test-drb

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101090 discussions

Attaching SIMH devices without halting simulation?

by nf6x＠nf6x.net

I've been experimenting with the SIMH VAX simulators a lot lately. The only way I know of to mount a tape, disk pack, CD-ROM, etc. after boot time is to halt the simulation with ^e to get to the SIMH command prompt, ATTACH the desired image, and then resume the simulation with CONTINUE. Is there any way to attach/detach media images in SIMH without halting the simulation? I've tried putting the system console on a telnet port so it doesn't occupy SIMH's controlling terminal, and I found that it's still necessary to halt the simulation to get back to the SIMH command prompt. -- Mark J. Blair, NF6X <nf6x at nf6x.net> http://www.nf6x.net/

8 years, 8 months

Non-Yahoo MTS Mailing Lists

by lyndon＠orthanc.ca

Are any of you aware of an MTS mailing list that lives outside of the execrable Yahoo groups environment? And if not, is there any interest in starting one? Meanwhile, if there are any MTS hacks on the list, I have a question: When running *SAV or *SVW, what are the labels the system is expecting for the FSnnnn tapes? I tried the obvious - FS2001 for the FS2001 tape prompted for - but no luck there. Then again, maybe I'm not labeling the tapes properly. This is under Hercules. hetinit -d fs2001.aws FS2001 MTS doesn't cut it. I also tried running *lbh against that tape (to give it the same label), but no luck there, either. The MTS operator's guide doesn't have anything to say about daily/weekly backups, other than the cryptic notes on the *SAV and *SVW files, and I can't find anything else as I dig through the rest of the online system docs. $HELP ? --lyndon

8 years, 8 months

VAX/VMS & IBM 360 manuals from mid 1980s

by sieler＠allegro.com

Hi, A friend, probably in Ohio, tells me his father has 3 boxes (about 150 pounds) of manuals for VAX/VMS and IBM 360 from the mid 1980s. If anyone's interested in following up, email me and I'll send you the contact info. thanks, and Happy New Year! Stan Sieler

8 years, 8 months

Slightly Meta: Travel tips for people traveling internationally with vintage equipment?

by mbbrutman＠brutman.com

I'm actively working on show planning for VCF PNW and I'm noticing that we have a few international travelers planning to attend and exhibit their machines/projects. I'd like to put together a FAQ for the logistics of traveling with vintage equipment across the US border. If you have ideas please let me know. For example: Should I plan on providing letters in advance stating that a person is a registered exhibitor at our show, including details like the show location, dates, times, and contact information in case there is a question about why somebody is carrying strange looking equipment into the US? Is there any sort of paperwork or customs form needed even if nothing is being sold or left in the US? Any other gotchas to look for? Thanks, Mike

8 years, 8 months

RT-11 idle light pattern

by jnc＠mercury.lcs.mit.edu

> From: Paul Koning > RSTS-11 V4, which had a major reliability problem ... As part of trying > to keep the customer placated, DEC supplied full OS sources, 5 > dectapes. ... We printed them ... I still have copies of those files. Is that version available online? If not, maybe an OCR project? (Although I know other versions of RSTS-11 are available, so maybe it's not rare enough to make the tedium of OCR worth it. That has been used on a number of systems; notably CTSS, but also the IMP code and the Apollo Guidance Computer, that I know of. I'm currently looking into getting an early version of MERT, and that may also come down to OCR - if we're lucky!) > Stranger still is the "fancy" lights in RSTS ... "Fancy" because it > produces a rotating pattern not just in the data lights which is easy, > but also in the address lights. It runs in supervisor mode Ah; it must busy loop at loops spread across the address space? Clever! (Perhaps using the mapping hardware so that it doesn't use too much _actual_ memory.) Is the source available? Noel

8 years, 8 months

Standalone X/Y/ZMODEM for non-PC x86

by rich.cini＠verizon.net

All ? ??????????????? I?m looking for some x86 source code for what I?ll call a standalone version of an X/Y/ZModem (or any combination thereof) for use with a non-IBM/PC x86 machine. Many versions exist on Simtel and other archives but they are executable programs rather than source. ??????????????? The reason for the odd request is that the system that it will be used on is a Seattle Gazelle replica I built based on the one in the VCFE inventory, and the constraints are hardware/OS imposed. None of the I/O ports are at PC-compatible addresses and it has no INT-callable system BIOS. The system does run both MS-DOS 1.25 and 2.0 but the standard character I/O devices other than CON: (LPT and AUX) are mapped to parallel ports on one of the boards. COM1 and COM2 devices don?t exist. ??????????????? Ideally it should just take two command line parameters ? the file name and whether it?s a transmit/upload or receive/download transaction. I know that the protocol is fairly simple but I was looking to adapt something rather than starting from scratch. I found an implementation of XMODEM in Microsoft BASIC, but it relies on opening the COM1 device to work. I am looking into writing direct hardware access using PEEK/POKE, but I?m not there on it yet. ??????????????? If anyone has something usable in their archives, please let me know. Thanks, and Happy New Year to all! Rich -- Rich Cini http://www.classiccmp.org/cini http://www.classiccmp.org/altair32

8 years, 8 months

Computing from 1976

by c.murray.mccullough＠gmail.com

I was perusing my old computer magazine collection the other day and came across an article entitled: ?Fast-Growing new hobby, Real Computers you assemble yourself?, Dec. 1976. It was about MITS, Sphere, IMSAI and SWT. 4K memory was $500. Yikes! Even more here in Canada. Now this is true Classic Computing. Have a Happy New Year everyone. May the computing gods shine down on us all in 2018. Happy computing. Murray :)

8 years, 8 months

Computing from 1976

by COURYHOUSE＠aol.com

so if you bought the altair and put it away you could sort of sell it for the same amount of money-worth today. In a message dated 12/30/2017 5:10:22 P.M. US Mountain Standard Time, cctalk at classiccmp.org writes: It was thus said that the Great Fred Cisin via cctalk once stated: > On Sat, 30 Dec 2017, Murray McCullough via cctalk wrote: > >I was perusing my old computer magazine collection the other day and > >came across an article entitled: ?Fast-Growing new hobby, Real > >Computers you assemble yourself?, Dec. 1976. It was about MITS, > >Sphere, IMSAI and SWT. 4K memory was $500. Yikes! Even more here in > >Canada. Now this is true Classic Computing. Have a Happy New Year > >everyone. May the computing gods shine down on us all in 2018. > >Happy computing. Murray :) > > OK, a little arithmetic exercise for you. > (a 16C is nice for this, but hardly necessary) Sounds like fun. > "Moore's Law", which was a prediction, not a "LAW", has often been > mis-stated as predicting a doubling of speed/capacity every 18 months. > > 1) Figure out how many 18 month invtervals since then, and what 4k > "should' have morphed into by now. 1) 28 doublings since 1975. (2017-1975) * 12 ---------------- 18 4K should (had we truly doubed everything every 18 months) now be 1T (terrabyte): 2^12 = 4K 2^(12+28) 2^40 ~ 1T > 2) What did Gordon Moore actually say in 1965? That the number of transistors in an integrated circuit double every 18 months. > 3) How much is $500 of 1976 money worth now? It depends upon how you calculate it. I'm using this page [1] for the calculation, and I get: Current data is only available till 2016. In 2016, the relative price worth of $500.00 from 1976 is: $2,110.00 using the Consumer Price Index $1,680.00 using the GDP deflator $2,400.00 using the value of consumer bundle $2,000.00 using the unskilled wage $2,450.00 using the Production Worker Compensation $3,340.00 using the nominal GDP per capita $4,960.00 using the relative share of GDP > 4) Consider how long it took to use a text editor to make a grocery > shopping list in 1976. How long does it take today? I would think the same amount of time. Typing is typing. > Does having the grocery list consist of pictures instead of words, with > audio commentary, and maybe Smell-O-Vision (coming soon), improve the > quality of life? For me, not really. > How much does it help to be able to contact your > refrigeratior and query its knowledge of its contents? It could be helpful, but with the current state of IoT, I would not want to have that ability. > (Keep in mind, that although hardware expanded exponentially, according to > Moore's Law, Software follows a corollary of Boyle's Law, and expands to > fill the available space and use all of the available resources - how much > can "modern" software do in 4K?, and how much is needed to boot the > computer and run a "modern" text editor?) EMACS is lean and mean compared to some of the "text editors" coming out today, based upon Javascript frameworks. It's scary. > 5) What percentage of computer users still build from kits, or from > scratch? I would say significantly less than 1%. Say, 5% of 1%? That's probably in the right ballpark. > 6) What has replaced magazines for keeping in touch with the current > state of computers? The world wide web, although I do miss the Byte magazine of the 70s and 80s. Not so much the 90s. -spc (Yeah, I realize these were probably rhetorical in nature ... ) [1] http://www.measuringworth.com/uscompare/

8 years, 8 months

Computing from 1976

by COURYHOUSE＠aol.com

Thanks for the heads up on this S-100 site! PdP-11 on a s-100 bus even.. Ed# In a message dated 12/30/2017 5:01:26 P.M. US Mountain Standard Time, cctalk at classiccmp.org writes: A good site for what was in the 1975-1980 era. http://www.s100computers.com/index.html

8 years, 8 months

Restoring MTS *FS distribution tapes onto a UNIX system

by lyndon＠orthanc.ca

The answer to my previous question lives in the source code. The D6.0A MTS distribution doesn't have the source on disk, so the files need to be extracted from the *FS tapes. On an MTS system, that's a pain in the ass. Given the DRIVER file from the distribution, has anyone tried extracting the 6.0A distribution tapes into UNIX file hierarchy, based on the hinted component/sub names? I'm thinking just the raw files - I don't care that they're EBCDIC at this point, so no content conversion required. --lyndon

8 years, 8 months

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