On 2025-07-16 8:13 a.m., Tom Hunter via cctalk wrote:
Recently I got a nice and complete PDP-8/s from the US. The power supply
uses a ferroresonant transformer which in addition to the standard primary
and secondary windings has a separate 2.3H winding connected in series to a
2uF 660VAC capacito
On 2025-07-06 11:28 a.m., Rod Bartlett via cctalk wrote:
Here's the directions since it was somewhat non-intuitive. I created a
Confluence page at work but everyone asks me to disable it each time the
problem crops up.
https://paulhutch.blog/2019/06/24/disable-serial-mouse-detection/
Reads
On 2025-07-05 1:34 p.m., Paul Koning via cctalk wrote:
On Jul 5, 2025, at 11:05 AM, Jon Elson via cctalk wrote:
On 7/4/25 14:32, Mark Kahrs via cctalk wrote:
Jon Elson's take hits home. A 780 was delivered and VMS was running. We
installed 4.1BSD and it ran fine until it crashed. Field s
On 2025-07-04 4:15 p.m., Wayne S via cctalk wrote:
Yeah, this was 1978.
What we used to spend on IT stuff back then is really amazing.
So much!
True, but you got field service,
not some AI telling you read web page xxx, with a dead computer.
Ben.
PS: serial port had some active input on boot, an
On 2025-06-23 10:02 p.m., Steve Lewis via cctalk wrote:
Speaking of Microsoft BASIC's - I suppose none of the Altair offerings were
really "boot to BASIC" (maybe you could rig it to auto-load from the paper
tape). In the microcomputer domain, does the PET remain really as the
first boot to BAS
On 2025-06-24 12:45 p.m., Wayne S via cctalk wrote:
P.S.
mylar/plastic was used for read many tapes. That is a tape that is going to be
red many times and usually holds some critical program. The center sprocket
really could eat up paper tapes. That’s why some material with durability was
need
On 2025-06-22 6:12 p.m., Wayne S via cctalk wrote:
Probably could use film stock. Issues are it’s not too flexable, might break
after a read so it would be hard to handle, its hard, and would dull the punch
pins quickly, and film is expensive.
Before CTP, we shot pasted-up pages with a big came
I saw another similar utility on Hackaday that uses a laser, but it did
not have as many format options.
https://hackaday.com/2025/01/29/paper-tape-with-lasers/
Steve.
Https://unimplementedtrap.com/paper-tape-punch
On 2025-06-22 4:33 p.m., Fred Cisin via cctalk wrote:
If toggling the laser isn't doable, then you could use a shutter. If
the shutter can't handle the heat, then a mirror that deflects the beam.
Some machines used punched used film stock or film leader. Is that a
valid option instead of pape
On 2025-06-21 11:35 a.m., Anders Nelson via cctalk wrote:
IIRC the tape drives on the Colecovision ADAM were way over-spec'ed for
that machine and thus quite high-speed.
$200 working on eBay: https://www.ebay.com/itm/177209174952
That would be a option if I had schematic
.
--
Anders Nelson
w
On 2025-06-21 7:54 p.m., Scott Baker wrote:
You can also find schematics for computers that used a tape, such as the
TRS-80 Coco. There's lots of old 8-bit computers that used tapes. Even
the original IBM PC had a tape interface built in (though it was rarely
used).
I had a COCO and tape.
On 2025-06-21 6:19 p.m., Scott Baker via cctalk wrote:
If a truly modern replacement was fine, there are things like casduino /
ardutape / tzxduino. These are devices that pretend to be an audio tape,
based on an arduino. Emulating at a digital level would be even easier as
many paper tape inter
On 2025-06-21 1:18 p.m., Wayne S via cctalk wrote:
Actual oiled paper tape that meets specs is difficult to make.
You need a thick stock and the tape is impregnated with oil to lubricate the
punch mechanism.
The actual specs for it is available on Bitsavers.
That said, old, unused paper tape s
Now that I have my 18 bit retro computer working, I am thinking of
adding classic IO, like paper tape. Sadly I am a few decades too late.
Is there anything out there to replace a punch/reader used as 70's i/o?
Any good mag tape (cassete tape) replacements? I would love a tiny 9
track mag tape to
On 2025-06-20 9:23 p.m., Glen Slick via cctalk wrote:
On Fri, Jun 20, 2025 at 6:54 PM Bill Gunshannon via cctalk
wrote:
You mean like this one? :-)
ULTRA RARE PDP-11 DIGITAL DEC 1970's PC05 PR11 HIGH SPEED Tape Reader ONLY
$2.00
$580.00 shipping
I have no direct knowledge of any kind about
On 2025-06-20 8:07 p.m., Mike Katz via cctalk wrote:
ULTRA RARE PDP-11 DIGITAL DEC 1970's PC05 PR11 HIGH SPEED Tape Reader
ONLY
$2.00
$580.00 shipping
bill
What is the real price of shipping for big things, like rack mounted
PDP-XYZ in a wooden crate? Back then big iron was big iron.
Ben.
Not if you write in VHDL / Verilog, the instantiated lumps (eg memory) will be
different but no more than the API between M$ and Borland C.
I refuse to those poorly designed languages, for the the reason I can't
figure out what is compiled, or where it is defined.
I have used ADHL and WINC
On 2025-05-04 3:13 p.m., Martin Bishop via cctalk wrote:
These days microcode works well in FPGAs, RAM access times of 3 ns without
pipelining, and as Xilinx BRAM comes in 1k Wd x 36b quanta eg 108 bits. BRAM
and DSP resource permits implementation of pretty much any (array of) mills.
And
On 2025-05-04 2:11 a.m., jos via cctalk wrote:
I recall that system had many boards, the whole "CPU" box was external to
the monitor (and in the earliest versions, the power supply was also a
large external box). I can't really fathom creating a BASIC out of raw
TTL, or maybe I'm misunderstandi
On 2025-04-30 4:03 p.m., Cameron Kaiser via cctalk wrote:
I saw on the BASIC Programming group on FaceBook that a new venture is going to
start publishing Compute's Gazette again.
https://www.computesgazette.com/
Perhaps interesting to some of you.
Their recent articles are hopefully not a
On 2025-04-29 6:53 a.m., Henry Bent via cctalk wrote:
Hi all,
Is anyone else having trouble with decuslib.com? I can connect but I never
get a response from the server.
-Henry
Same problem here.
What are you looking for, some one here may have a copy.
Ben.
Perhaps it is time to look at AI, 50 years ago.
Byte vol 3 jan - brains of men and machines.
Have we gotten farther in better computer tech?
Ben.
GO ANALOG - GET YOUR BRAIN IN A BOTTLE TODAY 99 cent special,
SEE 'EVIL MINIONS R US'.
On 2025-04-04 8:37 p.m., Michael Huff via cctalk wrote:
I've played with using ChatGPT to write code for older things (quickbasic,
1990's C++, stuff like that). In my experience it gets confused and gives
you snippets that has features from later, modern languages. I'm far from
an expert but it f
On 2025-04-02 6:10 p.m., Bill Gunshannon via cctalk wrote:
Except that no one ever wrote code like it offered me cause
it was just plain wrong and wouldn't work.
I write code like that all the time:)
bill
Have the tools really improved all that much to write better code
or debug it since t
On 2025-04-03 12:16 a.m., Johan Helsingius via cctalk wrote:
Indeed. As I wrote it has no actual understanding. It just combines
things based on statistics.
It is like Mark V. Shaney, the chatbot that Rob Pike and
Bruce Ellis did in the 1980s, but with enormous amounts
of computing power (and s
On 2025-04-01 11:55 a.m., ED SHARPE via cctalk wrote:
> Why not try?
> I'm open to your comments.
>
> As for the UNIBUS unobtainable transceivers: I think the best solution is
> to use AM26S10 for drivers, and an LVC logic powered at 3.3v for
receivers.
> Both are active parts costing nuts.
> I
On 2025-03-14 10:30 a.m., Jon Elson via cctalk wrote:
Wow! You leave a project abandoned for 40 years (yes, it has REALLY
been that long!!) and you think you still know stuff! But, it all fades!
I have been planning to build a computer from about 1973, with Star Trek
as my only computer mo
On 2025-03-14 3:16 p.m., Holm Tiffe via cctalk wrote:
:-)
Jon I don't think that there is a cause for thanking me for somewhat..we
all getting older and the memory fades all the time.
I don't think it fades, just slower access time.
Regards,
Holm
You can learn it all again In one's second
On 2025-03-13 6:01 p.m., Paul Koning via cctalk wrote:
An additional comment on that. To understand any field well, it is generally helpful,
and at times crucial, to have some knowledge of early work. I just read a translation of
some of the works of Galileo that makes that point in so many
On 2025-03-13 1:36 p.m., Paul Koning via cctalk wrote:
Depends on which one. RTL was 3.6 volts positive, as far as I can remember. I actually
have a keyboard that has some of those devices in it. Yes, ECL is around 3 volts also
but negative supply. And of course some people designed system
On 2025-03-13 12:24 p.m., Martin Bishop via cctalk wrote:
One FPGA will easily do a VLIW sequencer + scalar mills (one or more, memory /
MAC assemblies) or a simple processor
When it works.
I see lots low cost Chinese FPGA cards, so that is valid option.
Something like https://www.aliexpress
On 2025-03-13 10:47 a.m., Holm Tiffe via cctalk wrote:
Of course, now this could all be built on a few FPGAs, and get vastly higher
performance.
Most designs seem to 8 bitter's, and all memory fits in block ram.
Once you hit external ram/rom things slow down again.
That's the point where the
On 2025-03-09 12:35 p.m., Holm Tiffe via cctalk wrote:
Yes, I know, Real Programmers don't use Pascal...
(https://homepages.inf.ed.ac.uk/rni/papers/realprg.html)
Reads the paper.
Taped to the wall is a line-printer Snoopy calendar for the year 1969.
Looks Arg !!! Mine is Spock from 1973.
h
On 2025-03-09 3:24 a.m., Holm Tiffe via cctalk wrote:
At first any Macroassembler should do the job for coding the bits in the
control store, but even AMDASM and friends are laying around somwhere on
my disks. I thin the time to talk about "real software" is when the cpu
sucessfully adds it's f
On 2025-03-08 8:09 a.m., emanuel stiebler via cctalk wrote:
On 2025-03-07 15:36, Holm Tiffe via cctalk wrote:
Hi all,
I'm dreaming to build sometimes my own Bit Slice CPU (when I have
spare time)
and I have collected several IC's in the last years for this purpose.
There is a pretty quiet b
On 2025-03-07 1:36 p.m., Holm Tiffe via cctalk wrote:
Hi all,
I'm dreaming to build sometimes my own Bit Slice CPU (when I have spare time)
and I have collected several IC's in the last years for this purpose.
Today a small antistatic bag with 4x IDT49C402BG84 and two IDT 49C410J
fell in my han
On 2025-02-21 2:09 p.m., Wayne S via cctalk wrote:
That’s a side channel attack.
If there ever was one.
Was there ever a proof of concept made of that theory ?
Only when the BLACK helicopters show up.
On 2025-02-21 11:55 a.m., John via cctalk wrote:
On Fri, 21 Feb 2025 12:00:07 -0600
Paul Koning wrote:
What is the problem with ISRs running in a user stack? The ISR
runs, exits, the stack is cut back, and net effect on the user's
stack is zero.
A stack access fault in user mode kills the pr
On 2025-02-17 12:30 p.m., Paul Koning wrote:
On Feb 17, 2025, at 12:04 PM, ben via cctalk wrote:
On 2025-02-17 7:26 a.m., Paul Koning via cctalk wrote:
...
The problem was fixed fairly well with the introduction of the DEC Multinational
Character Set, which later morphed into ISO Latin-1
On 2025-02-17 10:41 a.m., Chuck Guzis via cctalk wrote:
While a hardware stack may be useful, I don't consider it to be
essential and perhaps counter-productive. (dodging brickbats).
A jump to subroutine is convenient , but could be omitted.
I say that because if a recursive solution to a pr
On 2025-02-17 7:26 a.m., Paul Koning via cctalk wrote:
I've never seen an ASCII terminal that was missing square brackets. But in theory those
codes were "national use" codes, and for non-English language use they would be
redefined as A with umlaut or stuff like that. This is why RSTS/E at
Did any classic computers have a subroutine call as (S++)=PC, PC=(EFA)
as well as the standard call (--S)=PC,PC=(EFA) ?
One could have a virtual stack machine, using helper functions without
having to deal with return addresses on the stack.
Ben.
On 2025-02-16 4:52 p.m., Paul Koning via cctalk wrote:
On Feb 16, 2025, at 5:30 PM, paul.kimpel--- via cctalk
wrote:
The question concerned good ALGOL code generation, not the feasibility of ALGOL
code generation.
I know that, but just as RISC machines can run very fast no matter what
a
On 2025-02-16 1:51 p.m., paul.kimpel--- via cctalk wrote:
I don't understand -- ASCII had only two versions, 1963 and 1967, and both had
square brackets. The IBM PC used ASCII, but had nothing to do with its
standardization.
https://archive.org/details/enf-ascii-1965-1966/page/n47/mode/2up
On 2025-02-16 7:32 a.m., Paul Koning via cctalk wrote:
A lot of early "ALGOL" compilers did major subsetting because it was considered to hard
to do the real language. Those subsets may not actually bear any real resemblance to the actual
language. For example, a "subset" that omits recursio
On 2025-02-15 1:14 p.m., Johan Helsingius via cctalk wrote:
On 15/02/2025 20:53, ben via cctalk wrote:
Some how 6 bit characters seems more standard, text wise,
compared with the mess with accented characters and money characters
of today.
6 bit characters were fine if you didn't care
On 2025-02-15 11:27 a.m., Frank Leonhardt via cctalk wrote:
Running anything like Algol on a machine with drum memory seems a bit
optimistic!
Remove "Like Algol" and the statement is even more valid.
I guess that was why the PDP-1 was successful, it had early core memory.
I keep forgetting
On 2025-02-11 9:32 a.m., Peter Corlett via cctalk wrote:
The proper solution to dodgy PC serial port performance was of course to
upgrade to the 16550 which had a FIFO which could buffer a few bytes while
the PC got round to answering the interrupt. It's not the greatest UART and
adds novel fail
On 2025-02-03 5:37 p.m., Sean Conner via cctalk wrote:
Do you mean you want a compiler to generate 16-bit code? Or be compiled
as a 16-bit program to run under Linux? If the later, it's not supported,
or at least, not supported by default [1].
I was hoping to use Embeddable Linux Kernel S
On 2025-02-03 5:06 p.m., Chuck Guzis via cctalk wrote:
On 2/3/25 15:47, ben via cctalk wrote:
No compiler generates bad code,just some hardware was never meant to
have stack based addressing, like the 6502 or the 8088/8086.
Really? The x86 family does indeed have stack-based addressing. In
On 2025-02-03 3:52 p.m., Chuck Guzis via cctalk wrote:
You miss my tongue-in-cheek observation. iPhone software isn't, to bhe
best of my knowledge, open-source. How does one know or determine that
there's not malware in vendor-supplied software?
I use a LAND LINE, I know the phone works.
I
On 2025-02-03 3:32 p.m., Sean Conner via cctalk wrote:
It was thus said that the Great ben via cctalk once stated:
At the root of Open Source is you, the user, have the right to the
source code.
In the early days, that's as far as it went but especially after the
Morris Worm, sec
>
> At the root of Open Source is you, the user, have the right to the
source code.
>
> In the early days, that's as far as it went but especially after the
> Morris Worm, security became very important, Open Source afforded
> users the ability to inspect the code for vulnerabilities in ways tha
On 2025-02-02 11:02 p.m., Steve Lewis via cctalk wrote:
I have numerous co-workers that bash Microsoft all day long. And yeah,
I've had my Windows hourglass twirl around inexplicitly. "I'm not DOING
anything, why am I hourglassed?" But I respect the challenge of trying to
get millions of peop
On 2025-02-02 11:09 p.m., Chuck Guzis via cctalk wrote:
On 2/2/25 17:22, Will Cooke via cctalk wrote:
Not quite lost. The 1802 crowd is doing amazing things.
See https://groups.io/g/cosmacelf/message/33678
And if you know anything about the 1802, it's, uh, not so speedy.
At its introductio
On 2025-02-01 10:11 a.m., Maciej W. Rozycki via cctalk wrote:
On Sat, 1 Feb 2025, roger arrick via cctalk wrote:
I'm happy to see people using the correct shell letter for DSubs around
here! Oldschool wisdom.
You kinda have to when you get at things such as DA-3W3.
Maciej
I have no i
On 2025-02-01 6:37 a.m., Frank Leonhardt via cctalk wrote:
IME +/- 12V was a de-facto standard on microcomputers because they
already had a +12V and -12V rail, along with +5V. The ubiquitous 4116
DRAM needed +5V, -5V and +12V so +/- 5V was a popular option too.
Apple was smart with their swit
On 2025-01-31 7:06 a.m., Frank Leonhardt via cctalk wrote:
RTS could be used to seize a half-duplex line (DCE didn't mean full
duplex modem exclusively), and CTS would be asserted once the line was
seized so you could start typing, start the tape reader.
I wanted to get a REAL computer for a
On 2025-01-31 4:25 a.m., Frank Leonhardt via cctalk wrote:
A couple of points you might like to consider, which you may already
know but stuff you've said above doesn't spell it out:
RS232 is not serial - make yourself clear. Before RS232 the same data
format was used in current loop (often 2
On 2025-01-26 12:11 p.m., Joseph S. Barrera III via cctalk wrote:
On 1/25/2025 5:55 AM, Sellam Abraham via cctalk wrote:
Can this stop already?
Will the circle be unbroken?
(Except that some people maintain it's a square)
I pick 3, the Reuleaux.
Ben.
PS: Less fiction with this topic, than wi
On 2025-01-24 11:04 p.m., Fred Cisin via cctalk wrote:
And, it would was close enough to make it obvious that if you want to
sail west from europe to the indies, you are going to run out of
supplies long before you get there! Unless you are dumb lucky, and
happen to bump into some land on the
On 2025-01-23 8:15 a.m., Alexander Schreiber wrote:
On Tue, Jan 21, 2025 at 12:52:49PM -0700, ben via cctalk wrote:
On 2025-01-21 10:54 a.m., Paul Koning wrote:
Uh, what? How would the earth surface gravity be that much different? "Citation
needed" as Wikipedia would say.
On 2025-01-21 10:54 a.m., Paul Koning wrote:
Uh, what? How would the earth surface gravity be that much different? "Citation
needed" as Wikipedia would say.
paul
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autodynamics
On 2025-01-20 2:51 p.m., Alexander Schreiber via cctalk wrote:
ee a breakthrough it that either.
There have been various "simulate early (theoretical) earth conditions
in the lab to see what happens" and while at least some got all the way
to some interesting organic molecules, none of them reac
On 2025-01-20 7:41 a.m., cz via cctalk wrote:
That is not a solution either: It just locks the AI into a 2015 or so
time period where they can't adapt to changing writing or speaking
styles. All the output is going to sound like an outdated person.
I'm already seeing this in "appliance repair"
On 2025-01-19 2:15 p.m., Frank Leonhardt via cctalk wrote:
While we're at it, biological science had clearly been unable to create
life. Not even a single cell. And I've no reason to believe we're about
to see a breakthrough it that either.
You have not seen the stuff way behind in my fridge
On 2025-01-19 11:03 a.m., Chuck Guzis via cctalk wrote:
On 1/19/25 09:39, Carlos E Murillo-Sanchez via cctalk wrote:
What happened to them? They're everywhere in academic papers. They've
become an easy way to get published. Nowadays they make up so many bio-
inspired variations of these algori
On 2025-01-19 6:12 a.m., Adrian Godwin via cctalk wrote:
I like to parse the 'artificial' differently. It's not AN artificial
intelligence - a manufactured entity that exhibits intelligence - it's JUST
artificial intelligence - something that appears to be intelligence but
isn't, like artificial
On 2025-01-19 3:07 a.m., Peter Corlett via cctalk wrote:
On Sat, Jan 18, 2025 at 08:27:05PM +, Pete Turnbull via cctalk wrote:
[...]
My robot vacuum has taken to asking "Please empty my dustbin and clean my
filter" about 5 minutes after I did that. More annoyingly, it insists that
"I'm stuck
On 2025-01-18 1:42 p.m., Frank Leonhardt via cctalk wrote:
Around 1981 I wrote what would now be called chatbot in 6502 (on an OSI
500 board - obligatory old computer content) that was placed in our
local library for the public to have a go on. Because most people hadn't
seen a computer, never
On 2025-01-18 1:27 p.m., Pete Turnbull via cctalk wrote:
On 18/01/2025 15:36, Bill Gunshannon via cctalk wrote:
A little humor for the group.
I also have a bunch of iRobot Roombas in my house. Based on my
experience with AI and robots I think there is no chance we will
have to worry about
On 2025-01-17 8:46 a.m., Paul Koning wrote:
As for ALGOL, I know that Burroughs ALGOL (which is an extended ALGOL-60) has separate
compilation, through a linker called "Binder". There is even a Binder for
PDP-11 ALGOL, though I haven't tried it. PDP-11 ALGOL looks very much like a 16-bit
de
On 2025-01-17 7:59 a.m., Jon Elson via cctalk wrote:
Pascal is really sort of a dialect of Algol, so I thought this was
somewhat on topic.
That is the DARK side of computing, Real computers are found in the
BATCAVE and can even run ALGOL 58. (batman 1967) :)
http://www.starringthecomputer.co
On 2025-01-15 5:17 p.m., David Wise via cctalk wrote:
Pretty sure it does stop, if it runs out of addend and there’s no carry.
I think being dumb is the smart thing to do.
On 2025-01-14 6:29 a.m., Fred Cisin via cctalk wrote:
Floppies were later used for data-entry (1973, 33FD for 3740). In those
days, data entry was for "mainframes". That was the "first" to use the
soft sectored format, which became the "standard". ("3740 SSSD format")
It held same data as 3
On 2025-01-13 9:33 p.m., Fred Cisin via cctalk wrote:
FORTRAN was a dead end, both in syntax (line-oriented, line numbers) and
semantics (common blocks, static arrays, very poor string support).
Fortran 2025, the sixth edition, is rather different from 1956.
But, a real programmer can write
On 2025-01-13 6:55 p.m., Joseph S. Barrera III via cctalk wrote:
I would expect universal condemnation for anyone who would ask if FLACC
were designed for floppies.
Did mainframes ever have a floppy option?
Do any copies exist and what was the meduium?
On 2025-01-13 4:00 p.m., David Wade via cctalk wrote:
More like not enough actual memory. You can fit an acceptable basic into
a 4K ROM so it will work without a disk drive.
Its an interpreter so can do checks as you type it in.
Its far easier to learn than Algol.
8K ROM got you APL.
On 2025-01-13 3:10 p.m., Martin Bishop via cctalk wrote:
Ben
I shall simply comment that for a useless language it did a lot of good, signal
processing, work for me all but 50 years ago
I never said it was bad, just kept being delayed by politics.
As an example, you could define matrix ope
On 2025-01-13 12:18 p.m., Brent Hilpert via cctalk wrote:
I used AlgolW on MTS at UBC in ’78 as a CS undergrad.
Still have the textbook “FANGET AN - an algolw primer”, and my greenbar listings
(but threw out the box of batch cards some years go, lol).
I rather liked algol, the course work moved
On 2024-12-13 4:54 p.m., hupfadekroua via cctalk wrote:
Look at https://winworldpc.com/library/operating-systems
But the problem with privately operated sites could be, that they might vanish
at some point.
Andreas
And how is that different from a Commercial Site?
Geo-cities comes to mind.
Th
On 2024-12-10 6:42 p.m., Mike Katz via cctalk wrote:
Or, more importantly, are we all living in a VR?
What is reality?
On 12/10/2024 7:21 PM, Rick Bensene via cctalk wrote:
Been waiting 45 years for the new IBM OS. Not holding my breath. :)
Ahhh...but are you sure we're all not already r
On 2024-12-10 12:13 a.m., Tom Hunter via cctalk wrote:
If this were my project, I would read the VT100 manual and design and
implement a serial driver and basic text window library from scratch
running on the bare hardware. It wouldn't be more than 1000 lines of C,
more likely something like 500
What about porting the old share-ware window libraries for dos?
On 2024-12-04 12:14 p.m., Nigel Johnson Ham via cctalk wrote:
On 2024-12-04 14:09, Tony Duell wrote:
On Wed, Dec 4, 2024 at 7:06 PM Nigel Johnson Ham via cctalk
wrote:
[6809]
I agree. The user stack pointer was a killer feature.
I like(d) the progam counter relative addressing mode along with
On 2024-11-16 2:43 p.m., Mike Katz via cctalk wrote:
Think of how much better the state of the microprocessor would be IBM
had chosen the 68000 Linear Architecture rather than the 8086
Segment:Offset with separate I/O instructions and only 1 interrupt
architecture.
I don't mean to start a hug
On 2024-11-06 12:28 p.m., Brent Hilpert via cctalk wrote:
The old common standard for a mains stroboscope was a neon bulb (+resistor).
They are still widely available, simple and inexpensive.
No, they are not very bright and need some shading or otherwise reduced ambient
light, but for a tool of
On 2024-11-04 7:23 a.m., Murray McCullough via cctalk wrote:
A lot happened in the computer industry in early Nov. in the past: Intel's
x86 PC architecture was born; lo & behold Windows ME was released upon the
world; for the corporate in us the IBM Portable Computer was introduced.
The PC world
On 2024-11-03 9:37 p.m., Tony Duell via cctalk wrote:
On Mon, Nov 4, 2024 at 4:06 AM Mychaela Falconia via cctalk
wrote:
Paul Koning wrote:
1. Show a one-word PDP-11 program that writes all of memory, in reverse order.
MOV -(PC),-(PC)
Does that work on all models of PDP11?
I had an idea
On 2024-10-24 4:35 p.m., Bill Gunshannon via cctalk wrote:
And yet, Minix ran on the 8088.
NO the PC, and even then it was developed under a UNIX emulator.
Some where I read, wen ported to the PC it would randomly crash.
This was later found to a case of undocumented irq service routine
for m
On 2024-10-24 3:21 p.m., Sellam Abraham via cctalk wrote:
On Thu, Oct 24, 2024 at 1:45 PM Fred Cisin via cctalk
wrote:
The author, presumably a heavy Reddit, TikTok and Facebook user, seemed
to
have never heard about existence of computers before internet, nor about
On Thu, 24 Oct 2024, Jo
On 2024-10-24 11:49 a.m., Joseph S. Barrera III via cctalk wrote:
The author, presumably a heavy Reddit, TikTok and Facebook user, seemed to
have never heard about existence of computers before internet, nor about
Y'all are ignoring CompuServe and that is hurting my feelings :-)
Was all that
On 2024-10-23 8:36 p.m., Doug Jackson via cctalk wrote:
Yes, UUCP was literally a thing, but UNIX was unobtanium in the early
computing eral - The world of the University Minicomputer.
It certainly wasn't even vaguely accessible by a hobbyist running a
Z80 or 6800 in the late 70's.
I vividly re
On 2024-10-20 10:34 a.m., Donald Whittemore via cctalk wrote:
Finally got the program I had a friend write back in 2009 working. I had it
written specifically because I had this disk.
Shades of watching a 2311 working. 😀
http://www.myimagecollection.com/webpics/exercise.mp4
Now, let's do this
On 2024-10-12 7:40 p.m., Jon Elson via cctalk wrote:
On 10/12/24 20:07, Jon Elson via cctalk wrote:
On 10/12/24 16:25, Wayne S via cctalk wrote:
Didn’t all the IBM mainframes use 400hz? Maybe ask the IBMers how
they got 400hz.
Also, can the local power company supply it?
Oh, the IBM 7090 seri
On 2024-10-12 1:47 p.m., Chuck Guzis via cctalk wrote:
On 10/12/24 11:54, Brent Hilpert via cctalk wrote:
I remember summer employment at a drive-in movie theater during my
summers working as a projectionist. Power supply for the DC carbon arc
lamps was supplied by a 40 Hp MG set located in i
On 2024-10-09 2:30 p.m., Fred Cisin via cctalk wrote:
MSX is unknown in USA!
It was for Z80, and the disk format was MS-DOS
I saw some at comdex.
I waited for MSX machines to showup here, but it never happened,
although I did find [and buy] a Yamaha MSX machine from Waite Group, at
John Craig'
On 2024-10-09 4:08 a.m., Liam Proven via cctalk wrote:
On Wed, 9 Oct 2024 at 04:37, ben via cctalk wrote:
Dos also has no subdirectories.
(?)
So did the hundreds of other 8 bit operating
systems.
(??)
The point here, was until hard disks with the PC became common you had
the tiny
On 2024-10-08 6:16 p.m., Doug Jackson via cctalk wrote:
And yet, here we are.
When I built my first system in 1985 as a trainee technical officer,
the *first* thing I did was copy all of the 8" floppies I could from a
donor system onto my 5.25" DSHD drives (1.2MB - The biggest system in
the neig
On 2024-10-08 5:00 p.m., Fred Cisin via cctalk wrote:
On Tue, 8 Oct 2024, roger arrick via cctalk wrote:
I figured he was mistaken, the old 'standard' is SSSD.
Well, that's the CP/M "standard".,
and, admittedly, on my first look at the message, I, too, did a double
take on "double density"
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