Re: DEC bus transceivers

[steven]

Hi all,
   On my road trip earlier this year one of the docs I snagged was a ring 
binder of Foxboro
Integrated Circuits dated 10/73, Revision A, one of 200 copies. It covers chip 
characteristics
and compatibility cross references.
This was part of the doc set for the Foxboro FOX 2/10 (PDP-11/15) about which 
more is to come.

Anyway from this I've just scanned and pdf'd the pages for the DEC 8881, which 
Foxboro called
the C3313AB. The first page is the relevant cross-reference to other 
manufacturers. I'm sure this
is already on bitsavers somewhere (what isn't :) but hey what the heck, the 
more the merrier. The
only other DEC-specific IC that is covered is the 380A.

It's at 
http://web.aanet.com.au/~malikoff/pdp11/DEC_8881_transceiver_IC_Foxboro_pn_C3313AB.pdf

Steve.

Re: Sage II

[Chuck Guzis]

On 10/29/2016 05:29 PM, emanuel stiebler wrote:

> Is it worth it, to get TEAC 55 for them as replacement? The ones I
> have, have broken fronts ...


If you need jumper settings for the 55FG, I've got them.

--Chuck

Re: Sage II

[Fred Cisin]

IIRC, TEC FB-504 is 80 track double density.
IIRC, the Teac 80track double density is the FD55F
(55G is 1.2M, 55FG is intended to be strappable as either)

On Sat, 29 Oct 2016, emanuel stiebler wrote:

TEC, sorry !
Ok, so both seems to be 80 track ...

Those should be imagable (is that the right word?) using a PC with 1.2M.


Is it worth it, to get TEAC 55 for them as replacement?
The ones I have, have broken fronts ...


If they work OK, I wouldn't worry about the bezel, although a broken bezel 
is a sign that they haven't been treated gently.


Teac 55F would be the ideal Teac to use.
Teac55FG would work, but I don't know the jumpers

Shugart/Matsushita/etc. 465
For full-height, Tandon Tm100-4

It shouldn't much matter which brand, but until it's working, I'd avoid 
adding in any more variables.

Re: Sage II

[emanuel stiebler]

On 2016-10-29 18:05, Fred Cisin wrote:

On Sat, 29 Oct 2016, emanuel stiebler wrote:

So both are 5.25", half height.
one is a mitsubishi M4853-342MG,


IIRC, that's a 80track double density drive.  (aka "720K", aka "quad
density")
(the 4854 is the 1.2M version)
IIRC, the 4853 was used in the Tandy 2000, so that might be a good place
to find the service manual if you need it.



the other TEAC FB-504

TEAC, or TEC?


TEC, sorry !


IIRC, TEC FB-504 is 80 track double density.
IIRC, the Teac 80track double density is the FD55F
(55G is 1.2M, 55FG is intended to be strappable as either)


Ok, so both seems to be 80 track ...


Those should be imagable (is that the right word?) using a PC with 1.2M.


Is it worth it, to get TEAC 55 for them as replacement?
The ones I have, have broken fronts ...

Re: Sage II

[Fred Cisin]

On Sat, 29 Oct 2016, william degnan wrote:

Ok...I'll try it tomorrow and post, you can let me know how it goes.  I'll
prob figure it out when I analyze the disks using the tools, just not sure
if being pascal they have any weirdness


not that would matter for imaging.
But, of course p-system was a whole different directory structure.
Good news, though, is that if you ever have to manually put sectors 
together, . . . is that p-system files are alway contiguous!
P-system would not let you put part of a file in one space on the disk and 
the rest in another space.  They had a p-system utility called "CRUNCH" to 
defragment the disk.  %Deity help you if it crashed while THAT was trying 
to run!

Re: Sage II

[william degnan]

IMD can't determine the interleave.  I am using a DD drive, not HD.
According to this page
http://www.thebattles.net/sage/
they're 96TPI - I don't have a system set up for this at the moment.  I
have the kermit disk for the Sage II though.  My B drive has an 8" drive
that thinks it's a 720K drive or whatever I did to make it work.
b

On Sat, Oct 29, 2016 at 7:02 PM, william degnan 
wrote:

> Ok...I'll try it tomorrow and post, you can let me know how it goes.  I'll
> prob figure it out when I analyze the disks using the tools, just not sure
> if being pascal they have any weirdness
>
> Bill Degnan
> twitter: billdeg
> vintagecomputer.net
> On Oct 29, 2016 5:57 PM, "Chuck Guzis"  wrote:
>
>> I don't know if this applies to the SAGE II or not, but 22DISK has two
>> SAGE IV definitions, for 48 tpi and for 96 tpi diskettes, as derived
>> from samples that I have.
>>
>> --Chuck
>>
>>

Re: Sage II

[Fred Cisin]

On Sat, 29 Oct 2016, Chuck Guzis wrote:

I don't know if this applies to the SAGE II or not, but 22DISK has two
SAGE IV definitions, for 48 tpi and for 96 tpi diskettes, as derived
from samples that I have.


The Sage IV sample disks formats in XenoCopy were a CP/M type file 
system, in 48tpi and 96tpi.  We also did a Sage 2 P-system format (but 
only the 96tpi)

I have no idea about Sage II, v Sage IV differences.

Re: Sage II

[Fred Cisin]

On Sat, 29 Oct 2016, emanuel stiebler wrote:

So both are 5.25", half height.
one is a mitsubishi M4853-342MG,


IIRC, that's a 80track double density drive.  (aka "720K", aka "quad density")
(the 4854 is the 1.2M version)
IIRC, the 4853 was used in the Tandy 2000, so that might be a good place 
to find the service manual if you need it.




the other TEAC FB-504

TEAC, or TEC?
IIRC, TEC FB-504 is 80 track double density.
IIRC, the Teac 80track double density is the FD55F
(55G is 1.2M, 55FG is intended to be strappable as either)


Those should be imagable (is that the right word?) using a PC with 1.2M.

--
Grumpy Ol' Fred ci...@xenosoft.com

Re: Sage II

[william degnan]

Ok...I'll try it tomorrow and post, you can let me know how it goes.  I'll
prob figure it out when I analyze the disks using the tools, just not sure
if being pascal they have any weirdness

Bill Degnan
twitter: billdeg
vintagecomputer.net
On Oct 29, 2016 5:57 PM, "Chuck Guzis"  wrote:

> I don't know if this applies to the SAGE II or not, but 22DISK has two
> SAGE IV definitions, for 48 tpi and for 96 tpi diskettes, as derived
> from samples that I have.
>
> --Chuck
>
>

Re: Sage II

[Chuck Guzis]

I don't know if this applies to the SAGE II or not, but 22DISK has two
SAGE IV definitions, for 48 tpi and for 96 tpi diskettes, as derived
from samples that I have.

--Chuck

Re: Sage II

[emanuel stiebler]

On 2016-10-29 15:08, william degnan wrote:

On Oct 29, 2016 4:53 PM, "Fred Cisin"  wrote:



Of course, but I just wanted to do this guy a favor and image the disks,


And he really appreciates that!!!


I did not want to set up my system and get all into it and whether I have 80
or 40 track drives, and what image disk settings to use..busy week.


I finally got to the system,
and bend it into shape enough, to get the drives out.

So both are 5.25", half height.
one is a mitsubishi M4853-342MG,
the other TEAC FB-504

Sorry it took me so long to answer the questions ...

Re: Sage II

[Pete Turnbull]

On 29/10/2016 22:08, william degnan wrote:

Of course, but I just wanted to do this guy a favor and image the disks, I
did not want to set up my system and get all into it and whether I have 80
or 40 track drives, and what image disk settings to use..busy week.


If it's any help, all four Sage IIs I've seen had half-height Mitsubishi 
80-track DS drives, including the one I have.  But that's really a 
single datum point, as three came from the same place at about the same 
time, and I suspect the fourth may have come from the same original 
supplier.


--
Pete
Pete Turnbull

RE: Sage II

[william degnan]

On Oct 29, 2016 4:53 PM, "Fred Cisin"  wrote:
>
> On Sat, 29 Oct 2016, tony duell wrote:
>>
>> As you have the machine, and it boots, check the DIP switch settings.
One of the switches is used to indicate if the boot drive is 40 or 80
cylinder.
>
>
> and the model number(s) of the drives will enable looking up hints as the
specs (although some TM100-4M (100tpi) drives were labelled "TM100-4"
(96tpi)).  Some of my drives ended up with labels on the faceplates.
>
> For CP/M 2.x, CP/M-68K run  STAT DSK:
> For CP/M 3.0/"PLUS" IIRC,   SHOW DRIVE
> That'll give you some hints of the drive and parameters.
>
>

Of course, but I just wanted to do this guy a favor and image the disks, I
did not want to set up my system and get all into it and whether I have 80
or 40 track drives, and what image disk settings to use..busy week.

RE: Sage II

[Fred Cisin]

On Sat, 29 Oct 2016, tony duell wrote:
As you have the machine, and it boots, check the DIP switch settings. 
One of the switches is used to indicate if the boot drive is 40 or 80 
cylinder.


and the model number(s) of the drives will enable looking up hints as the 
specs (although some TM100-4M (100tpi) drives were labelled "TM100-4" 
(96tpi)).  Some of my drives ended up with labels on the faceplates.


For CP/M 2.x, CP/M-68K run  STAT DSK:
For CP/M 3.0/"PLUS" IIRC,   SHOW DRIVE
That'll give you some hints of the drive and parameters.


There should be a KERMIT available, although machine specific overlay 
might not be.  Getting it onto the machine is another minor project.

RE: Sage II

[tony duell]

> 
> 
>To know for sure, unless my disks are labeled I will have to set the system
> up and test each disk, to do it right.  My Sage II is here:

Oh, you're looking for a CP/M-68K kermit. CP/M on its own normally
refers to the 8080/Z80 OS. I wondered if you were looking for kermit 
for some other CP/M machine to use a device to transfer Sage files
onto.

I believe the Sage was intitially intended to run the UCSD P-system. There
is at least one Kermit written in Pascal that could probable be got to run
under that.

> http://vintagecomputer.net/sage/SageII/

As you have the machine, and it boots, check the DIP switch settings. One
of the switches is used to indicate if the boot drive is 40 or 80 cylinder. 

-tony

Re: Sage II

[william degnan]

On Sat, Oct 29, 2016 at 11:58 AM, tony duell 
wrote:

> > > Quick question...
> >
> > I have one for you too ;-)
> >
> > Was there a version of kermit for CP/M ?
>
>
> Acrodding to this page  :
>
> http://www.columbia.edu/kermit/cpm.html
>
> there is.
>
> -tony
>


To know for sure, unless my disks are labeled I will have to set the system
up and test each disk, to do it right.  My Sage II is here:
http://vintagecomputer.net/sage/SageII/

looks like one of the disk drives was swapped out, not sure if I did that
or the previous owner.

one of the photos has a screen shot of a directory from CP/M, no kermit on
that particular disk but certainly I assume Kermit was available for a Sage
with CP/M.  Not sure if I have it.

Bill

RE: Sage II

[tony duell]

> > Quick question...
> 
> I have one for you too ;-)
> 
> Was there a version of kermit for CP/M ?


Acrodding to this page  :

http://www.columbia.edu/kermit/cpm.html

there is.

-tony

RE: Sage II

[tony duell]

> Quick question...I am setting up disks to be imaged from various requests
> including yours.  Do you know the tracks/sectors of the sage disks, off
> hand?  I don't necessarily plan to set up my sage to test the disks, just
> image the disks, to save time if I knew what settings to use it will
> increase the chances I get it right the first time.

The Sage II service manual (it's on the web somewhere, I forget where
I got it from) impilies that some machines have 40 cylinder drives, others
have 80 cylnder drives. I think it is normal to have 2 drives of the same
type, but said service manual implies that a machine with one of each
type is useful for converting disks. 

So they could be either 40 or 80 cylinder.  In both cases : 

Double sided (2 heads)
8 sectors/track
512 bytes/sector
Normal MFM double density

(Of course normal, not high density, data rate). 

I would think a PC disk controller with the appropriate drives could read
them.

-tony

Re: Sage II

[emanuel stiebler]

On 2016-10-29 06:32, william degnan wrote:

Quick question...


I have one for you too ;-)

Was there a version of kermit for CP/M ?

Cheers

Re: Sage II

[emanuel stiebler]

On 2016-10-29 06:32, william degnan wrote:

Quick question...I am setting up disks to be imaged from various requests
including yours.  Do you know the tracks/sectors of the sage disks, off
hand?


Sorry, I got my machine finally home two days ago.
During transport, it was really bend out of shape, so
I will try to check, during the day. The sticker on the outside says 
something like "80 track", but the drives are not original anymore.
(I have two half height 5.25" in it, the early models should have full 
height)



I don't necessarily plan to set up my sage to test the disks, just
image the disks, to save time if I knew what settings to use it will
increase the chances I get it right the first time.


Thanks again!

Booting PDP-11's from RX02's

[Noel Chiappa]

So, I'm winding up to boot Unix V6 from an RX02 floppy. So I need two things:

- Details of how DEC ROM bootstraps boot from RX02's. I vaguely recall seeing
documentation of this somewhere (e.g. which sectors it loads, etc), but now I
can't find it. Don North has dumps of the RX02 ROM's, but I'm too lazy to read
through the code and figure out how they work. Is there some documentation
which covers it? I did a quick Google search, but if there is anything out
there, my Google-fu was inadequate.

- Did anyone ever do an RX02 driver for the V6 disk bootstrap? (Well, I guess
a V7 driver would work, too.) Note: what I need is _not_ either i) the Unix OS
driver for the RX02 (I found one of those already), or ii) a driver for the v7
standalone second-stage bootstrap (which would probably be in C). The thing
I'm looking for would be called rx.s, or something like that. Yes, I could
write it, but again, I'm lazy! :-)

  Noel

Re: Sage II

[william degnan]

Quick question...I am setting up disks to be imaged from various requests
including yours.  Do you know the tracks/sectors of the sage disks, off
hand?  I don't necessarily plan to set up my sage to test the disks, just
image the disks, to save time if I knew what settings to use it will
increase the chances I get it right the first time.
Thanks..

Bill Degnan
twitter: billdeg
vintagecomputer.net
On Oct 14, 2016 3:48 AM, "emanuel stiebler"  wrote:

> On 2016-10-13 20:00, william degnan wrote:
>
> I may have some software that is missing from that site, if so I will image
>> and upload  will let you know
>>
>
> Thanks!
>
>

RE: ContrAlto V1.1 Released

[Paul Birkel]

-Original Message-
From: cctalk [mailto:cctalk-boun...@classiccmp.org] On Behalf Of Josh Dersch
Sent: Friday, October 28, 2016 2:13 PM
To: General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts
Subject: RE: ContrAlto V1.1 Released

OK, one more time with feeling, because apparently when I pasted that link it 
added a bunch of garbage (thanks, Outlook Web Access!).

If you want to get ContrAlto, the actual, real, working link is:

http://www.livingcomputers.org/Join/Online-Systems/ContraltoSetup.aspx

Sorry for the confusion and/or stupidity on my part...

- Josh

-
Thanks Josh; it's a wonderful contribution.

I remember a database being written for the Alto; it used the relational model. 
 I believe that it was related to INGRES, but I have only a hazy recollection 
and can't remember the name -- although I would likely recognize it anyone else 
has further information.

We used it along with a graphical post-processor to prepare office-assignment 
floor-plans at CMU in the early 80's.  My recollection is that the principal 
uses for the CMU Altos at that time were as PostScript-based printer-drivers 
("Dover" and "Calais" were our name-assignments).  Our use in space-planning 
was a quirk, and possibly the last remaining regular use of the few remaining 
machines.  I definitely don't remember any machine-time contention; I believe 
that there were two available for general-use.  I just brought along my 
disk-pack and would boot and have-at-it.

Never thought about it all becoming (near) ancient history ...

paul

Re: Digital archiving tools

[Richard]

Hi Al,

Dredging up an old email thread...

In article <4d77c151.90...@bitsavers.org>,
Al Kossow  writes:

> I made a decision a long time ago that the primary mode of storage would
> either be media images or uncompressed archive files (tar, or uncompressed
> zip, mostly).

So, based on the above decision, if you were archiving CD-ROM images,
you would store them as uncompressed .iso files?

Wikipedia says:

"ISO disc images are uncompressed and do not use a particular
container format; they are a sector-by-sector copy of the data
on an optical disc, stored inside a binary file."

Therefore the best way to archive CD-ROM images is to use straight
ISO since partial corruption of the file wouldn't corrupt the whole
image.

Am I following your reasoning correctly?

Thanks,

-- Richard
-- 
"The Direct3D Graphics Pipeline" free book 
The Terminals Wiki 
 The Computer Graphics Museum 
  Legalize Adulthood! (my blog) 

RE: ContrAlto V1.1 Released

[Josh Dersch]

OK, one more time with feeling, because apparently when I pasted that link it 
added a bunch of garbage (thanks, Outlook Web Access!).

If you want to get ContrAlto, the actual, real, working link is:

http://www.livingcomputers.org/Join/Online-Systems/ContraltoSetup.aspx

Sorry for the confusion and/or stupidity on my part...

- Josh

> -Original Message-
> From: cctalk [mailto:cctalk-boun...@classiccmp.org] On Behalf Of Josh
> Dersch
> Sent: Friday, October 28, 2016 9:30 AM
> To: General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts
> 
> Subject: Re: ContrAlto V1.1 Released
> 
> On 10/28/16 5:56 AM, william degnan wrote:
> 
> > On Thu, Oct 27, 2016 at 4:22 PM, Josh Dersch
> > 
> > wrote:
> >
> >> Hi all --
> >>
> >> Just wanted to let you guys know that a new version of the Xerox Alto
> >> emulator I've been working on at the LCM+L has been released; V1.1 of
> >> ContrAlto can be downloaded from: http://www.livingcomputers.
> >> org/Join/Online-Systems.aspx.  At this point, the vast majority of
> >> software appears to be working properly, if you do run into any
> >> issues please let me know!
> >>
> >> ContrAlto is open source, so if you want to hack on it the source is
> >> available on our GitHub site at https://github.com/
> >> livingcomputermuseum/ContrAlto.
> >>
> >> Thanks!
> >> - Josh
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >>
> > Having trouble reaching a link following through to download from
> > http://prevlcm2.corp.vnw.com/Join/Online-Systems/ContraltoSetup.aspx
> >
> Yep.  Our new website is going through some teething problems. Until
> they're resolved, use:
> 
> http://www.livingcomputers.org/Join/Online-Systems/ContraltoSetup.aspx
>  Va7eQPnMcovYMFBZkfQxyQT__TCA..=http%3a%2f%2fwww.livingcom
> puters.org%2fJoin%2fOnline-Systems%2fContraltoSetup.aspx>
> 
> To download the emulator.
> 
> Thanks,
> Josh