test-drb June 2015

test-drb@ccmp.vtda.org

165 participants
285 discussions

by COURYHOUSE＠aol.com

I will have to dig out he small computer handbook from the Dec section at smecc library and study up on it again! the brain cells are foggy! another nice go with to display with 8s is the DEC logic trainer We somehow ended up with a few of these... one goes next to a 8 the other in toys robots and trainers display and one for offsite which leaves one extra for trade! In a message dated 6/8/2015 2:20:24 P.M. US Mountain Standard Time, bqt at update.uu.se writes: Not so much "serial bus" as just "serial". Everything is serial in the machine, as far as I understand. Not sure how much of a bus it got. Johnny On 2015-06-08 22:59, COURYHOUSE at aol.com wrote: > yea... poor 8 s was 20 microsecond cycle time.... > the S stood for serial buss as I remember it. > Ed# _www.smecc.org_ (http://www.smecc.org) > > > In a message dated 6/8/2015 1:09:31 P.M. US Mountain Standard Time, > pontus at Update.UU.SE writes: > > Quite rare the PDP-8 faq says 1024 made. And given how slow it > was, I suppose people didn't hold on to it. > > /P > > On Mon, Jun 08, 2015 at 12:26:07PM -0700, couryhouse wrote: >> >> >> 8s is rare?? We have one. Is there a an registry? Ed# smecc.org >> >> >> Sent from my Verizon Wireless 4G LTE smartphone >> >> -------- Original message -------- >> From: ben <bfranchuk at jetnet.ab.ca> >> Date: 06/08/2015 12:05 PM (GMT-07:00) >> To: cctalk at classiccmp.org >> Subject: Re: Front Panel Update >> >> On 6/8/2015 12:28 PM, Rod Smallwood wrote: >>> Theres an 8/f which replaced the 8/e and has a similar front panel with >>> extra markings >>> The 8/m - OEM no front panel >>> The 8/I has different front panel >>> The 8/A is a totally different box altogether >>> >>> The 8/e was the big seller with thousands shipped >>> >> The 8/s was a small seller with 10's of computers shipped. >> I got to play with both. >> Ben. >> >> -- Johnny Billquist || "I'm on a bus || on a psychedelic trip email: bqt at softjar.se || Reading murder books pdp is alive! || tryin' to stay hip" - B. Idol

10 years, 1 month

Front Panel Update

by COURYHOUSE＠aol.com

I have seen M with all toggles... In a message dated 6/8/2015 12:16:57 P.M. US Mountain Standard Time, kylevowen at gmail.com writes: On Jun 8, 2015 2:28 PM, "Rod Smallwood" <rodsmallwood52 at btinternet.com> wrote: > > Theres an 8/f which replaced the 8/e and has a similar front panel with extra markings > The 8/m - OEM no front panel > The 8/I has different front panel > The 8/A is a totally different box altogether > > The 8/e was the big seller with thousands shipped > > The 8/M came both with or without a front panel. I've got both, with the front panel-less version connected (on occasion) to the front panel version as an expansion box. 8/F is identical except for color. There was a memory expansion box for the 8/L that is reminiscent of the front panel-less 8/M, though it has four field switches on the front and no key switch (the 8/M just had a key switch and a SW switch). Kyle

10 years, 1 month

Front Panel Update

by COURYHOUSE＠aol.com

yea... poor 8 s was 20 microsecond cycle time.... the S stood for serial buss as I remember it. Ed# _www.smecc.org_ (http://www.smecc.org) In a message dated 6/8/2015 1:09:31 P.M. US Mountain Standard Time, pontus at Update.UU.SE writes: Quite rare the PDP-8 faq says 1024 made. And given how slow it was, I suppose people didn't hold on to it. /P On Mon, Jun 08, 2015 at 12:26:07PM -0700, couryhouse wrote: > > > 8s is rare?? We have one. Is there a an registry? Ed# smecc.org > > > Sent from my Verizon Wireless 4G LTE smartphone > > -------- Original message -------- > From: ben <bfranchuk at jetnet.ab.ca> > Date: 06/08/2015 12:05 PM (GMT-07:00) > To: cctalk at classiccmp.org > Subject: Re: Front Panel Update > > On 6/8/2015 12:28 PM, Rod Smallwood wrote: > > Theres an 8/f which replaced the 8/e and has a similar front panel with > > extra markings > > The 8/m - OEM no front panel > > The 8/I has different front panel > > The 8/A is a totally different box altogether > > > > The 8/e was the big seller with thousands shipped > > > The 8/s was a small seller with 10's of computers shipped. > I got to play with both. > Ben. > >

10 years, 1 month

Amstrad CPC 464

by terry＠webweavers.co.nz

For any on the list that might be interested... The colourful Amstrad CPC 464. The latest in my stash/hoard/collection to get the YouTube treatment. http://youtu.be/rOuPuE194fo Terry (Tez)

10 years, 1 month

DEC cartridge ID & ARTIFACS 440

by hilpert＠cs.ubc.ca

Does anyone recognise these DEC cartridges?: http://www3.telus.net/~bhilpert/tmp/deccartridge.jpg Any details or knowledge of what systems they may have been used with? They're definitely digital, note the logo on the nearer one on the right. I can't recall ever having seen them. They're associated in this instance with 80s-era biomed analysis. Also, anyone know what processor may have been used in a Becton Dickinson ARTIFACS 440 cell-sorting (FACS) rack? We're speculating there may be an embedded LSI-11. Rob and I are assessing some surplus/scrap equipment for rescue but haven't been on site yet.

10 years, 1 month

PDP-8/e front panels.

by jnc＠mercury.lcs.mit.edu

> From: Rod Smallwood > I have recently produced a number of high quality custom PDP8/e front > panels. They are full size reproductions of the original. The > production methods are exactly as used in circa 1971. First, my sincere congratulations! This is a real contribution, and I doubt it was trivial to accomplish. > I'll also instigate another batch of ten. .. If I get orders for more > than ten then I'll bump up the second batch size accordingly. These sound so cool I'm tempted to buy one, even though I don't even own a PDP-8! :-) > If there is a demand I'll do other 8's or 11's front panels that use > the same plexiglas and silk screen technique. Someone mentioned -12's and -15's? I don't (yet) need any -11 ones, although at some point, I might need an 11/20 one (I have a line on an 11/20 that spent a lot of time outside, so its front panel is sadly very faded). The thing we really need to find now is a source for the special switches that DEC used in the front panels of the machines of this generation. Electrically, they are just standard SPDT switches (usually two-position, although for some - e.g. Deposit/Start - they are momentary-contact spring-loaded); the real issue is the mechanical fastening, which uses a special front plate (albeit on a standard micro-switch body). I have a number of different ones in my machines, from various manufacturers, but I have had no luck tracking down new ones through the part numbers on them (they seem to be DEC part numbers, or adaptions thereof). I have asked a number of people, but nobody seems to have spares/extras. Anyone know of a source? Noel

10 years, 1 month

Need Dos bootable 5 1/4" floppy with binary or hex editor

by jws＠jwsss.com

I just got a Compaq Portable 3 (286). I need to edit the contents of what will be the C drive when dos boots, though it probably doesn't have a file system on it. Anyway i'll need to boot up from a floppy because it has a pick r83 system on the C drive. Not sure what the system is, so fdisk and some simple tools like that would be nice too. Anyway any help would be appreciated. I'm searching for someone local with 5 1/4" floppies and blanks I can use, but if one has a disk i can get from someone I'd be glad to send compensation. For Pick folks (Mr. F15) I don't know the sysprog password, and need to null it out. I may pull the drive from another system I have that I do know the passwords for, but this new system I just got is working, and I'd like to log in and see what this system has and back it up. Pleasantly surprised it has an AST 6pack in the expansion (included) in the kit. thanks Jim

10 years, 1 month

Hercules Graphic Station (HG1024) drivers or utility disks?

by cctalk＠fahimi.net

Hello All, My googlefu has failed me in trying to locate actual drivers for download for this card. This was a TIGA (34010) based card w/ built in VGA (so no pass through) with 1MB of VRAM and 2MB of DRAM. I believe there were DOS utilities, Windows 3.x drivers, and SW specific drivers (e.g. AutoCAD). OS/2 or NT drivers would be fantastic but I doubt they are out there. TIA! -Ali

10 years, 1 month

Improved MSV11-P FMPS

by jnc＠mercury.lcs.mit.edu

So I have a busted MSV11-P, and I needed the FMPS to work on it. There is one online, but on my computers, it was extremely faint, and very hard (almost impossible) to read. So I have worked on it some, and I have a new version here: http://ana-3.lcs.mit.edu/~jnc/tech/pdp11/MP01239_MSV11-P.pdf which I feel is much more legigible, and is also a lot smaller (3.5MB instead of 36MB). The default page size is quite small (I have no idea why, I didn't do the re-conversion to PDF, I don't have Acrobat), but if you blow it up to about 300%, it still has good resolution at that point, and it's quite readable - all the signal names, pin numbers, package numbers, etc are quite legible. It doesn't have as much resolution hidden away as the original, but for most purposes, it seems quite acceptable (in fact, more so in some ways, given the increased legibility). I was interested in producing something readable, and easier to manage, and I think this new version succeeds at both. For those who are interested in the details of what I did (because I've seen other FMPS scans with this issue, and it might help someone down the road), after first saving all the pages as individual images (like I said, I don't have Acrobat, so whatever I did had to be done with something else - and I'm not sure Acrobat can do what needed to be done to make them legible, anyway), I started out by trying to simply increase the contrast. That didn't do anything (at least, with my image tool). Looking at the page images under magnification, I discovered why: the areas of ink (lines, letters etc) were actually (in the scanned image) a stipple of white and black pixels, which together produced the (un-readable) light gray printing of the original. So the contrast enhancement knob didn't do anything - each individual pixel was already quite light, or dark. So I used something called an averaging tool (which takes small groups of pixels, and averages them together), with a small averaging box size (I used 2x2), which converted the ink areas to a uniform grey; I could then use contrast enhancement to bring the printing up. I then reduced most pages to 40% of the original size, since the originals were scanned at 600 dpi, in 8-bit/pixel grayscale, and were pretty huge. (I didn't go that far on a few pages - the PCB images - which could use the higher resolution. Also, if you want the full resolution, the original scan is of course still available.) In addition to making the images smaller, this actually increased the crispness of the printing, since the reduction sampling process got rid of a lot of the jaggedness that the previous steps had left. I finally converted the resulting images from 8-bit/pixel grayscale to 1-bit/pixel black-and-white; on inspection of the two side-by-side, this lost a tiny bit of definition, but I felt that the reduction in size was worth it, plus to which my image tool has compression for 1-bit/pixel B+W TIFFs, but not for 8-bit/pixel grayscale TIFFs, so I won doubly on the size. Noel

10 years, 1 month

DHCP on VMS/VAX

by isking＠uw.edu

Hi folks, ISTR that DHCP was introduced in TCPIP-5.1, which was included on the 7.3 hobbyist CD. But I have a 7.2 CD?. I've installed VMS on SIMH on a G4 iBook (because I can), but then I remembered (yet again) that 7.2 doesn't have DHCP, which is a pain with a laptop on WiFi. So I'm hoping to find either (a) the kit to install TCPIP-5.1 or (b) a 7.3 ISO image on a big enough pipe for FTP. :-) Can anyone help? Oh, and if you're looking for 7.2 (VAX) I have that?. Thanks! -- Ian -- Ian S. King, MSIS, MSCS, Ph.D. Candidate The Information School <http://ischool.uw.edu> Archivist, Voices From the Rwanda Tribunal <http://tribunalvoices.org> Value Sensitive Design Research Lab <http://vsdesign.org> University of Washington There is an old Vulcan saying: "Only Nixon could go to China."

10 years, 1 month

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test-drb June 2015