test-drb November 2015

test-drb@ccmp.vtda.org

169 participants
223 discussions

by nf6x＠nf6x.net

I recently acquired a small pile of 8" floppy disks which appear to be for IBM 4341 and 3880 hardware: https://twitter.com/nf6x/status/669240958492372992 They're on my "to be imaged" pile. I don't have any hardware to go with them, and would be happy to trade them away after imaging them. They apparently came from a military surplus commo shelter whose innards were being scrapped out. I don't think that the hardware is still in the shelter owner's hands, and I wouldn't have wanted to acquire it anyway, but I thought it would be fun to try to preserve the contents of the disks he had in there. Based on the label picture linked to above, do any of you IBM fans know whether the contents of these are likely to be interesting to anybody? -- Mark J. Blair, NF6X <nf6x at nf6x.net> http://www.nf6x.net/

10 years, 1 month

IBM System/32 available

by tmfdmike＠gmail.com

Folks, I've been offered an IBM System/32. Location is close to LA. Condition appears pretty decent. If I can't take the offer up, would anyone else be interested? Thanks Mike http://www.corestore.org 'No greater love hath a man than he lay down his life for his brother. Not for millions, not for glory, not for fame. For one person, in the dark, where no one will ever know or see.'

10 years, 1 month

flash (or ide) storage for unibus 11?

by jnc＠mercury.lcs.mit.edu

{Catching up, after being on the road all day yesterday... Replies to quite a few people in this, sorry you'll have to read through it to find yours, didn't want to inundate the list with 17 replies.} > From: Jacob Ritort > Are you on keeping bits and/or status for these projects on github or > anywhere else that might encourage participation and contribution? We're going to make it public, but at the moment, it's a bit early for that; for one thing, we are working with hand-wire-wrapped prototypes, front-ending a ZTEX FPGA/uC (micro-controller) board, not a PCB card. And the 'software' (which includes FPGA code, we don't have any code for the uC yet) is in a very primitive state. We'll probably get a couple of controllers done (RK11, RP11, probably RL11, qetc) and then turn it loose for people to add others. > I'd be glad to pitch in if I can. We we get to the stage of turning it into a production PCB, we are definitely going to really encourage help for that step - doing PCB layout, etc, is sort of terra incognita for us both. > Actually, I (and I bet others) would love to see an up to date wiki > entry or somesuch listing folks' retro projects like these Well, we'd need the wiki first! But I hope to have some news on that front soon - I've located an existing one, and am discussing with the person who runs it, using it for material from CCTalk. > From: Henk Gooijen > Tell us more ... and keep us posted Noel. Not much more to say, at the moment. The plan is that it will be a dual QBUS card, with slots for two SD cards, and also one (or more) USB 2.0 connectors; although it will be possible to plug in memory sticks (to the USB), the SD cards will probably offer higher performance. Oh, and one will be able to configure virtual disks on on-board RAM; the contents won't survive a power cycle, but they will be very high performance, useful for swapping disks. We will definitely keep CCTalk posted when there is any news. > We *love* blinkenlights !! Why do you think they are in our plan? :-) We love them too! :-) > if you have a blank front panel this "fills nicely" Well, like the originals, they will be half-panels (i.e. 5-1/4 inches). They will not be electrically compatible with the original DEC indicator panels (we plan on driving them like Guy, with just a clock and data on a couple of wires, not one wire per light - in fact, I'd like to use a common connector and electrical spec with Guy's, so they are compatible); making them electrically compatible would be a _lot_ of work, and I don't see that it would be worth it. However, they will be mechanically compatible with the DEC originals; our plan is that if someone has an original indicator panel PCB (I know at least one person here does), they could mount it with one of our new production bezel/inserts (with the light captions on it), and the whole thing will work. I.e. in the original DEC design, we're just replacing the PCB. > Heck, why not address (all 22) and data too? Although 'classic' RP11/etc panels will probably be available (for purists), we intend to also do 'updated' panels which will drop a lot of lights that make no sense when you don't have a real disk (e.g. the shift registers) and replace them with useful lights that the originals don't have (e.g. full memory address, on the RP11). > From: Paul Koning > For a classic/straightforward programming interface, the Massbus disks > (RP04 and successors) are a good choice. That will take you just over > 500 MB, if you emulate the layout of the RP07. We'll probably do those too, but before that, we're thinking of doing an RP11+, i.e. an RP11 with the cyclinder address extended to 16 bits; i.e without changing the register format _other than using unused bits_ in the cyclinder address register. (Very easy for us to do, of course.) For those with the ability to tweak drivers, that will produce disks with 2^28 blocks, or 2^36 bytes, or 64GB. That's most of a large SD card... :-) > Sure, you can throw in a microcontroller, but interfacing that is > likely to take far more gates than doing the mapping in the device > directly. Alas, we pretty much have to have a uC; it's pretty much mandator to support USB. And once you have one, there's a lot of stuff that's easier to do in a uC, e.g. reading the configuration of the virtual controllers, and configuring the FPGA to match, etc, etc. > From: Rich Alderson > Why bother with the RP11? Because, for FPGA implementation, it's basically an RK11 with a few tweaks --> very easy to do! And with the RP11+ variant, it will support up to 65GB disks.. :-) > From: Mike Ross > Because, blinkenlights! :-) That too! Although there's nothing to stop us doing light panels for controllers that never had them, e.g. RL11's! > From: Johnny Billquist > 22-bit addressing is not possible on the Unibus. True, but my concept is that the eventual UNIBUS version will include ENABLE functionality (i.e. mapping boxes to 4MB memory, one for the CPU, and an 11/70-compatible UNIBUS map for DMA devices), and it could therefore _also_ 'emulate' a MASSBUS RP11, i.e. an RP11 with an additional 'extended memory address' like the identical registers on e.g. the MASSBUS RP04. (And yes, I know no such device ever existed, so unmodified DEC OS's won't support it, but...). > Your native interface have the additional problem that in addition to > requiring people to write their own device driver for any OS usage, it > will be rather difficult to get booting from it, since that require > special support. Right, but since adding another controller on the QSIC will be a trivial configuration option, we assume no machines will have _only_ an RQ11 (our aname for the 'native' interface), but rather an RK11 and RQ11, RL11 and RQ11 etc. Boot off the first, only use the second once the OS is running. > RK11 and RP11, while fairly simple, are also very small devices. Well, there's always the RP11+! :-) And the 'RPV21' (again, I know this never existed) will, like the RLV21, have native 22-bit addressing. > Massbus is a bit more useful, as it at least gives some larger devices, > but you need to implement each device. It's all 'software' (in the FPGA and the uC); so if we (in the community sense) upgrade the 'software' to support more controllers/disks, all boards could be upgraded to support them. Let's get the RK11 and RP11 working to start with, and then we'll figure out where to go from there. > However, if you want to write a device driver for a device you want to > boot from, you need to modify SAV as well, which is *not* documented, > and very non-trivial. Not recommended for the faint of heart. Which is why it's probably easier to just _also_ configure a standard RK11/RP11 whatever, and boot off that. (It's all 'software'! With the right FPGA load, you could have 127 RK11 controllers! :-) Noel

10 years, 1 month

Fw: new message

by katelists＠trouts.org

Hey! New message, please read <http://in2itshop.com/speaking.php?6lpk9> katelists at trouts.org

10 years, 1 month

Emulation

by wulfman＠wulfman.com

I know most of you have or are searching for the real thing. But for those of you that still don't have what your looking for, the arcade emulator MAME has now included most old computers in their emulation program. I have seen everything from apple computers to vax systems, while searching for game roms. Most are still non functioning as of this version but they are working on making them work. one that does work is a pdp1. http://mamedev.org/ emulator http://www.mameui.info/ windows gui front end http://retroroms.net most current list of roms in the download section, free reg required I have been collecting roms for years for repair of my huge collection of game board but this is the first time i have seen the retro computers in the rom sets. maybe if they are in need of a rom dump for some obscure computer one of you have you can contribute to the scene by dumping and sending the rom they are looking for. As always happy retro computing. -- The contents of this e-mail and any attachments are intended solely for the use of the named addressee(s) and may contain confidential and/or privileged information. Any unauthorized use, copying, disclosure, or distribution of the contents of this e-mail is strictly prohibited by the sender and may be unlawful. If you are not the intended recipient, please notify the sender immediately and delete this e-mail.

10 years, 1 month

Query for dec teleprinter roms

by cctalk＠beyondthepale.ie

> > Just a hit . . scanning/printing without having to go to kinkos etc.... > to any of you needing something that will > > print--- nice photos > print 11 x 17 > scan a tad larger than 11 x 17 > fax > reasonable price > free OCR software > built in duplex printing > has a bin sheet feeder too for doc size > > get a hp officejet 7612 > > I got mine on sale for $160 > > not a speed demon but a helpful device > it is handy. there are times we need to print something larger than > legal size for museum displays etc or scan large magazine cover, > schematics etc... it has worked well. > > we use this for pretty much in house use. > > patrons needing lots of something scanned we have still have to > contract with one of our offsite vendors. > (shoemakers children analogy etc.) > > Ed Sharpe archivist for SMECC > Are you formatting your outgoing emails like this in retaliation for not getting [cctech]/[cctalk] in the subject line in order to be able to sort your incoming AOL mail? Regards, Peter Coghlan.

10 years, 1 month

flash (or ide) storage for unibus 11?

by dab＠froghouse.org

> Otherwise it's the RM05 at 256 Meg, if I remember right. But all those > disks are also expected to expose the actual geometry of the disk. While > fairly straight forward, it do expose you to a rather low level > interface, where you need to do a lot of calculations all the time. All those old disk controllers expose the disk geometry. I've looked at it for the specific case of the RK11 and it doesn't look too bad. If it does turn into a problem, then we'll have a microcontroller on the board too and I'll punt the calculations to it rather than doing them in the FPGA. And my third option is to just do the trivial mapping of the sector/surface/cylinder numbers to LBA and waste space on the flash device. It's not we're so short of storage space in emulating any number of RK, RP, or RM class disk packs.

10 years, 1 month

mixed media on Massbus [was RE: flash (or ide) storage for unibus 11?]

by RichA＠LivingComputerMuseum.org

From: Paul Koning Sent: Monday, November 23, 2015 11:26 AM >> On Nov 23, 2015, at 1:00 PM, Johnny Billquist <bqt at Update.UU.SE>> wrote: >> As far as I can tell, disks fall into two groups, as far as massbus control >> is concerned. The RM02, RM03, RM05, RM80 and RP07 is one group. The RP04, >> RP05, RP06 is another. A few register addresses between the groups are the >> same, but the actual register at that address is different. But if I >> remember right, it's registers that have to do with error recovery, so >> potentially not something people would care about in emulation anyway. But >> it still means there are different drivers in the OS for them. [snip] >> And of course, you also have the TM02/TM03 and TM78, which have yet again >> different registers on the massbus. > Yes. And mixing disk and tape on a massbus is something that I don't think > was done on PDP-11s. It certainly could have been done, and it was on VMS > and/or TOPS if I remember right. Two things. 1) There is not such things as "TOPS". The 2 operating systems for the PDP-10 provided by DEC are Tops-10 and TOPS-20. The only thing they have in common is the first 4 letters (modulo case) of the names. They share exactly no code in the monitor ("kernel"), and do not even have the same origins. Tops-10 started as the monitor on the PDP-6, in 1964, and was in continuous development until 1988 (and in maintenance until 1993+), while TOPS-20 began life as the TENEX operating system from BBN c. 1969, licensed for the new KL-10 processor while that was under development. TOPS-20 v1 appeared in 1975. BBN developed a run time package for TENEX called PA1050 which handled a subset of the Tops-10 system calls by merging into user-mode programs and intercepting them; DEC carried on the same mechanism to allow Tops-10 compilers and other utilities to run on the new OS while native versions were developed. 2) Having stated all that, Tops-10 does not allow mixing tapes and disks on a channel, but it does allow mixing disk drive types. TOPS-20 has always allowed mixing tapes and disks on a channel. Rich Rich Alderson Vintage Computing Sr. Systems Engineer Living Computer Museum 2245 1st Avenue S Seattle, WA 98134 mailto:RichA at LivingComputerMuseum.org http://www.LivingComputerMuseum.org/

10 years, 1 month

flash (or ide) storage for unibus 11?

by dab＠froghouse.org

> This is great news, Noel. Are you on keeping bits and/or status for these > projects on github or anywhere else that might encourage participation and > contribution? I'd be glad to pitch in if I can. Actually, I (and I bet > others) would love to see an up to date wiki entry or somesuch listing > folks' retro projects like these and would be happy to create it if you'd > provide a couple of pointers. I have the little code I've written so far in a private git server but not on github. Eventually the plan is to do something like that but we're pretty early in the process. Certainly nothing is running yet. Even though I've set up a git server, I still have to learn how to actually use git. However, once we get a prototype doing something interesting, we were talking about looking around for people interested in helping out. We'll do a couple disk controllers but if someone wants to add others, great. Especially if someone wants to add MSCP. We're happy to skip that one ourselves. But the real thing we'll want help with is circuit board design and manufacturing. We can do easy things but I'd really like to use BGA parts for the FPGA and memory chips so if someone has a handle on that, we'd like to talk. A I said, our plan was to get a prototype working before going in search of this kind of assistance. We're using an FPGA module from ZTEX right now to sidestep the issue. Is there a wiki out there that holds this kind of information? It seems like a great idea and I'll put some information together on our project if there is. Or maybe, now that news is spreading that we're doing this, it's time to write up a web page describing what we're up to. -Dave

10 years, 1 month

Toshiba MKM0142E 8" floppy manual / jumper info sought

by jdr_use＠bluewin.ch

Trying to build up an IMD floppy disk imaging workstation, i.e. a PC with 3.5, 5 and 8 floppy drives. The 8 inch drive I have is a Toshiba MKM0142E , dual side, a very late model. ( Datecodes on the ICs range from 1984 to 1991 ) Anyone has a manual for that beast, or maybe just jumpering info ? thanks Jos

10 years, 1 month

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test-drb November 2015