test-drb July 2004

test-drb@ccmp.vtda.org

259 participants
518 discussions

by mbg＠theworld.com

>>I'm thinking farther back. Was there any mini or mainframe that had a >>real-time clock built in or as an add-on option? >It's come up in some litigation. The actual issue at hand is that >someone was able to overturn a patent by claiming the IBM 650 had a >real-time clock built in. They "proved" this by submitting as evidence a >printout that had the date printed on it(!) I've checked the IBM 650 >Manual of Operation and it makes no mention whatsoever of a real-time >clock. I pretty much figured it wouldn't but I of course had to do due >diligence. >But it made me wonder: what was the first computer to have a built-in >real-time clock? The 11/93,94 has built-in date/time. But that was end of 80s, early 90s. Prior to that, the Pro series had the TOY (time of year) clock built in. That was in the mid-80s. Prior to that, at least with Unibus PDP-11s, CSS (Computer Special Systems, DEC Nashua) came up with the KW11-C, a clock/calendar board which, from the drawings I have, was supposed to eventually be able to get its date/time from the WWVB signal. Otherwise it could be programmed with current date/time as well as date/time for a future event which would cause an interrupt. I have a programming manual for it somewhere (in my proverbial deep storage). This was early 80s. I seem to remember a KWV11-C, for qbus -11s, but I don't know what its features were. -- Sellam Ismail Vintage Computer Festival ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ International Man of Intrigue and Danger http://www.vintage.org [ Old computing resources for business || Buy/Sell/Trade Vintage Computers ] [ and academia at www.VintageTech.com || at http://marketplace.vintage.org ]

21 years, 1 month

Sanyo MBC 550

by dehogg＠ksu.edu

Just ran across the thread looking for info on the Sanyo MBC 550/555. I have a complete system that started out as the original 550 (had one 360 drive). I upgraded it to the 555 by adding the second drive, then upgraded to the double sided 800k drives. Installed more memory by piggy backing the memory chips and modifiying the power supply current limit sensor, added the PC video display card to make it more compatible with IBM type programs. Total of 512k memory. It came with MSDos 2.11 for Sanyo, Wordstar, Calcstar, DataStar, Pcwrite. It will run lotus 123 vs1.1. I have upgraded the Wordstar to the Pro version. I also have a multitude of "freeware" software that will run on it. I also subscribed to the Magazine that supported the unit and I have all of the copies that were issued relating to the 555. I used the monochrome monitor at first but shifted to using a Panasonic color monitor that had a pc input and ntsc input so I could use an external tuner and listen to tv while doing computer stuff and switch to the video if something sounded interesting. I also have the schematic diagram for the system. I used a Star Micronics dot matrix printer at the time. Fun time and learning experience. Donald E. Hogg Associate Director/Engineering Educational Communications Center Kansas State University 128 Bob Dole Hall Manhattan, Kansas 66506-6902 Voice==785.532.3141 Fax==785.532.7355 Email: dehogg(a)k-state.edu

21 years, 1 month

Good news on my RK05 drives

by wacarder＠usit.net

I just wanted to give everyone an update on my RK05 adventures. Yesterday I received an RK11-D controller card set and backplane. I decided to be adventurous and install it in my 11/34. I surprised myself by getting it right the first time. I installed the 4-slot backplane with the cards and plugged it into the BA11-k's power plugs that were available under the bottom. Then I moved the terminator card from the last slot on my existing backplane to the last slot on the RK11 backplane. I then connected the two backplanes together with an M9202 unibus connector. I booted up fine, no unibus config errors. So far so good. Then today I decided to cable everything up to my two RK05J drives and see if I would be lucky enough to have a working drive (or two). I cleaned out the drives, making sure to remove any small particles of dust/foam/etc. I connected a unibus cable from the RK11 to the first RK05 (drive 0). I then connected another cable from drive 0 to drive 1 (the second Rk05 drive). I powered everything on to make sure that the drives still behaved correctly when I pressed the RUN button. They did. I then put an untested, but clean looking RK05 pack in drive 0 and attempted to access the drive with a little Basic-Plus program I wrote in my 11/34 RSTS/E system. Drive 0 seems to have problems reading, but does spin up and light the ON-CYL and READY lights. I need to watch the head when I attempt to do a READ and see if it's doing anything. Experts, does this sound like an alignment problem or something else? Drive 1 works perfectly and can read the pack just fine. I modified my program to read blocks in various positions on the pack (1st block, 100th block, 700th block, 1500th block, 2000th block, etc). It had no problems. Now I need to troubleshoot that first drive to try to determine why it is having problems reading. It spins up fine, but gets errors reading. I have not investigated any further. Thanks to Tony, Al, Ethan, Paul, Henk and others here who gave me advice and encouragement on this little adventure. It was pretty exciting to hook up some 30 year old drives to my 27 year old computer and get one of them to work! I guess St. Chad was there too! Ashley

21 years, 1 month

8" floppy project

by dave＠mitton.com

On 7/28/2004 12:00 PM -0500, cctech-request(a)classiccmp.org wrote: >Date: Tue, 27 Jul 2004 22:46:49 -0500 >From: Doc Shipley <doc(a)mdrconsult.com> >Subject: Re: 8" floppy project >.. > And I need to be able to accurately copy a bootable RX02 diskette to >a formatted blank. > > I'd *like* to be able to take a disk image of a floppy as a file, and >to write that back out to floppy, but that's gravy. I wrote a set of FORTRAN programs that did that running on RSX-11. I was archiving CP/M diskettes onto RL02s when I worked in TWO. I could read the disks to a file and write multiple copies of CP-MUG distribution diskettes for the New England Computer Society. I don't remember if I ported it to VMS. You needed to have PHYSIO priviledge, and mount the drive FOREIGN, since FCS/RMS kept trying to interpret the floppy as a DEC file system media. I don't remember if I used QIOs or some other FORTRAN file construct. The programs weren't that hard to write, they did require a bit of work to unmap the sector interleaving. They were CP/M standard specific. I even wrote a program that would print a DIR from the image file. I'm sure the programs been lost to time. The CP/M diskettes however, I still have a large box of in the basement. Dave.

21 years, 1 month

Expressions of Interest for Old Microbee Computer Equipment

by gibbinsrobert＠hotmail.com

Hi all: My name is Robert Gibbins and I live in Melbourne, Australia. For sometime, my wife has been at me to clear out all the old Microbee computer equipment, software and documentation in our garage. I collected it all in the early 90s and have not used for many years. It is now with some real nostalgic reluctance that I try to find an appropriate home or homes for it all. Microbee was our first home computer and finding a new home has got to be better than throwing it all in the rubbish bin; is it? I am writing to you because you have displayed some interest as I trawled the Internet in old Microbee Computers and I am interested in receiving expressions of interest for it. But what I finally do get rid of will be dependent on the responses and of course any final offers I receive. By-the-way, any postage and handling charges will be your responsibility. Whilst cleaning out the Microbees I cataloged most of what I found. I may have missed listing some small items such as spare parts and individual cables etc. If you are interested please read the attachment with this email which is saved in Microsoft Word format. Some photos are included. By-the-way, OpenOffice.org was used to write the attachment. So, if you are at all interested please contact me by email at gibbinsrobert(a)hotmail.com. If you know someone else that could also be interested in old Microbee equipment please feel free to forward this email to them. Thank you Robert _________________________________________________________________ SEEK: Now with over 50,000 dream jobs! Click here: http://ninemsn.seek.com.au?hotmail

21 years, 1 month

The results of your email commands

by cctech-bounces＠classiccmp.org

The results of your email command are provided below. Attached is your original message. - Results: Ignoring non-text/plain MIME parts - Done.

21 years, 1 month

Old EPROM questions again, EPROM Programmer

by dwight.elvey＠amd.com

>From: ard(a)p850ug1.demon.co.uk ---snip--- > >I built my first EPROM programmer about 18 years ago. Programs >2716-27128, using the 'slow' algorithm. It doesn't even handle 12.5V >parts (I should add that feature!). 3 hand-wired boards of mostly TTL, >with a 40 pin AY-3-1015 UART in the middle. Oh yes, it's an EPROM >emulator as well, for the same types of EPROMs. > Hi My first programmer was also built to do 2716's. I put it on a prototype board in my H89. It only needed a few parts. The H89 was my second computer, my first was a Poly88. I made an adapter socket with two switches to expand the programmer to do 2732's and 2764's. I even added a jumper select for VPP levels. My favorite programmer is the 4004 developement system I have. It only does 1702A's but with a little modification of firmware can handle 1702's as well. How many out there actually have 1702's ( not the same as 1702A's )? For general purposes, the Needham works fine. I have a schematic for this that someone else drew up but I have no way to read. It is in some schmatic program format. I'd love to get it into a pdf to print out. I'm told that the main issue with the PB-10 is that they have filled the entire table for PROM types. Of course, with the schematic, one should be able to write their own code for other devices if the voltages needed are supported. One could also strip out many of the smart algorithms and just use the generic one. This would free up a lot of the space in the tables. Dwight

21 years, 1 month

Insect Conductivity - language?

by dwight.elvey＠amd.com

>From: "Don Maslin" <donm(a)cts.com> > > > ---snip--- >You are sure that they were ants and not termites? > > - don Hi Does anyone have the definitive answer as to which has the lowest DC and AC resistance? An ant or a termite? Also, how does that resistance vary over time of use? I want to see graphs and statistics. Different species might also be an additional variable. Dwight

21 years, 1 month

Old EPROM questions again, EPROM Programmer

by dave04a＠dunfield.com

> Does anyone have some schematics and software (would be great) for a > little homebrewed Eprom Programmer which works with a standard PC > parallel-port or ISA slot? I have a hardware/software design for a simple EPROM programmer on my site ... unfortunately, it was designed years ago when I was still fairly new at hardware design and it shows ... Works well however and I still use one of them from time to time (quicker and easier than my 29B). It's completely stand-alone with a 8-digit LED display and a keypad. It can upload/download Intel or Motorola HEX format data via a serial port, and also has a "remote" mode for total computer control. It only does 2716, 2732, 2764, 27128 and 27256 family devices (all I needed at the time), although you could design adapters and modify the code to support other devices if you wanted (I did one for 8051's at one point). Parts might be a bit hard to find now - uses a 6809 CPU, 6821 PIA, a 6551 UART, a few 6264 SRAM's, a handful of latches and 3-4 relays to move the power/programming voltage around (ok - I didn't know a better way at the time). You could redesign it using a modern single-chip MCU and better power control and reduce the parts count considerably. You could make a much simpler device if you want to make it rely on a PeeCee and it's parallel port - I did a "quickie" 29040 flash programmer a few years back which was literally nothing more than 3 8-bit latches and a decoder chip (and some software on the PC side). Regards, -- dave04a (at) Dave Dunfield dunfield (dot) Firmware development services & tools: www.dunfield.com com Vintage computing equipment collector. http://www.parse.com/~ddunfield/museum/index.html

21 years, 1 month

Intel D82284 datasheet..

by julesrichardsonuk＠yahoo.co.uk

Anyone happen to have a copy of the Intel D82284 IC (18 pin DIL) datasheet? I think it's some form of clock generator IC; I have an 80286 board which uses one that I'm trying to fix and just want to verify that the system's clocking OK. cheers, Jules

21 years, 1 month

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test-drb July 2004