Microware OS-9 68K books

[Ethan via cctalk]

A friend and I went in on an Amiga 4000T haul last weekend, and with it 
were some nice hard binder and box Microware OS-9 68x00 books. I want to 
say there are two sets of two, and then some binders with photocopied 
style paperwork for BASIC.


Is there any Microware fans that might want these? We were planning to 
put most of the Amiga software up on eBay to cut down the cost of the 
aquisition since it's mostly boring accounting/word processing stuff.


There are no disks with these manuals, just looking to find them a new 
home.


Can get more details if anyone is interested.



--
: Ethan O'Toole

Re: HIPPI devices

[Ethan via cctalk]

Anyone have any HIPPI stuff, preferably for sale?  The machine I have
uses the big parallel cables 100-pin but I guess there is a converter
to serial fiber.
Regards,
Kevin


I tossed a ton of 100 pin hippi network cables a good while ago. They came 
with my Cray systems. Never thought I would see people talking about HIPPI 
again :-)


--
: Ethan O'Toole

Re: More old stuff incoming

[Ethan via cctalk]

Really? Show me one that is 1) in current production, 2) offers the full ISA 
bus (not just some decoded address lines and 8 data lines), 3) plugs into a 
PCI slot.

Christian


Surprised no one has used something like an ATMega or cheap USB connected 
ARM to build a USB to ISA adapter with tie in to DOSBox or some other 
emulator.



--
: Ethan O'Toole

Re: Manual sources

[Ethan via cctalk]

https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2015/09/introducing-the-archive-corps/403135/
Jim Tucker is still selling things on ebay.
When we'll see the manuals from the archive, who knows?


Does the Internet Archive actively have people scanning tons of manuals 
all the time?


Oddly, I am friends with the guy who hooked them up with the space in that 
mall.


Just never understood what the effort was to get the information digital.

--
: Ethan O'Toole

Re: Market improving for monitors?

[Ethan via cctalk]

10ms-30ms of latency in most cases.  One frame time at 60fps is 16ms,
so if you wait for each picture to be completely scanned in over HDMI
before you start scanning it out to the glass then that's going to set
your minimum latency.  And obviously if the input frame rate is less
than 60fps it's possible that the latency may go up.


We had an arcade game at MAGFest (Music and Gaming fest with a computer 
museum room in the greater DC area) that used dual LCD TVs from a hdmi 
splitter. The players complained that the one side was too laggy. Friend 
put a LCD latency test unit on the displays, and sure enough one screen 
was about 30ms behind the other. Playing with the test widget (it's a box 
with a hdmi cable, box goes against screen and detects the flashing) the 
top of the screen and bottom of screen is definitely off a chunk of time 
as the rows are scanned in order across the panel (at least on TVs we 
had.) We swapped it out.


The LED video wall stuff I play with scans the image in every 8 lines, but 
it's much slower than a TV.


I don't know how humans do it, but on some of the music rhythm arcade 
games that use LCDs it's desired to have the original LCD over any 
replacement since the timing of the game is meant for it. People have made 
hacked DLLs that allow adjustment of timing windows but it's never as good 
as the original, which is why the original LCDs sometimes go for $5000. 
These games are imported from Japan.


How does a human do this? You hit the button as the line comes to the 
bottom of the screen where the solid line is across the bottom. This is 
why the timing is important:


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Oy2h2yDKYyY

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0nGhSAoQqcA

(Those aren't really on fast, the games go quite a bit faster than that 
even)


- Ethan


--
: Ethan O'Toole

Re: Market improving for monitors?

[Ethan via cctalk]

If you want to avoid shipping you see if there's a vintage arcade game
group in your area and see what they are looking for.  Most people seem to
be replacing tubes with equivalent size panels, though.


BLASPHEMY! N!

There are no LCDs that are 4:3 above 21". Not 25", not 27/29" models.

The arcade geeks have a database of curb found TV models, what tube is in 
them by part #, yoke coil ohm readings and neck connector. That way they 
can match up 19" tubes to Wells Gardner, Electrohome, Sanyo and other 
arcade monitor chassis to replace the burned in tubes from games that 
didn't change home screen enough (Pac Man, Ms Pac, Centipede, etc.)


There are people that take classic games, throw in crap 19" LCD panel and 
a $40 60-in-1 board and sell them for $2000. But that's not the 
collectors.



--
: Ethan O'Toole

Re: Market improving for monitors?

[Ethan via cctalk]

On a recent Reddit thread someone claimed that old PC monitors
and tube TVs are rising in popularity and price due to retro gamers.
Is this true?


SOME TVs. Not every TV. The gamers want the pro broadcast video monitors 
that have RGB inputs. Sony PVM and the like. Search ebay for Sony PVM RGB 
and you will see some.


Digital TVs usually have to buffer a frame before displaying it so 
displayed images are one frame behind (or more.) Old games were authored 
for their look on a CRT, so on LCDs you can see compression color 
artifacts and whatever else.


The PVMs were very expensive new, so it's like driving an old high end 
car I guess.


They may also be into other Sony and higher end late model TVs, but at 
less $$$ than the PVMs.


I chalk a lot of it up to a hobby and a hunt, but they're keeping high 
quality hardware in usable condition so +1 for them!



I wouldn't want to sell anything on eBay I couldn't hold in
one hand at arm's length, especially when it comes to packing
and shipping.


A lot of the PVM monitors are less than 25".

Crap VGA monitors can still be found, but harder to find the nicer ones.

CGA monitors (Tandy CM-11?) seem to be quite difficult to find now. My 
friend's CM-5 blew the flyback when it was out at an event and afaik China 
isn't reproducing anything like that yet (they do for the arcade 
monitors.)


I own 1 Sony PVM, a cube. Need the speakers that screw to the sides. My 
friend who gave it to me has about 20 of them including a $30,000 
reference mointor that is widescreen CRT Sony 16:9. Maybe a 23" picture 
and heavy as all hell.



- Ethan

--
: Ethan O'Toole

Re: sun model 47. code 4/40 does it have the nvram with battery?

[Ethan via cctalk]

Sun never made their own laptop, but they made a portable called the 
SPARCstation Voyager.


I own a Voyager (Can bring it to the next VCF East if needed.) I have been 
looking for the padded bag that goes with it for a long time. Any leads 
appreciated!



- Ethan

Re: Picking tubular locks (WAS : Text encoding Babel. now PICKING LOCKS OR FINDING KEY MFR AND KEY #

[Ethan via cctalk]

The commercial tools are just a tube with slots and sliders, with variable 
friction.  Almost trivial to make your own (as I did in High School), 
although a well machined one will be a joy to use.
As such, sometimes just sliding that into the lock (WITH THE RIGHT AMOUNT OF 
TORQUE) will get each pin to stop when it aligns.


I had one of those tools and it ran about $70. You had to buy a separate 
one for each size and pin count. Could add up. It was all pretty tight 
size wise, machining it would be possible if you precision tools but I 
don't think you could make one easily with a dremel grinding wheel or 
anything.


I was trying to talk a friend into starting a website where you could 
order tubular keys cut by robot by number but he didn't seem interested. 
*shrug*




--
: Ethan O'Toole

Re: NVRAM resuscitation (Was Re: SPARCstation 20 with SCSI2SD)

[Ethan via cctalk]

As an aside - once upon a time I worked for a company that made their own 
Sparc boards to fit inside a supercomputer and several of them were inside 
secure military/government establishments. Sometimes a board would fail and 
have to go back for a fix - and then the RTC/NVRAM chip had to be removed 
because - you know, those 64 bytes of battery backed RAM might just hold some 
state secret or something...

Fun days.
-Gordon


Surprised they knew about it!


--
: Ethan O'Toole

Re: SPARCstation 20 with SCSI2SD

[Ethan via cctalk]

Also, to anyone buying NVRAMs on eBay, don't expect anything from China to
actually be new NVRAMs. I've bought a bunch to disassemble, in the course


Are any of the SMD NVRAMs with the battery caps compatible? Throw them on 
a DIP to SOIC PCB?


- Ethan


--
: Ethan O'Toole

Re: SPARCstation 20 with SCSI2SD

[Ethan via cctalk]

I was hoping to just emulate it for now to avoid potentially bad hardware,
but seems like I need to use the real hardware to avoid potentially bad
software! :)


Ah cool. I was at a friend's brother's house on a work trip out to Silicon 
Valley. One of his friends was there, with something amazing running in 
QEMU. It was a work in progress, but he said that there were a lot of 
issues because QEMU was too accurate in emulating the MIPS procressors and 
in addition to this, there was bugs in his former employer's hardware that 
had software work-arounds in the real OS. So when trying to run that OS on 
the emulated system the accuracy worked against him.



The NVRAM is totally dead; I've been reloading the IDPROM contents each
time. I've already ordered replacement NVRAMs from China; we'll see how
they do. Otherwise, I'll be going with the filing/coin cell trick.


Interesting. Are they no longer made? I should get one for my Voyager.


Not sure; but, I can say, I've got SunOS 4.1.3 finally installed, and am
now looking at a sparse SunView desktop.


Very cool


Trying to build MazeWar results in:

ld: Undefined symbol
  ___bb_init_func
  DREG_SEG
*** Error code 2

Not sure yet what to look for, but the source does say it was tested on
SunOS 3.1 and 3.4. So, I am trying to compile it on something a bit later.


Sun compiler I assume and not a GCC?


--
: Ethan O'Toole

Re: SPARCstation 20 with SCSI2SD

[Ethan via cctalk]

Well, got the last problem solved rather quickly: I tried using 512 byte
sectors for the emulated CDROM instead of SCSI2SD's default of 2048 for a
CDROM, and that did the trick. Working my way through the SunOS 4.1.3
installation process now on the SS-20.


Was just thinking the 512 byte thing might be an issue. Early Toshiba 
Cd-ROMs had a solder jumper that would switch this, and is was needed for 
some early systems. SGI Indigo R3000 and below was one, and I guess Sun 
was another. I think NeXT also requires the 512 byte block CD-ROM.


Since you said QEMU, you are emulating this? If on the real hardware, is 
the NVRAM memory dead? Looks like it doesn't know what kind of hardware it 
is. Real hardware will loose nvram battery and need to be replaced and 
reprogrammed, or you can file it down and jumper a battery into it.


There is also probably a bunch of environment variables in the NVRAM as to 
the CD-ROM SCSI path and OS scsi path and stuff on the Sun. It's been a 
long time since Sun boxes for me, so unfortuantely I've forgotten a lot of 
it. But if it's all reset or non-existant it could be a source of issues 
if my memory is right (It definitely is on SGI hardware.)



--
: Ethan O'Toole

Re: What is windoes doing?

[Ethan via cctalk]

I have a question. I use the USB port for serial. In my program, I use a 
fixed com port. When going to the control panel, I find that I see (in 
use) tags on some of the com ports. I'm the only one currently using the 
com ports but recently another (in use) showed up, requiring me to 
modify my program to use another com port. How does one unuse a com 
port? how do I find out what is using it so I can stop it? I'm using 
windows 7 professional. Has anyone else had this problem? Dwight


Do you unplug the USB to Serial dongle with a terminal program open?

- Ethan

Re: Did anyone see Vintage Tech Hunters on Discovery Canada yet?

[Ethan via cctalk]

You can watch the second episode on the Discovery Canada website as well.
I just watched both.  Very nice on the credits by the way.


I tried to watch it on the drive home from work today. Youtube video had a 
strike (takedown) so it's gone. The web site had IP geolocation and 
rejected my phone. So looks like it's Canada only.


So most people will need to use a VPN to get to the Discovery site from a 
.ca IP, or maybe it's nerdy enough that it will show up via various 
underground conduits of content. I am going to ping a friend tomorrow who 
has a 500TB TV rig and see if he has heard of it.




--
: Ethan O'Toole

Re: Did anyone see Vintage Tech Hunters on Discovery Canada yet?

[Ethan via cctalk]

I equate the reproductions to kit cars.  If you are wanting something to play 
/ drive without angsting about damage, then IMHO, reproductions & kits are a 
great way to go.  Just don't pretend that they are the real thing.  Know that 
they are a reproduction / kit and enjoy the experience.


Indeed! Also, my friends often take their stuff to events where it's all 
put out for the public to play at large. When the values get too high on 
things, then they tend to get locked behind glass with the price guide 
nearby and aren't as easily enjoyed.


I've started seeing similar with old sound cards.  I'm following someone on 
Twitter that's recreating vintage Sound Blaster cards.  I've seen others that 
I can't remember the make / model of.


I think someone just did an Adlib remake. I am lucky that I still have two 
Soundblaster 1.0s and a Gravis Ultrasound 1 and Pro or something. It's 
neat to me that there is interest in it because that is how I grew up on 
DOS PCs, but a bit surprising. A lot of it is driven by youtube stars like 
LGR (who is awesome) who build hype. :-) But there are a lot of clones 
that should be out there feature compatible and sound identical.


I gave my Adlib to friends for a Tandy system that gets put out at events 
for people to play on. Mainly the Chesapeake VA Freeplay event at the 
library and the museum room at MAGFest in MD (near DC.) The CM5/CM11 
monitor exploded though, which sucks. Flyback died no reproductions yet.


I have to admit, I looked at some of those IIGS sound card reproductions 
:-)



--
: Ethan O'Toole

Re: NeXT Monitor Problem

[Ethan via cctalk]

The monitor works okay; slight burn in, but otherwise looks okay in terms
of the phosphor. However, something seems to be wonky with the horizontal
scan...the left edge is very wobbly.


Replace all electrolytic caps with new Panasonic of Nichicon 105 degree 
caps from a source like Digikey, Mouser, Newark or AVNet.


So... I've heard a lot of NeXT monitors get dim over time. There is a tool 
for rejuvinating CRTs. I wondere if it would work rejuvinating NeXT 
monitor to bring back brightness.



I am aware of the dangers of CRTs and will be sure to discharge the anode;
I've worked on a few MDA monitors before.


Definitely. Some monitor chassis self discharge via a resistor, so if you 
short anode to ground and don't see anything that is why.

Re: Did anyone see Vintage Tech Hunters on Discovery Canada yet?

[Ethan via cctalk]

On 2018-11-08 05:23, Santo Nucifora via cctalk wrote:

I am sure this is not authorized in any way but here's a link to the first
episode on Youtube.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iroAInAMfYo


Going to watch this tonight! Excited!

More TV shows to drive speculation on flipping old stuff versus producing 
new good stuff. But hey, at least it's a subject I like this time :-)


After American Pickers mentioned some pinball playfield could be turned 
into a coffee table tons of normies with pinball machines thought their 
old crap machines were worth thousands because people turned them into 
expensive coffee tables. Uhm, no.


Some of the gaming console stuff goes for crazy money right now. I've 
heard China makes "reproductions" of carts but I've never figured out how 
to buy them. I would. Many of my collector friends now would rather buy a 
flash cart and download ROMs versus dealing with the speculative pricing 
on old games.


It will be interesting to see what happens to the collectibles markets 
when/if the housing bubble pops.


--
: Ethan O'Toole

Re: 2 huge warehouses full of old computers

[Ethan via cctalk]

Before anyone scoffs, warehouse space is expensive.  It drove the
company I was last working for to move out of Austin.  Their business


Depends when it was bought. Pre-bubble or after the largest real estate 
bubble in the history of mankind.

If you archive old data for the public...

[Ethan via cctalk]

If any of you are archiving old data for the public, like CD-ROMs or 
whatever, and you are low on disk space  A friend gives me surplus 
data center hardware often, and I have some SATA disks. They have 4 years 
or so on them so backup / redundancy is important, but I can offer 
some to people that are running public archives of classic computer stuff 
to help.


You just can't resell the hardware.


--
: Ethan O'Toole

Re: Updates at retroarchive.org...

[Ethan via cctalk]

You realize that you can click a button and get a text list of those "pretty 
pictures", right?  Click the "Show Details" checkbox and you'll get a block 
of text that describes each one.

g.


I would assume he means text listings / directory listing type view.

- Ethan

Re: Updates at retroarchive.org...

[Ethan via cctalk]

Even a full list of what CDs Jason has there w/o indexing would be helpful.
Trying to figure out what is there is a nightmare.
For a while, I had about 400gb of cd images on bitsavers until we ran out of 
disk space.
I probably have a few hundred more gb I've read since then. I've slowly been 
trying to
find a full set of physical disks from Walnut Creek for CHM's archive.


I was recently talking to friends about making a Pi project with the Pi 
camera above a CD-ROM drawer, and a pushbutton to trigger picture of CD + 
ISO image automagically.


I have some AIX CDs, Oracle CDs, and old FreeBSD/Linux CDs to archive.

Years ago I had a robotic CD changer that could cycle through about 200 
discs hands off. Seems like it would be ideal now :-)


Are you short on disk space?


 --
: Ethan O'Toole

Re: Selling keyboards without the terminal

[Ethan via cctalk]

Woof!  I have a complete, working IBM 3101 terminal (got it from a
former co-worker who used to use it to work from home at CompuServe)
and it's tempting to sell just the keyboard.
-ethan


Just use an arduino to make an adapter so you can use a USB keyboard with 
the 3101 terminal.


If you used a clicky non-poured keycap RGB one you might be able to make 
it change colors when it beeps.



--
: Ethan O'Toole

Re: Selling keyboards without the terminal

[Ethan via cctalk]

The quality of modern keycaps is poor.
These guys are after mechanical boards with double-shot keytops.
If you do find modern double-shots, the fonts they use are crap.
The kb I'm typing on cost me about $300 after having to buy replacement caps
for almost the same price as the kb was.


I had some Model M keyboards I got for free. Gave them away to kids at our 
hackerspace in Norfolk because I hated the feel of typing on them. They 
were all giddy.


You can get the keyboard that has no print on the keycaps at all. Seems 
ideal!


--
: Ethan O'Toole

Re: Selling keyboards without the terminal

[Ethan via cctalk]

OK I  am sorry  I  do not  understand  why the keyboard  went  this high?
Please... Please... someone  explain?
Ed#


Race for the loudest keyboard. Bragging rights of the rare?

An Adlib card sold for $3100 a year ago or so. Friends were suspicious 
that people were driving up the price of their own posession to try to 
mark to market some of the retro stuff higher. Basically, create the same 
speculation that housing has gone through recently like the cryptocurrency 
people do.


I don't get it. You can buy off the shelf clicky keyboards with RGB for 
$150.


--
: Ethan O'Toole

Re: Selling keyboards without the terminal

[Ethan via cctalk]

Here is a great example of why the keyboards and terminals are getting
separated


I sold a working luggable computer. The keys were a bit clicky but I put 
on the auction to try to thwart the keyboard collectors. I shipped it 
working, buyer claimed it wasn't working when arrived. Ended up having to 
refund on it. Ate $110 in shipping.


I'm super paranoid that the buyer was looking for certain keyboard and 
just fried it to claim insurance.


It definitely squashed any enthusiasm about selling on eBay, outside of 
all the work done to pack and ship and have some 14% of the sale price 
taken by eBay/PayPal.


- Ethan

Re: Microsoft-Paul Allen

[Ethan via cctalk]

I thought it was just hilarious that Microsoft chose The Rolling
Stones' "Start Me Up" for the theme song at the launch of Windows 95,
unaware of the later lyrics in the song (not played during the launch,


IIRC They wanted R.E.M.'s "End of the world as we know it" but R.E.M. said 
no.


- Ethan

Re: OTsorta : Old phone system(s) avail

[Ethan via cctalk]

I'm still looking into whether these devices will help me.  I'm at the
point of figuring out what the unknown unknowns are, as I'm new to
telephony.
Where are you located?  I am in London, UK.  I'm aware that due to the
likelihood of shipping there's a good chance this won't work out.



It's an older office phone system. Boxes that run a bunch of office 
phones. Not a mobile phone.


Anyone know of an ESS-5A that needs a home? I really would like to bring 
one to HOPE in NYC one year.


- Ethan

Re: Paul Allen - RIP

[Ethan via cctalk]

https://www.king5.com/article/news/local/microsoft-co-founder-paul-allen-dies-at-65/281-604572895
Paul Allen just died.
Zane


Bummer!

--
: Ethan O'Toole

Re: R: Wanted: LTO-5 tapes (used?)

[Ethan via cctalk]

Sorry to intrude,
Those are LTO-1 tapes (I do have two for an hp drive I have)


No worries, the tapes I am after are LTO-5 / Ultrium-5


--
: Ethan O'Toole

Re: Wanted: LTO-5 tapes (used?)

[Ethan via cctalk]

If Ethan doesn't want them
I'm morbidly curious what you would want for a drive and some tapes.
Also, where you / they are at so that I can guestimate shipping.


I am after LTO-5 as that is what my best drives are (untested of course, 
and they came from trash.. how bad could it end?)


Library after I got the LEDs installed. Need to get a dedicated power 
supply for them:

https://imgur.com/UDqMQq7

I've got it down on one power supply, and it can run on 1 PS with two 
drives and the logic board. No fibre channel switches or any of that.


Backing up the archives of older stuff on less older stuff.

--
: Ethan O'Toole

Wanted: LTO-5 tapes (used?)

[Ethan via cctalk]

Looking for used LTO-5 tapes that I can erase and add to my library at 
home for backing up spinning disk archives. I can use LTO-4 as well but 5 
gives the most bang for buck.


HMU

- Ethan

--
: Ethan O'Toole

Re: helping to clean out an estate - a lot of CRAY

[Ethan via cctalk]

I appreciate the multiple offers to digitize the tapes. I will try to get
back to everyone next week.  Maybe split the load? Looking for ideas here.
My only rule is both museums get a copy and post it for public use. I do
have a few requests for some of the original tapes.


I was one of the people that offered. I have pro decks, Composite + SDI 
converter, audio processors for volume maximization on spoken content, and 
a Blackmagic ATEM system for SDI to H264 conversion. Colo host and 60TB of 
disk at home, along with a 500TB LTO-5 library.


My goal is just to digitize the tapes, get the files to whomever wants 
them (plus archive.org), and then the tapes go to some collector that 
wants to hold onto the originals. I don't have physical room to store the 
tapes long term.


I have archived a lot of laser show content recently that is digital data 
stored on 3/4" umatic, Beta, and SVHS ADAT format. I've found that pro 
tapes have help up well but consumer tapes less so.



--
: Ethan O'Toole

Re: helping to clean out an estate - a lot of CRAY

[Ethan via cctalk]

Hello Paul, I would be willing to take on the task of converting all the 
videos to digital format (as high quality as possible) for archive. Could 
pay shipping, but then would like to pass on the tapes to someone else.


- Ethan O'Toole






A friend of mine passed away a few days ago, and I am helping his brother
go through boxes of items. He was a research professer at the U of I, but
also spent time at CMU, Stanford and other places.

What I have had a chance to sort today follows, and there will be updates
throughout the week.

VIDEOS:

Tony Warnock- CRAY RESEARCH There are 3 tapes /day. I have 1-15 over 5 days?


Margaret Cahir -Cray Multitasking  6 tapes


John Rollwagen, CRAY-  chairman and ceo,business, q and a organizational
changes- 4 tapes most dated 87, 88
   also a tape labeled profile composite


TERA MTA report from SDSC 2 from 98, 1 from 99

Cray/ Silicon Graphics- The Power To See

UCA Professional Video Tape Plus- CRAY Applications Video Composite 1986

1600 BPI Perfect Benchmarks tape


A FEW of the Reports...

ACM SIGMETRICS 1994
ACM SIGMETRICS 2000
SPAA ACM 2002
SPAA ACM 2003

THE INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF SUPERCOMPUTER APPLICATIONS AND HIGH
PERFORMANCE COMPUTING   VOL 1, NUM 1 SPRING 87  through VOL 8, NUM 2,
SUMMER 1994 22 volumes, might be missing a few. they could turn up tomorrow

CRAY -3 Hardware Reference Manual
CRAY Y-MP System Prog Reef Manual
Programmer Ref Manual
Functional Description Manual
CRAY UNICOS LINE EDITOR


I have 4-5 more boxes of books i will not get to tonight.  There could be
another 20 boxes or more still there.

I am looking for reasonable offers and good homes. I am not a software guy,
my plate is more than full, and I have no place to store it.

Thanks, Paul



--
: Ethan O'Toole

Re: Thicknet/10base5 Test Segment: The Cable is In!

[Ethan via cctalk]

Allied Telesis made a "multi port tap" that provided four AUI ports off a
single Ethernet tap. I don't know if it was a repeater/hub inside, or what.
It was much smaller than a DELNI or DEREP.


That totally sounds like the one located in the Cray. My guess is most 
people would hook AUI transceivers but they just run ribbon cables to 4 
boards then I think the 10base2 feeds into a BNC T plugged into it.


- Ethan

Re: Thicknet/10base5 Test Segment: The Cable is In!

[Ethan via cctalk]

I think I've seen reports of multi AUI port taps.  Correct?


I think my Cray has a 4 port AUI box w/ 1 x 10base2. It has DB15 ribbons 
going to each of the IOSV CPU cards. Allied Telesyn might be the mfgr.



--
: Ethan O'Toole

Re: how good is the data reliability with BD-R (Blu-Ray)

[Ethan via cctalk]

My BD-R story:

For a little bit I was trying to go Blue Ray for backup of conference 
talks I was recording at the time. I picked up a Samsung BD-R drive and 
some memorex media. The media for BD-R comes in a High to low and low to 
high versions. One is dye based not for long term, the other type is long 
term. The Memorex type I got was the long term type.


I carefully made 2 or 3 copies of each set of video files. Each event took 
2 to 3 discs (Was recording events live using Blackmagic ATEM system, 5GB 
per hour is the data rate in 1080i60 h264 encoded.)


After about 9 months I went to copy some data back. It was all gone. 
Everything deteriorated and all the data was unreadable. Before I bought 
the drive I looked for info on reliability and didn't find any indicators 
that the media sometimes has severe issues.


Since then I kind of swore off optical media. I have some Verbatim discs 
but I haven't used them yet. I figure they will do better, but still 
bitter over losing the information from the earier events.


I have around 60TB of spinning disks at home, but will be going tape in 
the future.


A lot of my data is conference video and backups of laser show tapes which 
often are 8 channels of WAV data @ 48khz, so ~3-4GB per 30 minute show 
tape.

Re: Can anyone identify this S100 serial board?

[Ethan via cctalk]

/me bows

"National Multiplex" is the brand! Thanks Glitch!



I've got the manual for this one -- I've got one myself. I'll get it
scanned and uploaded.

Thanks,
Jonathan

On Tue, Jul 10, 2018 at 10:20 PM, Richard Cini via cctalk <
cctalk@classiccmp.org> wrote:









The two connectors at the top remind me of the MITS 2SIO board.
Chip on the left with the label seems odd — looks like an EPROM. Not sure
why they’d use a UART (40-pin chip) and an ACIA, but it’s an interesting
two-port combo board.



Get Outlook for iOS






On Tue, Jul 10, 2018 at 10:17 PM -0400, "dwight via cctalk" <
cctalk@classiccmp.org> wrote:










I'm thinking one serial and one cassette. The 8251 for the cassette.

I can't make out all the chips at the pins? The board was hand laid out.
Is there nothing on the bottom but traces?

Dwight



From: cctalk  on behalf of Ethan via cctalk
Sent: Tuesday, July 10, 2018 6:43:12 PM
To: cctalk@classiccmp.org
Subject: Can anyone identify this S100 serial board?


Trying to identify the S100 serial board in my Imsai 8080.

https://imgur.com/eZyOVT5

I assume it was a kit. There are wires from behind one of the ICs that go
to DB25 on the rear, along with other DB25s with a few pins (maybe
cassette input.)

Any help appreciated.


--
: Ethan O'Toole












--
: Ethan O'Toole

Can anyone identify this S100 serial board?

[Ethan via cctalk]

Trying to identify the S100 serial board in my Imsai 8080.

https://imgur.com/eZyOVT5

I assume it was a kit. There are wires from behind one of the ICs that go 
to DB25 on the rear, along with other DB25s with a few pins (maybe 
cassette input.)


Any help appreciated.


--
: Ethan O'Toole

Re: Who is eBay's customer was RE: SMS floppy disk controller

[Ethan via cctalk]

Yeah, well that is the age old argument. As far as I am concerned he who 
ponies up the cash is the customer. The sellers may be "customers" for 
eBay store front ends or advertising but the main business/revenue model 
is the fee on sale of items and that is paid by the buyers when all is 
said and done. One of the reasons eBay will never be as big or 
successful as Amazon is because they keep forgetting this basic fact 
IMHO.


eBay is an auction site behind a fraud management system.

--
: Ethan O'Toole

ISO: Seattle Computer Producs 300 S100 board

[Ethan via cctalk]

I jumped the gun and bought a SCP 200B board. I grew up a DOS kid, so 
figured it would be fun to run 86-DOS.


I found out about the SCP 300 board, that contains the boot loader and 
serial port. Anyone have an extra they would be interested in unloading?


Thanks

--
: Ethan O'Toole

RE: New Listings for Sellam's Collection Sales

[Ethan via cctalk]

Some of the Q-BUS stuff is very cheap. Pity I am in the UK. I thought 
the Atari Mega ST4 was a little expensive given its untested. I know it 
needs a special video lead to test but mine popped a video driver. Also 
technically it doesn't usually boot from disk. The OS is in ROM but it 
will read a settings file from floppy.


On Atari Mega 2s, the two I have come across has bad internal floppy 
drives. And they're really cool looking, so no desire to replace with a 
generic PC one (that will work, but not fit the plastic.) So I opted on 
mine to add an ultrasatan board mounted to the RF shield internally, with 
the SD card exposed on the back where the epansion board cover is. I used 
an external floppy to copy software to the SD card on the ultrasatan.


My friend landed a Mega 2 as well, and his drive was bad as well. I 
haven't attempted to repair yet but it might be worthwhile to figure out 
what the failure is on these rarities.


- Ethan



--
: Ethan O'Toole

Re: Nekochan has been shut down :(

[Ethan via cctalk]

I didn't see it being mentioned here on cctalk :(
http://archive.is/dJgyQ
but I'm hearing some refugees saying that the chances of the site going back 
online are not looking good


I just posted my SGI Indigo PSU repair to that site and was planning to 
copy it over to my personal blog this weekend. Arrgh.


I assume archive.org doesn't have the site either since it's dynamicly 
rendered.


Kind of a knee jerk reaction, just send a mass email like every other site 
does.



 --
: Ethan O'Toole

Re: R: Sparc Laptops

[Ethan via cctalk]

There's also the S3000 in that category (luggable SPARCs). On the RS/6000
ThinkPad side, I have an 860 and a currently refusing-to-boot 800.


Are the 860 and 800 worth hutning down?

All of them have 2.5" SCSI drives as well I assume.


--
: Ethan O'Toole

Re: R: Sparc Laptops

[Ethan via cctalk]

I'd be interested as well if any are left.
I sold a Sparcbook a while back that was missing the hard drive caddy. I
just couldn't find a caddy and had a random buyer that wanted it for a
museum. It did have it netbooting though, and they are fun machines!


Sparcbook and the IBM RS/6000 laptop have been on my back burner for a 
while... if a bunch turn up


Also looking for the official carry bag for the Sun Voyager. My Voyager is 
100% but missing that factory carry bag.


- Ethan


--
: Ethan O'Toole

Re: SGI Indigo Power Supply Pinout?

[Ethan via cctalk]

I Have an indigo that has not gotten much use aside from when i first
picked it up. It has the bigger power supply as well and is maxed out on
memory. As a last resort, I could sell you my machine. It boots, I had
rigged a peice of jumper wire to the battery to overcome a flat battery, i
did not want to attempt desoldering the battery on board. I have been
focusing less on the smaller workstations like the indigo and octane and
have been using my onyx and crimson, so I am looking to get rid of the
smaller workstations.


Ah nice re: the deskside SGIs! I remember those fondly.

At this point I'm going to try to figure out how this mechanism works in 
the power supply, but if I can't get it rolling soon I will reach out to 
you. Rent is high and excess doesn't sell well on eBay any more so being 
conservative these days.


My coworker is supposed to bring me one of his Indigo power supplies 
today, and I will see if the PSU is at fault or not, and then try to 
figure out how the power supply communicates the status.


Oddly enough they were trying to do soft power off on the Indigo and it 
never made it into production but some of the hardware is in the power 
supplies?



- Ethan


--
: Ethan O'Toole

SGI Indigo Power Supply Pinout?

[Ethan via cctalk]

Howdy,

 Working on fixing an old SGI Indigo of mine in prep for VCF East.

 The issue is once any sort of IRIX kernel is running, it craps out 
WARNING: Power Failure Detected at a high rate.


 The SGI Indigo and a few other similar models could push out 
that error on the local console and perhaps network inbetween the time 
that AC power was lost going into the power supply and the power supply 
had discharged enough for system to die. Pretty impressive and strange! 
I was amazed when I first noticed it, of course now it has come back to 
haunt me.


 I have replaced some of the electrolytic caps in the power supply.

 But in the spirit of troubleshooting, does anyone have any sort of 
schematics or documentation on the power supply, or the midplane?


 This is a R4000 Indigo and has the higher output power supply to support 
bigger CPU and graphics.


 In the meantime I'm working to document what I can about the power 
connector and will publish, but I can only get so far without other 
insight.


 Thanks



--
: Ethan O'Toole

Re: WeirdStuff going out of business

[Ethan via cctalk]

forgot about that..
wonder why they do that?


Outside linking to images can crush bandwidth, especially if they end up 
on a popular site.


Glad I got to visit the warehouse before it went away. Bummer when things 
like that go away.


Commercial rents are too high. Real estate values are too inflated 
everywhere. Everything cool is priced out.


-- : Ethan O'Toole

Re: Digitising collections of microfiche - Re: Looking for opinions...

[Ethan via cctalk]

I'm probably WAY over simplifying this because I don't have a grasp of the 
optics involved, but wouldn't it be possible to get a good image of 
individual pages on a microfiche by using a DSLR with the right lens and a 
CNC X/Y table made from one of the large (8x10) LED illuminators used to 
treat SAD?  The lights are pretty bright and are under $50.  The X/Y table 
build would be very simple and cheap to build.  The only "real" expense would 
be the right lens on the camera.


Yep. That is what I was thinking originally. I wasn't against the idea of 
projecting the slide to a surface then capturing that.


There is a Canon 300 something or other Microfiche machine on eBay. 
They're like $200-300. It's a viewer that supports computer capture via 
what looks like SCSI and Twain driver. 5.5 seconds per grab:


Oh look here is a DIY one that is good enough to center it on each page. 
Impressive. I think he is scanning DEC information:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GCRr9sbHBnM

Here is the Canon 300II:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ro1pO5Zd9hI

I'm not sure how person from unit #1 centers it, but unit #2 with a 
autoloader and steppers to do X/Y I think might provide sexy output.


The process could be automated by using a cheap SMD part vacuum (the little 
hand-held one I have ran about $10) attached to an arm that was run by some 
R/C servos.


That is what I was thinking, but there might be cases where the slide 
sticks to the top of the glass holder. I think the holder is important for 
focus.




--
: Ethan O'Toole

Re: Digitising collections of microfiche - Re: Looking for opinions...

[Ethan via cctalk]

You figure if a couple of college kids can build a robot that can solve a 
Rubik's Cube in 380ms, a bunch of really smart old guys should be able to 
cobble together a DIY microfiche scanner.

g.


Mentioned it in an IRC channel.

Friends started talking about it.

The open source hughin software is what the people scanning microchip 
photos to reverse engineer them are using. Looks like it could handle that 
part.


http://hugin.sourceforge.net/

Friend was saying new Sony mirrorless (Sony has been a huge player in 
digital mirrorless cameras recently) have 42MP sensors. His approach was 
image the whole thing at once but I'm not sure the resolution would be 
good enough.


I was thinking more along the lines of something mirrorless and moving the 
film around capturing areas, pile the images in a dir for each fische, 
then stich and save.


- Ethan







--
Proud owner of F-15C 80-0007
http://www.f15sim.com - The only one of its kind.
http://www.diy-cockpits.org/coll - Go Collimated or Go Home.
Some people collect things for a hobby.  Geeks collect hobbies.

ScarletDME - The red hot Data Management Environment
A Multi-Value database for the masses, not the classes.
http://scarlet.deltasoft.com - Get it _today_!



--
: Ethan O'Toole

Re: Digitising collections of microfiche - Re: Looking for opinions...

[Ethan via cctalk]

DOES ANYONE READ OLD POSTS HERE??



>> Some of us...

Do the math. Scanning all of that fiche is man-centuries of work with all but 
the most expensive equipment.


Quite.  Maybe someday 9600 dpi scan heads will be cheap, but not soon
enough for most of us here today to care.


We are like engineers or something. I think there is open source software 
for rebuilding images from shredded documents.Slide projector lens, LED 
array and diffuser and a digital camera. Stepper motors to move the thing 
around and load next fiche?


Let the robot do it?







source).  I doubt I have anything unique, but it's possible a handful
of items are not easily found.

For myself, it would be an enormous accomplishment just to make an
index of the titles.  At least it fits in a couple of shoeboxes and
takes up less room than paper.   The manual fiche reader itself is
much larger than my pile of fiche, so there's that.

-ethan






--
: Ethan O'Toole

Re: RAID? Was: PATA hard disks, anyone?

[Ethan via cctalk]

I know of no RAID setup that can save me >from stupid.


I use rsync. I manually rsync the working disks to the backup disks every 
week or two. Working disks have the shares to other hosts. If something 
happens to that data, deleted by accident or encrypted by malware. Meh.


Hardware like netapp and maybe filesystems in open source have those 
awesome snapshot systems with there is directory tree that has past time 
version of data. A directory of 15 minutes ago, one of 6 hours ago, etc 
is what we had setup at a prior gig.



--
: Ethan O'Toole

WTD: Dell ML6000 (or similar) LTO library, Mid-Atlantic East Coast

[Ethan via cctalk]

While this slightly deviates from classic computers, I've been on the hunt 
for a surplus LTO library around the mid-atlantic East Coast for a bit.


The Dell ML6000 which is made by someone else is what has my eye. We have 
one at work, lame robot that is very slow at changing tapes and looks sad 
compared to the STK machines I used to work around. But the density of the 
tape carts stored in the cabinet just can't be beat. I love some of the 
larger IBM fridge sized LTO units but the tape density given cabinet size 
just isn't there, but the scale out by adding cabinets side by side is 
cool -- if I only had a basement. Say 280 carts for huge IBM box versus 
133 carts in the Dell unit at 15 rack units high. No brainer.


The Dell ML6000 is also known as Quantum i500, and there is a super sexy 
IBM version and also a HP badged version.


A few have popped up down in Florida and AZ for ~$100 or so with LTO3 
drives which is ideal. But not proper timing.


I have a LTO5 drive or two for these that came from a trash bin, so in my 
case I can upgrade the drives.


Tapes don't generate heat or use electricity when sitting idle, so it 
seems ideal to backup my home NAS boxes and hoards of software for classic 
computers, arcade / video games and laser show 8 and 16 channel digital 
audio tape dumps.





--
: Ethan O'Toole

Re: Looking for opinions...

[Ethan via cctalk]

I found a stack of DEC microfiche  a few nights ago. It's probably about 12
inches tall, and contains PM Procedures, IPBs, Manuals, Tech Info, and
several type of Logistics, BOMs, vendors, etc which I will deal with
later.  Most of it is "company confidential", not that it matters anymore.  The
bulk of my microfiche is still missing.


Has all this data been converted to digital formats and posted online?

Can a flatbed scanner with high resolution (1200dpi) scan these directly 
or does it require using a lens setup?



--
: Ethan O'Toole

Re: PATA hard disks, anyone?

[Ethan via cctalk]

Hitachi 3 and 4tb are VERY good, as are the equivalent Toshiba from when WD 
divested themselves
of the Hitachi hi-end line.


Been runnning 4 HGST 4TB for a long while now at home and have been really 
happy. My best disks.



1tb was the switchover point to vertical recording, so those (and esp seagate 
1.5tb) are terrible


Ah, have a bunch of used 1.5TB seagates and there was about a 70% failure 
rate but I assumed it was due to age on disk and going from 24x7 to off 
for a few months then back on. Hoping to move off of those onto 30TB of WD 
disks soon if the drives aren't totally dead.



I have a few helium-filled drives spinning. They've been fine, but I don't know 
for how long yet.


Have a few HGST 8TB He drives at $work, out of 50 or so maybe 1 failure in 
2 years. Very solid but our most expensive drives until you get into flash 
storage.


I'm interested to hear how the 12TB Seagates perform. A friend I believe 
got a few hundred in so it will be interesting in a year to hear if 
they're reliable or not.

Re: PATA hard disks, anyone?

[Ethan via cctalk]

Are they functional or decorative?


3TB Seagate
They will likely fail. Defective model. Know someone that doesn't even RMA 
them, straight to trash. Replaces them with WD.


(Note that all Seagate models have the issue, just something wrong with 
a 3TB model.)


- Ethan


--
: Ethan O'Toole

Re: PATA hard disks, anyone?

[Ethan via cctalk]

The advantages of working for a small company... the sysadmin is a
long-time employee who's just moved into that role, he and I are good
buddies.  And there's not anything worth $$$ data recovery on them
anyway.



I hate seeing perfectly good working equipment reduced to low-value
scrap, so I'm wiping these drives at home on my own time to prevent
that.


Yep! I've watched thousand(s) of pounds of working hard drives get 
shredded.


I have a hook-up to get some older drives from another company (1.5TB, 
etc) and well... let's just say that "newer" used disks with 4 years on 
them aren't very reliable. I'd imaigne the older ones hold up much better 
since they were more expensive and less density.





--
: Ethan O'Toole

Re: R: PATA hard disks, anyone?

[Ethan via cctalk]

Certainly, but it's fruitless to use logic in cases such as these.
Chances are that someone once read the paper from the 1990s that said it
was possible to recover overwritten data from a drive using, IIRC, an
STM--at a rate of what was it? 1 kbit per hour?


AFAIK there has been a bounty out to recover data with a single wipe that 
hasn't been collected. I thought it was all theory and never done in 
practice?



--
: Ethan O'Toole

Re: SGI Indy power supply: identify this diode?

[Ethan via cctalk]

If only!  That question has been asked many times on SGI forums like 
nekochan, for the Sony PSU (like this one) and also the Nidec.  No-one has 
ever claimed to have seen one, and the chances are Sony wouldn't ever have 
released them.


Yea I was looking for the Nidec one for the Indigo, as mine constantly 
spits out a power lost error on the console of my R4000. IIRC Nidec said 
no, but Sony might be different. I think there is a private system that 
Sony repair shops can access that has schematics online.


I have thought about tracing out the relevant area of the circuit, but it 
would take a while as the components are fairly densely packed, and I've got 
several other tasks on the agenda.


I can imagine that would take a ton of time. And the parts list still 
wouldn't be official.



--
: Ethan O'Toole

Re: SGI Indy power supply: identify this diode?

[Ethan via cctalk]

I'm hoping I don't have to breadboard a 1kV supply and find a lot of 
multi-megohm resistors to try and estimate the breakdown voltage - and then 
guess at the forward current rating.


Is it possible to get the schematics?


- Ethan
--
: Ethan O'Toole

Re: Replica IBM 5150 PC motherboard

[Ethan via cctalk]

What about the ASICs, Ethan? :D
(An A500 recreation was made - the board was RED! :D )


Sockets. The battery damage has wiped out a ton of a3000 mobos, but the 
ASICs should be good. Just move the custom ICs over.




--
: Ethan O'Toole

Re: Picked up a couple 386 machines

[Ethan via cctalk]

That is a very standard IDE drive that you can replace with just about 
any IDE drive you can find, at least to get things up and running. The 
controller won't support the faster transfer speeds of later drives, and 
may not support the full capacity of the larger drives, but the newer 
drives should be backward compatible. Something in the 500MB range would 
probably be a good choice. Also, looking at the information I have on 
the motherboard the drive controller can't be disabled. You may be able 
to add a secondary drive controller, but booting from the hard disk on 
that controller _may_ not be possible.


On the old 386 era PCs you have to specify cyl/head/sector/lz type stuff 
in the BIOS usually? It's possible to sub in a CF card on the IDE bus with 
a cheap adapter, but I'm not sure how the cyl/head/sector stuff plays out. 
Maybe go with something fairly small like 32MB and a CF to IDE adapter 
(it's just wires, CF cards are similar to early PCMCIA which is ATA which 
I think is just buffered ISA but I could have it wrong?)


I did this recently on a 486 but it had an auto-detect feature for the 
hard drive parameters. Maybe they don't really matter when using a CF Card 
-- does anyone know?


Another option is the ISA CF/IDE card from GlitchWorks. It has it's own 
BIOS AFAIK and you don't need to worry about specifying the drive info in 
the bios. I have 3 or 4 but haven't tried them yet.


On PCI systems Promise FastTrak IDE cards take care of the BIOS drive 
specification annoyances -- I use a PATA IDE to SD card widget on a 
FastTrak 100 on my Pentium luggable -- works well.



--
: Ethan O'Toole

Re: Large HP plotter on the curb in Arlington, MA

[Ethan via cctalk]

The pen plotters came from Tektronix and the inkjets either free or via
-pete


Late to the thread but I owned a HP DesignJet 1050C until recently. It's 
similar to what was on the curb in Arlington, MA I believe?


They're beautiful machines. The ink carts can be had expired and will run. 
The drive belt will degrade and turn to mush after ~14 years or so 
depending on where it's stored. Replacements are $20 from eBay.


The ink carts and heads run $900 new but used I used to get them dirt 
cheap via ebay, always expired by 10 years or so. Yellow is the first to 
go.


Standard inkjet white paper from ebay is like $20 a roll for linear feet 
at 36" wide.


My machine was 4 color not 6 color (no pastels.) Used it to print cheap 
signage for a Makerfaire in Norfolk, signage for an arcade and video game 
music event called MAGFest in the DC area and a few other events. I sold 
it because I wasn't as involved in running events + there is one at the 
local makerspace. Plus needed room for more arcades/pinballs.


New machines might lock out expired ink carts though.

I have owned pen plotters in the past as well, they are fun to watch.

But the HP designjets are cool machines. But physically somewhat large as 
there is a lot of extra room on the left and right of the print area 
compared to similar machines from Epson.


There are videos on youtube on swapping things like the ink delivery 
system and the drive belt. I feared actually doing to work to replace the 
drive belt but really it took like 30 minutes after watching the video and 
having torx nearby.


--
: Ethan O'Toole

Re: Password reset for ~1998 AIX on RS/6000?

[Ethan via cctalk]

	Is there a standard procedure for recovering lost passwords for 
these systems, or for resetting passwords? I do have physical access to 
the machine; it’s possible I can find an AIX install disk but it’s 
*highly* desirable to preserve the contents of the existing hard drive.


Image the hard drive off to a raw file using a linux host with a SCSI HBA?

Once that is done, it might be possible to run a hex editor against the 
hard drive (one that doesn't copy the contents into RAM) and then search 
for the password file. From there you can copy the des hash and use 
rainbow tables / wordfiles to crack it or replace it with a known DES 
hash?


This is how I used to reset my root password on my Lucent Audix UNIX host.

YMMV, others might have more insight.

RE: Livingston Portmaster 2e

[Ethan via cctalk]

I was curious as to what this was so I Googled it.
A couple appear on epay - 
https://www.ebay.com/itm/Livingston-PortMaster-2E-Communications-Server-/400327660103
Wow - not sure of that’s a realistic expectation of what they're worth or not.


I used to do quite a bit with Livisington Portmasters. They were used to 
allow dialup ISPs to function in the early days before modems went direct 
digital (T1/E1/PRI) by providing serial ports and it could terminate SLIP 
and PPP.


You can also set it to up allow telnet (not ssh) to the unit and each tcp 
port # would pass thru to the serial port on the unit. So I had a few 
hooked to all the serial consoles of Sun and SGI boxes.


Like a Cyclades.

I still have a PM-2E which is the thinner version that needs special 
breakout cables from 50 or 68 pin scsi connectors to DB25. I have a number 
of the cables too, could use a home for them -- could bring it to VCF 
East if interest.


Also, a friend recently reverse engineered the password reset function for 
these so it's possible to reset the password without paying on the other 
website.


 --
: Ethan O'Toole

WTB: Sun Voyager carry bag

[Ethan via cctalk]

If anyone knows a source for the bag that holds the Sun Voyager computer 
w/ keyboard + mouse I am interested. Would like to keep mine together.


- Ethan

Re: Cases (display) for beloved ISA cards?

[Ethan via cctalk]

IBM's ISA cases come to mind, wonder if these are available, I have this
one:
http://vintagecomputer.net/ibm/IBM_ISA-Card-Case_Open.jpg
http://vintagecomputer.net/ibm/IBM_ISA-Card-Case_Closed.jpg
Bill


Neat!!!


--
: Ethan O'Toole

Cases (display) for beloved ISA cards?

[Ethan via cctalk]

Anyone have suggestions on a nice solid plastic case that could hold up to 
13" ISA card? Something that isn't terribly larger than the card, but has 
room for anti static foam cutout for the card, and is clear at least on 
the top?


So far the closest thing I can find would be cases from the jewelery 
world, but wonder if there is something better.



--
: Ethan O'Toole

Re: BBS software was Re: looking at buying a pocket PC / PDA

[Ethan via cctalk]

I'd get a RS232toWIFI dongle, they're cheap and easy to make a connection
via simple terminal software to an outside telnet target.


I don't think the RS232 to WIFI dongles from the one guy are often 
unavailable. I think the creator hand solders them in small batches or 
something.


- EThan


--
: Ethan O'Toole

Re: QEMM

[Ethan via cctalk]

The old extended/expanded memory manager for DOS. Anyone remember?


I remember it! It was useful.

Here is the manual:
https://www.jumpjet.info/Application-Software/DOS/QEMM/Manual.pdf


--
: Ethan O'Toole

Re: Convex Computer Corporation manuals

[Ethan via cctalk]

Does the content exist online / scanned?


Date: Wed, 25 Oct 2017 01:29:37 +1100
From: Unibus via cctalk 
Reply-To: Unibus ,
"General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts" 
To: cctalk@classiccmp.org
Subject: Convex Computer Corporation manuals

Anybody want some Convex Computer Corporation manuals on microfiche. The
titles are:

  - CONVEX C Guide
  - CONVEX C Optimization Guide
  - CONVEX FORTRAN User's Guide
  - CONVEX FORTRAN Reference Manual
  - CONVEX FORTRAN Optimization Guide
  - CONVEX VECLIB User's Guide
  - CONVEX LSQPACK User's Guide

Free to a good home or it will be plastic recycling



--
: Ethan O'Toole

Re: Pine (was: Re: cctalk Digest, Vol 17, Issue 20)

[Ethan via cctalk]

A minor problem - A lot of mail that I receive won't display pro[perly on 
PINE (such as the first letter of your name in your signature!

I end up forwarding some mail FROM PINE, TO GMail to be able to read it!


The UTF-8 subject lines are the worst :-(

Other than that, pine for 20 years (well, I suppose it's Alpine now.)

--
: Ethan O'Toole

Re: Looking for someone in North Carolina to assist person re-seat chips

[Ethan via cctalk]

Is there anyone here who'd be willing to help a person with an Amiga 2000
re-seat his CPU board's chips?  The symptoms he describes for a machine
that worked last week indicates that this is what is needed.   (blinking
power supply lights, etc.)  Anyone available?  If so, please contact me
privately.  I have had this happen to me in the past and fixed it that
way.
Not everyone is comfortable with opening a computer and doing such things,
but it should only take a few minutes.  I assume the person will come to
you.
Thanks
Bill Degnan


Has the battery been removed? If not... :-(


--
: Ethan O'Toole

Re: formatting MFM drives on a IBM PC

[Ethan via cctalk]

IIRC, the first time I had problems with the low level format was with one
of the early IDE controllers and a 230MB Maxtor. Crapped out the entire
firmware, was never able to get it to admit who it was again. Seemed to
work okay with earlier MFM/RLL 40 MB and 80 MB Conner drives (I think, it's
been a while).


AFAIK a lot of IDE drives store part of the firmware on the spinning disk 
in a special section of the disk. Not sure if those early models used that 
trick to cut costs or not?


The idea of IDE, as my understanding, is the controller that existed as an 
ISA card was moved onto the actual drive, and then what became the 
controller was mostly just extending the ISA bus over to the drive.


My first hard drive was a SCSI-1 ?Fuji? on a Seagate 8-bit ISA card. 
Families Tandy 1000sx. I remember in the end playing with low level 
formatting tools and interleves, then the drive dying at the same time. I 
correlated the two together then, but looking back I think the issue was 
drive motor/bearings/stuck rotation of platters.

Re: formatting MFM drives on a IBM PC

[Ethan via cctalk]

Hi,
trying to check some MFM drives I have on my shelf.
Have an IBM PC AT, with an WD1003 controller in it.
So, what is the best(?) or easiest piece of software,
to format the drives, check for bad blocks, etc.?
I think I remember something like "ontrack" for doing it,
but didn't touch PCs for a while ...
Ideas? Links?
Thanks!


There were utilities like SpinWrite, and of course dos format.

Some of the controller cards have a utility in rom that you can access via 
debug.com (I forget what the address is.)


I don't know if it's a good idea to low level format a drive or not.


--
: Ethan O'Toole

Re: I REALLY need a scrounger in Richmond, VA

[Ethan via cctalk]

Just a friendly bump. Did anyone post this on vcfed or any mac collector 
forums? 


I went there. There was no Apple stuff that I saw, mostly 386 and 486 
computers. He is a scrapper as a retirement job in RVA and does a lot of 
Hamfests, been doing the for many years.


Prices are based on eBay sold prices, minus a percentage. He said he has 
one or two people that will buy large amounts of stuff straight up then 
eBay it all -- sometimes parting it all out.


Much of the systems from that haul had rust/corrosion - they were in some 
sort of overgrown garage, they were all university / govt surplus from a 
long time ago.


Sounds like he gets cool things from time to time, for free. And you will 
pay a decent amount to get them from him :-) Such is life.


My friend bought 5 computers, 2 PS/2 systems (one 386 and one 486) and 3 
generic 386 computers. Came in at $100. The PS/2 systems were pretty rough 
though (corrosion on metal parts internally.)


I think friends are going back to try to buy some CGA monitors.

Ya roll the dice!

Re: Convex C220 lives

[Ethan via cctalk]

managed to bring a Convex C220 (dual vector CPU mini supercomputer from
1988) back to life. Both CPUs are working, but I¹m running with a single
CPU because of the power it draws with two CPUs. Next challenges: the
Convex C1, and quad vector processor C240 (not before I¹ve upgraded the
power feed).


This is amazing! Kudos and congrats, those systems are so rare. I've never 
heard anyone mention in the hobbyist community ever. Never thought I would 
hear of one running!



--
: Ethan O'Toole

Re: way off topic- EXOGEN bone stimulator

[Ethan via cctalk]

Does anyone here know how to reprogram an Exogen bone simulator?


I had one of those things from when I broke my leg in a segway accident. 
Don't remember the brand. My guess was they were IR configured. They won't 
ever reprogram them or reuse them since it's a cheap to produce medical 
device and they sell them for huge markup.


Check diet, better food resulted in my improvement not the bone stim 
AFAIK.


 -- : Ethan O'Toole

Re: Convex documentation online (C220 arrived)

[Ethan via cctalk]

My Convex C220 arrived about a week ago, so I now have a C1, C1 XL, and a
C220. A C240 will follow in a few weeks. Along with the C220 came some
installation tapes, and a large volume of documentation (some 300
documents). As long as I don¹t receive any objections to the being online
from HP (current owner of Convex), I¹ve put most of the loose-leaf hardware
documentation online at


Amazing! I saw a Convex system at auction many years ago, didn't think I 
would ever see another one in the wild let alone being restored to working 
condition. Kudos!


- Ethan


--
Ethan O'Toole

Re: Chip in first Apple AirPort WiFi

[Ethan via cctalk]

If I recall correctly, as you've noted it was a WaveLAN / Orinoco silver
card ('HERMES' chipset), connected via PCMCIA to a SBC based around an AMD
ELAN SC400 - 33AC 486-like CPU. It had something like a couple megs of RAM
and maybe 512K of FLASH. I don't know what OS it ran, if anything 'off the
shelf'
Why do you ask?


One of the early Apple Airports ran NetBSD, I believe supported by Wasabi 
Systems originally of NYC, then Norfolk VA. Not sure if it was the first.


I still have a pre-wifi 13" long ISA WaveLan card that is in the 915mhz 
ISM band sitting on a shelf.


--
Ethan O'Toole