>My understading is that this machine needs no reference disks, but
> >can I use a hard drive > 20MB? It never mentions it on IBM's site.
I successfully installed a 3 1/2" ST-506/412 drive (a Seagate, IIRC), which
worked OK. Has to be 3 1/2" because it fits in the floppy bay. You have to
find a controller card which has the power output because the floppies take
power off the drive cable.
I think you could bodge it to take a hardcard in one of the expansion
slots.
manney
The Model 25 takes the cake for the world's most stupidly designed PC --
and the hardest to work on.
> well, you could get your 5150 in several different flavours: one, two or
no
> floppy drives.
You could actually get four, supported by the motherboard switches. ($529
each, IIRC) There was some sort of expansion box, or you could get external
drives. I presume that's what the connector on the back of the FDD
controller was for.
manney
There's a lever/spring mechanism that shoves the floppy out when the disk
"carriage" is up and aligned with the slot in the case. When you put in a
disk, it extends the spring, the lever latches, and a microswitch activates
the motor that draws the carriage down. I expect that either the spring is
broke or the lever connected to it is bent. The previous owner probably
shoved in a floppy upside down or backwards and had to wrench it out using
brute force.
Dont laugh. I know someone who repairs machines for a living with GE (they
do repair for Circuit City and others), and he once found a slice of
american cheese in a floppy drive (guess it was a 5-1/4 inch unit). Coins
inside the drives and case are also common sources of PC/Mac repairs. Kids-
you gotta love 'em.
Anyway- the mechanism would go back down after failing to eject. The switch
contacts are still closed, and that's what it's designed to do - keep
running the motor.
You might be able to fix it with a pair of small needlenose pliers if the
spring is not broke. You will have to remove the drive to do this. Be
careful with that paper clip! You could hose up the head, or send a minute
electrical charge through your body that could affect your ability to
reproduce in the future. Unless you are really good with working on tiny
mechanical parts, save yourself the headache and replace the drive.
-----Original Message-----
From: SUPRDAVE <SUPRDAVE(a)aol.com>
To: Discussion re-collecting of classic computers
<classiccmp(a)u.washington.edu>
Date: Monday, January 26, 1998 11:16 PM
Subject: back ontopic: mac 400k drive.
>part of my new additions last week was a bunch of old mac stuff. i finally
got
>one of the 400k drives, but its having eject problems. the mechanism was
stuck
>so now im able to get a disk in, but when i call it to eject, the motor
turns,
>the disk lifts up to the slot, but wont pop out, then the mechanism goes
back
>down in position to read the disk. it does the same thing when i use a
paper
>clip; it will go up, the disk will stay in, then it goes back down into
read
>position. amazingly, the drive works fine otherwise. i dont quite
understand
>the mechanicals of it, anyone have ideas?
>
>david
>
Hi!
Recently I tried advertising for obsolete computers in a national
computer trading magazine, and it has paid off well. But I just got a
phone call today regarding an old Smelter near Mt Gambier in South
Australia. Apparantly they had a huge pile of old computer equipment,
and they went through and sold off the relativly new stuff. What they
have left is a whole lot of old stuff (around 15 years+) includig a huge
number of PCs and XTs, XT laptops, terminals, a mainframe, "a hard-drive
as big as a computer", terminals, and, presumably, a volume of non-dos
stuff. The guy I talked to has no idea what it all is, just that they
want to get rid of it really cheap. It's too much for me to handle on my
own, and it certainly is nowhere near where I live - would anyone else be
at all interested too?
Adam
classiccmp(a)u.washington.edu
Subj: Re: Re[3]: Development, round II
Roger Merchberger wrote:
!>REXX is/was
!>quite a nice language to use, but some features rendered it unsuitable
!>for serious programming - numbers, for example, are stored as strings of
!>digits in the character code of the machine you are using...
!
!Uh, Sir Philip?
!
!Maybe there are other reasons that your statement of unsuitability stands,
!but I can think of one programming language that's very handy (& powerful &
!serious) which stores it's digits as charcter codes: Perl. From experience
!I can tell you that one heckuva lot more stuff gets done with Perl on the
!WWW than Java -- and it's a lot easier to pgm. in.
!
!Guess what! This is still ontopic for this list... there's a version of
!Java for almost every 16-bit or higher machine available -- including a
!native version that runs on an Atari ST... (version 4.035 and I think you
!need a meg to run it -- I've done it!)
But Perl is 10 years old and Java is not. It is still quite easy to
distinguish a perl scalar that contains a numeric value from one that does
not. From the old FAQ you add 0 to see if the thing remains unchanged:
$ perl -e '$s = "a"; if ($s + 0 eq $s) {print "num"} else {print "string"}'
string
$ perl -e '$s = "1"; if ($s + 0 eq $s) {print "num"} else {print "string"}'
num
See also "perlfaq4: Data:Misc: How do I determine whether a scalar is a
number/whole/integer/float?" at
http://www.perl.com/CPAN-local/doc/FAQs/FAQ/PerlFAQ.html
for a whole slew of regular expressions for numbers.
BTW Tcl runs on a bunch of platforms and treats many things like strings as
well (hence it requires the expr() call for numeric evaluation and has
trouble with data containing embedded nulls (whereas perl does not)).
Apologies to folks (such as myself :) who tire of language wars though.
If the original poster wanted to run Rexx I say let them.
Peter Prymmer
(Someone who just spent a great deal of time porting perl to MVS recently)
On average, were most external floppies that used a db25 connector, pretty
much standard, as in interchangable? I'm basically talking along the lines
of mid-80's laptops. I've got a GRiD 1535exp that has a db25 connector on
the back for an external floppy, the left bottom most pin on the connector
is plugged up. Any ideas? Anyone?
-John Higginbotham-
-limbo.netpath.net-
If you ask me, drugs are a BAD idea. I mean, if it's not you, then it's not
you. I would rather be ME and be sitting in a basement, rather than some
powder, effectively turning my body into a slave.
Also, drugs are getting to be the past. Ask a group of junior-high
schoolers about drugs. 9 out of 10 will say that they're a mistake. As for
tobacco and alcohol, that's border-lined, but many are anti-tobacco, but
alcohol.... that's kind of next-generation. We're getting there.
Tim D. Hotze
-----Original Message-----
From: Max Eskin <maxeskin(a)hotmail.com>
To: Discussion re-collecting of classic computers
<classiccmp(a)u.washington.edu>
Date: Saturday, January 24, 1998 7:49 PM
Subject: Re: PDP-8/Es available
>>From classiccmp-owner(a)u.washington.edu Sat Jan 24 00:03:17 1998
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>>From: Ward Donald Griffiths III <gram(a)cnct.com>
>>To: "Discussion re-collecting of classic computers"
><classiccmp(a)u.washington.edu>
>>Subject: Re: PDP-8/Es available
>>References: <3.0.16.19980123181422.37e71016(a)ricochet.net>
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>>
>>Uncle Roger wrote:
>>>
>>> At 11:07 PM 1/21/98 -0800, you wrote:
>>> >>I'll leave this public since it might be useful to someone...I'm 29
>now
>>> >>but when I was 16 or 17 my parents expended GREAT energy trying to
>get me
>>>
>>> >Well, I AM 17, and I'm up to 30 computers or so... Let me see if I
>can
>>> >remember them all, my web site is a partial listing.
>>>
>>> One other item that was pointed out to me in the collectibles forum
>of
>>> Compuserve -- teenagers who collect things rarely get into trouble.
>You
>>> don't see them spending money on drugs or liquor or whathaveyou, and
>they
>>> don't often end up in jail. (Yes, I'm an exception, but I wasn't
>actively
>>> collecting anything in high school.)
>>
>>What exception? In high school I actively collected science fiction
>>books since computers weren't affordable yet to a high school kid -- I
>>wore a slide rule on my belt because (1) I used it (2) that honestly
>was
>>the easiest way to carry a Pickett and (3) the HP-35 came out in my
>>junior year of high school priced about $395.00 more than I had on
>hand.
>>
>(SNIP)
>If you ask me, it is better to have a social life and do drugs (though
>I am firmly against drugs, tobacco, alcohol, and firearms) than not
>do drugs and sit for years in the basement without seeing the light
>of day. It seems to me that since we all die anyway, might as well
>enjoy. I am not brave enough to take that approach, so I sit at my
>computer all day (when I am not at school-I am in 9th grade).
>
>______________________________________________________
>Get Your Private, Free Email at http://www.hotmail.com
Anyone know right off hand what the highest supported baud rate is for the
RS-232 on a CoCo 2 or CoCo 3? Asking for a friend who thinks she can use a
9600 baud external modem on it. (!)
-John Higginbotham-
-limbo.netpath.net-
From: Sam Ismail <dastar(a)wco.com>
Subject: Re: 99 cent store find...
> Every once in a while you actually find something cool at those places.
> There is a 99 cent clearance store (same chain as the one you went to
> Larry) near me where I found a bunch of mid 80s computer programming books
> (all in a series). The titles were like '6502 Assembly Language
> Programming' and 'Z-80 Assembly Language Programming', 'FORTH', some
> others.
Were those those thinnish hardback editions... I have come across
PILOT, FORTH, and TRS-80 Graphics... No 6502 Assembly though, better
check there again...
A couple years back I bought a couple 64 games books from another
discount store, I could easily tell why they were so cheap, some had
doubled or missing pages, or pages upside-down... oops.
> I bought all of them at $.99 each (about 35 in all) kept a set
> for myself and sold the rest on Usenet. I still have a few copies left if
> anyone's interested.
There are some things where you can never have too many. I find
Commodore datasette drives at a real low price is my particular
weakness...
00101001111010100001010111010100001101101110100100010000101101001001000111
I just got some e-mail from a user who was thanking me for the PET FAQ
and directed me to a page where some Commodore stuff is (was) being
sold, of course he snagged the 8010 (PET) modem before he e-mailed but I
may had added a few precious books to me library. You may want to check
out the site at:
http://www.puppetgallery.com/compucat/sale/c64.html
Besides some nice pics of what he offered for sale (I think the drives,
cables, and 64 software are still available), the main page has an
interesting history of the couple's computer experiences over the years
(from buying one of the first PETs to having Lenoard Nimoy call his
BBS...)
Larry Anderson
P.S. the user who e-mailed me also has a notable page, especially if you
have any interest at all in the history of Commodore 64/128 BBS
programs... Check it out at: http://www.prismnet.com/~bo
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