I have one of the 4000/200s, and a single person (or married operating
separately) can move them if you pull the drives, power supply, and
possibly cards if there are many.
It helps to think of the 4200 as a very good BA-4xx MicroVAX rather
than a very wussy VAX, as it really has more in common with the Qbus
MicroVAX 3xxx machines.
Regarding the 4000/705A's- a picture of any BA440 VAX will look like
them, not much has changed. I believe the 705A was one of the "server"
model VAXen that only shipped with a 2-concurrent user license (maybe
single-user?) but close to a VAX 9000 in processor power (slow
perepheral interface, though [3.3 MB Qbus and 2 or 4x DSSI.] Would have
been nice if DEC had put a high-speed interface beside the Qbus, but
there's no point in worrying about it now. I don't think the current
hobbyist license enforces the machine-class limitations, so you could
use your 4k as a multiuser VMS installation. xBSD doesn't support DSSI
currently, and 4.4BSD-QJ doesn't support VAX 4k, so you're pretty much
stuck with VMS, but that's not a real limitation.
Haven't got mine working yet, but if you need drives investigate a HSC
system. Some interface the DSSI bus to SCSI disk arrays. HSD05 comes
often as a standalone StorageWorks SBB for the BA5x blocks, and I've
seen DEC documentation that indicates you could get an internal model
that would connect to the storage backplane. Throw one of those on the
middle, and do a DSSI cluster of the two machines, and you'd have one
hot system. Enjoy it and use it well.
I picked one of these up a while back and stumbled across it yesterday.
It's a model TU80 IIRC. Does anyone have anyexperience with them? I've
never seen or heard of one in actual use but I know it's supposed to be
useable on the PDP-8 so I may try to hand it on my -8 if they're any good
(and I can find the right interface card). What kind of cassette tapes do
they use and how hard are they to find and format?
Joe
On Thu, 25 Aug 2005 several wrote:
> From: Al Kossow <aek at bitsavers.org>
>
> > Does anyone recognize this card?
>
> probably MIL-1553B (1mbit network used in aircraft)
Good point. It could definitely be 1553B.
> Any vendor? Huntsville Microsystems made interfaces.
> Try googling for "1553B unibus"
> From: Sridhar Ayengar <ploopster at gmail.com>
> Joe R. wrote:
> > Does anyone recognize this card?
> > <http://www.classiccmp.org/hp/Stuff%20Found%20at%20Rogers/network%20card.jpg
> >
> >>I found it in a PDP-11/44 but I couldn't find a model number or
> >
> > manufacturer's name on it. The other end of the four red cables connect to
> > four BNC connectors on the back of the cabinet and are marked Network
> > Ports. see
> > <http://www.classiccmp.org/hp/Stuff%20Found%20at%20Rogers/back3.jpg>
>
> Looks like a CI, no? But I didn't know that you could put a Unibus CI
> in a PDP-11. I thought those were for just the VAX-11's.
Actually, there never was a Unibus CI. The CI controllers on old VAXen was
never on Unibus, but on SBI. The 11/750 had a whole separate cabinet for
the CI750, which I think hung off the CMI (or what the bus on the 750 was
called).
> From: Paul Koning <pkoning at equallogic.com>
> Subject: Re: DEC network card?
> To: cctalk at classiccmp.org
> Message-ID: <17165.65022.802145.195486 at gargle.gargle.HOWL>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
>
> >>>>> "Simon" == Simon Fryer <fryers at gmail.com> writes:
>
> Simon> On Thu, 25 Aug 2005 12:16:22, Joe R. <rigdonj at cfl.rr.com>
> Simon> wrote:
> >> Does anyone recognize this card?
> >> <http://www.classiccmp.org/hp/Stuff%20Found%20at%20Rogers/network%20card.jpg
>
> Simon> Cabling looks like SDI.
>
> Agreed.
Slightly, but I wouldn't draw that conclusion too far. :-)
> >> > I found it in a PDP-11/44 but I couldn't find a model number or
> >> manufacturer's name on it. The other end of the four red cables
> >> connect to four BNC connectors on the back of the cabinet and are
> >> marked Network Ports. see
> >> <http://www.classiccmp.org/hp/Stuff%20Found%20at%20Rogers/back3.jpg>
>
> Simon> The BNC connectors are a bit novel if it is SDI.
>
> If they were TNC (threaded not bayonet) I'd suspect it to be a CI
> interface card (from an HSC50 or the like).
Ummm. No dice. No HSC ever used Unibus, and since this a Unibus machine...
Also, the connectors are very oddly marked if it were CI.
> It doesn't look like a DEC board (unless the digital logo is on the
> other side). The cable attachment for those coax cables doesn't have
> a DEC look to it, either. And the picture of the back has a mil-spec
> look to it. I wonder if this is a military databus interface.
That would go well with the previous guess of MIL-1553B, which I think is
probably the right guess.
Johnny
Johnny Billquist || "I'm on a bus
|| on a psychedelic trip
email: bqt at update.uu.se || Reading murder books
pdp is alive! || tryin' to stay hip" - B. Idol
Hi ALL!
I had the good fortune to witness something truly extraordinary yeaterday.
I imagine there are some on this list that have stumbled on large
collections by
accident or by design, and marvel at thier good fortune and curse their
luck at
not being the owner.
Well, such a thing happened to me yestrday and I was truly awestruck.
I had met a retired engineer at the auction I attend religiously at the
University of Arizona. I have been attending these auctions for about 5
years, there
are some who have been attending for far longer, and also have been
collecting
>from other source even longer.
Roy is such a person. He lives alone in a very large red brick hacienda in a
very lush part of the San Pedro River valley in SE arizona, only a few miles
>from me.
Upon arrival at his home which is at the end of a very muddy and rutted dirt
road, I was greeted by a very large vulture sitting on a telephone pole
outside
the driveway to his house. An omen of things to come?
I proceeded down the driveway several hundred yard through a huge thicket of
willows and cottonwoods to come upon a HUGE graveyard of old computers,
electronics parts,equipment racks and large piles of junk moldering in
the humid
arizona sun.
Sitting upright in the mud/grass were the remains of a DG Eclipse,
next to a stack of DEC RL02 disks about three feet high. piles anf piles
of old
dot matrix printers were next to several equipment racks. An old school
bus stood
forlornly by. It was stuffed to the gills with equipment.A hazeltine
terminal/computer half buried in the mud. A Variax? 10KW
I was greeted by Roy and we entered his house. I should say warehouse,
as the
this house was crammed from floor to ceiling with computers, test
equipment and
electronics gear. The floors were concrete and suported industrial steel
racks
packed full of stuff..in every room save one!
Have you ever seen people who have collected books or papers and went
overboard..Well imagine this with computers.Not just computers, but old
computers and electronic gear.
On my hour tour of the premise, I spotted:
At least three Data General Nova 2 and Nova 3's, with a paper reader and
terminals. All in great condition. One was turned on for me!
At least two HP 1000 and at least one HP 2100 series.
Dozens of Tektronix terminals and the early 405xx series computers
Roomfulls of HP testing and analyzer equipment and so many of the early HP
computers they were too numerous to count.
Shelves and shelves full of old DG terminals (the oval ones) Ahmdahl
terminals
At least two ASR 33's and some teletypes that might be even older.
A rack full of a pre WW11 commercial radio transmitter.
WWII and later aviation instruments!
A TOW missle. (the warhead had been replaced with intrumentation and
there was
no fuel in the missle but the rocket engine was intact)
A very early laser!
A shelf crammed with DEC decpacks RK11/RK02 all with RT-11 inscribed on the
sides. A big amount a older DEC documentation!
Huge bookshelfs full of documentation forTektronics, HP, DEC most
pre-1990 some
pre-80! some pre 70!!!
A large file cabinet stuffed with new in the box 8" floppies., paper tapes
8" inch floppy drives of all makes and models.
Various disks from HP to DEC to DG.(dozens)
A room dedicated to electronic testing equipment, mainly HP but also
scores of
others. most pre-1980. dozens of Oscilliscopes.
A scanning electron microscope!
Dec VT52, VT100 terminals. It was said there is a VT05? hiding somewhere!
It was almost too much for me too comprehend.
I'll be heading over there soon to pick up an RX02 that I spied hiding
in a corner.
O yeah.. a parting gift included a LSI-11 that looked somewhat complete,
all the
cards.
There was a unibus pdp11 buried somewhere in the racks of equipment, behind
other racks of equipment.
There was more stuff that I probably missed or forgot than what I
remembered (I didn't take notes!)
This may take a while!
Cheers
Tom
Just a quick update for those interested:
People Connection is mostly implemented, lacking only LOCATE and ID
commands.
Auditorium mode is working as well. The original service had a special
version of the SW (called the emcee disk) that had extra code to do the
moderation for the auditorium, but I figured out a way to support
auditorium with just the std disk.
I implemented a few IRCisms (/me and /msg) to add some value.
Along the way, a QLinker posted that he had written a sniffer while on
QLink and had saved a complete Q-Link session. After he found the
binary logs, I wrote a util to condense them into a single file, traced
the commands, and then modified the utility to actually parse each
command. I was thus able to extract 105 text files that the user had
viewed that day, and 200 menu items they viewed. I then inserted those
into the database, so you can now visit all the areas that user visited
that day.
Along the way, I found out a few more things:
How to send multiple lines of bulletin text to cut down on packets
(concat lines with 0xff, upto 127 chars)
How to send a System IM (SYSOLM) The command is OT.
How to convince the client that there is a next/previous article in a
set (parms to KC command)
How the file system handed sending data (39 byte chunks for 1st 18
lines, then 117 byte chunks.
How to turn on the (+) time indicator on the client
A user also found out how to run QLink off of an emulator (VICE) and
connect to the server. So, a number of folks are connecting that way.
online message and email works, not sure if I stated that in my last
note. The server is pretty robust. A user can corrupt their session,
but logging out will clean up that session.
Jim
--
Jim Brain, Brain Innovations
brain at jbrain.comhttp://www.jbrain.com
Dabbling in WWW, Embedded Systems, Old CBM computers, and Good Times!
>Date: Tue, 23 Aug 2005 00:18:14 +0100
>From: Philip Pemberton <philpem at dsl.pipex.com>
>Speaking of the 765s, I still need to build an MFM data separator...
Is there any reason not to just track down some WD92C32 or WD92C16?
I think SMSC (FDC prefix) sold some similar chips too.
The only problem is, I've been looking for WD92C32s for a few years
and there seem to be plenty of them in the hands of the folks who
*always* come up on Google searches of electronic part numbers and
they all seem to want >$3.50 each and a hundred dollar minimum or
more. Sigh. When you're trying to build something that might be
worth $15, it's hard to spend $3.50 on one component.
I did see a nice lot of WD92C16s on Ebay a year or two ago. I think
that will work as long as you need to read 1.44MB floppies. But I
haven't seen any more of them since then.
Jeff Walther
Anyone who is interested in this (and would like my help collecting) can
I ask you to negotiate directly with the uni concerned and advise them
that if successful you MAY have someone in Australia who can assist with
collection (and then keep me in the loop).
I've had no response from then to my email and I suspect it might be an
old web page.
Has anyone else heard.
++++++++++
Kevin Parker
Web Services Consultant
WorkCover Corporation
p: 08 8233 2548
m: 0418 806 166
e: kparker at workcover.com
w: www.workcover.com
++++++++++
-----Original Message-----
From: cctech-bounces at classiccmp.org
[mailto:cctech-bounces at classiccmp.org] On Behalf Of Wai-Sun Chia
Sent: Tuesday, 23 August 2005 3:12 PM
To: General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts
Subject: Re: PDP11 stuff in OZ
Oops...pressed send too soon..
Might as well grab the 11/50 memories if possible
11/40/45/50 various core memory
11/50 fastbus memory
On 8/23/05, Wai-Sun Chia <waisun.chia at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 8/22/05, Parker, Kevin <KParker at workcover.com> wrote:
> > I am located in OZ but about a 10-12 hour trip away from where this
> > guy is - I've just fired off an email myself expressing some
> > interest. If I get what I am looking for I may have to make a trip
> > over there and may have some capacity to get other stuff.
> >
>
> Kevin,
> I'm located in KL, Malaysia, and am interested in the following stuff,
> but don't know whether you are able to ship it or not...but here goes
> any way:
>
> PDP8/e CPU
> PDP8/e memory
> PDP8/e various
> RK11-D
> RK11-D complete with backplane
> RL11 controller (2)
>
> PDP11/50 in rack (I wish but I can't take the rack, it'l cost me
> thousands of bucks to ship)
>
> RK05 absolute air filters (HEPA), unused (4) RK05J (3)
>
> See what you are able to ship, and we can take it from there..
> Thanks for the service offer, though.
>
> /wai-sun
>
************************************************************************
This e-mail is intended for the use of the addressee only. It may
contain information that is protected by legislated confidentiality
and/or is legally privileged. If you are not the intended recipient you
are prohibited from disseminating, distributing or copying this e-mail.
Any opinion expressed in this e-mail may not necessarily be that of the
WorkCover Corporation of South Australia. Although precautions have
been taken, the sender cannot warrant that this e-mail or any files
transmitted with it are free of viruses or any other defect.
If you have received this e-mail in error, please notify the sender
immediately by return e-mail and destroy the original e-mail and any
copies.
************************************************************************
All:
I received another three boxes of stuff for my IMSAI from my
benefactor in Arizona. With this load I got more BYTEs (all spares; a list
to follow), 4+ years of Interface Age (1977 - 1981; not a complete run I
don't think), and a dual-8" floppy drive unit from Synetic Designs.
So, I'm looking for some informational items. How many issues of IA
are there and when did the run start/end? Second, does anyone have the
manual for this floppy drive system? I downloaded the manual for the FD400
drives but I can't yet locate the manual for the drive cabinet and
controller.
As always, TIA.
Rich
Rich Cini
Collector of classic computers
Build Master for the Altair32 Emulation Project
Web site: http://highgate.comm.sfu.ca/~rcini/classiccmp/
/************************************************************/
