test-drb

test-drb@ccmp.vtda.org

101090 discussions

by treen0＠gmail.com

> I've been after a manual for months. There is one up on eBay for $520, > it's been there for months.? A few weeks ago the seller sent out an > offer to anyone watching, with an offer of $399, I sent a counter > offer of $99.? I just bought a copy that turned up yesterday for $20. > Zane I see the same thing all the time on Amazon and various other used booksellers, it's a malfunction of using an automated pricing system.? My uncle has spent years importing college textbooks and explained it to me about fifteen years ago, the system is fairly simplistic and sets prices automatically based on other seller's prices.? The sellers have no idea what anything is worth, so they trust the automated system rather than the buyer.? One person comes in and prices an old manual at some randomized, arbitrary amount in the hundreds of dollars (or a computer in the thousands), and the entire market adjusts to selling at that price without any human interaction.? The systems then ignore the lowball prices set by sellers who run smaller businesses and need to move inventory or sellers who understand the actual value of the item. This leads to situations where an old paperback about an obsolete programming language gets priced at $455 and a half dozen other sellers under-cut it by pennies. If you want to see how this same sort of thing affects various other markets, look into high speed trading firms.

6 years, 4 months

Some new text adventure stuff for 2.11BSD

by athornton＠gmail.com

I'm having a party on Saturday January 11 (and if any of you are in Tucson, or want to come to Tucson for it, you're invited; email me for the address and time). Although the party is Elvis-themed, it's really about boardgaming and classic videogaming. So I kind of wanted to put a general-purpose Z-machine interpreter on my PiDP-11, so that people could play Infocom (and community) games on a real terminal. Turns out there wasn't really one, so I ported the venerable ZIP (which I have renamed "zterp" for obvious reasons) to 2.11BSD on the PDP-11, and I also wrote a little utility I call "tmenu" to take a directory (and an optional command applying to files in the directory) and make a numbered menu, so that my guests who are not familiar with Actual Bourne Shell can play games too. These things are at: https://github.com/athornton/pdp11-zterp and https://github.com/athornton/pdp11-tmenu/ Both are K&R C, and compile with the 2.11BSD system C compiler. My biggest disappointment is that the memory map of Trinity, my favorite Infocom game, is weird and even though it's only a V5 game, I can't allocate enough memory to start it. Other than that, V5 and below seem to work mostly fine; V8 is in theory supported but no game that I've tried has little enough low memory that I can malloc() it using C on 2.11BSD. Adam

6 years, 4 months

Odd vintage computer sellers

by aperry＠snowmoose.com

Most of us who collect vintage computers probably have our own stories like this, but I find this so amusing that I just have to share it. Last year I did an exhibit on SPARC clones for VCF PNW and wanted to include a Solbourne in it. Unable to cajole Cameron into loaning me one :-), I went looking for one to buy on eBay. There was a seller with, among other Solbourne hardware, a listing for some number of IDT S4000DXs. They had started with 6 and were down to 4-5 when I started looking. IIRC, the base Buy-It-Now (BIN) price was around $225, but, when they didn't sell, they were relisted with a varying discount. In relistings, the BIN was as low as $167. In a relisting where the discounted price was $195 BIN, I offered $175. The seller didn't accept and, in the counter offer exchange, eventually went above the discounted price. I didn't go for that. Then, in the next relisting, the discounted price was $167. I bought one. They were being sold with a HDD and a Solbourne frame buffer (Sun frame buffers don't work in S4000DXs), but no keyboard or mouse (Solbournes use proprietary keyboards and mice). The one that I got had a dead Sun0424 (Seagate ST1480N) HDD and, I found out later, a broken frame buffer. I put in a SD2SCSI and installed OS/MP (Solbourne's version of BSD SunOS). From the serial console, it worked fine and I included the system in my VCF PNW exhibit. After the show, I spent some time trying to make a Solbourne to Sun keyboard adapter, but couldn't get it to work. I have had it up for sale for a few months (my attention is now focused on the barn-find Sun 3/260 that I hope to have working for this year's VCF PNW). But, back to the seller that I got the S4000DX from ... The seller is still trying to sell 2 of the original 6 S4000DXs (that at one point included the one that I have). However, the pricing has changed. Now, instead of the old base price of around $225, the base price is now $3060. Yes, $3000. But they are being offered with an 83% discount, so one can get a S4000DX for the low, low price of just under $500. I find this amazing and odd. alan

6 years, 4 months

DEC flat cables

by djg＠pdp8online.com

Has anyone found a good method for repairing the DEC flat cables? The ones with flat wires with plastic laminated to each side. The glue holding the plastic on fails and you end up with two sheets of plastic and loose wires. I had some success with contact cement but it only glues the plastic to the flat wires since it doesn't have any body. I tried one of the rubbery adhesives but it wouldn't set. I assume the plastic prevented evaporation of the solvent. I assume the air cure products would have the same issue. I assume two part or UV cure products if UV makes it through the plastic might work better since they come thick enough to fill between the wires. I've never used any of these to know if they may be a better choice. Desirable would be reasonably quick set.

6 years, 4 months

IBM RS/6000 Model 320 (7012-320) and AIX 3.2.5

by cmhanson＠eschatologist.net

I have an IBM RS/6000 POWERstation 320 (original 7012-320) with plenty of RAM and SCSI storage. I?d like to install AIX 3.2.5 on it. Here?s the hardware setup: - POWERstation 320 - 8MB RAM currently, soon to be 72MB - Serial port adapter so I can use a terminal - Correct IBM keyboard (not working at the moment, hence the terminal) - Correct IBM mouse - MCA Color Display Adapter (1-1) - MCA Ethernet Adapter (2-1) - MCA SCSI-1 Adapter (4-1) - AIX 3.2.0 floppy images, including boot floppy images - AIX 3.2.5 CD-ROM images - External SCSI DAT (DDS-1) and CD-ROM drives The CD images appear to be ISO-9660 format, containing piles of ?AIX backup/restore format file? archives; the floppy images are also identified as being that format (no filesystems, just archive content). I?ve seen some stuff online that talks about installing from tape using DAT, so it seems like in theory I should be able to just push the CD contents to a tape and go. Can I use the 3.2.0 boot floppy images with a couple of DDS-1 tapes containing the files from the 3.2.5 CDs to directly install AIX 3.2.5? In what order should the files be put on the tapes? Or do I really need to do a complete install of 3.2.0 first? Another important question: Will I need some sort of key to use the included AIXwindows and xlc, or should this stuff just work? Finally, is there a complete set of post-release patches for AIX 3.2.5 online somewhere? I know 3.2.5 itself was primarily a patch roll-up release, I assume that with Y2K remediation and other bug fixes in the mid- and late-2000s there were a few additional patches released over time. -- Chris

6 years, 4 months

FS : IBM Magnetic cards for IBM selectric "compocarte" (?)

by gerardcjat＠free.fr

A guy, in Europ, sells a box of IBM magnetic cards, used on IBM "Compcarte" ( sorry, french "name" ) They seems in medium state, at least,? but I think these are pretty rare. So, if somebody is interested ..... https://www.ebay.fr/itm/gro%C3%9Frechner-wechseldatentr%C3%A4ger-magnetkart…

6 years, 4 months

Corvus Concept

by curt＠atarimuseum.com

Hi everyone, Happy New Years... Got into a convo with a local friend regarding Concepts. I sold mine nearly 15 years ago to Al Kossow and regretted it ever since. (Nothing to do with Al, he?s a great guy... just regret selling it) Anyone on the list have one that they might consider selling/trading for? Thanks, Curt

6 years, 4 months

One of Bay Area's last Fry's Electronics stores closes

by t.gardner＠computer.org

Palo Alto Fry?s closing <https://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/Bay-Area-locations-Frys-Electronics-…> . Sad, but not the end of an era ? apparently the loss of lease I remember visiting an early Fry?s (first?) in Sunnyvale (541 Lakeside Dr?, near Oakmead and around the corner from Shugart Associates where I then worked). I marveled at the selection of steaks, diet cokes, resistors, capacitors, ICs, etc. They had partially converted a supermarket into an electronics store but I heard they at first kept the food to keep some cash flow. I think I bought steaks J The engineers and technicians at Shugart more than once ran over there to get breadboard parts.

6 years, 4 months

VCF PNW 2020: Exhibitors, volunteers and speakers needed!

by mbbrutman＠brutman.com

What: Vintage Computer Festival Pacific Northwest 2020 When: Saturday March 21st and Sunday March 22nd Where: Living Computers:Museum+Labs in Seattle, Washington. Web site: http://vcfed.org/vcf-pnw Why ? So you can share your favorite old computers and projects in person with like-minded others for two full days at a great venue. This is one of the many ways we celebrate computing history while reaching out to a larger audience, and hopefully inspiring others. As of this writing we have seven exhibitors, three speakers, and a handful of volunteers signed up. We are looking for 20 to 25 exhibitors in total, another speaker or two, and a few more volunteers. While returning exhibits are welcome, we want to encourage first-timers to step up and try it out. (It is fun and rewarding!) If you know that you can bring an exhibit please look at http://vcfed.org/vcf-pnw/exhibitor-registration and then fill in the registration form. (Potential volunteers and speakers - send me an email instead, as there is no form.) If you are ?on the fence? or just have questions please send me an email and I will get things sorted out for you. The registration deadline is January 31st but if you know you can commit now it will make project planning easier. A description of the event can be found at http://vcfed.org/vcf-pnw . General information for exhibitors including links to pictures from last year, a link to the registration form, and a FAQ can be found at http://vcfed.org/vcf-pnw/exhibitor-registration . Feel free to email me with questions. Thanks, Mike mbbrutman at brutman.com or michael at vcfed.org PS: Not exhibiting at the event but interested in unloading some tonnage? We're doing a consignment area again and that is open to everybody. Now is a good time to start cleaning and testing things that you might want to sell. You bring your treasures and we?ll bring the buyers. Check http://vcfed.org/vcf-pnw/consignment/ for details.

6 years, 4 months

First Internet message

by c.murray.mccullough＠gmail.com

I?m not familiar with U.S. law but didn?t Xerox ?own? the patent(s) to GUI technology? Again to my knowledge Microsoft and Apple both ?appropriated? and/or ?misapproriated?, depending on your point-of-view, this exact technology! Does commercial-use, read profit, subsume legal rights eventually in the U.S. and I suppose elsewhere in the capitalist world? Given what has happened in the past 45 yrs. or so, and the almost equal value of Microsoft and Apple(determined by the stock exchange), has the marketplace prevailed? Have we the consumer benefited the most or more accurately the 2 richest high-tech, transnational corporations? Happy computing - and best wishes for a prosperous New Year for all. Murray ?

6 years, 4 months

Jump to page:

2026

2025

2024

2023

2022

2021

2020

2019

2018

2017

2016

2015

2014

2013

2012

2011

2010

2009

2008

2007

2006

2005

2004

2003

2002

2001

2000

1999

1998

1997

test-drb