Re: HEXTIr - TI HexBus SD Drive

[Ed Sharpe via cctalk]

thanks... I learn as I go!.. ed#

Sent from AOL Mobile Mail

On Monday, October 30, 2017 Jim Brain  wrote:

On 10/30/2017 10:35 PM, couryho...@aol.com wrote:

Jim I thought  all TI  computers  had  one? But  I  am new  to  TI's never 
owned one  when were new...  just  dealing  with one in a  museum  environment  
now.

The only produced home machine, the 99/4(a), did not, but there is a prototype 
HexBus adapter.  The 99/2 and 99/8 I believe both had the bus, as does the TI 
74 and TI 95 (the physical conn is different, but the bus is the same)

Jim

Re: Image de-warping tool, and Multics/GCOS panels

[Don Hills via cctalk]

For quick (and automatic) perspective correction, sharpening and OCR, I use
Microsoft's Office Lens. (Android, iOS, Windows 10 desktop)
There are a couple of other apps that do the same sort of thing but I
haven't tried them.

On Sat, Oct 28, 2017 at 5:59 PM, Steve Malikoff via cctalk <
cctalk@classiccmp.org> wrote:

> Noeal asked:
> > I'm having an issue with the images, though: taking a picture of a flat,
> > rectangular panel with a camera usually produces distortion (even with
> the
> > lens set to the narrowest angle possible).
> >
> > Does anyone know of any freeware which will fix this? The image tool I
> > normally use (ImagePals, sort of a poor man's Photoshop) does have a
> 'warp'
> > function, but it requires setting up a grid of points, and is a pain to
> use:
> > optimal would be something where you mark the 4 corners, and few
> intermediate
> > edge points, and the image is automagically fixed.
>
>
> You could do it "by eye" in Photoshop and GIMP-type tools, but I believe a
> far better and more adjustable
> way is to use an operation in imagemagick called affine transformation.
> With this you can tweak the
> result programmatically to the nearest pixel-to-millimetre value to get
> the best result.
>
> For instance I have done an analogous task in which I removed perspective
> from black and white images
> of a WWII vehicle onto a flat elevation, so that accurate markings and
> camouflage patterns or precise
> positions of fittings can be obtained, by only knowing the basic perimeter
> edges.
>
> To do this, I firstly need an accurate measurement of the side of the
> vehicle. Its exact length, height
> will do. This is easily obtained from scale modelling information. In your
> particular case, I think only
> the width and height of the panel would be needed, OR the two expressed as
> a ratio and scaled later.
>
>
> WORKED EXAMPLE:
> Let's take for example an IBM System/360-40 console. It is comprised of a
> few individual panels but they
> are arranged in two larger rectangles, joined along one ege, but with an
> angle of about 163 degrees between
> them. The upper panel's flat measurements are 711mm wide and 477mm long.
> The lower panel is 71mm wide by 199mm high, as flat.
>
> Say I then found any sufficiently detailed photo of a /40 console, and
> wanted to map the surface of that
> to my known panel edge measurements. The photo is of course taken from any
> arbitrary angle.
> I will use this one, 1200x953 pixels, presenting a common three-quarter
> side view, taken fron the left:
> https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/e/e7/
> IBM_System_360_at_USDA.jpg/1200px-IBM_System_360_at_USDA.jpg
>
> The angled panels also show in the photo but that will be removed. Save
> the image locally.
>
> I tend to start at the pixel that is the top right corner. The image
> editor places the origin at the top left corner.
> Essentially the corners of the console rectangle in the photo - taking the
> upper panel only, for this example -
> need to be stretched to my known rectangle of TR=(711,0) to BR= (711,477)
> to BL=(0,477) to TL=(0,0).
> The rectangular polygon will automatically be closed back to the start.
> I'm using mm but you could use any
> measurement unit you like.
>
> Next, load the above photo of the console in any good-enough image editor.
> I use the free Paint.NET for this
> purpose and I absolutely love it. Move around the photo, zoom in etc. and
> place the mouse cursor exactly
> on the top right corner and take a note of the pixel coordinate shown in
> the lower right of the app. I make it
> to be (675,141) on that particular photo.
>
> Then do the same for the bottom right, bottom left, top left corner
> pixels. Remember this is the top panel only,
> the lower is done in the same fashion seperately. These are done in the
> same point-to-point sequence as the
> known measurements, and must be the same number of coordinates. It does
> not have to be a rectangle, you
> may have five, six or more coordinates for a say a vehicle or spaceship
> scale elevation.
> So directly off the photo:
> 675,141 TR
> 646,315 BR
> 442,336 BL
> 458,129 TL
>
> Now, assuming Imagemagick is installed, all we need to is tell it to
> stretch those coordinates to our
> known actual square coordinates by pairing them, pixel-to-known
> coordinate. On the command line, or in
> a text file enter and paste into the shell (I use git bash on Windows):
>
> convert 1200px-IBM_System_360_at_USDA.jpg -virtual-pixel black
> -distort Perspective "675,141 711,0   646,315 711,477   442,336 0,477
>  458,129 0,0"  Model40_upper_panel_transformed_true_flat1.jpg
>
> Now the required de-perspective image will be in Model40_upper_panel_
> transformed_true_flat.jpg
>
> If you don't want to go through the above steps yourself you can see the
> result at
> http://web.aanet.com.au/~malikoff/ibm/Model40_upper_
> panel_transformed_true_flat1.jpg
>
> Then use the image editor 

Re: HEXTIr - TI HexBus SD Drive

[Jim Brain via cctalk]

On 10/30/2017 10:35 PM, couryho...@aol.com wrote:
Jim I thought  all TI  computers  had  one? But  I  am new to  TI's 
never owned one  when were new...  just  dealing with one in a  
museum  environment  now.
The only produced home machine, the 99/4(a), did not, but there is a 
prototype HexBus adapter. The 99/2 and 99/8 I believe both had the bus, 
as does the TI 74 and TI 95 (the physical conn is different, but the bus 
is the same)


Jim

Re: HEXTIr - TI HexBus SD Drive

[Ed via cctalk]

Jim I thought  all TI  computers  had  one?  But  I  am new  to  TI's never 
owned one  when were  new...  just  dealing  with one in a  museum   
environment  now.
 
 
In a message dated 10/30/2017 8:25:17 P.M. US Mountain Standard Time,  
cctalk@classiccmp.org writes:

On  10/30/2017 9:32 PM, Ed via cctalk wrote:
> ok ..  does this   mean I can put lots of  ti 99/4 software  on thesd
> card  for people to play with  in the   museum?
> Ed#
Do you have a HexBus interface for the  99/4a?









I  thought  all of them  had  it?

Re: HEXTIr - TI HexBus SD Drive

[Jim Brain via cctalk]

On 10/30/2017 9:32 PM, Ed via cctalk wrote:

ok ..  does this  mean I can put lots of  ti 99/4 software  on the   sd
card  for people to play with  in the  museum?
Ed#

Do you have a HexBus interface for the 99/4a?

Jim

Re: HEXTIr - TI HexBus SD Drive

[Ed via cctalk]

ok ..  does this  mean I can put lots of  ti 99/4 software  on the   sd 
card  for people to play with  in the  museum?
Ed#
 
 
 
In a message dated 10/30/2017 7:06:33 P.M. US Mountain Standard Time,  
cctalk@classiccmp.org writes:

On Sun,  29 Oct 2017 12:14:41 -0500
Jim Brain via cctalk   wrote:

> In case anyone has a fondness  for niche tech...
> 
> At VCF-SE this year, the TI folks had a  great exhibit, and perusing
> it I saw an unfamiliar machine, the TI  CC-40 (Compact Computer-40).
> While I was investigating, the exhibitor  (MillipedeMan aka Mark),
> told me the machines were frustrating to use,  as TI only supported
> one communications method on the unit, a  proprietary protocol called
> HexBus, and produced very low quantities  of very few peripherals that
> work on the bus. Most frustratingly, they  never producing a mass
> storage device in any appreciable quantity, and  there was no other
> way to save programs written on the unit.
>  
> Mark did note there was an eBay seller liquidating units, so I  bought
> a 2 unit combo from eBay before I left the show.
>  
> Sadly, Summer happened, but I was finally able to get to the  unit,
> and started working on an SD-based mass storage device for the  unit.
> It was an interesting journey to learn a new protocol.
>  
> The (development in progress) result is HEX-TI-r, the HexBus SD  drive:
> 
> GitHub source code is here:  https://github.com/go4retro/HEXTIr
> 
> Video of unit operating:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LX5ahVCRdvM
> 
> I don't have a  project page up yet, but will work on that.
> 
> Jim
>  

Nice work, Jim. Thanks for the effort you've put into  this.

jbdigriz

Re: HEXTIr - TI HexBus SD Drive

[James B DiGriz via cctalk]

On Sun, 29 Oct 2017 12:14:41 -0500
Jim Brain via cctalk  wrote:

> In case anyone has a fondness for niche tech...
> 
> At VCF-SE this year, the TI folks had a great exhibit, and perusing
> it I saw an unfamiliar machine, the TI CC-40 (Compact Computer-40).
> While I was investigating, the exhibitor (MillipedeMan aka Mark),
> told me the machines were frustrating to use, as TI only supported
> one communications method on the unit, a proprietary protocol called
> HexBus, and produced very low quantities of very few peripherals that
> work on the bus. Most frustratingly, they never producing a mass
> storage device in any appreciable quantity, and there was no other
> way to save programs written on the unit.
> 
> Mark did note there was an eBay seller liquidating units, so I bought
> a 2 unit combo from eBay before I left the show.
> 
> Sadly, Summer happened, but I was finally able to get to the unit,
> and started working on an SD-based mass storage device for the unit.
> It was an interesting journey to learn a new protocol.
> 
> The (development in progress) result is HEX-TI-r, the HexBus SD drive:
> 
> GitHub source code is here: https://github.com/go4retro/HEXTIr
> 
> Video of unit operating: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LX5ahVCRdvM
> 
> I don't have a project page up yet, but will work on that.
> 
> Jim
> 

Nice work, Jim. Thanks for the effort you've put into this.

jbdigriz

Re: Which Dec Emulation is the MOST useful and Versatile?

[Chuck Guzis via cctalk]

On 10/30/2017 04:18 AM, Eric Smith via cctalk wrote:

> 2. What a UTM does is simulate another machine using only a general-purpose
> machine. In fact, the UTM is arguably the most general-purpose machine ever
> described. What IBM defined as emulation was use of extremely specialized
> hardware and/or microcode (specifically, not the machine's general-purpose
> microcode used for natively programming the host machine). If anyone else
> did _that_ in a product before IBM, I'm very interested.

Well, "emulate" is a very fuzzy word, even in the context that you provide.

Taking as an example, some pre-S/360 hardware that's easily verified, is
the IBM 7094.   It ran the instruction set of the 7090 but with a single
departure--the use of 7 index registers, selectable using a 3-bit
isntruction field.  In the 7090, that same field selected any of three
registers--if you selected more than one, the contents were ORed
together before subtracting from the base address.   The 7094 did have a
"7090 compatibility mode" that used only the first three index registers
in the same manner as the 7090.

Specific hardware than enabled one machine to act as another.

So, is that "7090 emulation" on a 7094?

--Chuck

Re: looking at buying a pocket PC / PDA

[Robert Feldman via cctalk]

RE: Tubbs fire consumed the collected archives of William Hewlett and David Packard

[Tom Gardner via cctalk]

Apparently some of Hewlett's papers went to Stanford
"Two new collections open for research: Helen and Newton Harrison & William 
Hewlett"
http://library.stanford.edu/blogs/special-collections-unbound/2016/04/two-new-collections-open-research-helen-and-newton
 

Tom

-Original Message-
From: Ed Sharpe [mailto:couryho...@aol.com] 
Sent: Sunday, October 29, 2017 8:19 PM
To: cctalk@classiccmp.org
Subject: Re: Tubbs fire consumed the collected archives of William Hewlett and 
David Packard

Karen Lewis felt Stanford  was the place they should go... 

ed#

Sent from AOL Mobile Mail

On Sunday, October 29, 2017 Steven M Jones via cctalk  
wrote:
General comment to several earlier replies re: Bitsavers-type efforts.

The tragedy here is not that some copies of uncommon but otherwise extant 
product documentation were lost. From the description, there were a large 
number of unique, individual documents created by significant historical 
figures. Fair bet that many of these didn't exist anywhere else. Certainly not 
if it included drafts of speeches and correspondence, as well as the final 
copy, etc.

A better question (not that it does any good to ask it now) is why this stuff 
wasn't in the hands of university conservators or similar. I love bitsavers and 
warchive.org, but this is a level beyond what they typically focus on. (And to 
be sure, CHM would have at least kept such artifacts safe even if they couldn't 
do anything with them for a few
years/decades.)

Sigh. And I don't really mean to criticize anybody at Keysight, humans are 
generally bad at recognizing and planning for this kind of contingency - and 
I'm probably worst than most...

--S.

RE: Which Dec Emulation is the MOST useful and Versatile?

[Dave Wade via cctalk]

Eric,

 

The folks who made ENIAC programable didn’t use the word “program” but they ran 
what we would now call programs. The fact that the word wasn’t used doesn’t 
mean the concept hadn’t already been invented. I did check and Turing didn’t 
use the term in his paper “On Computable Numbers” and whilst the work “emulate” 
is now associated with Universal Turing Machines I am inclined to agree that 
Turing probably didn’t see this as “Emulation” in the modern sense of the word, 
but to me, there seems to be little difference between a UTM and SIMH….

 

Returning to ENIAC if you read Mark Priestley & Thomas Haig’s paper

 

http://eniacinaction.com/docs/AddressableAccumulators.pdf

 

you can see they describe ENIAC in stored program mode as “a microcoded 
interpreter for a virtual von Neumann architecture machine” which seems to me 
to be equivalent to what IBM did, some years earlier. 

When I spoke to Mark Priestley after the talk..

 

http://www.computerconservationsociety.org/lectures/2015-16/20160511.htm

 

he was quite clear that they configured ENIAC to emulate an EDVAC style machine 
and used the word “emulate” several times in the talk, so I would argue that 
the ENIAC pioneers invented the concept but did not name it as such…

 

Dave

 

 

 

 

From: Eric Smith [mailto:space...@gmail.com] 
Sent: 30 October 2017 11:18
To: General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts ; 
Dave Wade 
Subject: RE: Which Dec Emulation is the MOST useful and Versatile?

 

On Oct 29, 2017 09:54, "Dave Wade via cctalk"  > wrote:

I am not sure they invented computer emulation. I think that the concept
Emulation/Simulation is as old as, or perhaps even older than computing.
Whilst it was a pure concept Alan Turing's "Universal Turing Machine" was a
Turing machine that could emulate or simulate the behaviour of any arbitrary
Turing machine...

 

1. Did Turing use the word "emulate"? I honestly have no idea. My (possibly 
wrong) impression was that no published literature used the word emulate with 
that meaning (one computer emulating another) before the IBM papers.

 

2. What a UTM does is simulate another machine using only a general-purpose 
machine. In fact, the UTM is arguably the most general-purpose machine ever 
described. What IBM defined as emulation was use of extremely specialized 
hardware and/or microcode (specifically, not the machine's general-purpose 
microcode used for natively programming the host machine). If anyone else did 
_that_ in a product before IBM, I'm very interested.

 

 

 

Re: Which Dec Emulation is the MOST useful and Versatile?

[Jon Elson via cctalk]

On 10/30/2017 06:18 AM, Eric Smith via cctalk wrote:

2. What IBM defined as emulation was use of extremely specialized
hardware and/or microcode (specifically, not the machine's general-purpose
microcode used for natively programming the host machine).
As far as I know, IBM's 360s did NOT have any special 
purpose hardware associated with their emulation packages.
The only thing special was that additional microcode cards 
were installed.  In the 360/30, these were Mylar cards with 
word lines on them, they were punched on a card punch to 
punch out the capacitor plates to make zeroes.
On the 360/40, they were Mylar "tapes" that were punched to 
cut traces to go through or bypass the sense transformers.
On 360/50 and 65, they were etched word line boards that had 
traces that weaved under the bit line capacitor plates.
So, these were all custom to fit the specific instruction 
set to be emulated.  But, as far as I know, they added no 
additional logic to the machine to support the emulation.  
In some cases, this made things fairly inefficient.  At 
least on the 360/30, when running 14xx emulation, there were 
many holes in memory, because they did not convert between 
decimal and binary addresses.  So, memory locations 0-9 were 
used, A-F were inaccessible, 10-19 were used, 1A-1F were 
skipped, and so on.  Some of this made I/O buffers kind of 
strange, as the I/O buffers had to be repacked between the 
real I/O devices and the emulator's buffers.


Jon

RE: Cleaning and Restoring a Badly Corroded PSU

[Rob Jarratt via cctalk]

I have ordered the part now anyway. Whether I will replace it or not I don't
know yet. I am told that ESR measurements are not enough to detect bad caps
though, although I always replace ones with ESR that is at or close to the
limit on the table printed on my meter.

Regards

Rob

> -Original Message-
> From: Maciej W. Rozycki [mailto:ma...@linux-mips.org]
> Sent: 30 October 2017 12:12
> To: r...@jarratt.me.uk
> Cc: 'General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts'
> ; 'dwight' 
> Subject: RE: Cleaning and Restoring a Badly Corroded PSU
> 
> Hi Rob,
> 
> > By the way I just noticed a 15uF/25V one next to the fan connector. It
> > isn't one of the SXF ones as far as I can tell, do you recall replacing
it?
> 
>  My notes indicate it is a Chemi-Con SM, a general purpose 85°C part.  I
did
> replace it at least once, in one of my H7826s that didn't actually get to
leaking
> (yet?) and was still in a working condition.  I suspect doing the
replacement
> didn't really matter, as measuring the original gave reasonable readings
for its
> class.
> 
>  I also have a later revision of H7826 which has LXF rather than SXF
capacitors
> and this one looks really clean, almost like new, and also works
correctly.  I am
> in two minds about recapping this one, because despite of the good shape
of
> the PSU my sources indicate the LXF parts have also suffered from the
> quaternary ammonium salt syndrome.  I'll yet check the ESR for any
suspicious
> raise.
> 
>   Maciej

Re: looking at buying a pocket PC / PDA

[Liam Proven via cctalk]

On 30 October 2017 at 00:57, tom sparks via cctalk
 wrote:

>
> cant find the Gateway HandBook on ebay :(
> if wanted the GPD Pocket i could buy these
>  or  GDP Win
> Toshiba Libretto size issues

Your quoting is broken. It took 3 goes to type this because I couldn't
find your actual reply.

The Pandora is a gaming toy. It's got a terrible keyboard.

The GDP is one device, it just comes with either Windows or Ubuntu
installed. I think even the specs are the same.

The difference between modern things and the Psion is of course
battery life. A Psion 5/5mx ran for months on a pair of AAs. A
mini-laptop runs for a few hours.

-- 
Liam Proven • Profile: https://about.me/liamproven
Email: lpro...@cix.co.uk • Google Mail/Talk/Plus: lpro...@gmail.com
Twitter/Facebook/Flickr: lproven • Skype/LinkedIn/AIM/Yahoo: liamproven
UK: +44 7939-087884 • ČR/WhatsApp/Telegram/Signal: +420 702 829 053

RE: Cleaning and Restoring a Badly Corroded PSU

[Maciej W. Rozycki via cctalk]

Hi Rob,

> By the way I just noticed a 15uF/25V one next to the fan connector. It isn't
> one of the SXF ones as far as I can tell, do you recall replacing it?

 My notes indicate it is a Chemi-Con SM, a general purpose 85°C part.  I 
did replace it at least once, in one of my H7826s that didn't actually get 
to leaking (yet?) and was still in a working condition.  I suspect doing 
the replacement didn't really matter, as measuring the original gave 
reasonable readings for its class.

 I also have a later revision of H7826 which has LXF rather than SXF 
capacitors and this one looks really clean, almost like new, and also 
works correctly.  I am in two minds about recapping this one, because 
despite of the good shape of the PSU my sources indicate the LXF parts 
have also suffered from the quaternary ammonium salt syndrome.  I'll yet 
check the ESR for any suspicious raise.

  Maciej

RE: Which Dec Emulation is the MOST useful and Versatile?

[Eric Smith via cctalk]

On Oct 29, 2017 09:54, "Dave Wade via cctalk"  wrote:

I am not sure they invented computer emulation. I think that the concept
Emulation/Simulation is as old as, or perhaps even older than computing.
Whilst it was a pure concept Alan Turing's "Universal Turing Machine" was a
Turing machine that could emulate or simulate the behaviour of any arbitrary
Turing machine...


1. Did Turing use the word "emulate"? I honestly have no idea. My (possibly
wrong) impression was that no published literature used the word emulate
with that meaning (one computer emulating another) before the IBM papers.

2. What a UTM does is simulate another machine using only a general-purpose
machine. In fact, the UTM is arguably the most general-purpose machine ever
described. What IBM defined as emulation was use of extremely specialized
hardware and/or microcode (specifically, not the machine's general-purpose
microcode used for natively programming the host machine). If anyone else
did _that_ in a product before IBM, I'm very interested.

RE: Picked up job at electronic recycling center

[Rob Jarratt via cctalk]

> -Original Message-
> From: cctalk [mailto:cctalk-boun...@classiccmp.org] On Behalf Of devin
> davison via cctalk
> Sent: 30 October 2017 03:40
> To: General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts 
> Subject: Picked up job at electronic recycling center
> 
> I recently picked up a job at an electronic recycling center. Harris is right
> around the corner from us, as well as a bunch of technical schools and
> aerospace related businesses. All of thier old stuff ends up at the shop to be
> resold as surplus or broken down and scrapped.
> 
> There tends to be to much to process, and inside space is limited.
> Excess equipment is stored outside in tents, and it goes to crap quite quickly
> unfortunately. The humidity and rain destroys stuff outside quickly. I am
> uncertain of how many requests I will get, but if anyone is looking for
> something in particular, please send me an email and I will keep an eye out 
> for
> you. The place is a goldmine, and a lot of nice older gear is going to waste
> because the store owners do not know what it is.
> 
> Examples of stuff that comes in are old microcomputers like the c64, nice 486
> like machines with good isa cards in them, TONS of HP and tectronics test
> equipment, ham radio gear, you name it.
> There is a ton of good stuff here, i am trying to find some a good home before
> it gets stripped out.
> Some of this stuff works fine, the tandy 1000 computer I picked up this 
> weekend
> works flawlessly for example. Other things are in a broken or parts state, but
> within reach of repair. There is a lot of new gear there as well, not many
> machines come in with nice graphics cards in them, but tons of workstations
> with lots of ram and hard drives are common. We get so many servers they are
> broken down almost immediately unless they are particularly new or unique in
> some way.
> 
> Lets see how busy my inbox gets, if you are in need of something, please send
> me an email, i can keep an eye out for it and hopefully be of service.I work 
> on
> Saturdays, that is the day i will be on site to look for things.
> 
> Stuff will be priced as surplus/used. Hopefully i  can be of use and keep 
> some of
> this stuff out of the scrap pile.
> 


That is a great offer Devin, you don't say where you live, but I guess the USA.

Personally, being a bit of a hoarder I wonder if I could do a job like that, 
seeing nice stuff being scrapped. It is a bit like my son, he loves animals and 
is great with them, but when I suggest he volunteers at an animal rescue he 
says he wouldn't be able to cope with the ones that are suffering.

Regards

Rob

Re: Which Dec Emulation is the MOST useful and Versatile?

[Johnny Eriksson via cctalk]

Lars Brinkhoff wrote:

> Jon Elson wrote:
> > I'm not sure the original DEC PDP-10 (KA-10) used microcode, but the
> > KI-10 did.
> 
> As far as I understand, the PDP-6 (type 166), KA10, and KI10 were
> hardwired.  KL10 and KS10 were microcoded.  The Foonly F1 preceeded and
> influenced the KL10 design.

This is exactly correct.

BTW: they still are...

--Johnny