test-drb February 2002

test-drb@ccmp.vtda.org

293 participants
1043 discussions

by donm＠cts.com

As you will note, Barry authorized this posting. - don ---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Wed, 13 Feb 2002 17:24:45 -0500 From: Barry A. Watzman <Watzman(a)neo.rr.com> To: 'Don Maslin' <donm(a)cts.com> Subject: RE: SOL-20 keyboard I won't but you may if you want to. Barry -----Original Message----- From: Don Maslin [mailto:donm@cts.com] Sent: Wednesday, February 13, 2002 1:05 AM To: Barry A. Watzman Subject: Re: SOL-20 keyboard On Tue, 12 Feb 2002, Barry A. Watzman wrote: > By the way, in 1977 I made and sold a SOL-20 keyboard modification kit > that included a new ROM for the keyboard and new keytops. The new ROM > made the high order bit of the numeric keypad keys a "1" instead of a > "0". This made it possible to distinguish between the keys in the > numeric keypad and the numeric keys in the top row of the normal > keyboard (in the stock keyboard, these different keys produced exactly > the same output). This was transparent to normal applications because > they normally did an "ANI 7FH" anyway, stripping this bit, but it > could be used by an application if the application wanted to do so. > The new keytops had word processing legends instead of numbers, and > really was made for the "Electric Pencil" and "Wordstar" word > processors. The keytops were actually made by Keytronic (I had to pay > tooling charges, about $1,000 (those were 1977 dollars, it was about > one-fourth the price of a new car)) and and matched the SOL keyboard > exactly. > > I have a few of these kits left in a box in the basement. If anyone > wants them, they are $25. What I'm not sure of is if I have the > installation instructions anywhere. > > [If anyone takes me up on this, I'm actually going to have to FIND that > box, which may be easier said than done.]

24 years, 1 month

nice find - now I have a PDP-11/93 question

by GOOI＠oce.nl

Hi all. Many times I read with envy those phantastic finds in the US. Now it is my time to get lucky: - several 8- and 16-line serial MUXen with distr. panels - Q-Bus Centronics printer interface with connector - SC-08 Q-Bus (dual) SCSI controller (MSCP/TMSCP compatible) with the Emulex doc and the rear connector panel - KDJ11-A manual (0.5 inch thick) - LA120 (with flaky electronics and both pin-feeds bands broken) - PDP-11/73 with TK50, RD54 (Maxtor) disk and 2 M7551 memory boards (but when powered up produced the smell of burning paper ...) - PDP-11/93 (M8981-BA) but without documentation. AFAIK, the 11/93 was the fastest DIGITAL PDP-11, so I consider this a nice addition to my collection. Since the chassis only contained in slot 1 A-B: M8981 PDP-11/93 in slot 2 A-B: M8047 grant continuity in slot 3 A-B: M7546 TK50 controller and the PSU of course, I moved the TK50 and the RD54 from the 11/73 into the 11/93 and added in slot 4, position A-B, the RQDX3 (M7555). On the M8981 are 8 diagnostic LEDs, from top to bottom a yellow, 3 red LEDs, a green and 3 red ones again. I call them yellow, red 1-2-3, green, red 4-5-6. When the system is turned on (with HALT button in) the display on the backpanel reads "7.7." and all LEDs on the CPU module are on. When I push the HALT button out and press the RESTART button, the display reads "0.4." and the LEDs are as follows: yellow - on red 1 - off red 2 - off red 3 - off green - on red 4 - on red 5 - off red 6 - off. What does this mean? BTW I connected a VT set at 9600 Bd to the console DB-25 connector. Nothing appears on the screen. The DIP switches on the backpanel are set as follows: (left) (right) +-----------------+ | # # | | # # # # # # | +-----------------+ Last piece of information I can think of is the backplane. It is an H9278-A. Reading what I have written, I come to think that I forgot to check jumpers/DIP switches on the M8981 board itself .... If necessary I can tell that tomorrow. TIA - Henk. http://home.hetnet.nl/~tshaj

24 years, 1 month

Working with useful computers (was: What's your specialty?)

by mtapley＠swri.edu

Sellam touched off a firestorm of responses: >Ok, now's your chance to discuss your specialty and get the attention of >other folks who have stuff that you may want. Sellam, you *are* keeping a list of these answers, right? If anyone is brave enough to declare themselves a specialist, they ought to get questions about their "specialty" directed to them. Mine (am I really that brave? Sigh): --------- Dec Rainbow (see also Jeff Armstrong, or Tony Duell) Own a 100A with 8087 board, VR201 and VR240 monitors, tech doc set, some software NeXT (I'm *definitely* not the only or best one of these on the list) Own an 040 cube, OD often works, floppy, Laserprinter, NS3.0 and 3.3 and a 1.0 OD, Mathematica 2.2 and 3.0, WriteNow, various other SW R. D. Davis asked: >How many here still work, for an >income, with the types of vintage systems they collect? > > ..Out > of curiosity, how many others here absolutely refuse to work for an > employer requiring one to work with those confounded annoyances called > Micro$oft products? The NeXT does most of my analysis and coding, a Mac PB3400 does most of the rest, various Unix Boxen and Macs do what's left. A hand-me-down Power Mac 8500 with Oriffice 2000 translates to sylk or .pdf when I recieve tainted files from co-workers. I work pretty hard at not using Micro$oft (and advocating abstinence) but I admit to bending at times. - Mark

24 years, 1 month

SyQuest drive compatibility

by vcf＠vintage.org

Here's a good FAQ on SyQuest drives that answered my question regarding whether or not a 44MB drive was compatible with an 88MB drive was compatible with a 200MB drive. The bottom line is that the original 88MB drive could only read a 44, not write to it. People got pissed, so SyQuest came out with an 88c ('c' for "combination") that could both read and write 44MB disks. The 200MB drive can read/write/initialize 44/88/200MB disks. -- Sellam Ismail Vintage Computer Festival ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ International Man of Intrigue and Danger http://www.vintage.org * Old computing resources for business and academia at www.VintageTech.com *

24 years, 1 month

Compaq portable to good home

by vcf＠vintage.org

Contact Peter directly if you are interested. Reply-to: <banjoman9(a)hotmail.com> ---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Wed, 13 Feb 2002 12:15:38 From: Peter Finucane <banjoman9(a)hotmail.com> Subject: computers I have several bits and pieces including a working Compaq portable from about late sixties early seventies. Although "portable" it is heavy and about the weight(and looks like) a portable sewing machine. It has a built in 5 inch screen,integral keyboard and operates on two 5 1/4 floppy discs. I live in Southern England and would be prepared to donate this if someone was willing to collect it. I also have a working IBM 286 with monitor from about 1988, again I will donate. Please advise if you are interested or can put me in touch with someone who is. Pete Finucane (banjoman) -- Sellam Ismail Vintage Computer Festival ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ International Man of Intrigue and Danger http://www.vintage.org * Old computing resources for business and academia at www.VintageTech.com *

24 years, 1 month

Need docs & drivers for old tape drives

by csmith＠amdocs.com

> -----Original Message----- > From: Sellam Ismail [mailto:foo@siconic.com] > to be able to read just about anything, but writing isn't as critical. > Usually when someone wants data converted these days, they > want it on CD > or 3.5" floppy. Do you plan to read tk50, QIC-1000, 9-track? What about the SyQuest removables that were so common on Macintosh systems? Chris Christopher Smith, Perl Developer Amdocs - Champaign, IL /usr/bin/perl -e ' print((~"\x95\xc4\xe3"^"Just Another Perl Hacker.")."\x08!\n"); '

24 years, 1 month

Need docs & drivers for old tape drives

by mythtech＠Mac.com

>I'm looking for PC docs & drivers for old tape drives. I already have >everything I need for Colorado tape drives, so I'm looking for older, more >obscure stuff from the 80s. If anyone's got ANYTHING like this, for any >type of tape drive (QIC, digital cassette, whatever) please let me know. I have a Conner Tape-Store 800 with docs and drivers (drivers disks appear to be BackUp Exec for windows) I also have an Iomege Tape250 Insider with docs and drivers. What exactly are you looking for? (ie: did you want them, or just copies, or just wanted to know something about them). They are both in use right now, so I don't know if I am apt to just give them away. -chris <http://www.mythtech.net>

24 years, 1 month

Is this a IBM RT mouse?

by mcguire＠neurotica.com

On January 28, Doc wrote: > > Yup, that's it! Anyone claimed it yet? I'd like it for my RT. > > I think, therefore I am dangerous > > Well, I fired off an email asking for it Saturday, and haven't heard > back. So, I hope *I* got first dibs.... Me too. We could all meet somewhere and fight for it. :) -Dave, grunt grunt -- Dave McGuire St. Petersburg, FL "Less talk. More synthohol." --Lt. Worf

24 years, 1 month

4.4BSD-Lite binaries for SPARC and PMAX

by jkunz＠unixag-kl.fh-kl.de

Hi. I plan to do a BSD exhibition at the VCFE. Main focus is 4.3BSD{,-Tahoe,-Reno} on VAXen. But I want to show 4.4BSD-Lite on HP300, SPARC and PMAX too. I have the 4.4BSD-Lite HP300 binaries, but nothing for SPARC and PMAX. Are there any binaries still around? I don't want to struggle with a SPARC and PMAX bootstrap... Ahh, and 4.2BSD-Reno for HP300 is missing too... -- tsch??, Jochen Homepage: http://www.unixag-kl.fh-kl.de/~jkunz/

24 years, 1 month

VMS help file

by alan.pearson＠cramer.com

Last night I finally got a cable sorted (thanks Pete!) to connect the VS3100 to a "VT52" (Atari ST running the emulator!), and was chuffed to find it's a healthy 16Mb Model 30 with two hard disks and VMS 5.5-2 installed. Unfortunately my old mate "HELP" doesn't want to play with me any more: $ HELP %HELP-F-OPENIN, error opening SYS$COMMON:[SYSHLP]HELPLIB.HLB as input Rats. I was pretty much counting on HELP working to help dust off the cobwebs :-) I'm guessing it's not installed because the machine was configured to boot >from the network (ESA0). A SHOW DEV revealed a couple of disks ("DKA200" and "DKA300") and luckily it boots VMS from DKA300 no trouble. I reset the SYSTEM password OK, so now I've got a system to play with but no HELP to make life easier :-) So, a few questions to help me on my way: - are there VMS equivalents of 'find' and 'grep' to set loose on the disks to look for this file? - if the help file isn't on either disk, would somebody be able to send me a copy? - I'd like to find out more about how VMS boots, can someone point me at a good website? Finally, at the moment I don't have a suitable CD drive to be able to install the Hobbyist OpenVMS. When VMS boots it displays: %LICENSE-I-EXCEEDED, attempted usage exceeds active license limits Is there a limit to the number of logins allowed after expiry? Am I going to get locked out? :-} Cheers, Al.

24 years, 1 month

Jump to page:

2026

2025

2024

2023

2022

2021

2020

2019

2018

2017

2016

2015

2014

2013

2012

2011

2010

2009

2008

2007

2006

2005

2004

2003

2002

2001

2000

1999

1998

1997

test-drb February 2002