Re: Scotch 777 "blue label" tape blues confirmed
On 7/20/19 10:18 AM, Mark J. Blair via cctalk wrote: > >> On Jul 20, 2019, at 9:38 AM, Chuck Guzis via cctalk >> wrote: >> >> your cleaning machine > > I do not have a cleaning machine. Do you suppose a cyclomethicone > applicator fabricobbled into the tape path of a tape drive might > work? > > I haven't encountered these sorts of issues in 9-track tapes yet, but > I've certainly been frustrated with binder bleed and/or sticky shed > when I tried to mess with a TK50 drive. Just shipped the last batch of tapes back--there were no fewer than six of those buggers in it--all had sticky/bleed whatever. Cyclomethicone did the trick on all six. These were all from between 1969-74. --Chuck
Re: Photos from VCF West 2019
That must have been photos from Saturday morning, by Saturday afternoon we had to rearrange the Apple-1 cases because we had 14 at the show at once with a minimum of 2 continually running and we were working on repairing some on the table behind the one with Marco Boglione’s Apple-1 playing music. We got 4 more running and 1 we started but didn’t finish because we ran out of time. We even had a few show up on Sunday that didn’t RSVP they were coming, so 17 unique Apple-1 computers, not counting the one in the CHM collection ,were on the floor at one time or another over the weekend. It was so crazy I never even powered mine up, though mine is usually shown running at VCF east so no excitement having it run. You also missed getting a picture of the AGC opened up. The guys who did the restoration of operational one on Sunday opened up the AGC so you could see the modules inside. Cheers, Corey corey cohen uǝɥoɔ ʎǝɹoɔ Sent from my iPhone On Aug 6, 2019, at 2:10 PM, Cameron Kaiser via cctalk wrote: >> Any (more) photos of Cameron's RISC laptops and portables exhibits? > > I'll be putting up my own soonish as soon as I can escape from $DAYJOB. > > -- > personal: http://www.cameronkaiser.com/ > -- > Cameron Kaiser * Floodgap Systems * www.floodgap.com * ckai...@floodgap.com > -- Blanket statements are always wrong. > ---
Re: RSTS/RSX manuals available in the UK
Adrian, what order of volume and weight are these? I'm definitely interested, from a general preservation viewpoint, also a personal interest in lesser-known OS. And I have some PDP-11 systems to restore and play with. However I'm in Australia... Britain has a nice 'media mail' option - I buy 2nd hand books from British abebooks.com dealers, and postage to Australia is very cheap. But could that extend to these manuals? What box size? Could you send a photo or two? Btw, can anyone suggest links to overviews of DEC (and other?) operating systems evolution and influence over time? Regards, Guy http://everist.org/NobLog/ At 11:04 PM 6/08/2019 +0100, you wrote: >Hi folks, > >I've held onto this collection of manuals for the last 3 years and now they >really need to go because I'm having to move house in the next 2-3 months, my >landlady is selling up. I thought it was too good to be true being in this >house for 7.5 years! > >The RSTS manuals are V10 (1990) and there's 3 RSX-11M V4 as well as RSX >DECNET. I don't have the time to scan them myself otherwise I would've done >ages ago. > >I'm heading past Jim Austin's place in a couple of weeks' time so if nobody >else is interested I can drop them off there if he's up for it. > >Cheers, > >-- >adrian/witchy >Owner of Binary Dinosaurs, the UK's biggest private home computer collection? >t: @binarydinosaursf: facebook.com/binarydinosaurs >w: www.binarydinosaurs.co.uk
Re: IBM Series/1
On 2019-08-06 5:33 a.m., Dave Wade via cctalk wrote: -Original Message- From: cctalk On Behalf Of Jay West via cctalk Sent: 05 August 2019 18:38 To: 'William Donzelli' ; 'General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts' ; 'Stan Sieler' Subject: RE: IBM Series/1 I used to run a system at Anheuser-Busch in the late 80's, ISTR it was a 4331, 4341, or 4381. Under VM/370, It ran SMI's (Systems Management, Inc) Pick/370 OS. IBM terminals could attach direct or via an establishment controller, but dumb serial terminals could connect via the series/1's which acted as a front end processor/aggregator (via a Micom switch that just let you select the Pick/370 machine or one of the many Pr1me's about One Busch Place). There was also a standalone series/1 next to it, which ran CDI's (forget the company name) implementation of Pick for the Series/1. They used this for connecting a bunch of serial ports to timeclocks throughout the plant. Workers coming in and out hit these and there was some Pick/BASIC code that comprised a time & attendance system. Data capture from the timeclocks involved the full character set which normal Pick I/O had issues with, so I wrote a program in Pick Assembler to deal with that and pass sanitized/escaped data back to the host. IBM used the Series/1s to run the door locks in its UK offices. We also had one to provide X.25 interfaces to VM/SP. I never did much on it. I could back it up and edit the config for the X.25 but that was about it... Dave My most distinct memory of this is the simultaneously cute and annoying 'BLEET' sound that each button on the front panel (membrane keypad) made. Fun Times. J IBM used Series/1 to run the badge access systems everywhere. They where also used to run production lines in the plants. In one of my jobs we had two channel attached Series/1 systems, that appeared to the MVS host system as 3274 terminal control units, and where used to create diskettes from images transmitted from another site. I know of three chains of stores that once had Series/1 systems as a back end processor. One of these store had systems without and operator panel or diskette drive, so to run diagnostics on them the service rep had to bring an operator panel and diskette drive with him. A lot of the service reps where not fond of working on them because they where so reliable you could never become good at fixing them unless you had a lot of them in your territory, as a result our branch expert was the guy who serviced the local IBM plant. Paul.
RSTS/RSX manuals available in the UK
Hi folks, I’ve held onto this collection of manuals for the last 3 years and now they really need to go because I’m having to move house in the next 2-3 months, my landlady is selling up. I thought it was too good to be true being in this house for 7.5 years! The RSTS manuals are V10 (1990) and there's 3 RSX-11M V4 as well as RSX DECNET. I don’t have the time to scan them myself otherwise I would’ve done ages ago. I’m heading past Jim Austin’s place in a couple of weeks’ time so if nobody else is interested I can drop them off there if he’s up for it. Cheers, -- adrian/witchy Owner of Binary Dinosaurs, the UK's biggest private home computer collection? t: @binarydinosaursf: facebook.com/binarydinosaurs w: www.binarydinosaurs.co.uk
Re: MULTIPROCESSING FOR THE IMPOVERISHED Part 1: a 6809 Uniprocessor
Ben wrote on Tue, 6 Aug 2019 13:47:59 -0600 > It was too bad the 6809 did not have a pin to indicate Instruction or > Data memory bank in use. That would of given a real unix system in the > 8 bit world, as by then (late 70s) 64kb was proving just to small for > any real use. I added a circuit to generate such a signal in my 1983 children's computer: http://www.smalltalk.org.br/fotos/pegasus1.jpg If I remember correctly, it only used half of a 74LS74. The notebook with the circuit is a bit hard for me to get to right now. It didn't work perfectly since it depended on there being a non memory cycle between fetching the instruction bytes and the data access. And that doesn't happen if you use the zero offset addressing mode. So I just wrote my assembler to never generate that. Instead it used a five bit offset with a value of zero. This wastes a byte and a clock cycle but I thought it was worth it. The extra signal was used to select between ROM and DRAM. This meant I couldn't fetch data from ROM nor execute code from DRAM but since the only program I was interested in was the Logo interpreter it seemed like a reasonable design. I did have a Logo compiler planned, which would not have worked with this. > The 68000 was the only real 16/32 bit cpu out at time, but nobody could > afford it. The 6809, and specially the 6809E were hardly cheap themselves. And their prices stayed stable while the 68000's dropped quite a lot. By late 1985 the difference was rather small. And the 6847/6883 chipset was expensive too, at around $40 for these two chips. I regretted using them as you can get a lot of TTLs for $40 and have far nicer video than they gave you, specially if you didn't care about the built in text modes. -- Jecel
Re: MULTIPROCESSING FOR THE IMPOVERISHED Part 1: a 6809 Uniprocessor
On 8/6/2019 6:38 AM, Norman Jaffe via cctalk wrote: I built a dual-6809 in the late '70s - it was a brand-new, exciting part - and we used the E part for exactly that reason. The system used memory that had an access time that was better than the 4x clock, so that each processor could run at full speed. It was too bad the 6809 did not have a pin to indicate Instruction or Data memory bank in use. That would of given a real unix system in the 8 bit world, as by then (late 70s) 64kb was proving just to small for any real use. The 68000 was the only real 16/32 bit cpu out at time, but nobody could afford it. Ben.
Re: VCF Midwest 14 Talks and Talkers
Great page design, congrats. On Tue, Aug 6, 2019 at 9:04 PM Jason T via cctalk wrote: > On Tue, Aug 6, 2019 at 12:38 PM Liam Proven via cctalk > wrote: > > > > On Tue, 6 Aug 2019 at 19:28, Cameron Kaiser via cctalk > > wrote: > > > > > > Especially the > > > > > > "Notice: Undefined index: currentpage in /var/www/ > vcfmw.org/footer.html on line 34" > > > > > > at the bottom. I felt right at home ;) > > > > I liked that too! Reminded me of: > > > > http://www.coboloncogs.org/INDEX.HTM > > > > (c) > > I took a lot of, uh, "inspiration" from that page :) > > The PHP error on our page is unfortunately real (goes away on reload > if you're not blocking cookies). I'm still laying out tables and have > a shirt to design and.marking "fixed in next release!" > > j >
Re: VCF Midwest 14 Talks and Talkers
On Tue, Aug 6, 2019 at 12:38 PM Liam Proven via cctalk wrote: > > On Tue, 6 Aug 2019 at 19:28, Cameron Kaiser via cctalk > wrote: > > > > Especially the > > > > "Notice: Undefined index: currentpage in /var/www/vcfmw.org/footer.html on > > line 34" > > > > at the bottom. I felt right at home ;) > > I liked that too! Reminded me of: > > http://www.coboloncogs.org/INDEX.HTM > > (c) I took a lot of, uh, "inspiration" from that page :) The PHP error on our page is unfortunately real (goes away on reload if you're not blocking cookies). I'm still laying out tables and have a shirt to design and.marking "fixed in next release!" j
Re: Photos from VCF West 2019
> Any (more) photos of Cameron's RISC laptops and portables exhibits? I'll be putting up my own soonish as soon as I can escape from $DAYJOB. -- personal: http://www.cameronkaiser.com/ -- Cameron Kaiser * Floodgap Systems * www.floodgap.com * ckai...@floodgap.com -- Blanket statements are always wrong. ---
Re: Photos from VCF West 2019
Thanks for sharing! On Tue, Aug 6, 2019 at 7:14 PM Brian K. Perry via cctalk < cctalk@classiccmp.org> wrote: > Thought I would share some photos I took of VCF West this past weekend in > Mountain View, CA. > > https://photos.app.goo.gl/gF6Sd34SxQMzJEZPA > > Brian >
Re: looking for a 7-track reel tape controller
Hello Paul, thanks a lot for your hint to the DEC controller. I wasn't aware that the TM11, TMA11 and TMB11 controllers can handle 9-track as well as 7-track NRZI-encoded tape drives. However, all these controllers seem to be very rare in the public out there. Not too surprising considering that DEC TU and TS tape drives themselves are rare and that 7-track tape drives were soon replaced by 9-track tape technology in the early days. With best regards, Pierre - http://www.digitalheritage.de Am Dienstag, 6. August 2019, 19:49:14 MESZ hat P Gebhardt Folgendes geschrieben: Hello Paul, thanks a lot for your hint to the DEC controller. I wasn't aware that the TM11, TMA11 and TMB11 controllers can handle 9-track as well as 7-track NRZI-encoded tape drives. However, all these controllers seem to be very rare in the public out there. Not too surprising considering that DEC TU and TS tape drives themselves are rare and that 7-track tape drives were soon replaced by 9-track tape technology in the early days. With best regards, Pierre - http://www.digitalheritage.de Am Freitag, 2. August 2019, 07:04:02 MESZ hat Paul Koning via cctech Folgendes geschrieben: It may depend more on what kind of tape drive you have. The DEC TU10 controller handles both 7 and 9 track tapes. paul
Re: Photos from VCF West 2019
On 8/6/19 10:13 AM, Brian K. Perry via cctalk wrote: Thought I would share some photos I took of VCF West this past weekend in Mountain View, CA. https://photos.app.goo.gl/gF6Sd34SxQMzJEZPA Any (more) photos of Cameron's RISC laptops and portables exhibits? Or the IPX lunchbox exhibit (so I can compare it to my exhibit at last year's VCF PNW)? alan
Re: VCF Midwest 14 Talks and Talkers
On Tue, 6 Aug 2019 at 19:28, Cameron Kaiser via cctalk wrote: > > Especially the > > "Notice: Undefined index: currentpage in /var/www/vcfmw.org/footer.html on > line 34" > > at the bottom. I felt right at home ;) I liked that too! Reminded me of: http://www.coboloncogs.org/INDEX.HTM (c) -- Liam Proven - Profile: https://about.me/liamproven Email: lpro...@cix.co.uk - Google Mail/Hangouts/Plus: lpro...@gmail.com Twitter/Facebook/Flickr: lproven - Skype/LinkedIn: liamproven UK: +44 7939-087884 - ČR (+ WhatsApp/Telegram/Signal): +420 702 829 053
Photos from VCF West 2019
Thought I would share some photos I took of VCF West this past weekend in Mountain View, CA. https://photos.app.goo.gl/gF6Sd34SxQMzJEZPA Brian
PDP-11 Emulation on VAX Was Re: Alphaservers for free in Athabasca, Alberta
If I am not mistaken the 8600/50 were the last VAXen to feature PDP-11 emulation. After VMS 3.x the functionality was dropped so it was very short lived on the 8600. Ray
Re: Alphaservers for free in Athabasca, Alberta
On 08/06/2019 03:42 AM, Dave Wade via cctalk wrote: -Original Message- From: cctalk On Behalf Of Grant Taylor via cctalk Sent: 06 August 2019 04:25 To: cctalk@classiccmp.org Subject: Re: Alphaservers for free in Athabasca, Alberta On 8/5/19 8:40 PM, ben via cctalk wrote: Now why could it not be a nice little PDP 11. I thought that it could be if it was running emulation software. Or was that more that the VAX-11 could emulate a PDP-11 up to a specific version & hardware combination? (Read: Did this functionality not get carried forward to the Alphas?) I think it went from the VAX fairly early in the model range. I don't believe that any of the MicroVax machines implemented this. The VAX Architecture manual The VAX 11/780 definitely had PDP-11 emulation, apparently in the microcode. I'm kind of guessing the 750 and 730 also had this. As far as I know, no later machines had hardware (microcode) emulation, and did it all by software. It didn't take very long for DEC to recompile all the VMS utilities into native VAX executables. I think we started with VMS 3.x and very quickly updated to a 4.1 VMS version. I was not aware of any PDP-11 code in them, but I did not look very closely. Jon
Re: Alphaservers for free in Athabasca, Alberta
> On Aug 5, 2019, at 11:41 PM, Richard Loken via cctalk > wrote: > > [EXTERNAL EMAIL] > > On Mon, 5 Aug 2019, Boris Gimbarzevsky wrote: > >> A mere 579 miles from Kamloops. Unfortunately have to talk to my wife who >> thinks I have too many computers even though I've given away bulk of my DEC >> stuff. Never got a chance to play around on Alpha as it came out during my >> Mac days. > > A mere 1,000km, South I assume since you gave the distance in miles but > I don't think you want a 7 foot rack of ES45s in your living room - the > power bill, the heat, and the fan noise would wear on you after a while. > > Without looking it up, I imagine I am about 1,000km the other way from > Kamloops. We could meet in the middle, have a beer together, and trade > trailers. :) > -- > Richard Loken VE6BSV : "...underneath those tuques we wear, > Athabasca, Alberta Canada : our heads are naked!" > ** rllo...@telus.net ** :- Arthur Black Or… what about: Seattle computer museum sets it up in their “mainframes” area with opposed mirrors on either side, making it look like it’s one of an infinite row of racks in the world’s fastest supercomputer installation? Just thinking.
RE: Alphaservers for free in Athabasca, Alberta
> -Original Message- > From: cctalk On Behalf Of Grant Taylor via > cctalk > Sent: 06 August 2019 04:25 > To: cctalk@classiccmp.org > Subject: Re: Alphaservers for free in Athabasca, Alberta > > On 8/5/19 8:40 PM, ben via cctalk wrote: > > Now why could it not be a nice little PDP 11. > > I thought that it could be if it was running emulation software. > > Or was that more that the VAX-11 could emulate a PDP-11 up to a specific > version & hardware combination? (Read: Did this functionality not get carried > forward to the Alphas?) > I think it went from the VAX fairly early in the model range. I don't believe that any of the MicroVax machines implemented this. The VAX Architecture manual http://bitsavers.trailing-edge.com/pdf/dec/vax/archSpec/EY-3459E-DP_VAX_Architecture_Reference_Manual_1987.pdf (page 289) simply says its an optional feature without saying which models had it... Dave > > > -- > Grant. . . . > unix || die
RE: IBM Series/1
> -Original Message- > From: cctalk On Behalf Of Jay West via > cctalk > Sent: 05 August 2019 18:38 > To: 'William Donzelli' ; 'General Discussion: On-Topic > and Off-Topic Posts' ; 'Stan Sieler' > > Subject: RE: IBM Series/1 > > I used to run a system at Anheuser-Busch in the late 80's, ISTR it was a 4331, > 4341, or 4381. Under VM/370, It ran SMI's (Systems Management, Inc) > Pick/370 OS. IBM terminals could attach direct or via an establishment > controller, but dumb serial terminals could connect via the series/1's which > acted as a front end processor/aggregator (via a Micom switch that just let > you > select the Pick/370 machine or one of the many Pr1me's about One Busch > Place). > > There was also a standalone series/1 next to it, which ran CDI's (forget the > company name) implementation of Pick for the Series/1. They used this for > connecting a bunch of serial ports to timeclocks throughout the plant. Workers > coming in and out hit these and there was some Pick/BASIC code that > comprised a time & attendance system. Data capture from the timeclocks > involved the full character set which normal Pick I/O had issues with, so I > wrote > a program in Pick Assembler to deal with that and pass sanitized/escaped data > back to the host. > IBM used the Series/1s to run the door locks in its UK offices. We also had one to provide X.25 interfaces to VM/SP. I never did much on it. I could back it up and edit the config for the X.25 but that was about it... Dave > My most distinct memory of this is the simultaneously cute and annoying > 'BLEET' sound that each button on the front panel (membrane keypad) made. > > Fun Times. > > J >
Re: MULTIPROCESSING FOR THE IMPOVERISHED Part 1: a 6809 Uniprocessor
On Tue, Aug 6, 2019 at 1:19 AM Eric Smith wrote: > With the [MC6809]E version you have to supply a quadrature clock, but all > that's required to generate that is a single-phase 4x clock (which you need > with either the E or non-E part) and a single 74HCT74. > In case anyone needs to see how this is done, I've attached a schematic. It is shown with an 8 MHz half-can oscillator, which will result in 2 MHz outputs suitable for an MC68B09E, which is rated for 2 MHz operation.
Re: MULTIPROCESSING FOR THE IMPOVERISHED Part 1: a 6809 Uniprocessor
On Fri, Aug 2, 2019 at 11:15 AM Liam Proven via cctalk < cctalk@classiccmp.org> wrote: > 1993 article on building a multiprocessor 6809 box. > http://www.bradrodriguez.com/papers/6809cpu.htm > I disagree very much with the author's advice to use the MC6809 rather than the MC6809E. With the E version you have to supply a quadrature clock, but all that's required to generate that is a single-phase 4x clock (which you need with either the E or non-E part) and a single 74HCT74. If you feed your single-phase 4x clock into multiple 6809 (non-E) parts, their E clock phases won't match, but will be off by arbitrary multiples of 1/4 cycle, which makes the shared memory design unnecessarily difficult.
