[cctalk] Re: Experience using an Altair 8800 ("Personal computer" from 70s)

[Adam Sampson via cctalk]

Christian Corti via cctalk  writes:

> What is the difference between buss/buses(pl.) and bus/busses(pl.)?
> I mean, you don't say omnibuss, do you?

No difference -- they're variant spellings of the same word. From the
examples given in the OED, it looks like "buss" was originally the more
common spelling when people first started shortening "omnibus". It might
have been influenced by older words in English pronounced the same way,
e.g. "buss" meaning "to kiss", or "a buss" being a type of fishing boat.

Both spellings were in use by the time "bus[s]-bar" was invented, which
is where the computer sense comes from. We wouldn't call a vehicle a
"buss" any more, but both spellings survive in electronics.

-- 
Adam Sampson  

[cctalk] Re: Getting floppy images to/from real floppy disks.

[Adam Sampson via cctalk]

Hi Tony,

I recently built the simplest "F1" version of Keir Fraser's
Greaseweazle, and it works fine with a 3.5" drive. I'm using Linux, so
my software recommendations may not be the same as you're after, but for
reference here's what I did...

Tony Duell via cctalk  writes:
> So what I am asking is for people to describe what to do as in :
> Buy this microcontroller board

A "blue pill" STM32F103C8T6 board. I bought a bag of 10 of these from an
eBay seller in 2016, but they are still available from many suppliers.
I've used a few of them for different projects -- they have a fast ARM
CPU and lots of IO pins, but not much RAM.

Be careful that there are also similar boards with "compatible" chips
that may or may not work. The Greaseweazle project includes a test
program that you can upload to the board (in the same way as the
firmware below) to check whether a board will work.
  https://github.com/keirf/greaseweazle/wiki/STM32-Fakes

> Buy this blank PCB and solder the components given in the BOM to it.

The schematics for the various versions of the interface are here:
  https://github.com/keirf/greaseweazle/wiki/Design-Files

The F1 circuit is so simple that I just built it on stripboard (using a
hacksaw to split the tracks for the floppy connector). It connects the
STM32's output pins directly to the floppy drive's inputs, which
apparently doesn't work reliably with 5.25" drives; I will probably
build a version with buffered outputs at some point.

> Download this software and install it by doing this.

Precompiled binaries of the Greaseweazle firmware for the STM32 are
available here:
  https://github.com/keirf/greaseweazle-firmware/releases/

I installed it by connecting a USB 3.3V serial adaptor to the STM32's
serial pins, moving the boot mode jumper on the STM32 board to the
programming position, pushing the reset button, and running:
  stm32flash -b 115200 -w hex/greaseweazle-firmware-f1-1.3.hex /dev/ttyUSB0

That's this tool: https://sourceforge.net/p/stm32flash/wiki/Home/

I then moved the jumper back to the normal position, disconnected the
serial cable, plugged the board's USB connector into my computer, and it
initialised happily as a USB device.

(I did try building the firmware from source as well, but the result
failed to complete USB initialisation -- I probably have a newer version
of GCC than the developers are using. The Greaseweazle docs describe how
to install the firmware a different way if you have a dedicated STM32
programming device.)

> Connect a standard floppy drive to this connector

I used an ex-PC 3.5" drive and cable. The F1 circuit connects all the
drive select pins together so it only supports one drive, but both
twisted and non-twisted cables will work. The fancier versions of the
circuit feed the drive selects individually.

> Run the software, specify the disk image file and sit back.

The host software, written in Python, is available here:
  https://github.com/keirf/greaseweazle/wiki/Download-Host-Tools

It detects the USB device automatically if it's attached -- you don't
have to configure anything.

You can read a disk into an image file, assuming the disk is in a format
that the tools know about, with a command like:
  gw read --format ibm.1440 MyDisk.img
  
This will verify sector checksums as it goes and reread tracks if errors
are detected. You can also read the raw flux transitions by specifying
"raw" format, and process it later with disk-utilities.

You can write an image file to a disk with a similar command:
  gw write --format amiga.amigados MyDisk.adf

It's also apparently possible to use David Given's FluxEngine program to
do the same kinds of thing -- I've not tried this yet but it looks
interesting:
  http://cowlark.com/fluxengine/

Hope this helps,

-- 
Adam Sampson  

Re: 86-DOS and Seattle Computer Products

[Adam Sampson via cctalk]

Ryan Ottignon via cctalk  writes:

> So, if you have any copies of 86-DOS, even if you don’t want to share
> or its version is 1.00 or above, please send an e-mail back.

You probably have this already, but there's at least one version in Don
Maslin's collection of disk images:
  http://www.retroarchive.org/maslin/maslin_archive.zip

See maslin_c_d_10apr97/ddrive/sydex/dos/scp86dos.td0 (Teledisk format;
ImageDisk can convert this to other formats if needed).

Cheers,

-- 
Adam Sampson  

Re: Updates at retroarchive.org...

[Adam Sampson via cctalk]

Al Kossow via cctalk  writes:

> On 10/29/18 12:54 PM, geneb wrote:
>> https://archive.org/details/walnutcreekcdrom
> It sure would be nice if you could get a comma separated list of
> metadata instead of a bunch of pretty pictures

It's fairly well hidden, but you can indeed do that:

https://archive.org/advancedsearch.php?q=collection%3Awalnutcreekcdrom[]=identifier=csv

There's some documentation here: .
The "advanced search" form is handy for setting up queries like the above.

The Python internetarchive module comes with a command-line tool "ia"
which can drive much of archive.org's interface programmatically; I use
it for searching and batch uploads/downloads rather than the web
interface.

Cheers,

-- 
Adam Sampson  

Re: Microsoft-Paul Allen

[Adam Sampson via cctalk]

Jim Manley via cctalk  writes:

> Many are unaware that the largest fraction of CP/M licenses ever sold
> were for the Microsoft Softcard for the Apple ][ (about 300,000 sold,
> all told),

Do you mean sold up to that point? Amstrad went on to sell several
million PCWs with CP/M later in the 1980s. (They say 8 million on
http://www.amstrad.com/products/archive/, but that includes the
much less popular PCW16 which wasn't a CP/M machine.)

-- 
Adam Sampson  

Re: early ANSI C drafts, pre-1989 standard

[Adam Sampson via cctalk]

Andrew Luke Nesbit via cctalk  writes:

> On a related note, I have an ongoing project to create an archive of
> all Usenet posts from comp.lang.c and related groups, index them, and
> make them properly accessible to the public. [...]
> The biggest hole I have is the 1990's.

This seems to be a general problem with Usenet preservation -- the utzoo
archives run up to 1991, and the collections from Giganews etc. on
archive.org typically cover from 2000 or so onwards, but the 1990s are
harder to obtain. Are there any public archives other than Google
Groups for this period?

(We've found quite a lot of useful information for the DB ITS project by
mining relevant groups on Usenet -- a web interface isn't nearly as good
for this as having the text on disk...)

-- 
Adam Sampson  

Re: Weird Lear-Siegler ADM-3A board

[Adam Sampson via cctalk]

Adrian Graham via cctalk  writes:

> A friend of mine has said ADM-3A and is baffled by the tiny board it
> contains, not the usual ‘covering entire base’ discrete logic board
> they normally have.

Here's a similar one that was on eBay a couple of years ago (the full
listing has pictures of the insides):
  https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/-/322312097162

The September 1986 date on the case of yours means that it dates from
around the time when Lear-Siegler sold their terminal business to
Zentec -- is it actually badged Lear-Siegler?

-- 
Adam Sampson  

Re: The origin of the phrases ATA and IDE [WAS:RE: formatting MFM drives on a IBM PC]

[Adam Sampson via cctalk]

Tom Gardner via cctalk  writes:

> But again if anyone has any documents dating IDE in the 1980s I’d love
> to see them

Don't forget the Internet Archive's impressive collection of scanned
magazines for questions like this! There are several references in 1989
in Infoworld and similar periodicals.

The earliest I could find from a quick search is this ad from CompuAdd
Corporation in PC Magazine, December 27th 1988, listing PC clones with
"Integrated Drive Electronics fixed disk drive interface" and "IDE fixed
disk drive interface":
https://archive.org/stream/PC-Mag-1988-12-27#page/n227/mode/2up

The ad in the 1988-11-15 issue doesn't mention IDE, so it looks like
that's one of the first times CompuAdd thought it was useful for
marketing...

Cheers,

-- 
Adam Sampson  

Re: Model M case screws

[Adam Sampson via cctalk]

Jules Richardson via cctalk  writes:

> Google suggests that they might be 7/32", but I'm not sure; that's
> less of a common size (vs. 3/16" or 1/4", say) - I'm not even sure I
> could find a driver like that around here.

Yes, they're 7/32", but in a narrow hole that means some bits won't
reach. Xcelite do a nut driver that fits nicely:
https://stuff.offog.org/model-m-screwdriver.jpg

I got mine in the UK a few years ago from Mouser, part numbers 578-997
for the driver and 578-99-1 for the handle.

-- 
Adam Sampson  

Re: Looking for cassete basic rom code

[Adam Sampson via cctalk]

Alexandre Souza via cctalk  writes:

> I lost my XT BASIC ROMS, can someone send me the code so I can burn it
> and replace on my XT?

minuszerodegrees.net has several versions of the XT ROM images, along
with lots of other useful service information for PC/XT/AT machines:

http://www.minuszerodegrees.net/bios/bios.htm

-- 
Adam Sampson