Hi there,
I am working on a 30 minute historical video about the digital group. For source material there isn't a ton of stuff out there unfortunately and much of the account of what happened to the company comes from the late Dr. Robert Suding. In his account, Suding sort of points fingers at Richard "Dick" Bemis for mismanagement of the company.
I am wondering if anyone knows what became of Mr. Bemis after his stint running dg. Apart from a couple of (slightly snarky) letters to Dr. Dobb's Journal when dg was still operational, there's literally no trace of him on the internet. If he's still around I'd love to get his side of the story to balance things out, or at least find out what he did afterwards.
Thought I'd write here in case anyone knew.
Brad
Looking for suggestions on hobbyist PIC setup. So far I have just used
Arduino type direct-connect microcontrollers (back in the day
programmers for general devices were expensive), but the currently
existing SGI proprietary system to PS/2 keyboard adapter is PIC (and I
have a couple different systems that all use my single SGI proprietary
keyboard).
Any gotchas with the PICKit-3 clones out there? I have the feeling that
sticking with PIC would be better than trying to port to Arduino, and
imagine that as things continue to age there will be more applications
for interfaces. Any better but still cheapish alternatives for
programming?
I'm having trouble using DECtapes with TSS/8 under SIMH. I tried with both the
RF image and LCM RK05 image and no mater what I do it hangs if I try to
access a DECtape.
I am trying to use COPY command from account 2.
I attach a dectape in simh then assign it in TSS and then try to get a
directory or zero the tape with copy. Both hang. Anybody with more TSS
knowledge know how to get this to work.
Images from bitsavers http://www.pdp8online.com/ftp/images/bitsavers/unknown/
7196, 7211, 7242, and 7280 have text where TSS/8 was mentioned. These are the
ones I wanted to use TSS to see if I can get a directory.
7241, 7253, 7264, 7265, 7275, 7278, 7291, 7292 have contents but nothing I
can identify.
There are also some LINCtapes that had read issues so unable to determine
what the are.
What I have decoded
http://www.pdp8online.com/images/index.shtml
See last 3.
I am posting, with permission from Daniel, the following "For Sale" message from the HPLX Mailing List for a large collection of HP LX Palmtop hardware, software and books. Daniel Hertrich has been a major contributor to the HPLX List, creating a backlight mod, and doing HPLX repairs. His web site, www.hermocom.com, has been an important repository of information about the HP Palmtops. He can be reached at daniel at hertrich.photo and is located in Bavaria, Germany. I have no interest in the sale, etc.
Regards, Bob
<Begin Forwarded Message>
Hi friends :)
In short (longer text below):
You can see my collection in detail here:
https://360bayern.de/pano/daniels_palmtop_collection/index.html
(zoom in with zoom gesture or scroll wheel)
2,000 ? total for the entire collection. Shipping or delivery from Bavaria, Germany.
You can hover over each item and get a description tooltip (except for items that are self-explanatory, such as the books), some are even clickable, and the click leads to a website describing the item. Most clicks lead you to my own website www.hermocom.com, because I documented a lot of the stuff that I worked on back then. :) If you like to provide more link targets for the items, please do so. then I'll gladly add them.
Note that for the high-resolution image (300 Megapixel) I used panorama software to stitch 10 individual images, so you can zoom in and see a lot of details of the single items. But given the unusual "panorama" setup for capturing the collection, there are stitching errors in the image, so some items look as if they might be broken, but they are not. ;) You can always switch to the lower-resolution standard image (40 Megapixel) to check that there is really no crack in the item. The descriptions and (obviously) the high details when zooming, however, are only available in the high-resolution image.
So here comes the longer text: :)
No, I won't say goodbye to you! I'll stay here with you. And I'll keep a few items from my collection for myself. But the rest of my collection has to go. The Palmtop hobby was a really great one for me, probably the most important one, until I began with photography. I learned so much during all these years since 1997, when I bought my first 200LX. Until 2005 the 200LX even was my main computer (i.e.: the one I used most). I started so many hardware and software projects to support my own work and also the community, and I got a lot of support from you, the community, as well. Thank you so much for that, and for all these years of fun! :) I have (even until now!) never been part of a community that I gave to and got from that much support and heart-warming talks, even if the topic was most of the times a very unemotional one: Computers!
I've even built my own small business around all that ("hermocom - hertrich mobile computing"). The business was never really "successful" in the sense of earning money, but that was not important to me. Important was, that I could take the money earned from it and invest it into new research, new projects, new hardware, to keep it all going and constantly improve.
I think, the most important success (again, not in the monetary sense) was the development of a feasible and relatively affordable backlight solution for the 200LX, made possible by the great help of Hal Goldstein and his team at Thaddeus Computing by handing me over their material they got from their own research in this field.
I will keep two used 200LXs and one 1000CX, as well as a few important accessories (an LED light, one 200LX has a backlight, some PCMCIA cards etc.) and spare parts, but all the remaining parts and devices, even two like-new(!) 200LXs just take up space here and only once a year or so they give me nostalgic feelings and a smile.
Given that I am currently in a financial emergency situation with my photography business, that's heavily damaged due to the Corona situation, I clearly need the money more than the nostalgic feelings. :)
For each item in the collection (except for almost all the books and a few trivial items, which I will add for free), I estimated a value, then summed up these values and resulted in a total value of 2,300 ?.
I would prefer to sell the collection in its entirety, and would offer the entire collection for 2,000 ?.
That price does not include shipping costs.
In case nobody wants to buy the entire collection for a couple of weeks, I'll probably slice the collection into smaller chunks or offer items one by one.
If you are interested in a particular set of items (collection chunk), let me know. I may consider that.
The collection fits into a standard-sized moving box, with not much padding. For shipping, I'd like to add much more padding, so that it would probably take 2 moving boxes for shipping.
Within Germany, I would deliver the collection in my area for free (85077 Manching, near Ingolstadt + 100km). I'd also consider delivering it within a wider distance against a refund of my driving costs. That would maybe be cheaper than parcel shipping for two heavy moving boxes and it would allow for a beer and a good talk :)
Okay, so now have fun exploring my collection. :)
If you are interested or have questions, you may contact me at daniel at hertrich.photo.
....This is quite an emotional step for me... Oh boy.
Daniel
> From: Paul Koning
> Here is an outline (not all the details) of the hardware scan flow:
> ...
> 2. Make sure the MMU exist; if not, halt.
> ...
> If it has FIS, it can only be an 11/40.
You probably know this already, but the KEV1-A floating point chip for
the LSI-11 also implemenred FIS. (Of course, the LSI-11 would fail
step 2, so it's not really a factor here.)
Noel
Hi,
I habe some pdp10 related docs which need to go away.
Anybody interested? Or should I dump it (and reuse the white folders foro pdp8 stuff)?
https://www.icloud.com/sharedalbum/#B0r5oqs3qGclUOi
Kind regards
Philipp
--
Dipl.-Inf. (FH) Philipp Hachtmann
Buchdruck, Bleisatz, Spezialit?ten
Klus 16
31073 Delligsen
Mobil: 0171/2632239
UStdID DE 202668329
> From: John Floren
> Can anyone on the list point me to either an existing archive where
> these exist
The canonical repository for historic documentation online is BitSavers.
It has an almost-complete set of DEC stuff (both manuals and prints. QBUS
devices are at:
http://www.bitsavers.org/pdf/dec/qbus/
QBUS CPU's will be in the relevant model directory, e.g.:
http://www.bitsavers.org/pdf/dec/pdp11/1123/
and disk drives are in:
http://www.bitsavers.org/pdf/dec/disc/
I haven't checked your list, but I suspect most of them are there; I think the
ADV11-A prints are missing, though. You can either send the originals to Al
Kossow, or scan them for him; but check with him first, to make sure he doen't
already have them, just hasn't got around to posting them yet.
There's another site which indexes DEC online documentation:
https://manx-docs.org/
There are a very few things which aren't in Bitsavers, and can be found there.
> KFD11-A cpu
I assume that's a typo for 'KDF11-A'?
Noel
>
>From: John Floren <john at jfloren.net>
>Date: Fri, 5 Mar 2021 14:51:40 -0800
>To: The Eunuchs Hysterical Society <tuhs at tuhs.org>
>Subject: [TUHS] A stack of PDP-11 field maintenance print sets
>
>I've been hauling around a pile of DEC Field Maintenance Print Sets
>for PDP-11 components for over a decade now, intending to see if
>they're worth having scanned or if there are digital versions out
>there already. Can anyone on the list point me to either an existing
>archive where these exist, or an archivist who would be interested in
>scanning them? They're full of exploded diagrams, schematics, and
>assembly listings.
>
>Here's the list of what I have:
>
>Field Maintenance Print Set (17" wide, 11" high):
>RLV11 disk controller
>RL01-AK disk drive
>ADV-11A (??)
>
>Field Maintenance Print Set (14" wide, 8.5" high):
>RL01 disk drive
>DLV11-J serial line controller
>RLV11 disk controller
>KFD11-A cpu
>KEF11-A floating point processor
>PDP11/23
>PDP11/03-L
>
>Absolutely not tossing them, just wondering if there are already
>scanned copies available somewhere, if I should send them off to be
>scanned and put online, or if I should just check in with computer
>museums (I'm near the CHM, for instance)
>
>John Floren