The last thing I want to do is get involved in the Sellam/Dick spat,
and I'm certainly not pimping for Apple, but...
On Sat, 10 Nov 2001 at 22:42:13 -0700 Richard Erlacher wrote:
> I didn't use an Apple with or without an 8" disk subsystem, but no one I
know
> who did useful work on an Apple][ back in '79-'85, after which the
Apple][ was
> pretty irrelevant, relied on the 5-1.4"diskettes.
During that time period I wrote software for Apples that were used as
satellite video encryption controllers. We had a custom interface card
in one of the Apple slots that drove the encryptor, but we certainly relied
on the standard 5 1/4" disk drives. The machines would typically be installed
in remote uplink sheds, everywhere from San Diego to northern Canada,
and to my knowledge we had no failures due to the disk drive. None of
the drives ever received any maintenance, preventative or otherwise.
And yes, I enjoyed 6502 programming very much. To tie yet another thread
into this, I wrote code to work with the Hayes Micromodem II that allowed
the network operator to transfer new authorization information to the Apple.
(We later upgraded to the Hayes Smartmodem 1200.) These setups also
used a Thunderclock card for real-time clock information.
I still have a Micromodem II but I can't seem to find a Thunderclock card.
Around that same time I bought a video digitizer from Microworkz -- it was
a card that plugged into the Apple and accepted baseband video input.
I remember writing machine code to sample the video and print out the
greyscale image on an HP Thinkjet printer. Cool stuff for the early 80's.
Cheers,
Dan
http://www.decodesystems.com/wanted.html
I have an Apricot Xen 'mainframe' which is a 286 based msdos generic from
1986. Its not ibm compatible. Comically, it does have a copy of Windows V1
on its disk which runs, well, like all versions of windows ;-)
Its role was a fileserver for an ms-net network, hence the awful
'mainframe' name. I've always been intrigued that there was a port of
xenix available for this machine - anyone know anything about that, or
about xenix on a 286 based system in general?
//Rich
On November 10, Sellam Ismail wrote:
> Um, is this the CLASSIC COMPUTERS mailing list? Some culinary mailing
> list traffics seems to be getting mixed in here.
>
> As we've discussed before, an occasional off topic posting is OK. A
> long-assed thread is not. It's starting to drown out my pointless
> argument with Dick (or is that perhaps the point?)
>
> At least precede your subject line with OFF-TOPIC!
>
> Better yet, MOVE THIS DISCUSSION ELSEWHERE!!!
Hey man, it gets worse. Over on the Rescue list, we're talking about
which news network babes we like best. (Personally, I've got the hots
for CNN's Rudi Bakhtiar with The Weather Channel's Christina Abernathy
running a close second. :))
To, ahem, inject some on-topic discussion here...has anybody found a
good replacement for the air-filter medium that' DEC used in the front
panels of, among other things, 10.5" pdp11/34 chassis? I've used
cut-out pieces of furnace filter material with decent results, but I
wonder if anyone has found anything better.
-Dave
--
Dave McGuire
St. Petersburg, FL
Hello, all:
I want to do something fun with the Altair Emulator. Does anyone
have a binary for Adventure? I don't yet have the ability to complie
programs in the emulator (because of problems booting CP/M), so I could use
a memory image.
If someone has one, please contact me off line. Thanks.
Rich
==========================
Richard A. Cini, Jr.
Congress Financial Corporation
1133 Avenue of the Americas
30th Floor
New York, NY 10036
(212) 545-4402
(212) 840-6259 (facsimile)
>> I can't figure out how to change the setup, so it is useless to me (if I
>> can't at least get it to accept a 3.5" drive, I can't use it).
>
>Umm, why?
Why can't I figure out how to change the settings? I don't know, it
doesn't seem to respond to "standard" key combos to get into a setup
menu, so I am figuring it doesn't have one. There are a million and one
unnamed jumpers on the MB, so I don't know if it is one of those, it
doesn't seem to keep settings done thru gsetup (the program I used for my
old IBM ATs and clones). I don't have a manual for it, and a quick look
online turned up no info (I didn't spend a huge amount of time looking,
as the system isn't very valuable to me).
Why can't I use it unless it has a 3.5" drive? Because the only place a
386 is of any use to me right now, is to work as an interviewing station
for a particular software package. But the application runs off a 3.5" DD
disk. So if I can't get it to work with a 3.5, I can't use it (and
currently, it doesn't seem to accept the DD disks in the 3.5 drive when
swapped for the DD 5.25 drive, which I though a little odd, as in my past
experience, I have usually gotten computers to recognize a drive and use
its lowest supported disk format without messing with BIOS settings, the
exception being systems that just didn't support a 3.5 at all, but since
this has cutouts for 2 3.5" drives, I have to assume it should work with
them.)
As a result, this machine's HD, RAM, CGA card, screws, jumpers, and dust
plates are of more value to me than the working unit (I normally would
want the PS, but it isn't a standard AT connector, so I will just strip
the fan from it).
Since it IS a fully working, useable 386, I offered it here first, but no
one seems to want it, so I am going to strip it next chance I get
(probably later today, or tomorrow, I need the bench space back that it
is chewing up).
-chris
<http://www.mythtech.net>
On November 11, Michael Nadeau wrote:
> Xenix was also a popular option for the TRS-80 Model II/12/16/6000 series.
Ahh, eventually I'd like to get my hands on a 16. Someday. I fondly
remember when that machine came out. "Ooooh! A 68K!! At RADIO
SHACK!!!" :-)
-Dave
--
Dave McGuire
St. Petersburg, FL
At 05:06 PM 11/11/01 -0500, you wrote:
> > > Remember, Xenix was originally a Microsoft product, they then sold it
> off
> > > to SCO (for a % ownership in SCO)
> > >
> >
> > Actually Xenix was never a Microsoft branded product. It was Microsoft's
> > but they only sold Xenix as OEM'd versions to vendors like SCO and lots
> > of HW vendors who then added they modifications to support their specific
> > products (like Apricot, whose machines were far from plain PCs).
>
>We may not all mean the same thing by "branded", but ISTR
>seeing the banner "Microsoft XENIX" on that Radio Shack 68000
>machine whose model number I can never recall...
Tandy Models 16 and 6000, it was a dual proc box, with both a Z-80 and a
68K processor. on seperate system boards. the 68K cboards were in a
cardcage in the back, and IIRC the Z-80 wqas in the bottom of the
machine. You could boot CP/M, Trs-Dos, CP/M-68K or Xenix on the
beasties... (I used to own 2 of them) a local ISP (Eskimo north) got
started originally on model 1's, then 3's (in the guise of a BBS) then he
moved it up to a Model 16 running Xenix (still a bbs) then when the whole
"internet" thing started to take off, he used the 16's he had as shell
boxes with a couple of suns to do the talking to the internet......
He used to do a mod on the 16/6000 ramboards that involved running a
couple of wires and changing out the PALS on them to allow 1 Meg per board
instead fo the 256K they shipped with (256Kx1 chips instead of 64Kx1 chips)
>what the hell is all this bullshit? food and now religion. get ontopic!
Ok... what kind of classic computer do you think God used to design the
cosmos... while eating his Nutella?
:-)
-chris
<http://www.mythtech.net>
> Mac -> Asante SCSI to ethernet adapter -> Farallon Etherwave
>ethernet to Localtalk adapter -> Laserwriter
>I likely would have removed the adapter chain and
>connected the Laserwriter to the Mac directly with the Localtalk
>ports but I wasn't going to try and walk someone through a
>reconfigure like that over the phone.
Yeah, I would have gone Mac to Ethernet (if the mac needed the ethernet),
and LaserWriter to Mac via localtalk, run Apple's local talk bridge
software, and the whole ethernet network (including the local mac) will
see the laserwriter on the ethernet network.
Much easier than ethernet to etherwave to localtalk. But you are right,
if they didn't know to connect the LW directly to the mac in the first
place, you probably would have had fun trying to walk them thru it over
the phone.
-chris
<http://www.mythtech.net>
