Hi,
I've got an oddball SCSI controller card that I would
like help identifying (actually, I have several *different*
ones but we'll start with this one :> )
Card is full length. PCI. Appears to be made by IBM
(FRU 76H6875). Has three AIC-7880's on it connected to
three "internal" wide SCSI-2 connectors -- and a single
external connector presumably tied to one of these three
busses. Onboard PowerPC and what appears to be a
connector for a flying CF card. A pair of 10 pin
headers one of which has a "SERIAL" legend nearby.
A third header labeled JTAG (no doubt for manufacturing
diagnostics).
External connector appears to be LVD or SE (bummer, I
was hoping to find a HVD in this box of goodies...)
I'll assume it's a RAID controller. But, question is
how well (if at all!) it is supported and whether it
is worth my time or if I should just toss it in the
box and dig out the next "mystery card"?
Thanks!
--don
> I'm now wondering about streched band
That is EXACTLY your problem. The tensioning belt isn't tight enough
any more and
as the tape rolls it goes slack. When it stops at EOT, it folds over
itself, and
often creases the tape, creating a bad spot that you hit on every pass.
I have had to replace 100+ belts as I've been reading all of my
tapes. Pretty much
any tape from the mid-80's earlier will have a bad belt. Sometimes
they're so bad
they snap on the initial retension (you do know you have to retension
the tape before
you try reading it, don't you?)
Scotch DC450+ carts from the early 90's have been my primary source
of donor belts.
The bad news is the piles of surplus carts that were all over Silicon
Valley in the
late 90's are pretty much all gone now..
> Unfortunately, two evenings of googlings has only found me
> consumer-level guides to help clueless PC owners tell SIMMs
> from DIMMs - nothing at the chip level.
Strange, my first google hit gets this ..
http://www.chipmunk.nl/DRAM/ChipManufacturers.htm
Lee.
It's not what I thought it was- looks like the tape "emulsion" is fine. The looping only seems to happen
when the tape gets to the end and is ready to rewind. Listening to the tape, it sounds almost like there's some slack
or slippage, but the cartridge seems tight when I look at it (take it apart, poke and prod, etc. The tapes that I'm having
problems with (both trapped loops binding the tape and plain read errors) are noticeably noisier than trouble-free
cartridges. I'm now wondering about streched band or lubrication issues (they have a much duller surface
than newer DC600/DC6150s).
Hi,
I've inherited a 3700 so my 3000 is now looking for
a use :-/
I expect to get DG/UX running on the 3700 (when I have
some spare time to deal with those issues). It would
seem wasteful to also install that on the 3000. I figure
I can fill the 3000 with drives and glue other peripherals
onto it and turn it into a "media machine" (i.e. support
many different types of tape, disk, etc.) and file server.
Choice of OS to install on it becomes an issue. It's
a quad Pentium box so ideally something that supports
SMP. I would *like* to find something that can support
blocksizes != 512 (for my MO drives).
I'd also like to find an OS that would let me treat the
multiple drives as a single *big* drive (e.g., DG/UX
supports virtual drives that can span multiple physical
drives) so I can set up a nice /distfiles filesystem.
The box will run headless.
Suggestions?
--don
All:
I'm putting the finishing touches on my replica Altair 8800
front panel and I need to find out how much the LEDs stick out from the
front of the metal dress panel. Would someone be kind enough to measure this
for me? Thanks.
Rich
Rich Cini
Collector of classic computers
Build Master for the Altair32 Emulation Project
Web site: <http://highgate.comm.sfu.ca/~rcini/classiccmp/>
http://highgate.comm.sfu.ca/~rcini/classiccmp/
/************************************************************/
I recall that one test we'd use on new assembly language programmers on the
CDC 6000 series was a routine to save the contents of all of the registers
without using an exchange jump. It's much harder than it appears to be at
first. No register assumptions like B1=1 allowed, either.
Are there any similar tasks on other architectures that try a programmer's
mettle?
Cheers,
Chuck
I'm working to image some of the CV tapes from the CADDStation before they fade away, and I'm
running into a problem with "sticky tapes". They're not losing the coating, they're just sticking to something and
catching, requiring dissasembly of the tape cartridge (QIC) before they will run again. One had an extraneous loop when
I popped the cover. The two that I have done this with so far imaged
fine after I messed with them, but is there a way to fix this to start? I'm not even sure about the etiology.
Is the "baking" from the HP tapes thread likely to help?
The tapes that have a manufacturer's mark are 3M DC300-XL/P
All date from about 1988.
