test-drb September 2002

test-drb@ccmp.vtda.org

217 participants
408 discussions

by foo＠siconic.com

Well, I finally had some success with these old computers I've been trying to get working. The Atari problem ended up being with the power supply. Its plug did not properly fit the power receptacle on the computer. Once I got the proper power supply it worked like a champ. More like I remember the last time I played with an Atari 800 a few years ago. Then, I was amazed at how easy it was to get up and running with a disk-based Atari 800. Everything is total plug and play (but for real). I now like the Atari 800 :) The TRS-80 M3 was a LOT of work but I finally got it running. It turns out the problem with most of the units I tested most likely was a bad keyboard or just my ignorance in not knowing how to boot it into BASIC ;) I finally found one that had a decent keyboard and would boot to BASIC if I held down the BREAK key upon boot-up or after a reset. I wanted to make one nice machine out of two that I had. I moved the good keyboard to the nicer one. The nicer one didn't have the serial port board, so I moved it from the yucky one to the nice one. No wonder RS wanted you to bring the machine in to the service center to get it upgraded. This is NOT an easy computer to work on. I had to unscrew everything to remove the motherboard to both take out the card on the one and install it on the other. Also, there is a power cable that is added for the serial port option when it's upgraded, so I had to cut the zip ties holding the cable in place on the old one to move it to the new one. What a shit design. The stuck brightness and contrast knobs were fixed with a healthy helping of Deoxit, which is this deoxidizing agent. I worked the knobs back and forth and they loosened up nicely. Now everything works great. I now like the TRS-80 Model III :) The Commodore 64 I have is just plum dead. Or at least it seems to be. The video cable I am using has four connectors on it: red, yellow, white and black. The 1702 monitor has three jacks on the back: chroma, luma and audio. I tried all different combinations trying to get video on the display but no die. What's the deal with that? I think I'm using the wrong video cable, but all the C64 stashes I check turn up this 4-connector cable. I forgot to bring home the spare C64's I was going to have as stand-by's so I don't currently have another C64 to compare with. I know I have a three-connector cable that I'm sure goes to the C64 but I cannot find one for the life of me. Grrr. I still hate the C64. The Radio Shack Color Computer 2 is confusing. And somewhat lame. I have to go find the disk controller carthridge to attach disk drives to it. Then I have to find the proper disk drives. Fine. But I can't figure out the video. I want to connect it to an Amdek color monitor. The only video jack is the RCA type on the back that seems to be a built in RF modulator. So needless to say I don't get video on the display. I can't find any mention on the web of adding an external monitor to the CoCo. The CoCo2 is lame. I do not like the CoCo2. Any idea on how to hook the CoCo2 to a composite monitor? 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

Stuff available in UK

by pete＠dunnington.u-net.com

It's that time again -- time to clear a little space. Here are a few things I need to get rid of, some are things that I part with only reluctantly because I've had them a while, some are things that have been replaced with "better". All have to go *soon*. PDP-11/23 in a BA11-N box (upgraded to Q22, so equivalent to BA11-S) with 11/23 processor, memory, serial lines, etc. This was the first PDP-11 I ever had, but it has to go to make room for an even more interesting one. Free to a good home: Dual 8" double-sided floppies in a 3U-high rackmount case with 240V power supply. 50-pin SA850-type interface. Very nice unit made by Baydel (of RAID fame). I might also have a Q-bus floppy controller to go with this; it was once used with the 11/23 above. PDP-11/24 system chassis (also 3U high) and boards, including CPU and KT-24 Unibus map, maybe some others. Trust 9600 SP+ A4 colour scanner and SCSI interface card, with documentation and floppies. Works well under windows, not quite so well under Linux/SANE. I might also have a DEC TS11 and TS03 tape unit going spare. A few assorted DEC (and other) bits available to anyone who collects any of the above. Lastly, my much-loved Star LaserPrinter 8. This is a laser printer based on a Canon SX engine, like an HP LaserJet II. Originally with 1MB of memory, upgraded to 2MB, so it can handle a whole page of graphics plus some extra fonts/forms. Parallel and serial interfaces. In very good clean condition, it's had about 26000 pages through it from new (I bought it around 1988). I'd like to get (a small amount of) money for this. I would consider trading any of the above for a Unibus disk controller, a Viking QTD controller, or a TU56 ;-) -- Pete Peter Turnbull Network Manager University of York

24 years

OT: dumpster dive and water/mold cleanup

by dwightk.elvey＠amd.com

>From: "Chad Fernandez" <fernande(a)internet1.net> > >William Donzelli wrote: >> You can not reuse needles, nor can you sharpen them. With the >> acoustic-era machines, needles are used exactly *once*. Play the record, >> then pitch the needle. If you reuse needles, you will wreck the records. >> >> Needles are very available from several sources. They are quite >> inexpensive (they have to be!). >> >> William Donzelli >> aw288(a)osfn.org > >Wow, that is something I didn't know. I have zero knowledge on acoustic >era anything :-) > >That would be a pain. > >Chad Fernandez >Michigan, USA Hi The original Edisons all used diamond needles and could get thousands of plays. Many of the acoustic setups used cactus needles and one could sharpen them with a twizzle thing that had sand-paper to sharpen them. Dwight

24 years

OT/Old Recordings/Shameless Plug

by healyzh＠aracnet.com

> >My current archival project involves shifting Laserdisc's to DVD-R. I'm > >embarrassed to admit that I've resorted to using a system running Windows > >XP. > > Why XP instead of 2000? My Tivo -> SVCD projects went 15-20% slower on XP > vs. 2K, so I dropped back. I *despised* that damnable kandy-koted GUI crap, > too... As much as I despise Microsoft products I've found that I can almost stomach Windows XP Pro unlike any previous version of Window or Window NT since Windows 3.11. Plus it has some features that I like. Since I don't have a dedicated system for this, XP is the best choice. If in the future I do go with a dedicated system I'll put NT2k Pro on it, as I've already got a legal copy I can use for that. Actually considering it can take 40 hours to encode a disk using the options I'm using, a dedicated system is starting to make sense. "^) > My results are better than VHS, as I've never seen SVHS in action, I can't > say about that... not quite as good as DVD. But... hey... whaddya want for > $0.20 per disc??? :-) http://tivo.30below.com/zmerch/ -- for my methods; > maybe you'll find a nugget of info there to help you out? I'll have to take a look at it. I've been looking at using VCD for shifting VHS and TV. I've run into a really wierd problem though. The audio on my AVI capture (I use a Canopus ADVR-100 hooked to a firewire port) sounds fine, but when I encoded it to MPEG1 (VCD spec'd), it has a high pitched whine. I don't get the whine if I encode it as MPEG2 for DVD. So far I've only experimented briefly with this using a TV signal as the VCR in the computer room is an old ~1990 GE model with Mono audio and I'm using fairly cheasy cables to hook it up to the ADVR-100. I'm wondering if that might not be part of my problem. As on the AVI or MPEG2 file I think I can hear a 60Hz hum. I'm going to look into getting a decent VCR for the computer room in the very near future and experiment more. Zane

24 years

OT/Old Recordings/Shameless Plug

by jpl15＠panix.com

I have offered audio restoration services for many years, from any (and all) types of recorded audio media - cylinders, wire, tape: paper, plastic, sprocketed, 2MM to 4"... etc etc. I restore damaged media and do forensic work. That being said, if any list members have a few bits of recorded stuff lying about that you'd like cleaned up and transfered to a CD, contact me off-list. Obviously for big and/or complex jobs we'd need to discuss a fee structure, but for the occasional disc, old tape, or spool of wire that can be rolled into ProTools and dumped to a disc... why not? I imagine that this would extend to data cassettes with FSK or other audio-freq modulation schemes, so it's not *that* badly off-topic. :) Cheers John

24 years

OT: dumpster dive and water/mold cleanup

by Robert_Feldman＠jdedwards.com

Tried RadioShack? -----Original Message----- From: Russ Blakeman [mailto:rhb57@vol.com] Sent: Wednesday, September 04, 2002 2:07 PM To: cctalk(a)classiccmp.org Subject: RE: OT: dumpster dive and water/mold cleanup If y ou come across a vendor that also sells new stylus units for the tone arms of turntables you might post that too - my long term source dried up last year <snip>

24 years

OT: dumpster dive and water/mold cleanup

by mythtech＠mac.com

>Antique electronic supply has some. www.tubesandmore.com >They are good for 12 plays each. Package of 25 for $1.95 Thanks, I'll check them out. -chris <http://www.mythtech.net>

24 years

FA: CompatiCard IV, old Pop Electronics with 2650 SBC, S-100 SpeechLab, SOL Access & more

by rigdonj＠cfl.rr.com

Still cleaning up around here! See <http://cgi6.ebay.com/aw-cgi/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewSellersOtherItems&userid=rigd…> Joe

24 years

OT: dumpster dive and water/mold cleanup

by mythtech＠mac.com

>You can not reuse needles, nor can you sharpen them. With the >acoustic-era machines, needles are used exactly *once*. Play the record, >then pitch the needle. If you reuse needles, you will wreck the records. Glad to know that. I have reused them before, but never more than two or three total playings (they go visibly dull VERY quickly, and unless they look nice and sharp, I didn't dare use them). >Needles are very available from several sources. They are quite >inexpensive (they have to be!). Humm... I've never been able to track them down. But then again, last time I really looked, was pre-internet for me (pre 94/95), so I'll have to do a search now that I have the power of things like Sherlock and Google at my disposal. -chris <http://www.mythtech.net>

24 years

cctalk digest, Vol 1 #157 - 46 msgs

by gstreet＠indy.net

Hello All, Back on June 9th of this year (Classic Tech Eletter #11), someone thoughtfully posted the paragraph at the bottom of this message (on this newsgroup). Coincidentally, I had already found the same S-100 computer and I eventually ended up winning the bid (I was the only bidder). I only very recently received this machine (it was slightly damaged in shipping, and it _really_ was filthy! (There was an enormous delay in shipping it to me.) I've got the damage straightened out and I completely disassembled it for cleaning. I just got it back together last night and turned on the switch. I seems to power up and the led's come on (led near the on/off switch and 3 led's on the backplane/motherboard). I talked to one person who said that he thought that he'd had an ISC computer before, but that it wasn't pure S-100. The reason that I bought this machine is that I have some Seattle Computer Products S-100 cards that I really want to get running. They drop in the ISC "S-100" computer _perfectly_, but I have not powered it up with the SCP cards in place. If there's something that's not "pure S-100" about the ISC, I don't want to damage the SCP cards. I just checked the link (below) and it still works. I think the link will disappear in just a few more days (90 days), so I can provide the same pictures to anyone interested after the link disappears. The reason it's taken so long to ask this question is because it took over 2 months for me to actually receive the unit (now the darned link is ready to vanish, probably on Sept 10th). http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=2029719366 I cannot find _any_ information about ISC Systems Corp., Spokane, WA. It's an absolutely beautifully crafted unit and from the filthy condition that I received it in--it appears to have been left running for, perhaps, _years_! The seller claimed that he'd removed the existing cards to install in his Altair, but if that's true, someone must have already substituted different cards--in the pictures, you'll notice a bunch of twisted pair and other small gauge wires: these all appear to hook up to what would seem to be "non-standard" S-100 cards, through proprietary connectors. I cannot fathom how the original ISC cards could have been of any use to anyone except a user of this ISC system. It appears that the "non-standard" wires go to things like: keyboard, monitor, a network and LP 1 and LP 2 (LPT 1 & LPT 2??). There is yet another connector that I've no clue as to what it might do. _BUT_, _if_ the box itself conforms to the S-100 standard, and if I can use the SCP cards, all the other wires don't matter, because they won't be connected to anything. I've really taken a liking to this machine--I hope I can use it! Any help would be much appreciated! Thank you, Robert Greenstreet gstreet(a)indy.net > >At 08:33 PM 6/9/02 -0400, you wrote: >CLASSIC TECH ELETTER, Vol. 1, Issue 11 > >It's too bad the seller gutted this ISC Systems S-100 computer. If it >sells close to the opening bid, however, the buyer will get a good deal on >an S-100 starter system. (The seller's right about the system needing a >cleaning. You could knit a sweater with all the lint stuck in the fan >vent.) http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=2029719366

24 years

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test-drb September 2002