test-drb

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101090 discussions

by dastar＠wco.com

Well, I thought I'd trumpet my trophies from today's hunting since I haven't done a trip like this one in a while and it was fun. Nothing really amazingly special today, but there were some nice finds. First stop: Computer Recycling Center Commodore Colt (PC-10C) - the Commodore IBM PC compatible, kinda neat. Has a WD hard drive inside (don't know what size) Radio Shack CoCo1 with the old-style (original) keyboard. I believe this is a 4K model. Came with the RS Modem I and a manual set plus some carts and a bunch of tapes with instructions Radio Shack Line Printer VII Zenith Data Systems Portable - this is the OEM'd Morrow Pivot Portable Everex external tape backup - this is cool...it uses cassette tapes for (apparently) 40MB backup. Coincidentally I found another one of these at stop #4 with a cassette. The cassette looks like your standard tape cassette but it has a notch on the tope of the casing in the middle. Can this drive use standard cassettes? It apparently plugs into the external floppy connector of an IBM PC Mac SE with 4MB RAM and 20MB HD Bunch of books, cables, Apple II software, other miscellany Total: $50 Second Stop: Surplus Store Atari 600XL with Atari 1027 printer (2) Lobo 5.25" drives for the Apple II (of course Marvin knows these were manufactured in Santa Barbara, CA!) Apple //e numeric keypad, joystick (2) Apple //c power supplies Miscellany Total: $30 (haggled down from $45) Third Stop: Thrift Store #1 Mattel Aquarius with Mini-expander and two game controllers in excellent condition (my first computer!) Atari 800XL Total: ~$15 Fourth Stop: Thrift Store #2 Burroughs C-7400 Electronic Adding Machine - I don't know if this should be called an adding machine or a computer. It seems to have some sort of computing ability. The keypad has this overlay with commands such as "GOTO", "IF" and "GOSUB" printed on it. I haven't fired it up yet but it has a one line LED (LCD?) display. Looks very neat. I don't normally collect adding machines except when one really jumps out at me. Any info? Data General External 5.25" Floppy Drive - I believe this drive was specific to the DG1 laptop. The funny thing is I just recently saw a photo of it on a web page and was thinking "Hey, I want one of those" A whole OS/2 library of books (like 10 volumes on OS/2 including developer manuals for Presentation Manager, etc). Total: ~$15.00 Fifth Stop: Surplus Store Northstar Advantage in excellent condition Panasonic Portable Data Terminal - similar to the TI Silent 700 but a little more polished Televideo PC-605 - this is a more IBM compatible model of the Televideo PC. This one apparently has a color CGA monitor instead of the more standard monochrome display. It also is supposed to have a PC compatible BIOS and can thus run some PC apps. It also has a HD (probably 20MB) Corvus Systems Hard Drive unit - I believe this goes with the rest of the Corvus Concepts computer. It has several connectors on the back labeled "Processor", "Drive"...it also has one labeled "VCR" and a video IN and OUT jack. McFrank, this is so you can backup to a VCR right? Misc. MicroPro software packages (CalcStar) Misc. books: Rexx, 8080/8085 Assembly Programming Total: $80 Grand Total: ~$190 Total spots visited: 5 Total Elapsed Time: 7hrs Deal Scale: 4 (1=Bad Deal...10=Great Deal!) [I've had better days] Sam Alternate e-mail: dastar(a)siconic.com ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Computer Historian, Programmer, Musician, Philosopher, Athlete, Writer, Jackass Coming Soon...Vintage Computer Festival 2.0 See http://www.siconic.com/vcf for details!

28 years, 4 months

front panels

by allisonp＠world.std.com

<>> panel. Does anyone remember other front panel S-100 cards besides MIT <>> IMSAI, Ithaca, and Wameco? Wasn't there a Byte-8 sold by Olson <Electronics <>> for a while that also had a front panel? < <>Yes, the Byte-8 had a front panel with, I believe, a hex keypad and a tw <>digit 7-segment LED display. Godbout. Equinox_100. <Was that just a display driven from a boot ROM or was it a real front pan <with displays directly driven from the bus, examine/deposit, single step <etc.? Usually a hex keypad meant a simulated front panel (CPU actually <running a debug program in the boot ROM). A true front panel needed 16 L <or 4 hex digits for address, 8 LEDs or 2 hex digits for data, and at leas <status LEDs for bus signals (SINP, SOUT, MEMR, INTA, etc.). Most were "simulated FP" though most offered better than real front pannel abilities. A few were hybrid, IE: the leds really did indicate what was on the bus and the cpu only ran the rom code needed to perform the needed actions and stopped. <All the panels <I have seen also had an extra 8 LED latched output port and sense switch <input port. Altair compatability hack. The sense switches were also port 0FFh so the software could read them. Allison

28 years, 4 months

Classic computing email list

by RWood54741＠worldnet.att.net

Please tell me how to subscribe. Thanks, Bob Wood

28 years, 4 months

HP 7958B

by healyzh＠ix.netcom.com

Today I picked up a HP 7958B unit which contains a "Bauart Gepruft model 97533-60051" Hard Drive. It is my understanding that this Hard Drive is an MFM Hard Drive, and I got this thing expecting to be able to find enough info on the net that I could hopefully fake my way through formating it for one of my MicroVAX's. No such luck, I've been able to dig up a big fat nothing on the net. Does anyone have any info on these things? I gather they were used with HP9000/300 systems. Zane | Zane H. Healy | UNIX Systems Adminstrator | | healyzh(a)ix.netcom.com (primary) | Linux Enthusiast | | healyzh(a)holonet.net (alternate) | Classic Computer Collector | +----------------------------------+----------------------------+ | For Empire of the Petal Throne and Traveller Role Playing, | | see http://www.dragonfire.net/~healyzh/ | | For the collecting of Classic Computers with info on them. | | see http://www.dragonfire.net/~healyzh/museum.html |

28 years, 4 months

IBM Techref

by maxeskin＠hotmail.com

Tony, you mentioned that a lot of info was mentioned in the IBM techref, on the AT in your case. What is the kind of size of this set, for the AT let's say, and does anyone have extra copies? What about XT? (I have the quickref to it already) ______________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free Email at http://www.hotmail.com

28 years, 4 months

Prices & Rants(was: Future Computing Trends. Still is, I guess)

by manney＠nwohio.com

<Snip> > The oldest part is toshiba 1.44 I have no idea > how old but I think it was about 5 years old. Hard to find a good > floppy drive that will last that long now. But tell me if there is > one out there that good and costs $40 and I will take it! What's happening to prices? Just returned from a show...Mitsumi FDD's, $16, sound cards $12, speakers $10...cases $18!!! > Only problem with disposeable PC if the makers gives us the >machines > too non-standard and hard to expand n' upgrade ...a la Packard Bell...but now it seems EVERYONE is making purpose-designed motherboards and cases. The best thing about keeping older PC's going (just to keep this on track) is interchangability of parts: P/S, for example. What's gonna happen to us electronically challenged types when the HP Pavilion P/S smokes -- am I going to go, hat in hand, to HP for another -- at their prices?

28 years, 4 months

Found a decent use for a PC...

by allisonp＠world.std.com

<They'd be extremely handy as a diagnostic tool, especially when there's To a point but it also required somethings to work and added things that could break the system. <problem with a video card or memory, and instead of having to count a <bunch of stupid beeps to determine what the error code is, you can just <read it off the front panel. That's what POST-cards do. <Those front panels had value that was overlooked when the modern machine <were ushered in. The altair had some 30 switches and as many leds all costing a bit never mind a board full of logic. It's was an expensive solution to not using Eproms even small ones. Systems like the POLY-88, SOL, SWTP 6800 got along just fine without them. Most minicomputers were dispensing with them by 1970s in favor of rom boots. Allison

28 years, 4 months

Prices & Rants(was: Future Computing Trends. Still is, I gu

by maxeskin＠hotmail.com

I apologize for any weird layout, but this IS Lynx...(as always for me) >> Missed my point; I prefer to buy quality one if I can find one and >> that floppy example is what I'm driving at. If I had money... >> Mitsumi and Epson floppy drives are junk. I had too many of those >> fail before year is up and use was not that heavy. Panasonic and few >> Teac is just o. k. but not on my esteemed list. Also those cheapo I had a drive problem once. It was intermittent, and I never could understand what was wrong. Eventually, I swapped the cable and the drive, and it works now. The only FDD I've bought was a 3.5" TEAC for $70 at the world's worst store- CompUSA. It actually has a metal frame! >The one advantage of Teac drives is that you can get the service/repair >manual. I have it for several versions of the FD55 (5.25" drive) and the >FD235 (3.5" drive). It means you can be _sure_ your drive is correctly >aligned. I wouldn't bother if I had to. >What floppy drives would you recomend? Punched card, IBM ,circa 1928. >> more noisy. PSU have cheap parts inside and fan will fail inside. I >> do have bunch of PSU's with failed fans and all of them are sleeve >> bearing type, very doubtful of finding one with ball bearing fans > Once again, I wouldn't bother with such minor details when I run Windows 95. My Fan howls when I boot, then stops after a few minutes. I read an article once on how to replace a PSU fan with a silent external one. >The worst PC-clone part I own is a keyboard. One day when using it, the >manual for my 'scope slipped off the top of a PDP8e that's alongside my PC >and landed on the keyboard. The result was that many keys on the keyboard >failed to work. I spent the next _3 hours_ removing bits of broken SRBP >circuit board and soldering wires all over the place. Amazingly there was >a schematic printed on the box that the keyboard came in (which I'd cut >out and filed), but (I guess) not too suprisingly it was incorrect!. I keep bumping into kb's that have plastic film instead of PCBs. The problem is that sometimes, the film will bend down, and not detect the key, so I have to bash it. (Which I do enough anyway, given my OS) > >And don't get me started on monitors. Is it too much to ask for a monitor Well, now that we have LCDs, it should get better, though LCD can be crap too. Don't have to worry about focus, transformers, etc. But I'm sure that they'll figure out something to screw up. >worse than the 17 year old Barco I happen to have... Out of ten new Performas, about half have darker monitors. We don't know why. It seems that the monitor is the second least reliable part of the computer, after the rest of it :) In old machines, everything was hackable anyway, so that any bugs in hardware or software could be easily fixed by the likes of us. In modern machines, its too complicated to fix anyway, and one would never have the time to fix all of the bugs, and for me, hardware is a minor problem (since it never breaks for me anyway, even when I try) ______________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free Email at http://www.hotmail.com

28 years, 4 months

Copying TU-58's?

by allisonp＠world.std.com

<The person I've been getting a bunch of DEC stuff off of has a whole pil <of TU-58 tapes that he would like to get transfered over to something he <can read. I'm wondering if there is anyway I can attach the TU58 drive <I've got for my PDP-11/44 to my MicroVAX II and copy these tapes for him VMS does support Tu58 on vax on a serial port(it is a serial device). The real question is whats the target media? RX50, RX33, RX02? If one of those three the 11/44 can do RX02 and if you have a q-buss PDP-11 with a DLV11j or any other serial port at 176500 you can hang the TU58 off that and use RT-11 to do the tansfer. Allison

28 years, 4 months

Found a decent use for a PC...

by maxeskin＠hotmail.com

>They'd be extremely handy as a diagnostic tool, especially when there's a >problem with a video card or memory, and instead of having to count a >bunch of stupid beeps to determine what the error code is, you can just >read it off the front panel. > >Those front panels had value that was overlooked when the modern machines >were ushered in. I wouldn't say that! Some of the PS/2s, A popular WYSE 286 machine and so one have had LCD diagnostic panels ______________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free Email at http://www.hotmail.com

28 years, 4 months

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