Jay, have you tried floppydisk.com? Their site only shows 3.5 and 5.25"
floppies, but they do have 8" too (although not cheap).
Not sure if they'll have the hard-sectored ones but they have SSSD
soft-sectored (for my RX01) at $90 for a pack of ten. Going rate on ebay is
$25-35 a pack...
6G-BE, AS-DC36B-BE, AS-DK35A-BE.
I did email Al Kossow about archiving but maybe he didn't receive the
message.
Anyhow, if anyone is interested, please contact me off-list. I don't have a
VAX so I can't read them.
Perhaps we can trade for blank SSSD disks?
thanks
Charles
XE), whether SJ or XM.
So is there any way to run ADVENT while running TSX-Plus?
thanks
Charles
(on both the console and the other time-sharing
terminal). Thanks for the information, though.
-Charles
I have a PDP-8/A with a flaky RL8A (M8433) controller card. I can't track
the fault down. I've spent enough hours on it by now that I'd just as soon
buy another one.
Anyone have one to sell? Or possibly could repair mine (for compensation)?
thanks
Charles
et but I'm sure that will work too!
NOW maybe I can get my RL02 controller card (and the rest of the hardware,
the power supply has started glitching again) debugged.
Many thanks to Kyle for creating this very useful software :)
-Charles
n memory address registers for DMA which drive the MA0..11 lines.
I checked the various signals coming out of the card and (at least
statically) none of them are in the "wrong" state...
Any thoughts on testing the DMA facility?
thanks
Charles
27;s 90F in the computer room too, which may be above spec for an RL02
anyhow. Just finished Pass 0002 on Drive 1 without errors :)
-Charles
t the diagnostic to just print out that error and keep running. Trial
and error might take a long time.
Without the source code there's no other good way except possibly to
single-step through the program and look for the OSR command (which may also
take a very long time).
thanks for any help.
-Charles
I got lucky with a little trial & error. Setting the MSB of the SR (i.e.
7000) causes AJRLIA to report an error but then keep testing.
Not sure if this works for all the AJ diagnostics but hopefully DEC had
some kind of pseudo-standard for this...
h
man-hours on this flaky board.
thanks
Charles
t it... CA 3 is the 4th bit of course where all
the problems were occurring. Will let it run for a while longer.
David Gesswein just sent me a version of dumprest for RL that he's just
written, modified for my Omni-USB port at 40/41.
If that works I'll be able to upload an entire RL02 in about 2 minutes
instead of 3 hours with vtserver...
-Charles
1 uf decoupling cap at every IC and 12 out
of 40 pins on each of the two connecting ribbon cables are dedicated to
ground. 7 on one, 5 on the other are for +5 volts.
On the other hand, I am tired of tinkering and considering just buying a
real DKC8-AA if there's one out there. Anyone? ;)
-Charles
changing
three 20-pin unsocketed DIPs without proper desoldering equipment. Guess I
should have used sockets in a prototype!
Besides, the board really does need redoing with proper power and ground
plane management.
-Charles
ing from US zip 65775.
thanks
Charles
own... I sure hope it's not another solder whisker.
Meanwhile, I used the system for over half an hour, running PFOCAL,
formatting disk packs in Drive 1, checking the handlers loaded with BUILD.
All working.
-Charles
Update: The first thing I tried was removing and reseating the boot ROMs
(465A2/469A2), since they did not use good machine-tooled sockets.
Now the boot loader performs normally, no incorrect locations, and OS/8
boots from Drive 0 whether using the boot key or manual start at 0001.
Great!
So o
es rewrite each time or not, I don't know.
Now I've got yet another RL02 (maybe) problem to chase down...
-Charles
lly a problem with the RL8A controller and
not *both* RL02's, since both drives return the same errors, and never had
problems like this before...
Any help making sense of this mishmash of errors would be greatly
appreciated :)
-Charles
Recall that the other day, I was seeing this on running AJRLHA.DG:
STATE NOT 5 AFTER SEEK WITH 0 DIFFERENCE (this error and register dump
prints twice in succession. State 5 = Lock-on, keeping on track).
WD1 0317 (lower head, heads not out, spin-down)
WD2 0204 (write data error, write gate error)
om any experts on the internal workings of OS/8
especially relating to RL02's.
-Charles
I assign the text file to a paper tape reader, for example?
thanks
Charles
disk without significant changes, because the swapping is more
or less constant.
-Charles
ad. I bet that would be enough swap area most of
the time (it's not like most of us have 16 users all logged on
simultaneously) :)
-Charles
;t see anything in the OS/8 manual and I know I had
OS/8 running with 16K and 24K previously.
-Charles
core board, the one that was jumpered for field 4-7.
So there wasn't any core in fields 0-3 which will "break" OS/8.
When I fired up the system with only the board jumpered for the LOW 16K
core, everything works as usual.
Sorry for the bandwidth...
-Charles
As I've periodically posted, my 8/A has an intermittent power supply problem
(Power OK light and signal line flickers, so the entire system is confused.
Throwing the DC breaker and resetting it will often make the problem go away
for the rest of the evening). It's slowly getting worse, to the po
y rack
shelf and set the drive on it. That would be inconvenient to service the
drive but it should not need attention often.
Can anyone help me find some? Thanks.
-Charles
quot; the feed hole
pulses and manually shut the reader off once the tape runs out.
I'd like to hear from anyone who's done something similar to interface a
non-DEC tape reader.
thanks
Charles
ng rails I'd
be interested for the sake of originality ;)
Jay, let me know exactly what measurements you would need. There's a pretty
good view of the inside rail on the second pic.
thanks
Charles
On Sun, Oct 18, 2015 at 6:26 PM, Fred Cisin wrote:
> Does it correlate with the decline of actual FARMING?
FARMING hasn't declined, only the number of farmers.
(Not a farmer, but surrounded by them.)
On Mon, Oct 19, 2015 at 8:04 PM, Fred Cisin wrote:
>>> Does it correlate with the decline of actual FARMING?
>
>
> On Mon, 19 Oct 2015, Charles Dickman wrote:
>>
>> FARMING hasn't declined, only the number of farmers.
>> (Not a farmer, but surrounde
s "really small"? IBM made a terminal with a 5" screen for
> >> the 4704 banking systems. http://frente-cajas.blogspot.com/
> >>
> >
> > I've got one with a 64 character 1-line LED display. Is that small
> enough?
> >
> > --Chuck
> >
> >
>
Set the baud rate really low and tie an LED to the xmit line.
-- Charles
ing and understanding the
technology to run that many LEDs.
TIA,
-- Charles
On Sun, Nov 1, 2015 at 12:18 PM, Michael Thompson <
michael.99.thomp...@gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > Date: Sat, 31 Oct 2015 13:11:29 -0700
> > From: Charles Anthony
> > Subject: Front panels
> >
> > The front panel I want to build is for m
I am just going to build a plexiglass board and use LEDs, laid
out in a similar order to the display; I'm mostly interested in CPU state.
That will give me a better idea of the scope of the project, and allow me
to make more educated decisions about the Mk. II display.
A lot of helpful ideas from cctalk; thank you all very much.
-- Charles
:
>>
>>> FADID. Where do I send the consulting bill?
>>>
>>
>> I'm not familiar with that one.
>> It just might be unique enough to keep anybody from confusing our fadids
>> from somebody else's keyboards
>>
>
> Finger Accessible Data Input Device.
>
> DADDID -- Digit Accessible Digital Data Input Device
-- Charles
a random thought..
Could you put a 2nd disk drive in the machine, and copy the disk image to
it?
-- Charles
with a leading \, but of course the \\U\\N\\I\\X shell treats \
as an escape, so when using my card deck submission script \\I have to
escape the uppercase characters for the account name, project and password
parameters.
./submitDeck test.deck \\Anthony \\Sys\\Eng sec\\Krit
-- \\Charles
Here is my attempt to convert the DEC Standard 092 color specifications to RGB
http://www.chdickman.com/pdp8/DECcolors/
No Wild Rose on the list, but there is a Brite Rose.
On Sun, Nov 15, 2015 at 4:57 PM, rod wrote:
>
> Thanks Al
> Well they say you never stop leaning and I did n
t one version
> of sector 3, while one that could not handle 1:1 interleave would get the
> other one, and you could have different code for the two kinds of
> machines.:-)
>
>
> But, that has 11 sectors on the track
> Were they 512 bytes each?
> Was it 8"? 5.25"? SD?, DD?, "HD"?
>
8" on one side, 5.25" on the other.
-- Charles
e question:
The DPS8-M had configurable core memory bank interleave (even/odd
addresses); I would hazard a guess that this improved bandwidth on double
word read/writes.
-- Charles
e programmer would scatter the instructions
according to the execution time of the instructions; IIRC "assembler"
referred to the process of converting the sequential source to the
scattered arrangement.
-- Charles
preamble on some of the sectors, changing their number; the track
contained something like:
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 4
This meant that a command to "read sector 4" would return whichever sector
4 passed under the head first. If you did 'read sector 2', 'read sector 4'
you would get the first one; 'read sector 6', 'read sector 4', you would
get the second.
Interleaving for obfustication, not efficiency.
-- Charles
use for? Mathematics or? ? ?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q07PhW5sCEk
A 30 minute film "1963 Timesharing: A Solution to Computer Bottlenecks"
-- Charles
tation.
>
>
>
The plug board could control which columns of the punch card appeared in
which columns of the printout; it served as a simple FORMAT program. The
COBOL interpreter plugboard rearranged the COBOL source on the punch card
to a more readable style on the printer.
-- Charles
on the second one is the correct length to glue onto the first.
-- Charles
On Sun, Dec 20, 2015 at 2:55 PM, Charles Anthony wrote:
>
>
> On Sun, Dec 20, 2015 at 2:43 PM, Dave Wade wrote:
>
>>
>>
>> > -Original Message-
>> > From: cctalk [mailto:cctalk-boun...@classiccmp.org] On Behalf Of
>> > ste...@mal
On Sun, Dec 20, 2015 at 4:10 PM, Chuck Guzis wrote:
> On 12/20/2015 03:20 PM, Charles Anthony wrote:
>
> Or, rather then cutting it, remove the inside threads on the shell,
>> and glue it back on to the plug, rather than screwing it on.
>>
>
> I don't have any to
should work.
>
> Mailing the drive to a government office, with a note saying, "please help
> me recover the pictures of my grandmother's birthday party", and having it
> lost in their mailroom might work.
>
>
>
Putting it a crate with a few hundred other drives...
-- Charles
I am trying to fire up a DN6600 emulator and am encountering some
discrepancies between the DD01 documentation and existing software.
Anyone remember how to program this beast?
-- Charles
I have a DATAIO 201 prom programmer that fails the self test with an
error 75. The error translates to a pin fault.
Any help with schematics or suggested debugging experience appreciated.
-chuck
vain for the "discuss proposed discussion" button, tried the
general 'ask a question' tab, but it seems to believe that I am not logged
in.
I happily participate in a retro-computing discussions, but my knowledge
base is mainframe computing, so between the alienation in the discussion
definition, and the site's apparent inability to let me discuss that
alienation with the creators, it looks like Area51 is non-starter for me.
-- Charles
>
and
doing image analysis to recover that data; this occurs to me because I've
done a fair bit of image recognition software, so this solution may not be
feasible for all. If you sent me a sample movie, I would make a stab at
writing some data recovery software.
-- Charles
On Thu, Jan 21, 2016 at 6:21 PM, Jason T wrote:
> On Thu, Jan 21, 2016 at 8:04 PM, Charles Anthony
> wrote:
> > For part 2, personally, I would take movies of the paper tape moving and
> > doing image analysis to recover that data; this occurs to me because I've
>
iven the described condition of the tapes, this is the approach
least likely (it seems to me) to make things worse. YMMV.
-- Charles
s=\E0, am, cub1=^H,
clear=\EK, lines#24, cols#80, cuf1=\EC, cuu1=\EA, ed=\EJ, el=\EI,
kcud1=\EB, kcub1=\ED, kcuf1=\EC, kcuu1=\EA,
home=\EH, cup=\EY%p1%' '%+%c%p2%' '%+%c, ht=^I,
Attached is ibm3101.ctl.lisp, the 3101 bindings for the LISP interpreter.
-- Charles
usin, a PDP8/a
> >
> > This 8a, BTW, has more memory (128K x 12) and more oomph ( a FPP8A )
> than the PDP11/04
> >
> >
> > Jos
>
> I'm just getting a Synology page-not-found page.
>
Try ftp://ftp.dreesen.ch/PDP11 (It's marked as an HTTP link, but's it
really an FTP.
-- Charles
;> daemon, or puffer fish :)
>>
>>
> I like demons ... :)
> That is why they go with big PDP 11's, you never know just what was sold
> to you.
And let us not forget the wombat, beloved of the VMS RDBMS.
"PLOT WOMBAT"
-- Charles
>
> Ben.
>
has done chess that way.
>
>
I remember seeing someone in the mid '70s working on a Monopoly game using
punch cards and printout on a CDC 6000 class machine.
-- Charles
t 'simh>'
q
Multics today: http://ringzero.wikidot.com/
Multics FAQ <http://ringzero.wikidot.com/wiki:multics-faq>
Multics Cheat Sheet <http://ringzero.wikidot.com/wiki:multics-cheat-sheet>
Multicians <http://www.multicians.org/>
-- Charles
>
e isn't a history I know of that it was
> anything but Honeywells property. A lot of negotiation and persistence on
> the part of many folks went to getting it to where the Multics code could
> be released. And it was lucky to be saved @ MIT and the CHM with
> donations.
>
>
the emulator does not necessarily have and
do not have the 'wow' factor.
-- Charles
ive programming
environment supporting several languages (Multics includes the BASIC and
FORTRAN runtimes). Sadly, there remain some emulator bugs that are causing
some failures under TSS; and lacking the source code for TSS, it is proving
to be an intractable issue.
-- Charles
structure in-place for my simulated display. (All of the needed data
is in a shared memory segment, a standalone program just scrapes the data
and sends it out.)
-- Charles
nding Unit', then it was a
Multics machine, GE-645, DPS-8M, or (I think) 6040/6080/6180.
If you want a better estimate, I can ask some of the Multicians to look at
the pictures; or, if you know what site the panels came from, there exists
pretty good documentation about what was at which sites.
-- Charles
On Sat, Mar 12, 2016 at 11:49 AM, Zane Healy wrote:
>
> > On Mar 12, 2016, at 10:49 AM, Charles Anthony <
> charles.unix@gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > There is a also the GCOS TSS subsystem which is an interactive
> programming
> > environment supporting
On Sat, Mar 12, 2016 at 12:32 PM, Noel Chiappa
wrote:
> > From: Charles Anthony
>
> > The enormous number of configuration switches is due to the extreme
> > modularity of the system. ... Each bank could taken out of service
>
> The really amazing thing (c
e L66 was memory bandwidth. With the fast 6250 BPI tapes
> he said the tape drives could drive the memory flat out, locking the CPU
> out….
>
>
I believe that.
-- Charles
On Sun, Mar 13, 2016 at 10:11 AM, Michael Thompson <
michael.99.thomp...@gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > Date: Sat, 12 Mar 2016 07:27:18 -0800
> > From: Charles Anthony
> > Subject: Re: Honneywell multics? from panels. the inline phots in this
> > mes
E 102.
The emulator should not have rounded in this case; but I cannot figure out
the rule.
I've abstracted the instruction out of the emulator and embedded it in a
standalone test harness that runs the 47 tests.
https://sourceforge.net/projects/dps8m/files/drop/Charle
ed mantissa is
all ones and any ones were shifted out, then set the mantissa to 0".)
-- Charles
ilures have been with negative mantissas, so I
don't think that I gain anything by going to sign-and-magnitude; I'd be
tracking zeros being shifted off instead of ones, which it isn't going to
change the rounding algorithm, just the implementation.
-- Charles
le
to move them all into the same space, but that will require a lot of
tinkering with the way that Multics deals with stack and process space.
(Also, Multics stacks grow upward -- great for protection against buffer
overrun attacks, but a pain in a modern architecture.)
-- Charles
27;s company (Seattle Computer Products) shared a booth with
> Microsoft at NCC or the West Coast Computer Faire, and he liked the ideas
> behind the Stand-Alone BASIC directory structure.
>
>
> I have a vague late-70's memory of RSX-11 putting the directory in the
middle of the disk.
-- Charles
On Wed, Mar 16, 2016 at 6:19 AM, Noel Chiappa
wrote:
> > From: Charles Anthony
>
> > I desperately want to port Multics to a modern architecture
>
> Funny you should mention this! Dave Bridgham and my 'other' project (other
> than the QSIC) is somethin
On Sun, Mar 13, 2016 at 1:39 PM, Charles Anthony wrote:
> The Multics distribution includes ISOLTS, a surprisingly complete and
> pedantic processor test program.
>
> It is unhappy with our emulated floating point.
>
> I've abstracted the instruction out of the emulat
all time?)
>
I think that having HTTP use DNS was the big one; it changed the role of
DNS from finding computers by name to the being the innocent victim of the
land rush of domain name marketing.
Followed closely by NAT being used make vast portions of the internet dark.
-- Charles
On Mon, Mar 28, 2016 at 7:26 AM, Noel Chiappa
wrote:
> > From: Charles Anthony
>
> > the missing piece of the rounding algorithim has been identified:
> > Only round if the mantissa was shifted more then 71 bits.
>
> Wow. I'm really impress
On Mon, Mar 28, 2016 at 11:33 AM, Robert Johnson
wrote:
> >
> > On Mar 28, 2016, at 7:45 AM, Charles Anthony
> wrote:
> >
> > I think that having HTTP use DNS was the big one; it changed the role of
> > DNS from finding computers by name to the being the innoc
erating Supervisor), and has an active user base,
including companies offering support services.
-- Charles
UNIX droolz")
"Multics rulez; UNIX droolz"
t
-- Charles
illoscope or monitor.
I have some code that does an X-11 emulation of the Atari Tempest vector
graphics display; I'm thinking of wedging it into the simh PDP8 code to
emulate the 338 and PDP-1 displays.
DECUS has PDP-8 software that runs on the 338, and the spacewar source is
available, so that should be emulatable as well.
-- Charles
The Edited Option / Module List 21-APR-83 Page 620, 621 says:
RP11 CONTROL FOR 8 RP02 OR RP03
RP11-CA CONT,CAB FOR 8 RP03-AS (20M 16BIT WORDS) 120V
RP11-CB CONT,CAB FOR 8 PR03-BS (20M 16BIT WORDS) 240V
RP11-E RPR02 CONTROL
RP11-EARPR02 & RP03 CONTROL & H950 CAB,120V
RP11-EB
Is it an image available?
Anyone have a datasheet for the NCR83C11? I believe it is a SCSI transceiver.
Thanks!
On Fri, Jul 24, 2015 at 6:40 PM, Matt Burke wrote:
> On 23/07/2015 03:45, Charles Dickman wrote:
>> Is it an image available?
>>
>
> MV DIAG CUST TK50 (3 versions):
>
> http://www.9track.net/vax/mvdiag.zip
>
>
> MVII DIAG CUST (RX50 & TK50):
&
On Tue, Jul 28, 2015 at 11:29 AM, Pete Turnbull
wrote:
>
> No, they're ABS - at least mine are, I just tested a few. I don't know what
> grade, though, and perhaps something more flexible and forgiving - a
> different grade of ABS, semi-rigid PVC, or nylon would be better.
>
> My suggestion, howe
On Wed, Jul 29, 2015 at 3:34 AM, Eric Smith wrote:
> Some people seem to think that "reforming" an aluminum electrolytic
> capacitor is some kind of cheat, akin to zapping NiCd cells or
> rejuvenating CRTs. Actually reforming is the same electrochemical
>
Reforming is standard practice with
lues lights in a UV-erasable PROM
by putting it in the PROM burner the wrong way around.
-- Charles
On Sat, Sep 19, 2015 at 4:32 PM, jwsmobile wrote:
> XYZZY. hopefully banishing the creature back to the cave.
>
> Plugh (for good measure)
>
>
Y2
-- Charles
t was a logic trainer, I'm pretty sure it had the same from factor and I'm
pretty sure it was a DEC, but I can't remember what it looked it well
enough to be say that picture is what I remember, but it sure feels like it.
-- Charles
ean, like the PDP-10?
> >
> > {Ducks!}
> >
> >Noel
>
> Strangest C I saw was on a DPS-8 mainframe running GCOS-8.
>
>
And stranger yet, it is currently available and supported:
http://www.thinkage.ca/english/gcos/product-ansic.shtml
-- Charles
> >
>
> DPS-8's, not 6's, and I for one don't believe that legend.
>
>
I don't know about the legend, but the cookie program originated on the
DPS-8: http://www.multicians.org/cookie.html
-- Charles
sting a flux capacitor...
> roll that bench to 88 miles an hour
Since they made 3 of them, we can conclude that flux capacitors have low
ESR, yes?
-- Charles
>
> http://www.oppetarkiv.se/video/2243834/valvakan-1982
>
[Google translate]:
"The setup program can only be seen if you are in Sweden"
-- Charles
On Thu, Apr 7, 2016 at 9:35 PM, Pontus Pihlgren wrote:
> On Thu, Apr 07, 2016 at 04:08:42PM -0700, Charles Anthony wrote:
> >
> > I have some code that does an X-11 emulation of the Atari Tempest vector
> > graphics display; I'm thinking of wedging it into the simh PD
On Tue, Apr 12, 2016 at 9:07 PM, Chuck Guzis wrote:
> I use a plain medical glass syringe with a fine blunt tip needle for
> that. I've also found that orthodontic wire cutters work very well as
> flush cutters (and almost as inexpensive as the regular electronics kind).
A couple of weeks ago, l
There is a ' 338INSTRUCTIONTEST.BIN' out there, but none of the BIN loaders
I have tried recognize it.
The PDP-8 versions of space war all use a different graphics system, so are
not helpful.
Anyone have any 338 diagnostic or applications stashed away somewhere?
-- Charles
place
> to buy your new computer!"), but after a while, the swaps ceased to exist.
>
>
Engineering "Feature Creep" in real life.
-- Charles
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