The local surplus place has an Alpha available.
I know nothing of these machines. It is in a black 4U rackmount case. Front
panel door opens to reveal a 3.5 floppy, removable hard drive (which has
been removed and disappeared), and a CD drive. Inside the machine are two
scsi cards, and a few others I didn't look closely at. There's 256M of ram
(all big 32m modules).
If anyone is interested, let me know, and let me know what you want me to
look for, and I'll go back and look at it closer. If you want it, I'll put
you in touch with the guy at the store. They typically let this kind of
thing go cheap.
Jay
Jameco claims to have real Signetics 82S129's in (not substituted parts).
These are for the HP 21MX loader roms.
They are quoting me $9.95 each for qty 1-10.
Anyone know of a better source, or want to go in with me on this? I will
probably get about 10.
Equivalent parts (that my 29B can program):
Monolithic Memories 6301
Harris 7611
Texas Instruments 24S10
Applied Micro Devices 27S21
So maybe someone knows of a source for the above parts that is cheaper.
Jay
I have never heard of these devices being called "Record Unit"
I have seen them called "Unit Record"
try http://www.bitsavers.org/pdf/ibm/cardProc for information on IBM
card processing equipment.
What were some interesing record unit machines from IBM
Card punches:
Which IBM card punch had a dial on the upper part of
the keyboard? I used one, but I forget what the dial
was for.
Card Sorters:
What is the machine that read card and could add
information and print reports, usually programmed with
a patch panel?
Were there any machines that read cards and wrote to
Mag tape?
Is there a collection of Information on the Internet
about these beasts?
I had a passing though of writing emulators for the
machines found in an old record unit shop,
Card Punches - would be something like an editor.
Sorters, Collators?, and all the other machines, with
text files as card-decks.
I have the link on Wikipeadea, it also just gives a
gloss overview. I am not finding the detail needed.
Never mind, it wasn't important. I'll go on to other
things.
Hi
One thing to consider by both parties is that when communicating
over the phone, a lot of one's ability to convey the meaning of
what is said is lost. Much of our communications is visual. We
watch reactions as we talk. Most people think that they can communicate
properly over the phone. It is a big mistake. I have had several
times when I'd been misunderstood. It is still interesting that
both sides see the interaction from a different perspective.
They both need to realize that it was the phone that caused
the misunderstanding. It would be truly incorrect for either
to judge the other by the responses over the phone.
Of course, even more of communications is lost in the form of
email. I'm not saying that either side was wrong or right,
only that one should be careful when emotions get involved
over the phone. They are rarely interpreted correctly, by the
other party. By the time they realize that there was a problem,
a lot of damage has been done between them.
Just my opinions
Dwight
>From: "Vintage Computer Festival" <vcf(a)siconic.com>
>
>On Thu, 27 Jan 2005, Fred N. van Kempen wrote:
>
>> All,
>>
>> On Wed, 26 Jan 2005, Jay West wrote:
>>
>> > Fred wrote...
>> >> ...
>> >
>> > Oh man! That just bytes.
>> >
>> > Thanks for letting us know. Bert is on the list I believe, so maybe he has
a
>> > response/explanation.
>>
>> This is not the right place for a dicussion of this topic; my
>> message was a read-only object of class 'warning'. I will not
>> be discussing any of it, in private or in public, as have a
>> judicial system for that in place.
>>
>> In other words... thread closed, judges will decide.
>
>Fred,
>
>It's already public. You made it so. I think the simple solution here is
>for you to arrive at Bert's place with a truck and money and settle it
>quickly and easily. Bert indicates he is ready to hand it over and is on
>record saying so. If he doesn't then he'd really be in trouble.
>
>I did notice in Bert's reply he cc'd Erik Brens, who has a bad reputation
>with more than a few folks here (myself included), and that is rather
>suspect.
>
>--
>
>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 ]
>
>
Thanks for the info so far.. here are the ugly details on the 'kit'..
Dave wrote:
> Btw - if you have an unassembled 8800 - it might be a good idea to keep it that way - I
> would think unassembled ones would be more rare than assembled ones.
Sorry if I was confusing on this.. I was half-joking when I said 'kit form'; the unit wasn't so much *unassembled* as *disassembled* :) The unit is quite an interesting hodgepodge at the moment.. Here is a better description of what I have:
Original 8800 Chassis, with early faceplate - dang I love that old 70's computer typeface! A ding in the white topcover, but overall very nice shape.
Display / Control board (rev 1) removed, and showing evidence of a burnout in the lower left, 7400 chip I think. Someone has socketed every chip on the board, with a collection of random colorful sockets. The board shows some small rework with kynar, to fix lost pads/traces on one socket pattern. Needs a couple of switches replaced. Marked "3421K" in black Sharpie.
8080 CPU card (rev 1) removed and showing signs of modification (a mystery chip has been added with glue & kynar), and CPU is missing. Marked "3423K" in black Sharpie.
Motherboard replaced with a Processor Tech (?) MB-1 Mainboard - 16 slots. The pullup/pulldown resistors look like they were installed by a small child, and not a gifted one. I will rework this area.
Power supply replaced with beefy 8800B power supply, obviously to accomodate all that extra hardware that the motherboard will hold. Large fan is also added, without a grille. Watch your #&!$@ fingers, kid!
A card marked "MCT R30 ASSY 105510" (seems like serial or parallel I/O)
A card marked "SD Systems VersaFloppy II" (must be the disk controller)
A card marked "SD Systems Expandoram II" (must be the memory card, and it's fully populated. No idea what the capacity is)
A card marked "SD Systems SBC-200" (has a Z-80A cpu, and what I think is the matching Z-80 buss driver chip. Has 4 ROM sockets, two of which are populated. One is clearly marked 'EDO BIOS'. Also has edge connectors marked serial & parallel I/O. Seems like a multifunction card; CPU, ROM & I/O)
A card marked "Signum Systems MICE-48" with a long ribbon cable leading to an emulator probe, bearing an EPROM chip. (It's clearly an In-Circuit Emulator device, my guess is that it was emulating an 8048 or similar)
A card marked "Vector 8800V", which is a complete and utter disaster of Kynar and flying components. I wouldn't let this thing near a running system. (seems like a generic breadboard card, which has been built into some form of custom hardware, has a large device marked "Analog Devices 940", and about 12 other chips, plus a pile of discete components)
A large dual-floppy drive chassis, blue in color, with 8" drives. Seems like generic Intel hardware of the mid-70's. No obvious markings.
A collection of 8" disks, some clearly CP/M based. I'm quite certain that in light of the Z80 card, that this machine was running CP/M until it was taken (or took itself) out of service.
A small board marked "John Bell Engineering Phoneme Synthesizer" with a DIP connector, wall-wart power supply, and a few chips including a Votrax SC-01 chip. (Ok, it's clearly a speech synth. Apparently, this thing could talk at one point..)
Ok - I think that's pretty much all of it. If anyone can verify / correct me on identification, or provide other info, it would be greatly appreciated. Some of this stuff (like the ICE hardware) might be up for trade.
Thanks for all of your time,
Bill
>From: "William Layer" <william.layer(a)comcast.net>
---snip---
>
>Display / Control board (rev 1) removed, and showing evidence of a burnout in
the lower left, 7400 chip I think. Someone has socketed every chip on the board,
with a collection of random colorful sockets. The board shows some small rework
with kynar, to fix lost pads/traces on one socket pattern. Needs a couple of
switches replaced. Marked "3421K" in black Sharpie.
Get a schematic and start plaing with it. Like the IMSAI panel,
it uses the processor to actually generate the addresses and
fetching from the bus. You should check for shorts with an
ohm meter before powering up. After powering up, check for anything
that is hot. These old TTL parts would run slightly warm but
should not be hot. Be ready to remove the power quickly in case
of smoke. With power applied, even FR4 will burn if sustained
with an electrical arc.
There is a schematic and layout on that CD ROM that has many
of the schematics and such ( I've seen but don't have it my self ).
>
>8080 CPU card (rev 1) removed and showing signs of modification (a mystery chip
has been added with glue & kynar), and CPU is missing. Marked "3423K" in black
Sharpie.
The extra chip is most likely to generate the correct status signals
for the refresh of the dynamic RAM. The early boards were designed
around static RAM systems and it wasn't until later that the status
signals were added. The earlier DRAM boards had no standard way of
providing these signals so there are several different ways this
was done.
---snip---
>
>A card marked "MCT R30 ASSY 105510" (seems like serial or parallel I/O)
List major IC's?
>
>A card marked "SD Systems VersaFloppy II" (must be the disk controller)
Will most likely only work with the Z80 processor board. The 8080 was
a little on the slow side to handle the disk transfers. Most 8080 systems
used a DMA interface for disk drives. I did look at some tricky software
that I believe would have worked on a 8080 but it required transfering
4 bytes at a time. It has been some time since I looked at doing that
so I'm not much help now. I think the main thing was that after the
controller gave the status, you had something like 13 uSec to read
the data or it was lost.
>
>A card marked "SD Systems Expandoram II" (must be the memory card, and it's
fully populated. No idea what the capacity is)
It depends on which chips are there. If it has the four banks of 16K
chips, you have 64K. It could also be populated with 18K or 4K
chips but that is unlikely as it came out just when the 16K chips
were getting available. See my note above about the refresh signals.
>
>A card marked "SD Systems SBC-200" (has a Z-80A cpu, and what I think is the
matching Z-80 buss driver chip. Has 4 ROM sockets, two of which are populated.
One is clearly marked 'EDO BIOS'. Also has edge connectors marked serial &
parallel I/O. Seems like a multifunction card; CPU, ROM & I/O)
This is most likely the main processor that was used with the system
for CP/M.
>
>A card marked "Signum Systems MICE-48" with a long ribbon cable leading to an
emulator probe, bearing an EPROM chip. (It's clearly an In-Circuit Emulator
device, my guess is that it was emulating an 8048 or similar)
Most likely correct here.
>
>A card marked "Vector 8800V", which is a complete and utter disaster of Kynar
and flying components. I wouldn't let this thing near a running system. (seems
like a generic breadboard card, which has been built into some form of custom
hardware, has a large device marked "Analog Devices 940", and about 12 other
chips, plus a pile of discete components)
I believe the 940 is an amplifier module but I'm not sure. It
could be a voltage converter as well. They made many discrete
circuit instrument amplifiers that had especially low offset
inputs. I would get this was an analog board of some type.
---snip---
It looks like a good project.
Later
Dwight
Hi all,
Today is a sad one, as I had to part with someone I considered a friend,
a new collector, and recent addition to the CCtalk community.
Bert had trouble with getting his PDP-11/34 to work (as we have all been
reading here), and, a while ago, I offered him to have a look at it.
We got together, and I was able to fix the system. Took a while, but
hey, that's OK. I did mention to him I just acquired a new system,
and needed to have it moved to my place. To return my favor, Bert
offered to move my system, as he had a van available, which makes it
a lot easier than using my car. Great deal! The selling party and
Bert were put in contact, so they could agree on a date and such.
And that's the last thing I heard about it.. until I got curious,
and contacted the seller if something had gone wrong.. I _am_ out
of the area and country a lot, so could have missed something.
Nope, everything went as planned, the seller replied - Bert had picked
up the system that saturday morning, and all was well. He did mention
that Bert said that since he picked up _and_ paid for the system, he
considered it his, now.
(The seller had not yet replied to my question about how to pay for the
system- this is a bit different in Holland, as we usually just exchange
bank account numbers here, and then just transfer the amount needed.
Easy. So, I was waiting for him to reply with his account number.
Rather, he did not reply, and when the pickup ocurred, he wanted cash.
Even this is normally handled fine.. one pays the cash, and then gets
reimbursed by whoever is supposed to actually receive the system.)
Anyway... when I heard that, I tried to contact Bert, and eventually
got a hold of him. And when asked about this, he indeed told me the
above - as far as he was concerned, it was now HIS system.
To make a much longer story short- I have taken legal action against
him to get my system back, and the extra (legal and other) fees and
costs reimbursed for. Sadly, Bert decided to not accept his being
wrong, so this will be a full case of fraud in Dutch court.
Your mileage etc etc, but I'd like everyone to take extreme caution
when dealing with Bert, as his definition of "mine" and "yours", and
the being right or wrong, might very well be different from what you
consider such. This surely was the case for me.
With kindest regards,
Fred
--
Fred N. van Kempen, DEC (Digital Equipment Corporation) Collector/Archivist
Visit the VAXlab Project at http://VAXlab.pdp11.nl/
Visit the Archives at http://www.pdp11.nl/
Email: waltje(a)pdp11.nl BUSSUM, THE NETHERLANDS / Mountain View, CA, USA
