know, I suppose. More likely, someone in IBM must have known. But I would hazard a guess that almost everyone who had direct internal knowledge of DCF, GML/Bookmaster, and the BOO format has already retired. Charles Goldfarb was born in 1939 brian
PIC programmer
Hi all, I have, surprisingly, a non IBM 1130 related issue to ask about. I have a PIC16C55A-04/P 28 pin plastic MPU that I would like to reproduce --- but don't have a PIC debugger on hand and in fact don't know whether or not the existing device is code protected. (If it's code protected, then the path forward is going to be very different). Does anyone have the ability to check one of the chips that I have here is code protected so I can see if I should pursue this any further? Located in the San Francisco Bay Area but can mail a sample chip. Thanks! Brian
ENIAC Simulator
Unfortunately, I won't be able to make it to VCFMW this year. (Those of you who don't know me are probably thinking "So what?" Those who do are probably split between "Aww, that's too bad" and "Good; he's a pain in the...") In lieu of my "sparkling personality" I'm making available the ENIAC simulator I would have exhibited had I committed to coming early enough to reserve a table. If you attended VCFSE or VCFE this year, you may have seen an early version of the simulator. It's now at a beta testable level of operation. The files you'll want to download and some minimal instructions for use are at: http://cs.drexel.edu/~bls96/eniac/eniac.html It's written in Go, so you should be able to compile it on a variety of platforms. For those not wanting to compile it themselves, I've included binaries for several options including Linux/amd64, Linux/arm, FreeBSD/amd64, FreeBSD/i386, MacOS/amd64, and Win/amd64. The Windows version has not been tested at all, and only minimal testing has been done on the Mac version. You'll also need TCL/Tk installed to get the wish program available as used by the GUI. Suggestions, comments, criticisms, and questions are welcome, but it will probably be a few weeks before I'll be able to make time to do anything about them. Enjoy. BLS
ISO Figure from ENIAC Technical Manual
I know this is a very long shot, but I'm looking for Figure 6-13 from the Part I Technical Manual on the ENIAC by Adele Goldstine. In the table of tables at the front of the manual, this table is one of three listed as "in an envelope attached to the back cover." Neither the scan on archive.org, nor the printed manual from Periscope Film, appear to include these tables. Does anyone by any chance know where a scan of any of those three tables (6-13, 7-4, and 8-13) might exist? Thanks in advance, BLS
ISO figure from ENIAC Technical Manual
ISO Table from ENIAC Technical Manual
I know this is a very long shot, but I'm looking for Table 6-13 from the ENIAC Technical Manual Part 1 by Adele Goldstine. In the table of tables at the front of the manual, it's listed as being "in an envelope attached to the back cover." Neither the scan on archive.org nor the printed copy from Periscope Film (which appears to be produced from the scan on archive.org) appear to have this table. Does anyone know where a scan of this table might exist? Thanks in advance, BLS
Re: Unknown DEC indicator panel
On Tue, 11/1/16, Jon Elson wrote: > Also, some IBM publications (where I'm more > familiar with their models) had some photos > of machines that probably were in-house > prototypes that were quite different than the > production version. Along the same lines, the picture in the original PDP-8 manual was of a machine that had a front panel that looked more like the PDP-5 panel than the one shipped on the 8s. Given how close the machines were in architecture, it wouldn't be surprising for a prototype. As it turns out, I saw the picture in the manual a few years before I ever saw a real straight-8. To this day, the real straight-8s look a little "wrong" to me. BLS
Re: Transporting an LGP-30
On Thu, 12/29/16, Noel Chiappa wrote: > Interesting factoid about the Bendix G-15: it was designed with the help of > one of the ACE people (Harry Huskey), and is basically a re-packaged ACE with > drum instead of delay lines. There's an interesting article by Huskey himself > in "Alan Turing's ACE" (by Jack Copeland) which discusses the G-15. Indeed. Huskey is probably one of the most influential, least known early pioneers. He was one of the engineers on the ENIAC, having designed the card reader and punch interface units. He spent some time at NPL and was one of the prime pushers behind the idea of building a pilot version of the ACE. When he returned to the US, he designed both the SWAC and the G-15. Later he was on the faculty at UC Berkeley where three of his advisees were Niklaus Wirth, Ken Thompson, and Butler Lampson. And he turned 100 early in 2016. BLS
Re: LGP-30 Memory Drum Update
On Tue, 1/3/17, Cory Heisterkamp wrote: > What I’m wondering is if anyone is familiar with the setup/adjustment > procedure for getting the heads set correctly. There *might* be a couple of > unused tracks I can relocate heads to, but my thought is that if half a > dozen heads were already in contact, then the rest may be perilously close > as well (swelled drum?). My odds of setting 71 heads perfectly on a 50 year > old worn drum is…well…not great. A while back I read a procedure (probably in reference to the G-15). Quite frankly, it scared me a little, but I'll pass it on. The idea is to use sound. The tech would use a screwdriver as a sounding bar between the casing and his ear. Then the head was tightened down until you could just hear it start to brush. I don't remember for sure, but I'd have to think that you would then back off just enough for the brushing sound to stop. I don't recall whether the article said that this was done with the motor running or the drum was being turned by hand, but if it were my machine, I'd set the heads turning the drum slowly by hand and then check for any brushing sound when the motor comes up. Whether or not the drum is restorable, I'd still plan on building a drum simulator. That way you can get the rest of the machine up and running without stressing or depending on the drum too much. Plus if the drum does turn out to be unrestorable, you'll still be able to run the rest of the machine. As to how to approach the simulator, I would have to think a C.H.I.P. or a Pi would have plenty of horsepower, especially if you drop Linux and either run on the bare metal or as an in-kernel driver in something lighter weight. BLS
Re: [cctalk-requ...@classiccmp.org: confirm 38290c8a992491eda604beff5a06ff20cd7e85f5]
On Tue, 1/31/17, geneb wrote: > On Tue, 31 Jan 2017, Alfred M. Szmidt wrote: >> Can someone please fix the mailing list software? This has been >> reported every once in a while by a bunch of people for over ten >> years. > > Bounces aren't caused by the mailing list, they're caused by the > destination mail server. What I've been wondering for a while is the span of time over which the bounces are counted. I can understand shutting a subscriber off for getting 10 bounces in as many minutes. On the other hand if those 10 bounces are spread over two months, it seems rather severe. BLS
Re: Ted Kaczynski was RIGHT!
On Wed, 2/15/17, jim stephens wrote: > I saw her speak twice... I got to hear her speak once when I was a freshman in college before I really knew much about who she was. Yet there were still several things she said that have stuck with me ever since. Years later I was talking with a retired Navy admiral that I worked with and if I remember correctly how he put it, Hopper was the only person Nimitz was ever scared of. > But she had only brought a couple of "nanoseconds" and so I > missed a chance to snag one. Alas, I never got one of her nanoseconds either. But I still love telling my students the story about them. > Very nice lady. >From everything I've heard she was indeed, in addition to being a force of nature. Always wished I had gotten a chance to meet her. BLS
non-shunting jumpers?
Hi all, Oddball question here: has anyone ever seen a way to cap off or protect standard 0.1" pin header jumpers? Maybe there exist jumper plugs that *don't *conduct across the two pins? I'm looking at a piece of hardware that has some jumper pins on top of the PC board and I'd like to protect against anything accidentally making contact. I have seen surface mount 0.05 pitch pin headers come from their manufacturer with protective caps, but I haven't been able to find anything to apply to 0.1" pin headers that I could by aftermarket. Any ideas would be appreciated! thanks brian
Re: non-shunting jumpers?
that's a thought, thanks. This is 2x3. That could work. I may end up just clipping off the pins! brian On Thu, Oct 22, 2020 at 11:35 AM Richard Cini wrote: > I have not seen a cover but how about an empty header shell. I forget if > they're called C-Grid but it's the ones you have to crimp pins and insert > into the shell. I have those "in stock" but usually not bigger than 2x13, > but if I wanted to protect something, that's what I'd grab off my shelf. > > > On 10/22/20, 2:31 PM, "cctalk on behalf of brian--- via cctalk" < > cctalk-boun...@classiccmp.org on behalf of cctalk@classiccmp.org> wrote: > > Hi all, > > Oddball question here: has anyone ever seen a way to cap off or protect > standard 0.1" pin header jumpers? Maybe there exist jumper plugs that > *don't > *conduct across the two pins? I'm looking at a piece of hardware that > has > some jumper pins on top of the PC board and I'd like to protect against > anything accidentally making contact. I have seen surface mount 0.05 > pitch > pin headers come from their manufacturer with protective caps, but I > haven't been able to find anything to apply to 0.1" pin headers that I > could by aftermarket. > > Any ideas would be appreciated! > thanks > brian > > > >
[cctalk] Re: Mac SE disk cleaning
> > Is there a particular reason to leave MacOS intact? After removing all > the user data you might as well have a fresh copy of the OS, so I'm not > sure why you wouldn't zero the entire disk and then do an OS reinstall. > Owner of the thing does not have a set of installation disks. so, if erased, it would be sold or given away unbootable. I suppose someone interested enough in vintage Macs to acquire it would already be equipped with installation disks, but, it would be nice to send it on demonstrably working. They said they tried Googling a solution and didn't come up with anything, I took their word on that. Saving a bunch of very large files seems a reasonable way to do it, I'll suggest that. thanks brian
[cctalk] Re: Typing class in high school
Speaking of good keyboards, my typing class used IBM Selectrics for the lucky people but we also had some older Underwoods and Royals in the class. You got those when you irritated the teacher. I took Typing I & II and it's worked out great as every job I've had since required lots of typing. On Fri, Jan 27, 2023 at 2:41 PM ben via cctalk wrote: > On 2023-01-27 10:48 a.m., Norman Jaffe via cctalk wrote: > > In high school I had signed up for an electronics class and then my > family transferred to another city. > > In the high school that I then enrolled in, there was no electronics > class so I was given the option of another class - I chose typing, which > turned out to be a great choice. > > Since I had started the class mid-semester I wasn't required to pass any > proficiency test, so it didn't matter how fast I was. > > At the same time, I learned to touch-type which was perfect when I > became involved with computers, as all the other programmers were doing > hunt-and-peck! > > > PECK PECK HUNT PECK HUNT > Still am, but I like a good key board.Ben. > > >
Re: Does anyone here know Siemens STL?
I worked with STL some but am much more familiar with structured text as used by Rockwell/Allen-Bradley. However, my first exposure to PLCs after getting out of the Navy back in 1991 was the Mitsubishi A series with a GPP for a programmer. I found that one interesting because you could program in ladder mode or switch to the other mode (which I can't remember the name of) that looked exactly like assembly. The two modes were interchangeable as far as I could tell. On Tue, Apr 11, 2017 at 10:32 PM, Chuck Guzis via cctalk < cctalk@classiccmp.org> wrote: > On 04/11/2017 07:03 PM, Charles Dickman via cctalk wrote: > > The Balkanized nature of programming is interesting. > > > > I make a comment about C and get a flurry of responses, but ask a > > question about a programming language that is also very common for > > machine control and get no response at all. Not even a recognition > > of its existence. > > > I don't think that you're being quite fair. There are boatloads of > specialized application programming languages--I rarely pay attention to > any of them, figuring that after your first dozen or so, it's easy > enough to add another one. > > Heck, I may even have some STL stashed away in my collection of Siemens > PG-685 floppies. I never was interested in looking. > > --Chuck > >
Re: Why women were the first computer programmers
On Wed, Aug 23, 2017 at 8:59 PM, Al Kossow via cctalk wrote: > > "Nathan Ensmenger has observed" > > he's written a whole book on the subject "The Computer Boys Take Over" > https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/computer-boys-take-over > > And: "Recording Gender", Janet Abbate (also mentioned in the article) https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/recoding-gender "Programmed Inequality", Marie Hicks https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/programmed-inequality b
Re: formatting MFM drives on a IBM PC
IIRC, the first time I had problems with the low level format was with one of the early IDE controllers and a 230MB Maxtor. Crapped out the entire firmware, was never able to get it to admit who it was again. Seemed to work okay with earlier MFM/RLL 40 MB and 80 MB Conner drives (I think, it's been a while). On Tue, Sep 26, 2017 at 7:58 PM, Warner Losh via cctalk < cctalk@classiccmp.org> wrote: > On Tue, Sep 26, 2017 at 5:53 PM, Fred Cisin via cctalk < > cctalk@classiccmp.org> wrote: > > > > I remember at least one manufacturer >recommending it for their > > >> drive(s) if they were ever tilted through 90 degrees - >presumably > > there > >> were tiny effects on the head positioning and so not >doing a > LLF > would > >> result in problems. > >> > > > > On Tue, 26 Sep 2017, Ali via cctalk wrote: > > > >> This was pretty common wisdom back in the day. Not quote sure how wise > it > >> was but it was generally recommended in the magazines of the time. I > >> remember reading an article about it in PC Magazine. > >> > > > > There were some interesting discussions of that when companies, such as > > Compaq, first started to put hard drives in portables! > > > > A lot of the conventional wisdom of the time has turned out to be not so > wise... > > Warner >
PDP-8/a wire-to-board connector for power?
I'm assembling a PDP-8/a from a pile of parts, but I'm missing the entire AC power entry assembly, as shown in http://www.retrotechnology.com/restore/8a_trans_gnd0.jpg. Does anyone know what the 6-pin connector is? Even better, does anyone have an extra assembly? Thanks to Herb Johnson for the 8/a repair write ups ( http://www.retrotechnology.com/restore/8a_repairs.html) and pictures. Very helpful! bri
Re: PDP-8/a wire-to-board connector for power?
Awesome, thanks! I missed that in my scan of the Mouser catalog. https://www.mouser.com/ProductDetail/TE-Connectivity/1-480270-0/ $0.86 for the connector, $160 for the crimper. b On Fri, Nov 3, 2017 at 9:36 PM, Chuck Guzis via cctech < cct...@classiccmp.org> wrote: > On 11/03/2017 05:40 PM, Brian Walenz via cctech wrote: > > I'm assembling a PDP-8/a from a pile of parts, but I'm missing the entire > > AC power entry assembly, as shown in > > http://www.retrotechnology.com/restore/8a_trans_gnd0.jpg. Does anyone > know > > what the 6-pin connector is? Even better, does anyone have an extra > > assembly? > > That connector is still being made! It's an AMP Mate-n-lock: > > http://www.te.com/usa-en/product-1-480270-0.html > > Well, okay, it's not "Amp" anymore, Amp's been eaten. > > --Chuck > >
SOL-20 and Helios-II in Louisville
Hope this isn't too far off topic, but noticed a SOL-20, Helios-II, and several disks available in Louisville via Craigslist. Can't afford more stuff this year myself but price doesn't seem too bad. i don't know the person that has it, just found it as I was searching. https://louisville.craigslist.org/sys/d/processor-technology-sol-20/6391107432.html Regards, Brian.
DECnet License for older VAX VMS
Hello,I have a current hobbyists license for OpenVMS 7.3 and a handful of simulated VAXen. I wanted to add my simulated 11/780 and 11/782 to my DECnet and wondered if there was a (legal of course) license workaround to install networking on an older version such as 4.4. The current PAKS will not work.Brian. Sent from Yahoo Mail on Android
Re: DECnet License for older VAX VMS
Thanks Matt, I did have the netrtg040.a file but it was corrupted. The one on the TU58 tape worked perfectly and I was finally able to install DECnet. The network does come up but goes right down with a synchronizing error. It's always something it seems. Should be all set once I get that figured out. Thanks again Brian. Sent from Yahoo Mail on Android On Sat, Mar 9, 2019 at 7:21 AM, Matt Burke via cctalk wrote: On 07/03/2019 03:21, BGeezer via cctalk wrote: > Yes, I can see now that they are different. If I can't find a license > tape I'll probably put on 5.5 which I have as well. In fact I have > V1.0 on up. I'm running two Simh instances on each Raspberry Pi all > clustered and running DECnet and TCP/IP. I was hoping for a large mix > of machines and VMS versions so hopefully I can eventually find some > early licenses. Search for BE-X083A-BE and you should also find BE-X085A-BE and BE-DL08A-BE. Matt
