test-drb November 2016

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VAX Common Lisp

by aswood＠t-online.de

any idea where to get VAX Common Lisp?

9 years

Reasonable price for a complete SOL-20 system?

by james＠attfield.co.uk

> From: "Mike Stein" <mhs.stein at gmail.com> > Subject: Re: Reasonable price for a complete SOL-20 system? > Message-ID: <B1054C1D081C4DB9881083349D0D5B64 at 310e2> > Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" > > > Any chance you still have a copy of that CP/M port buried somewhere? > We're sort of collecting the various Cromemco ports and emulators. > Sorry Mike, I didn't think so but went through my diskettes anyway and no go - all CDOS. I do believe that there was a Cromemco CP/M in the Don Maslim archives and another in the classicmp Dave Dunfield archives here http://www.classiccmp.org/dunfield/img54306/system.htm. If all else fails, I have found a CROMCPM.TD0 file in my archives which is Teledisk format and is 607Kb but I don't have a functional Teledisk at the moment so can't tell what it represents. I'm not sure of the source but would be happy to forward it to someone with a functional Teledisk, or Dave Dunfield's converter from TD0 to his IMD ImageDisk format. James

9 years

Imaging Old Disks Advice Needed

by barythrin＠gmail.com

Out of curiosity, since I've never done this either but have heard most folks suggest it. How do you seal the newly made jacket? Is it not necessary or folks using scotch tape??

9 years

Unknown DEC indicator panel

by jnc＠mercury.lcs.mit.edu

> I suppose I should try and round up images of 19" x 5-1/4" PDP-10 > panels, too So there are quite a few, although I'm not sure they are exactly the same as the ones used in the PDP-11's, PDP-15's, etc. Those use a plastic bezel which is the same as the blank panels in the H960 racks, into which the inlay is set >from the front, and glued down to the lip inside the bezel. The PDP-10 ones, >from the pictures, and my vague memory, use metal bezels which cover the panels from the front, holding them on, so the shape of the inlay may be subtly different. Anyway, I found images (not great - all B+W illustrations in manuals) of the following PDP-1 panels: DF10 DA10 RC10 BA10 TD10 TM10 DS10 RM10B DC10 RP10-C MB10 MD10 I'll add them to the page at some point. If any has actual images of any of these, they'd be appreciated. (And no, none of them is the mystery panel in the RSTS manual.) Noel

9 years

Gould 32/77 (was: NWA auctions)

by rickb＠bensene.com

> I'm curious what the Systems 32/77 is.. >Wasn't Gould SEL? maybe an SEL system? The 32/77-series was a 32-bit machine implemented in ECL, based on earlier SEL designs, but is definitely Gould in design/manufacture. Some of the machines in the series had a very powerful (for the time) floating point unit (known as the IPU) that operated in tandem with the main CPU that vastly increased the number-crunching power available The machines were mainly intended for real-time control applications (as used in the flight sim applications in the auction) The machine ran a real-time executive called MPX-32. More information: http://www.encore-support.com/htmls/32_77.htm Years ago, I had some experience with these machines. They were quite powerful for their time, and were also workhorses that just ran and ran. Very robust design. These are neat machines, and I hope that they end up in the hands of someone that can care for them rather than ending up scrap. -- Rick Bensene The Old Calculator Museum http://oldcalculatormuseum.com

9 years

VAX/VMS Pascal, Modula-3, Oberon, what could have been....

by seefriek＠gmail.com

I've heard Modula-3 (from DEC SRC and Olivetti Research Center) called "the Ada regular programmers would adopt". They never did, of course, because Olivetti decided research wasn't that important and DEC got bought and a lot of other reasons that are documented elsewhere. Not to get into a language pissing contest, but IMO it's an awfully nice way to program, with threading built in, type safety, generics, a reasonable GC, exceptions, etc. I really enjoyed it, but then I think Ada brings a lot to the table. What might have been, indeed.

9 years

Looking for info on a CAMAC module - Kinetic 3912 Unibus Crate Controller

by pete＠petelancashire.com

Over the years I've played around with a few old CAMAC (*) modules, by today's standard they pretty much have zero value, anyway that's another story. Recently I've been offered a CAMAC to Unibus board. A Kinetic 3912 Unibus Crate Controller . A Crate in CAMAC speak is just a chassis with a backplane. The problem with CAMAC is there is almost no information out there, Since I don't YET have a Unibus system, it more of a curiosity then anything. So .. anyone have the manual ? (*) - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_Automated_Measurement_and_Control

9 years

QIC-150 1/4" Cartridge Drive with Emulex MT-02 SCSI-QIC Controller?

by rickb＠bensene.com

Hello, all, Question of the day: Will an Emulex MT-02 SCSI->QIC tape controller work with a Wangtek 5150EQ (QIC-150) Tape Drive? I am trying to resurrect an old Tektronix 4132 Unix workstation. The 1/4" Wangtek 5099EQ drive that was in the machine was toast, something on the drive's electronics went POP when it powered on the first time, and it is no longer being recognized by the MT-02 controller. I have documentation on the drive, and will probably look into seeing if I can fix whatever fried, but in the short-term, I have a Wangtek 5150EQ with a good drive wheel, and was wondering if this drive would function with the MT-02 and be useful on the machine. I have a bunch of old (1980's) QIC-24 tapes written with the old 5099EQ drive that I want to look through and archive in a different form. And yes...I know about the tension band issues with old 1/4" QIC media...I've got a bunch of new tension bands and have become quite adept at replacing them and assuring the proper tension on the tape. Wishing all a peaceful day, -Rick -- Rick Bensene The Old Calculator Museum http://oldcalculatormuseum.com

9 years

VAX/VMS Pascal, Modula-3, Oberon, what could have been....

by mark＠wickensonline.co.uk

I recently discovered the very excellent website http://pascal.hansotten.com devoted to all things Wirth. I sent a message to the author, as detailed below, but I would encourage anyone to visit the website - you will surely learn something? Greetings from Windermere in the Lake District, England! I read with interest your interview with John Reagan. His efforts on the VAX Pascal Compiler, and more recently (well, in the last few years or so) my discovery of the very excellent Theo De Klerk book on VAX Pascal and it's excellent integration with the VMS operating system have rekindled my love of this excellent implementation of Pascal. I am the organiser of declegacy.org.uk - a 'mostly' annual event here in Windermere where collectors of DEC equipment and ex-employees gather to immerse themselves once again in the excellence of product that was the result of DEC Engineering. I have tried a couple of times to 'entice' John to provide a video narrative of his time at DEC - but, thankfully, he is still a very busy man. At DEC Legacy this time around for example I was very fortunate to find myself in the 'programming zone' for a couple of hours - sat at a VT terminal, trying to determine why my VAX Macro-32 fractal generation programme would not run successfully on a DEC Alpha via the VAX Macro Compiler. For those precious moments I could have been sat at a piece of DEC equipment anywhere in the world. For a programmer this is just intoxicating and all too rare these days. I have a long standing interest in the legacy of Wirth - and indeed DEC, as could be expected. When I was considering a programming language for my PhD efforts on a DEC 3000/600 AXP running Digital Unix 3.2C in 1994 I would have been better using Modula-3 and ignoring the C-based Khoros framework which was the path I eventual took (C was a 'better the devil you know' option at that point).

9 years

Unknown DEC indicator panel

by blstuart＠bellsouth.net

On Tue, 11/1/16, Jon Elson <elson at pico-systems.com> wrote: >? Also, some IBM publications (where I'm more > familiar with their models) had some photos > of machines that probably were in-house > prototypes that were quite different than the > production version. Along the same lines, the picture in the original PDP-8 manual was of a machine that had a front panel that looked more like the PDP-5 panel than the one shipped on the 8s. Given how close the machines were in architecture, it wouldn't be surprising for a prototype. As it turns out, I saw the picture in the manual a few years before I ever saw a real straight-8. To this day, the real straight-8s look a little "wrong" to me. BLS

9 years

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test-drb November 2016