Re: LASERS! && Freemont Street LED array (was Re: Cray J932SE (was Re: Straight 8 up on Ebay just now))
No, Brad was not the founder of NewTek. He did do early designs of the Toaster. - John Derp! Checked, he built the first Video Toaster but not the company. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brad_Carvey Thanks for the correction! -- Ethan O'Toole
Re: LASERS! && Freemont Street LED array (was Re: Cray J932SE (was Re: Straight 8 up on Ebay just now))
At 05:13 PM 7/19/2016, et...@757.org wrote: >I'm sure you know the thing about Garth/Dana Carvey? Him mentioning the Unix >book in Waynes World was a nod to his brother, his brother founded NewTek the >company behind the Amiga video toaster and the current NewTek Tricaster stuff? No, Brad was not the founder of NewTek. He did do early designs of the Toaster. - John
Re: Straight 8 up on Ebay just now
agreed. if it would have been 11/20 and a h960 would have been muccc more reasonable.. what was there was totally amazing. Ed# In a message dated 7/24/2016 9:05:37 P.M. US Mountain Standard Time, j...@mercury.lcs.mit.edu writes: > From: Glen Slick > For the curious about the eBay market value of the PDP-11/20 today That one was a once-in-a-lifetime thing, though: not only a KA11 in absolutely pristine condition, but also an additional BA11 stuffed to the gills with memory; the most complete set of original documentation I have _ever_ seen with a computer that old; a complete H960 in perfect condition, with all the blank panels, the rear door, etc; trays and trays of original paper tape software, etc, etc. When you consider that that PDP-11/70 that went a while back for $10K - and -11/70's are a lot more common that -11/20's - I think this one was easily worth what it went for. I'm quite serious - I doubt we'll ever see another -11/20 in this good a shape, and this complete, for sale, at least, not in my remaining lifetime. Noel
Re: Straight 8 up on Ebay just now
On 7/24/2016 9:50 PM, Mark Linimon wrote: On Sun, Jul 24, 2016 at 08:08:53PM -0700, Glen Slick wrote: For the curious about the eBay market value of the PDP-11/20 today, it just sold for $5,655.55 well, there goes that fantasy. mcl Well in 1972 you could get ... http://www.village.org/pdp-11/faq.pages/pricing.pdp11-05-15-apr-1972.html Too bad I/O other than TTY is not listed. Ben.
Re: Straight 8 up on Ebay just now
> From: Glen Slick > For the curious about the eBay market value of the PDP-11/20 today That one was a once-in-a-lifetime thing, though: not only a KA11 in absolutely pristine condition, but also an additional BA11 stuffed to the gills with memory; the most complete set of original documentation I have _ever_ seen with a computer that old; a complete H960 in perfect condition, with all the blank panels, the rear door, etc; trays and trays of original paper tape software, etc, etc. When you consider that that PDP-11/70 that went a while back for $10K - and -11/70's are a lot more common that -11/20's - I think this one was easily worth what it went for. I'm quite serious - I doubt we'll ever see another -11/20 in this good a shape, and this complete, for sale, at least, not in my remaining lifetime. Noel
Re: Straight 8 up on Ebay just now
buyer aranges pick prolly hurt the price as well On Sun, Jul 24, 2016 at 10:50 PM, Mark Linimonwrote: > On Sun, Jul 24, 2016 at 08:08:53PM -0700, Glen Slick wrote: > > For the curious about the eBay market value of the PDP-11/20 today, it > > just sold for $5,655.55 > > well, there goes that fantasy. > > mcl >
Re: Straight 8 up on Ebay just now
On Sun, Jul 24, 2016 at 08:08:53PM -0700, Glen Slick wrote: > For the curious about the eBay market value of the PDP-11/20 today, it > just sold for $5,655.55 well, there goes that fantasy. mcl
Re: Straight 8 up on Ebay just now
Think it was add on box that went for the $! ---Ed# Sent from my Verizon, Samsung Galaxy smartphone Original message From: Glen Slick <glen.sl...@gmail.com> Date: 7/24/16 20:08 (GMT-07:00) To: "General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts" <cctalk@classiccmp.org> Subject: Re: Straight 8 up on Ebay just now > > Straight PDP-8 > http://www.ebay.com/itm/152171436497 > > PDP-11/20 > http://www.ebay.com/itm/201624309371 For the curious about the eBay market value of the PDP-11/20 today, it just sold for $5,655.55
Re: Straight 8 up on Ebay just now
> > Straight PDP-8 > http://www.ebay.com/itm/152171436497 > > PDP-11/20 > http://www.ebay.com/itm/201624309371 For the curious about the eBay market value of the PDP-11/20 today, it just sold for $5,655.55
Re: LASERS! && Freemont Street LED array (was Re: Cray J932SE (was Re: Straight 8 up on Ebay just now))
The only ones worth using that I'm aware of are Scream Tracker and Impulse Tracker and neither was around in the 16 bit ISA days pre-386, IIRC. I doubt Scream Tracker would be able to function on a 286 anyhow. It puts a 486DX2/66 at about 50% CPU load, from my recollection. The Amiga trackers were more efficient, but you got fewer channels, too. OctaMED was 8-channel and that seemed massive until it wasn't. IT was VGA but I think Scream Tracker was a 50 line text mode or something. I guess it depends if Scream Tracker used protected mode. Hmm intarnet says 386s were out during 1990 which was the year the more popular Scream Tracker was released. I swear my friend was playing coma.s3m on his Northgate 286-16 via PC Speaker Several made it there over the years. I can't remember which ones, but I do remember one day I was listening to Nectarine Radio and heard one of my own Protracker MODs. That was awesome. Awesome! Ahhh, those air-car-mounted-on-hydraulics "ride" thingys? Huh. Laser disc was always a cool thing, too. Remember "Time Traveler" ? That "holographic" (it wasn't really but it looked damn cool) game were the characters appeared in front of some kind of curved mirror volumetric display uhm, thingamabob? It used a Laserdisc too. Of course I loved Space Ace and Dragons Lair along with every other self-respecting geek, too. Also, my favorite was called "Thayer's Quest" in which you were a wizard's apprentice. Yes. There is an arcade in Chicago called Galloping Ghost which has both of the Sega holographic machines, and some of the laserdisc games like Space Ace and Dragons Lair. In the arcade world, due to the unreliability of the laserdisc players often used in games like Dragons Lair (it uses a real HeNe laser tube!) it's okay for people to move them to the MS-DOS Daphne replacement system and such. Normally MAME/emulation is frowned upon by collectors but the LD games get an okay. The way they work is amusing, the game board drives the LED score and just watches for joystick directions and sends the chapter skip commands via RS-232 or RS-422 to the serial port equipped commercial LD player in the cabinet. Pretty simple but legendary. Most commercial real estate weasels think you are the next "sucker" coming through the door. They seem to believe that some old crufty warehouse that's been empty for a decade is actually worth the ridiculous rents they charge. You'd think it'd be better to have the buildings occupied and someone giving you a bit or two to cover the property taxes, but they still don't seem to see their clients as anything more than walking cash registers. It's definitely a hard slog to find a screaming deal on space. All the hacker-spaces here in big-D have lots of folks pitching in to make ends meet. The first one here with an Ethan-style laser arcade will definitely get my membership dues. Hah awesome! Then there is the problem that nobody but old dudes remember how fun/cool arcades could be, back in a time when they looked a lot more like nightclubs. I remember them so crowded you had to go out for some fresh air. Flynn's Arcade may never live again, but it's still a paradigm of cool in my mind. Then again, I'm probably too old now to adjudicate "cool" for anyone. If you do open an laser-illuminated LED-walled arcade, let us all know so we can put you on the cctalk road-trip map. We'll rent a bus in Seattle, and drive to your place (or visa versa). I nominate Fred to run the logistics. I'll drive. :-P I help with an event each year called MAGFest which is currently in the DC area. We had 278 arcade cabinets in the arcade room and a decent deployment of classic computers in the museum. The attendance is 20,000 people or so -- it's a large event. Much of it is video game music related, and there is a ton of history and classic computer tie ins there. All the synth chips all the machines. The event is an insane amount of work though, I think it was 14 26' penske trucks some of which made 3 trips full of arcade cabinets, and the computer museum stuff occupied 2/3rds of a truck and was all owned by 3 people (just their personal stash.) No big metal mostly plastic micros but it's all hands on. There is a big arcade event in Seattle / Tacoma that has 450+ games, and there is CAX in California which just happened that has a large collection. They have a lot more people with lower numbers of games from what I understand where MAGFest has a handful of collectors with very large collections. There is definitely interest in the retro computer stuff growing outside of the age group the reminisces about it. There is also some cross over I think between the arcade and classic computer (plastic micro) crowd. -- Ethan O'Toole
Re: Cray J932SE (was Re: Straight 8 up on Ebay just now)
On 07/20/2016 05:59 AM, Paul Koning wrote: > Three phase power shows up in a bunch of places. Some high current > power supplies (pre switching era) use three phase input to increase > the ripple frequency and reduce its amplitude, which significantly > reduces the size of the required filter capacitors. I remember that > in the KL-10. CDC 6000 mainframes go further, not only using 3 > phase but also 400 Hz power for that reason (that also shrinks the > transformers). Indeed, I was going to mention this. A full-wave 3-phase rectifier configuration produces ripple at six times the distribution frequency and the output is largely DC. Even more interesting is the use of a transformer with both wye- and delta-configured secondaries. This introduces a bonus phase shift of 30 degrees, with the result that the ripple frequency is twelve times the mains frequency (e.g. 720Hz on 60Hz mains). I remember working summers as a projectionist at a drive-in movie theater that used carbon-arc lamps. Many such installations simply used a motor-DC generator for the arc supply, but one theater used a transformer-rectifier setup on 3-phase power. Even above the noise of the projector and the exhaust fans, you could hear the 360 Hz "whine" of the arc lamps. 3 phase induction motors are simple in the extreme--no starting capacitors or coils. I think (but am not sure) that they also deliver a lot more starting torque than the typical single-phase induction motor--at least that's been my experience with machine tools. FWIW, --Chuck
Re: LASERS! && Freemont Street LED array (was Re: Cray J932SE (was Re: Straight 8 up on Ebay just now))
On Wed, 20 Jul 2016, et...@757.org wrote: > Very cool! I'm a.d.d. a bit with hobbies. On the synth side I recently > picked up a Roland MT-32, so that was an achievement unlocked. Hope to > find an Oberheim Matrix 6 at some point. I'm not a keyboard guru like some on the list, but I've owned a Roland FP-9 and Alesis DG8. Now I use a Yamaha Clavinova. I miss the DG8, but I traded it off once it's internal amp started fritzing out. > I started computeres on Atari 800XL, then next computer was family's > Tandy 1000SX. I had a friend with an Atari 800XL and I was very impressed with it. I remember a few demos (one with a metallic rendered robot walking toward you, I remember was most impressive). I was surprised that it was just an 8bit machine. At first I thought it might have been 16 bit! > At some point ended up with a Sound Blaster 1.0 in that (Still have the > SB.) I don't remember if there was ever a tracker on that, but I > remember Scream Tracker on the 386 (same sound card IIRC.) The only ones worth using that I'm aware of are Scream Tracker and Impulse Tracker and neither was around in the 16 bit ISA days pre-386, IIRC. I doubt Scream Tracker would be able to function on a 286 anyhow. It puts a 486DX2/66 at about 50% CPU load, from my recollection. The Amiga trackers were more efficient, but you got fewer channels, too. OctaMED was 8-channel and that seemed massive until it wasn't. > Spent a lot of time messing with Scream Tracker and Renaissance Composer > 669. Yes! I almost forgot about Composer, that was another good one. > If you haven't looked, look on the hornet mod archive to see if any are > on there? Several made it there over the years. I can't remember which ones, but I do remember one day I was listening to Nectarine Radio and heard one of my own Protracker MODs. That was awesome. > There was recently a video from popular artist deadmau5 where he was > driving around interviewing some DJ and he asked the guy if he used to > mess with ScreamTracker and all that -- I was pretty shocked. He was just showing proper street cred. +1 Deadmou5 > Interesting! Never seen the show, we tried to go to it once while at > Defcon but messed up on the time. So they're still running it on an > Amiga? That's awesome! It took some extra hard Googling to find anything about it. The only time I'd even heard about it was when I was actually in Vegas working as a Def Con goon. > Some of the amusement parks had ride simulators that used Amiga + Laser > disk. It's interesting where the Amiga found it's niche. Ahhh, those air-car-mounted-on-hydraulics "ride" thingys? Huh. Laser disc was always a cool thing, too. Remember "Time Traveler" ? That "holographic" (it wasn't really but it looked damn cool) game were the characters appeared in front of some kind of curved mirror volumetric display uhm, thingamabob? It used a Laserdisc too. Of course I loved Space Ace and Dragons Lair along with every other self-respecting geek, too. Also, my favorite was called "Thayer's Quest" in which you were a wizard's apprentice. > Very cool! I always think about trying to do some sort of music venue > with a focus on live music + video recording / live streaming, or > arcades + old computers. > Here in Northern VA everything is crazy expensive tho, so coming across > commercial space for pennies is difficult (at this moment.) Most commercial real estate weasels think you are the next "sucker" coming through the door. They seem to believe that some old crufty warehouse that's been empty for a decade is actually worth the ridiculous rents they charge. You'd think it'd be better to have the buildings occupied and someone giving you a bit or two to cover the property taxes, but they still don't seem to see their clients as anything more than walking cash registers. It's definitely a hard slog to find a screaming deal on space. All the hacker-spaces here in big-D have lots of folks pitching in to make ends meet. The first one here with an Ethan-style laser arcade will definitely get my membership dues. Then there is the problem that nobody but old dudes remember how fun/cool arcades could be, back in a time when they looked a lot more like nightclubs. I remember them so crowded you had to go out for some fresh air. Flynn's Arcade may never live again, but it's still a paradigm of cool in my mind. Then again, I'm probably too old now to adjudicate "cool" for anyone. If you do open an laser-illuminated LED-walled arcade, let us all know so we can put you on the cctalk road-trip map. We'll rent a bus in Seattle, and drive to your place (or visa versa). I nominate Fred to run the logistics. I'll drive. :-P -Swift
Re: LASERS! && Freemont Street LED array (was Re: Cray J932SE (was Re: Straight 8 up on Ebay just now))
I knew it! Piano, bass, violin, and guitar, here. I play them all badly but guitar a little less badly. I've been an amateur for about 10 years and I've been taking guitar lessons for about three years, now. Sax, eh? Cool. I've never tried a reed-based instrument. Very cool! I'm a.d.d. a bit with hobbies. On the synth side I recently picked up a Roland MT-32, so that was an achievement unlocked. Hope to find an Oberheim Matrix 6 at some point. You have all the cool sound gear you need if you have an ST and a machine with a GUS! Well maybe an Amiga with Octamed or Protracker, but Scream Tracker and Impulse Tracker also rocks fairly hard with a GUS, so never mind. :-) I started computeres on Atari 800XL, then next computer was family's Tandy 1000SX. At some point ended up with a Sound Blaster 1.0 in that (Still have the SB.) I don't remember if there was ever a tracker on that, but I remember Scream Tracker on the 386 (same sound card IIRC.) Spent a lot of time messing with Scream Tracker and Renaissance Composer 669. As you can tell, I like trackers. I wrote a few MOD/IT/S3M files "back in the day". If you haven't looked, look on the hornet mod archive to see if any are on there? There was recently a video from popular artist deadmau5 where he was driving around interviewing some DJ and he asked the guy if he used to mess with ScreamTracker and all that -- I was pretty shocked. Ah... I finally found some mention of it. Check this out: "The light and sound spectacular runs on a master show controller and three sub-systems. The controller runs Stage Manager 3000 software on an Amiga computer originally installed when the show began in 1995. Murphy said the master controller sends commands to the video-display controller, light console and digitally automated audio system. The audio system, a recently upgraded LCS Matrix 3 system, distributes 550,000W of sound through 220 remote amplifiers located throughout the outdoor mall." From: http://www.signweb.com/content/night-lights Interesting! Never seen the show, we tried to go to it once while at Defcon but messed up on the time. So they're still running it on an Amiga? That's awesome! Some of the amusement parks had ride simulators that used Amiga + Laser disk. It's interesting where the Amiga found it's niche. Whoa, very neat. When I was in college I used to run shows out of an old machine shop in an industrial part of town. It started as just a practice place. However, I knew a bunch of artists. They weren't just other college kids but artists who are pretty well known in the area and responsible for large public works etc... They all had daughters, you see... Anyhow, they talked me into letting them setup some art "openings" at this same little dinky venue I had going. One of them was an electrical engineering student who would come up from Texas Tech and cover the place with LED matrices that he had built. It was really impressive tech for the 1990s. He could do things like color cycling, and display static frames, but not animation. It always brought in lots of folks (200-800 per show usually) who were impressed by our tiny art shows with the "Light Room" display. People gave canned food or $$$ to get in and we raised a bit of food and money for charity that way, too. Very cool! I always think about trying to do some sort of music venue with a focus on live music + video recording / live streaming, or arcades + old computers. Here in Northern VA everything is crazy expensive tho, so coming across commercial space for pennies is difficult (at this moment.) -- Ethan O'Toole
RE: LASERS! && Freemont Street LED array (was Re: Cray J932SE (was Re: Straight 8 up on Ebay just now))
On Tue, 19 Jul 2016, Mark Green wrote: > I don't know a lot about data transmission, my main application is > display. Thanks anyway for the informed reply. Do you happen to know the best place to view large format holograms? I'm just looking for your personal opinion, since you seem to be in the know about such things. I've been fascinated with holograms since I was a kid (ie.. the National Geographic comment). > The mathematics behind data transmission and display are similar, they > are based on wave propagation and diffraction and lots of Fourier > transforms. FFT is a wonderful and amazing algorithm. It's akin to Diffie-Hellman in it's magicalness, to me. Without it, imagine how poor (or non-existent) some technologies would be! > The laser power is not overly important, it's the resolution of > diffraction pattern or hologram that you produce. It's a very redundant > coding scheme, so part of the signal can be lost and you can still > recover all the information. Hmm, I'm guessing holograms have their own redundancy methods. I've seen Reed-Solomon matrices for such things, but that's the only one I know about. People write their Ph.D thesis on such things, so I'm not even a hobbyist, just an admirer of such tech. -Swift
Re: LASERS! && Freemont Street LED array (was Re: Cray J932SE (was Re: Straight 8 up on Ebay just now))
I wouldn't be doing that. I cited the cg6 by way of contrast. How the points get into the display hardware is still open, but a framebuffer seems unlikely to be involved. (I suppose a framebuffer with something like DVI-D could be used as a way to continuously replay sequences very fast, but it has its limitations. I'd rather build a hardware ring buffer, but I tend towards hardware hackery.) Ah gotcha. In the laser show world there are gadgets properly called DACs, that usually connect to a host computer via USB, ethernet, or in the old days parallel port or PCI/ISA bus. They usually have 8 to 24 bits per channel, and will have channels for X, Y, then colors (Red, blue, green for diode based systems -- or some have a lot more channels as it's possible to have different sets of the same color on different wavelengths. 445nm blue looks a lot different than the 473nm blue, etc.) The Etherdream is the open hobbyist ethernet/USB connected device and runs around $200. The Pangolin FB3 is Pangolin's USB and the FB4 is ethernet. The pangolin units mostly only work with Pangolin stuff when it comes to modern DACs but the Etherdream has more hobbyist type stuff using it. There is an "industry" pinout for the DB25 called ILDA that specifies the color and XY pins, safety interlocks and what not. Some DACs are differential signalling for running over longer cables. The old school Pangolin hardware is called QuadMod boards, so if you find a QuadMod card in an Amiga or a QuadMod32 in an ISA PC that's what those are. The QuadMod2000 runs on PCI computers, but still approaching classic since it was a Windows 2000 product. -- Ethan O'Toole
Re: LASERS! && Freemont Street LED array (was Re: Cray J932SE (was Re: Straight 8 up on Ebay just now))
On Tue, 19 Jul 2016, et...@757.org wrote: > I live in Virginia but go to a number of events every year. I dabble > with music a little, have some synths and midi hardware (and of course > an Atari ST setup, and a luggable Pentium 200 with a SB/GUS and Voyetra > Sequencer!) Also dabble a little with saxophones but it's been a while! I knew it! Piano, bass, violin, and guitar, here. I play them all badly but guitar a little less badly. I've been an amateur for about 10 years and I've been taking guitar lessons for about three years, now. Sax, eh? Cool. I've never tried a reed-based instrument. You have all the cool sound gear you need if you have an ST and a machine with a GUS! Well maybe an Amiga with Octamed or Protracker, but Scream Tracker and Impulse Tracker also rocks fairly hard with a GUS, so never mind. :-) As you can tell, I like trackers. I wrote a few MOD/IT/S3M files "back in the day". > Hmm interesting! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scala_%28company%29 No > mention of freemont street but their current market is digital signage. > That would have been one of the earliest LED video screens ever! Ah... I finally found some mention of it. Check this out: "The light and sound spectacular runs on a master show controller and three sub-systems. The controller runs Stage Manager 3000 software on an Amiga computer originally installed when the show began in 1995. Murphy said the master controller sends commands to the video-display controller, light console and digitally automated audio system. The audio system, a recently upgraded LCS Matrix 3 system, distributes 550,000W of sound through 220 remote amplifiers located throughout the outdoor mall." From: http://www.signweb.com/content/night-lights > I'm sure you know the thing about Garth/Dana Carvey? Him mentioning the > Unix book in Waynes World was a nod to his brother, his brother founded > NewTek the company behind the Amiga video toaster and the current NewTek > Tricaster stuff? I did know some of that story, but not all. That's really cool. > Also, you can put together your own freemont-street-living-room at not > totally insane prices now. I put together this LED video screen [...] Whoa, very neat. When I was in college I used to run shows out of an old machine shop in an industrial part of town. It started as just a practice place. However, I knew a bunch of artists. They weren't just other college kids but artists who are pretty well known in the area and responsible for large public works etc... They all had daughters, you see... Anyhow, they talked me into letting them setup some art "openings" at this same little dinky venue I had going. One of them was an electrical engineering student who would come up from Texas Tech and cover the place with LED matrices that he had built. It was really impressive tech for the 1990s. He could do things like color cycling, and display static frames, but not animation. It always brought in lots of folks (200-800 per show usually) who were impressed by our tiny art shows with the "Light Room" display. People gave canned food or $$$ to get in and we raised a bit of food and money for charity that way, too. -Swift
Re: LASERS! && Freemont Street LED array (was Re: Cray J932SE (was Re: Straight 8 up on Ebay just now))
> On Jul 20, 2016, at 9:12 AM, Mousewrote: > >> As far as sending video from a computer frame buffer, I think it >> might be way too fast. > > I wouldn't be doing that. I cited the cg6 by way of contrast. How the > points get into the display hardware is still open, but a framebuffer > seems unlikely to be involved. (I suppose a framebuffer with something > like DVI-D could be used as a way to continuously replay sequences very > fast, but it has its limitations. I'd rather build a hardware ring > buffer, but I tend towards hardware hackery.) Given modern processor speeds, an obvious answer is to do it the same way the CDC mainframes drive the console: a program loop feeding coordinates to the interface. You just need a loop that takes less than the acceptable refresh interval (30-50 ms or so) which isn't hard to do. Especially since the deflection performance is likely to be the limiting factor. paul
Re: LASERS! && Freemont Street LED array (was Re: Cray J932SE (was Re: Straight 8 up on Ebay just now))
> As far as sending video from a computer frame buffer, I think it > might be way too fast. I wouldn't be doing that. I cited the cg6 by way of contrast. How the points get into the display hardware is still open, but a framebuffer seems unlikely to be involved. (I suppose a framebuffer with something like DVI-D could be used as a way to continuously replay sequences very fast, but it has its limitations. I'd rather build a hardware ring buffer, but I tend towards hardware hackery.) /~\ The ASCII Mouse \ / Ribbon Campaign X Against HTMLmo...@rodents-montreal.org / \ Email! 7D C8 61 52 5D E7 2D 39 4E F1 31 3E E8 B3 27 4B
Re: LASERS! && Freemont Street LED array (was Re: Cray J932SE (was Re: Straight 8 up on Ebay just now))
> On Jul 19, 2016, at 4:58 PM, Wayne Sudolwrote: > > Laser technology to draw things like this is used in photo typesetters. A > laser beam is focused onto a thin (about 1/2" thick) many sided (about 8 > sides i think) spinning mirror. Each facet of the mirror is cut differently > to deflict the beam up, down or center it on a sheet of moving paper or a > plate of sensitized aluminum. Depending on the typesetter, the spinning mirror might just be horizontal deflection, with vertical positioning provided by the film transport motor. But in any case, those are raster scan systems. It's very easy to scan a light beam in a regular pattern at high speed, with schemes like this. DLP (micro-mirror chips) are also raster systems. paul
Re: DEC H-500 Computer Lab pins and docs (was Re: Straight 8 up on Ebay just now)
From: Karl-Wilhelm Wacker: Tuesday, July 19, 2016 5:21 PM This company does custom tapered pins in brass - There are others out there I'm sure. I would find out what their minimum is and get a bulk order together. http://www.stanlok.com/Taper_Pin_Pages/an386.html A place I worked for in the past had www.mill-max.com do a custon part for them, in the 100's - I would talk to them about a part also. From what I can gather from the websites you referred me to, the tapered part of the pin's dimensions are very close to the narrow end of a standard taper #4/0 in the 3/4" length? Have I done the math right on that? From there it would seem to be a matter of getting a way to mount the wire, and optionally to shorten the overall length of the pin and wire attachment to .65" from .75". (Or maybe just slot the pin's fat end, solder in the wire, and call it good.) I also thought about using a taper reamer to create molds and perhaps casting with solder around the fluxed wire. (Casting brass or bronze seemed to require more heat than I could generate easily.) (For some reason that I've forgotten over the years, my eBay search for suitable pins looks for "42107" and "42279". Never gotten any results for it, though.) Vince
Re: LASERS! && Freemont Street LED array (was Re: Cray J932SE (was Re: Straight 8 up on Ebay just now))
Laser technology to draw things like this is used in photo typesetters. A laser beam is focused onto a thin (about 1/2" thick) many sided (about 8 sides i think) spinning mirror. Each facet of the mirror is cut differently to deflict the beam up, down or center it on a sheet of moving paper or a plate of sensitized aluminum. The more facets you have, the more 'cuts' you can have and the beam can be deflicted more each time it hits the mirror. The electronics is mainly used to control the timing/pulsing/power of the laser beam hitting the mirror. Using the same idea, a larger mirror could be used to deflict the beam more and shine it on any surface. Think of the scene in the Val Kilmer movie "Real Genius" where they advertise a part using a laser beam. Wayne Sudol Riverside Press-Enterprise A Digital First Media Newspaper 1-951-368-9945 On Tue, Jul 19, 2016 at 1:45 PM, jim stephenswrote: > > > On 7/19/2016 1:22 PM, Noel Chiappa wrote: > >> Those have been around for decades - I recall seeing them used to draw >> things >> on the sides of building,_many_ moons ago. >> > I know that the pen motors from Brush recorders were used eons ago. They > have frequency response that is very high, and if you had the power to > drive them would move very quickly. > > Also Oscilligraph motors could be used, and already had mirrors mounted on > the end. > > Piezo actuators could be mounted on the Brush motors and swung for a > second degree of motion as well. > > These were in use in the 70's if not earlier. > Thanks > Jim > > Gould Brush example: > GOULD-BRUSH-220-Strip-Chart-Recorder-Model-15-6327-57-POWERS-ON-SEE-DETAILS > http://www.ebay.com/itm/262507072142 > > Oscillograph: > HONEYWELL-1406-VISICORDER-OSCILLOGRAPH > http://www.ebay.com/itm/272248210671 > >
Re: DEC H-500 Computer Lab pins and docs (was Re: Straight 8 up on Ebay just now)
This company does custom tapered pins in brass - There are others out there I'm sure. I would find out what their minimum is and get a bulk order together. http://www.stanlok.com/Taper_Pin_Pages/an386.html A place I worked for in the past had www.mill-max.com do a custon part for them, in the 100's - I would talk to them about a part also. Karl - Original Message - From: "Vincent Slyngstad" <v.slyngs...@frontier.com> To: "General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts" <cctalk@classiccmp.org> Sent: Tuesday, July 19, 2016 6:43 PM Subject: Re: DEC H-500 Computer Lab pins and docs (was Re: Straight 8 up on Ebay just now) From: Karl-Wilhelm Wacker: Tuesday, July 19, 2016 9:25 AM Does anyone have one of the patch cables, and can they measure the diameter of the pin and it's length? The width goes from about .093" near the tip to 0.1" near the crimp. The length of the tapered region is about 0.32". The rounded tip has a radius of .046" or so, and the crimp area is about .28" long, accommodating the stranded hook-up wire and insulation. The wire extends beyond the crimp into the tapered section, but I can't see in there to determine if it is soldered or what. Also, is it a straight pin or like a bannana jack with springy sides? Miniature banana jacks (not the regular ones) actually fit the holes OK, but are horribly expensive, and also wear on the soft brass holes. I've bought some of the stackable jumpers, and used them in a pinch, but it isn't that great of a solution. (It was actually on H901 lab panels, which have similar brass grommets.) http://www.so-much-stuff.com/pdp8/lab/lab.php Vince
RE: LASERS! && Freemont Street LED array (was Re: Cray J932SE (was Re: Straight 8 up on Ebay just now))
I don't know a lot about data transmission, my main application is display. The mathematics behind data transmission and display are similar, they are based on wave propagation and diffraction and lots of Fourier transforms. The laser power is not overly important, it's the resolution of diffraction pattern or hologram that you produce. It's a very redundant coding scheme, so part of the signal can be lost and you can still recover all the information. -Original Message- From: cctalk [mailto:cctalk-boun...@classiccmp.org] On Behalf Of Swift Griggs Sent: July 19, 2016 6:04 PM To: General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts <cctalk@classiccmp.org> Subject: RE: LASERS! && Freemont Street LED array (was Re: Cray J932SE (was Re: Straight 8 up on Ebay just now)) On Tue, 19 Jul 2016, Mark Green wrote: > In my day job I work on computational holography and other forms of > esoteric 3D displays, so I can give you some insight in how these > things work. Holography is amazing. Do you know much about so-called "free space optical" data transmission? I worked with some gear a few years ago that could transmit & receive using multiple lasers at 1Gbit. I was fascinated with that stuff, but the vendor had their folks do all the alignment and installation. So, I didn't get to work with it much. I wonder if you've seen faster speeds than that. I also wonder what the power levels look like for those lasers and what distances the really serious ones can reach. Can they still work in bad weather? It seemed like the ones that I mentioned, still worked in the rain. -Swift PS: It was the May 1984 National Geographic cover that blew me away and made me forever respect holography. :-) --- This email has been checked for viruses by Avast antivirus software. https://www.avast.com/antivirus
Re: LASERS! && Freemont Street LED array (was Re: Cray J932SE (was Re: Straight 8 up on Ebay just now))
> From: Mouse > my impression is that they're only for pre-prepared displays, and only > some displays (notably those that don't involve the beam turning any > sharp corners My vague recollection is that they could do pretty sharp corners, but it's been decades. IIRC, they were multi-coloured. > Turning sharp corners is the hard part with mechanical deflectors like > mirrors, as it means very high acceleration of the mechanical parts. Probably the trick is to do what old voice-coil actuator drives did for multi-track seeks, which was to evenly accelerate up to maximum velocity, coast at that until you got close to the target track, and then evenly ramp down, so that the head assembly's radial velocity goes to 0 as you get to the target track. (If you're not moving enough tracks to do the whole thing, you only ramp up part-way, then ramp back down.) The RK05 drive did this with fancy analog circuits, but these days one would do it in software. I would assume one would do something similar with the mirror; evenly accelerate up to maximum slew rate, then back down at the end of the move, so that when one gets to the corner, the mirror is mostly stationary, and so not so much force is needed to sharply change directions. Of course, this might make the parts of the line where the mirror is moving slower brighter, but perhaps one could tweak the brightness to compensate. Noel
Re: DEC H-500 Computer Lab pins and docs (was Re: Straight 8 up on Ebay just now)
From: Karl-Wilhelm Wacker: Tuesday, July 19, 2016 9:25 AM Does anyone have one of the patch cables, and can they measure the diameter of the pin and it's length? The width goes from about .093" near the tip to 0.1" near the crimp. The length of the tapered region is about 0.32". The rounded tip has a radius of .046" or so, and the crimp area is about .28" long, accommodating the stranded hook-up wire and insulation. The wire extends beyond the crimp into the tapered section, but I can't see in there to determine if it is soldered or what. Also, is it a straight pin or like a bannana jack with springy sides? Miniature banana jacks (not the regular ones) actually fit the holes OK, but are horribly expensive, and also wear on the soft brass holes. I've bought some of the stackable jumpers, and used them in a pinch, but it isn't that great of a solution. (It was actually on H901 lab panels, which have similar brass grommets.) http://www.so-much-stuff.com/pdp8/lab/lab.php Vince
Re: LASERS! && Freemont Street LED array (was Re: Cray J932SE (was Re: Straight 8 up on Ebay just now))
On 19/07/2016 21:46, Mouse wrote: You'd probably know, then - what's the fastest way to deflect a laser beam? In particular, I'm wondering how practical it might be to take a laser and turn it into a vector display Turning sharp corners is the hard part with mechanical deflectors like mirrors, as it means very high acceleration of the mechanical parts. I haven't done the math to be sure, but, until/unless taught otherwise by testing, I'd feel dubious about clipping the X and Y signal bandwidths at anything lower than ~1MHz. If you want to experiment, you might try to find the mirror/coil assemblies from a Pioneer laserdisk player or similar. They consist of a small mirror mounted on a moving coil so as to turn on one axis through an angle of some +/-10deg (total 20deg). They're light enough to respond somewhere in the kHz (maybe 10s of kHz) range if you only need small deflections, rather than the full 20deg. I've got one here, but never got round to trying it out. -- Pete
Re: LASERS! && Freemont Street LED array (was Re: Cray J932SE (was Re: Straight 8 up on Ebay just now))
Killer. I wish we were neighbors, Ethan. We'd be able to throw the most awesome block parties, I swear. I bet you are a musician, too. I live in Virginia but go to a number of events every year. I dabble with music a little, have some synths and midi hardware (and of course an Atari ST setup, and a luggable Pentium 200 with a SB/GUS and Voyetra Sequencer!) Also dabble a little with saxophones but it's been a while! Okay, after talking about the recent roots of that hobby, and in an effort to keep this slightly on topic, do you know anything about the original animations used on Freemont street in Las Vegas? I was told that at one time it was run from an Amiga using Scala "and some other stuff". If you haven't seen it, it's a giant (uhm, like 4 city blocks) color LED array and a big sound system. Hmm interesting! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scala_%28company%29 No mention of freemont street but their current market is digital signage. That would have been one of the earliest LED video screens ever! I'm sure you know the thing about Garth/Dana Carvey? Him mentioning the Unix book in Waynes World was a nod to his brother, his brother founded NewTek the company behind the Amiga video toaster and the current NewTek Tricaster stuff? Also, you can put together your own freemont-street-living-room at not totally insane prices now. I put together this LED video screen, it's a square meter of panels, the software screen scrapes Windows desktop sends it over gigabit: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=78RUIGVvQ5E -- Ethan O'Toole
Re: LASERS! && Freemont Street LED array (was Re: Cray J932SE (was Re: Straight 8 up on Ebay just now))
Yeah, me too, but my impression is that they're only for pre-prepared displays, and only some displays (notably those that don't involve the beam turning any sharp corners, such as Lissajous figures). My impression may, of course, have been - be - incorrect, which is what I'm asking for; if you've seen such displays involving sharp-corner turns of the beam and run-time chosen displays, then obviously my impression is incorrect and the technology exists. The devices are called Galvometers and they work like audio meters. There is in deed a mirror, and they are used in an XY pair. Old gas lasers used a RF driven crystal to select a specific wavelength of light (and deflect all other wavelengths.) Those crystal setups are known as Poly-chromatic acouso-optic modulation or PCAOM for short. The current fastest scanners that I know of on the market for laser show display would be the Pangolin Saturns. Next up would be something in the 6800 series from Cambridge Technology. The galvos can do sharp turns, text, and graphics. There is software for Linux that can do edge tracing and send it out of a modified sound card DAC (has to pass DC voltage?) to the X/Y scanner drivers. Most galvos have a feedback loop for inertial correction. The laser display world uses a test frame known as the ILDA (International Laser Display Association) and there is a performance benchmark in points per second, so 12,000 points per second is old spec, 30,000 points per second is a newer spec. Now people are claiming 60 and 90K on the modern, expensive, quality scanners. The Chinese stuff is mostly 30K and 40K. The old days 8 degrees was the scan width but now people push it way further. Old technology stored the laser show information on various formats for shows ... like 8 track multitrack reel to reel, and then the Alesis SVHS based ADAT machines were popular for a while. Now everything is directly driven from computer. Some of the old systems are being recovered here and there, and similar to vintage computers people pet them and clean them and take care of them. I'm pretty certain some old school stuff existed in the S100 world, but none of that has surfaced. There is also analog consoles and the like. As far as sending video from a computer frame buffer, I think it might be way too fast. Also, the more you scan and the faster you scan the laser power has to be higher. And there can also be issues with modulating the actual laser diodes. Direct solid state run at one rate and diode pumped solid state run at another rate. This is a random picking of a laser graphics show, projected on a scrim. It's from LD-2000 which would of been Windows 2000 to XP era software, but the show is pushed into a card that is a Motorola 68040 on a board with RAM where the card just runs the show once it's loaded. Pangolin's roots are on the Amiga so I've always grinned thinking they just put an Amiga on a board: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=khVGAOLTaTA There are a few ports of MAME for running vector arcade games into laser projectors, the older hardware had quite a bit of flicker. There is also someone who has rebuilt, from scratch, several older analog consoles that had some fame. China really opened the floodgates with the availability of parts, and lots of projectors and low cost galvos. Before China a set of galvos could run a thousand or more dollars with the amps. And the PCAOM hardware would costs thousands. When I had the argon system I had picked it up from a NASA auction while hunting lasers, SGIs, and Suns. Everyone will probably cry when I say that one of the first NASA auctions I went to there was a Convex system there.
RE: LASERS! && Freemont Street LED array (was Re: Cray J932SE (was Re: Straight 8 up on Ebay just now))
On Tue, 19 Jul 2016, Mark Green wrote: > In my day job I work on computational holography and other forms of > esoteric 3D displays, so I can give you some insight in how these things > work. Holography is amazing. Do you know much about so-called "free space optical" data transmission? I worked with some gear a few years ago that could transmit & receive using multiple lasers at 1Gbit. I was fascinated with that stuff, but the vendor had their folks do all the alignment and installation. So, I didn't get to work with it much. I wonder if you've seen faster speeds than that. I also wonder what the power levels look like for those lasers and what distances the really serious ones can reach. Can they still work in bad weather? It seemed like the ones that I mentioned, still worked in the rain. -Swift PS: It was the May 1984 National Geographic cover that blew me away and made me forever respect holography. :-)
RE: LASERS! && Freemont Street LED array (was Re: Cray J932SE (was Re: Straight 8 up on Ebay just now))
In my day job I work on computational holography and other forms of esoteric 3D displays, so I can give you some insight in how these things work. Remember these are vector displays and not raster displays, so the computational side is not an issue. You are basically looking at a pair of D/A convertors that are driven by a pair of parallel ports. The circuit is probably a bit more complicated than that, but you get the idea. This can be done interactively with no problem. With a modern CPU you are probably looking at less than 1% of the CPU time. The complication occurs with the lasers and the optics. For an outdoor display you need a very high power laser, which will literally melt standard optics devices. There are special lens and mirrors that are used with high power lasers, look at Edmund Optics. The deflection range is relatively small, around 1 degree. The limiting factor is how fast you can move the mirror, which depends on mass and inertia. With these small deflections you can get pretty high rates. Indoors with low light you can get away with much lower power, 10mW is more than enough. With this power level you can use standard optics, and the lasers are quite cheap < $30 as long as you like red. I've heard of people using TI DMDs to deflect laser beams. Even the low end DMDs can display 1 bit raster images at 4000Hz. One of the problems with this technology is it's hard to modulate the laser intensity, which greatly restricts the range of colours you can produce. -Original Message- From: cctalk [mailto:cctalk-boun...@classiccmp.org] On Behalf Of Mouse Sent: July 19, 2016 4:47 PM To: cctalk@classiccmp.org Subject: Re: LASERS! && Freemont Street LED array (was Re: Cray J932SE (was Re: Straight 8 up on Ebay just now)) >> You'd probably know, then - what's the fastest way to deflect a laser >> beam? In particular, I'm wondering how practical it might be to take >> a laser and turn it into a vector display on a handy blank wall [...] > What bandwidth (deflection rate) do you need? Full scale in a > microsecond? In 10 microseconds? Well, if it takes longer than 100ms to replot the display, it will flicker visibly, and the more under 100ms the better. In that time I'd like to draw at least a couple hundred lines, though most of them will be short (line length maybe 1-15% of corner-to-corner distance). What kind of radians/second deflection rates this means depends on how far from the wall you put the projector. But, in terms of the bandwidth on the X and Y axis signals? If we say 200 lines at 25 ms replot (I get 20ms frame rate out of the cg6 for displays significantly more complex than that - ie, with the cg6 the actual limitation is the video signal vertical frequency), that's 125us/line. Turning sharp corners is the hard part with mechanical deflectors like mirrors, as it means very high acceleration of the mechanical parts. I haven't done the math to be sure, but, until/unless taught otherwise by testing, I'd feel dubious about clipping the X and Y signal bandwidths at anything lower than ~1MHz. /~\ The ASCII Mouse \ / Ribbon Campaign X Against HTMLmo...@rodents-montreal.org / \ Email! 7D C8 61 52 5D E7 2D 39 4E F1 31 3E E8 B3 27 4B --- This email has been checked for viruses by Avast antivirus software. https://www.avast.com/antivirus
Re: Cray J932SE (was Re: Straight 8 up on Ebay just now)
On Tue, Jul 19, 2016 at 5:47 PM, Mousewrote: > For example, I once had a neighbour who replaced an outlet in his > kitchen. Turned off the breaker, removed the old one, put in the new > one, all very nice. Turned the breaker for that circuit back on and > popped the service main breaker. Heh, I knew what was coming here and that it must mean you were in Canada (and only then checked the sender...) But all this seems like a red herring. Surely the three-phase power requiring devices only require three phase for the cooling systems? Wouldn't it be easier to just use a modern switching power supply to provide 5V and feed cold air directly from your home hvac and not try to run 50-year old cooling and power? -- greg
Re: LASERS! && Freemont Street LED array (was Re: Cray J932SE (was Re: Straight 8 up on Ebay just now))
On 7/19/2016 1:22 PM, Noel Chiappa wrote: Those have been around for decades - I recall seeing them used to draw things on the sides of building,_many_ moons ago. I know that the pen motors from Brush recorders were used eons ago. They have frequency response that is very high, and if you had the power to drive them would move very quickly. Also Oscilligraph motors could be used, and already had mirrors mounted on the end. Piezo actuators could be mounted on the Brush motors and swung for a second degree of motion as well. These were in use in the 70's if not earlier. Thanks Jim Gould Brush example: GOULD-BRUSH-220-Strip-Chart-Recorder-Model-15-6327-57-POWERS-ON-SEE-DETAILS http://www.ebay.com/itm/262507072142 Oscillograph: HONEYWELL-1406-VISICORDER-OSCILLOGRAPH http://www.ebay.com/itm/272248210671
Re: LASERS! && Freemont Street LED array (was Re: Cray J932SE (was Re: Straight 8 up on Ebay just now))
>> I'm wondering how practical it might be to take a laser and turn it >> into a vector display on a handy blank wall > Those have been around for decades - I recall seeing them used to > draw things on the sides of building, _many_ moons ago. Yeah, me too, but my impression is that they're only for pre-prepared displays, and only some displays (notably those that don't involve the beam turning any sharp corners, such as Lissajous figures). My impression may, of course, have been - be - incorrect, which is what I'm asking for; if you've seen such displays involving sharp-corner turns of the beam and run-time chosen displays, then obviously my impression is incorrect and the technology exists. /~\ The ASCII Mouse \ / Ribbon Campaign X Against HTMLmo...@rodents-montreal.org / \ Email! 7D C8 61 52 5D E7 2D 39 4E F1 31 3E E8 B3 27 4B
Re: LASERS! && Freemont Street LED array (was Re: Cray J932SE (was Re: Straight 8 up on Ebay just now))
> From: Mouse > I'm wondering how practical it might be to take a laser and turn it > into a vector display on a handy blank wall Those have been around for decades - I recall seeing them used to draw things on the sides of building, _many_ moons ago. I'm assuming they bounce the beam off a mirror, and actuate the mirror, but I don't actually know how they worked. Noel
Re: LASERS! && Freemont Street LED array (was Re: Cray J932SE (was Re: Straight 8 up on Ebay just now))
> On Jul 19, 2016, at 4:02 PM, Mousewrote: > >>> Light show hobby. > > You'd probably know, then - what's the fastest way to deflect a laser > beam? In particular, I'm wondering how practical it might be to take a > laser and turn it into a vector display on a handy blank wall - but > that requires some very fast acceleration of the spot, probably faster > than mechanical deflection can support (though if I'm wrong I'd love to > know it). For example, does piezoelectricity make a crystal distort > enough to use it as an optical deflection element in such a scheme? > (My guess is no, but I don't actually know.) > > I have SPARCstations with cg6s that I can use as vector displays, but > they are vectors converted to raster. I'd like to do real vector - a > parallel port driving a couple of moderately fast D->A converters might > be able to do it; it might take something better, dunno. But without > the deflection mechanism there's no point in even trying to design the > rest of it. What bandwidth (deflection rate) do you need? Full scale in a microsecond? In 10 microseconds? Piezoelectric loudspeakers work up into ultrasonic range. A mirror attached to such an actuator would give you variable deflection. So 10 microseconds might be doable. A faster (no moving parts) scheme might be to use Kerr cells. I don't know if that has been done, but from what I understand about the Kerr effect it seems plausible that it could be. paul
Re: LASERS! && Freemont Street LED array (was Re: Cray J932SE (was Re: Straight 8 up on Ebay just now))
On Tue, 19 Jul 2016, Mouse wrote: > You'd probably know, then - what's the fastest way to deflect a laser > beam? Whoa. Interesting problem since a photon carries no charge and thus you can't horizontally or vertically deflect it with a magnetic field. I guess that's why folks make things like these: http://www.newson.be/rhothor.htm > In particular, I'm wondering how practical it might be to take a laser > and turn it into a vector display on a handy blank wall - but that > requires some very fast acceleration of the spot, probably faster than > mechanical deflection can support (though if I'm wrong I'd love to know > it). I wonder how laser projectors work. The must use some kind of internal screen like the ones that use "lamps". I'm guessing they just use lasers instead of lamps to get a brightness and longevity boost. > For example, does piezoelectricity make a crystal distort enough to use > it as an optical deflection element in such a scheme? (My guess is no, > but I don't actually know.) I found mention of something like that in this paper: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1875389214002351 It's in the references: F. Filhol, E. Defay, C. Divoux, C. Zinck, M.-T. Delaye Resonant micro-mirror excited by a thin-film piezoelectric actuator for fast optical beam scanning That sounds wicked-cool, by the way. If you ever do build something like that, please share some video! -Swift
Re: LASERS! && Freemont Street LED array (was Re: Cray J932SE (was Re: Straight 8 up on Ebay just now))
They generaly use mirrors - I would cobble something together by taking the laser diode read head from a CD rom, and removing the diode assembly, and glue a small, thin, front surface mirror in its place, and drive the coil from the output of an audio amp, just to try it out. A pair of these, at right angles, would give you X/Y deflection. Karl - Original Message - From: "Mouse" <mo...@rodents-montreal.org> To: <cctalk@classiccmp.org> Sent: Tuesday, July 19, 2016 4:02 PM Subject: Re: LASERS! && Freemont Street LED array (was Re: Cray J932SE (was Re: Straight 8 up on Ebay just now)) Light show hobby. You'd probably know, then - what's the fastest way to deflect a laser beam? In particular, I'm wondering how practical it might be to take a laser and turn it into a vector display on a handy blank wall - but that requires some very fast acceleration of the spot, probably faster than mechanical deflection can support (though if I'm wrong I'd love to know it). For example, does piezoelectricity make a crystal distort enough to use it as an optical deflection element in such a scheme? (My guess is no, but I don't actually know.) I have SPARCstations with cg6s that I can use as vector displays, but they are vectors converted to raster. I'd like to do real vector - a parallel port driving a couple of moderately fast D->A converters might be able to do it; it might take something better, dunno. But without the deflection mechanism there's no point in even trying to design the rest of it. /~\ The ASCII Mouse \ / Ribbon Campaign X Against HTML mo...@rodents-montreal.org / \ Email! 7D C8 61 52 5D E7 2D 39 4E F1 31 3E E8 B3 27 4B
Re: LASERS! && Freemont Street LED array (was Re: Cray J932SE (was Re: Straight 8 up on Ebay just now))
>> Light show hobby. You'd probably know, then - what's the fastest way to deflect a laser beam? In particular, I'm wondering how practical it might be to take a laser and turn it into a vector display on a handy blank wall - but that requires some very fast acceleration of the spot, probably faster than mechanical deflection can support (though if I'm wrong I'd love to know it). For example, does piezoelectricity make a crystal distort enough to use it as an optical deflection element in such a scheme? (My guess is no, but I don't actually know.) I have SPARCstations with cg6s that I can use as vector displays, but they are vectors converted to raster. I'd like to do real vector - a parallel port driving a couple of moderately fast D->A converters might be able to do it; it might take something better, dunno. But without the deflection mechanism there's no point in even trying to design the rest of it. /~\ The ASCII Mouse \ / Ribbon Campaign X Against HTMLmo...@rodents-montreal.org / \ Email! 7D C8 61 52 5D E7 2D 39 4E F1 31 3E E8 B3 27 4B
LASERS! && Freemont Street LED array (was Re: Cray J932SE (was Re: Straight 8 up on Ebay just now))
On Tue, 19 Jul 2016, et...@757.org wrote: > Light show hobby. Inspired by the Def Leppard music video "Pour some > sugar on me." Killer. I wish we were neighbors, Ethan. We'd be able to throw the most awesome block parties, I swear. I bet you are a musician, too. > Everything is from China and solid state now. There is a laser > "con/fest" of sorts and a small bit of vintage computing cross-over. Huh, cool! That sounds (and from the videos also looks) fun. > Like any technology I suppose it grew up along side of personal > computing. > SELEM event in NC: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-S75y8-StKE Neat. What fun! Okay, after talking about the recent roots of that hobby, and in an effort to keep this slightly on topic, do you know anything about the original animations used on Freemont street in Las Vegas? I was told that at one time it was run from an Amiga using Scala "and some other stuff". If you haven't seen it, it's a giant (uhm, like 4 city blocks) color LED array and a big sound system. -Swift
Re: Cray J932SE (was Re: Straight 8 up on Ebay just now)
On Tue, 19 Jul 2016, Paul Koning wrote: > I wouldn't run my $100 little VFC in production, but I expect that the > more expensive ones from serious companies like Yaskawa or Allen-Bradley > will do just fine. I forgot about those. I think you are right. I've seen what I believe to be massive VCFs in a metal-powder mill with multiple inputs. Those probably can provide you with even more redundancy since you can run multiple input lines. -Swift
Re: Straight 8 up on Ebay just now
I just put in pdp-8 in ebay search and saw it last nite -Ed# In a message dated 7/19/2016 12:24:15 P.M. US Mountain Standard Time, pon...@update.uu.se writes: I can't find it, does anyone have a URL? /P On Mon, Jul 18, 2016 at 01:58:12PM -0700, jim stephens wrote: > 25,000, Alexandria, Va. > > Josh Dersch can have one for his home and for work. > > BTW, about the other nice system noted here, I was hoping the 11/20 would > stay off the radar and not go for a zillion bucks, so much for that idea. > At least I have the means to go to Tucson and get it if I'm nuts and go for > it. > > Thanks > Jim
Re: Straight 8 up on Ebay just now
I can't find it, does anyone have a URL? /P On Mon, Jul 18, 2016 at 01:58:12PM -0700, jim stephens wrote: > 25,000, Alexandria, Va. > > Josh Dersch can have one for his home and for work. > > BTW, about the other nice system noted here, I was hoping the 11/20 would > stay off the radar and not go for a zillion bucks, so much for that idea. > At least I have the means to go to Tucson and get it if I'm nuts and go for > it. > > Thanks > Jim
Re: Cray J932SE (was Re: Straight 8 up on Ebay just now)
I haven't been able to articulate anything witty, but I'll go ahead and just say: Ethan I don't know what you do with those BF-lasers, but it sounds damn awesome, anyway. Your stock just went up. It's hard to make lasers anything but sci-fi radical coolness. Light show hobby. Inspired by the Def Leppard music video "Pour some sugar on me." Everything is from China and solid state now. There is a laser "con/fest" of sorts and a small bit of vintage computing cross-over. Like any technology I suppose it grew up along side of personal computing. Early animation/graphics systems probably existed (low quantity) on S100 systems then moved to things like the Commodore Amiga (Pangolin) and then IBM PC (but using coprocessor cards and stuff.) SELEM event in NC: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-S75y8-StKE There are more videos on youtube but I just grabbed one I know. Just another geekfest, and that's just one of a number of rooms. -- Ethan O'Toole
Re: Cray J932SE (was Re: Straight 8 up on Ebay just now)
At 02:41 PM 7/19/2016, Fred Cisin wrote: > and resulted in high voltage to the 110 outlets, damaging a bunch of minor > stuff, such as grinder, space heater, clock, etc. Obviously a delta with a high (aka "wild") leg. Dale H. Cook, Roanoke/Lynchburg, VA Osborne 1 / Kaypro 4-84 / Kaypro 1 / Amstrad PPC-640 http://plymouthcolony.net/starcity/radios/index.html
Re: Cray J932SE (was Re: Straight 8 up on Ebay just now)
On Tue, 19 Jul 2016, Paul Koning wrote: Anything powered by electric motor above 2 hp or so often comes in 3 phase, and when you get to somewhat higher power (5 hp or so) it seems to be about the only option. Lathes and milling machines are good examples. and air compressors in automotive shops, maintaining a large tank of compressed air. 3-phase comes in "delta" or "Wye"("Y") some installers don't know the difference! I experienced TWO misdone installations. One was an auto garage, and resulted in high voltage to the 110 outlets, damaging a bunch of minor stuff, such as grinder, space heater, clock, etc. The other was was a PDP installation. After excessive downtime of third party disk drive, the community college had sold it to a neighboring school district, and bought a roomful of PCs. Microsoft PC COBOL and Fortran were crap, but quite adequate for teaching the languages, and it was great to have dozens of machines for students to use without fear of downtime. PG (our power company) agreed to buy a new replacement computer, if those involved would go along with the fiction that it had been a lightning strike (NOT common here). The bad drive ceased to be a problem. Everybody was happy, and PG got to call it a donation on their taxes.
Wiring Regulations. RE: Cray J932SE (was Re: Straight 8 up on Ebay just now)
In the UK we have, for DOMESTIC premises something call "Part P" > -Original Message- > From: cctalk [mailto:cctalk-boun...@classiccmp.org] On Behalf Of Mouse > Sent: 19 July 2016 17:47 > To: cctalk@classiccmp.org > Subject: Re: Cray J932SE (was Re: Straight 8 up on Ebay just now) > > >> [...electrical wiring...] > > This very definitely is an area where, if you're not 100% comfortable > > with t$ > > Also, know your own limits. A depressing number of people think they're > more competent than they are. > > For example, I once had a neighbour who replaced an outlet in his kitchen. > Turned off the breaker, removed the old one, put in the new one, all very > nice. Turned the breaker for that circuit back on and popped the service > main breaker. > In the UK we used to have an inspection regime. You did the work, they would inspect. These days, for DOMESTIC premises we have something call "Part P" which limits what a householder can and cannot do. So you can generally do "like for like" replacements, add additional outlets where permitted and one or two other things. Originally all work in Kitchens was defined as "Special" and was notifiable, but this was modified so that is no longer the case. So as the above is a "like for like" replacement, I believe it is currently permitted in the UK. Of course in a Museum, or even a Scout Hut, provided it does not share a supply with residential premises then any one can do the Work so long as it is later inspected. ... the problem with Part P is that it encourages a "tick box" approach and the Electrician who replaced my "Consumer Unit" (distribution panel) With a new one with multiple RCD's which tripped suggested it would be simpler to re-wire rather than fix the existing wiring. This sort of approach seems common. The actual fault was that I have a pair of linked smoke detectors, and one was connected via one RCD, the other via a different RCD. The connection between the two was sufficient to cause an imbalance. I replaced them with wireless linked smoke detectors and all works well > When I investigated, it turned out the new outlet still had the bridging piece > that shorts together the hots for the two outlets, and this was a kitchen > outlet and thus had separate circuits for each half (and, as is often the case, > they were on adjacent fingers in the breaker box and thus on different > phases). So, of course, the new outlet shorted the two hot phases together. > > He didn't have the experience to recognize that those shorting pieces exist, > to realize that having four conductors instead of three coming to the outlet - > or its being a kitchen outlet - likely means the two halves are on different > circuits and thus likely different phases, or the electrical understanding to put > those facts together. Which wouldn't've been a problem, except that he > thought he was fine - he didn't bring me in until the main service breaker > blew. (He did, fortunately, have enough sense for that to tickle his > "something I don't understand happened, call for help" reaction.) > > I've been doing electrical work since I was maybe ten or twelve, when I > helped my parents wire the house they were building. (My father inspected > my work first; then, this being de rigeur there-and-then, it was inspected by > a suitable authority. Only then was it energized.) I don't hesitate to do > routine house electrical work, maybe even installing 30A outlets (though I'd > make sure I looked up the appropriate gauge of wire, and probably then > used the next larger gauge). But I'd call in someone more experienced for > something well outside my own experience, like (say) dealing with 600/600 > service. > > I would say that, if you don't have a good deal of experience, find someone > who does to look over your work before you energize it. > Indeed, some jurisdictions require that for work done by unlicensed persons > - or at least used to, and I would assume some still do. Even if yours doesn't, > it strikes me as the smart thing to do. > > /~\ The ASCII Mouse > \ / Ribbon Campaign > X Against HTML mo...@rodents-montreal.org > / \ Email! 7D C8 61 52 5D E7 2D 39 4E F1 31 3E E8 B3 27 4B Dave G4UGM
Re: Cray J932SE (was Re: Straight 8 up on Ebay just now)
> On Jul 19, 2016, at 1:51 PM, et...@757.org wrote: > > ... > I've heard sometimes the utility will indeed give you 3phase but you have to > pay them to replace the transformer and it's very very expensive. Normally > it's people buying used milling equipment that are after it from my > experience. There are rotary converters and solid state converters but > probably not ideal for huge loads. Anything powered by electric motor above 2 hp or so often comes in 3 phase, and when you get to somewhat higher power (5 hp or so) it seems to be about the only option. Lathes and milling machines are good examples. The expense of a new service for 3 phase is one issue; it may not be available at all. A lot of US rural areas have a single wire running along the street. The only way you could get 3 phase service is for the utility to replace that by 3 wires, for however many miles it takes to get to the spot where their 3 phase service ends. Rotary converters have a good reputation among home workshop types. You can build them or buy them. I liked the VFC approach when I realized how inexpensive a basic one can be, plus I get variable speed and instant reverse and controlled braking as well. paul
Re: Cray J932SE (was Re: Straight 8 up on Ebay just now)
On Tue, 19 Jul 2016, et...@757.org wrote: > The Cray is single phase, the only thing I've ever owned that was 3 > phase was the laser stuff. Now my solid state laser projector uses 100 > watts and producsed half the power of the argon that used to take 3ph @ > 30A (and still tripped the breaker sometimes.) I haven't been able to articulate anything witty, but I'll go ahead and just say: Ethan I don't know what you do with those BF-lasers, but it sounds damn awesome, anyway. Your stock just went up. It's hard to make lasers anything but sci-fi radical coolness. > I've heard sometimes the utility will indeed give you 3phase but you > have to pay them to replace the transformer and it's very very > expensive. Yep. It's happened in every case I've been involved with here in Colorado (ie.. residential or small buildings, not in data centers). > Normally it's people buying used milling equipment that are after it > from my experience. There are rotary converters and solid state > converters but probably not ideal for huge loads. ... and as I mentioned before, they can break. So, even if your VCF will handle the load, your uptime requirement might be a dealbreaker if you have commercial intentions. > The Cray uses 5 x Pioneer magnetics power supplies that I believe are > identical to those in the Sun E1. "back in the day" I was a certified (not as an FE, though) in various ways for the E10k, E15k, and E25k. We had several at Oracle when I worked there. However, I don't remember that detail (the brand of the PSs). I'm sure you are right, though. > Note - in the modern datacenter in the US it's not uncommon for > everything to be run on 208, but everything would run on 120. Yep, that's my experience, too. Although many telco datacenters still use DC. They are funny like that. -Swift
Re: Cray J932SE (was Re: Straight 8 up on Ebay just now)
Right... and in my area (hardly unique, I'd wager), you cannot get 3-phase in residential areas. The shared transformers on the poles don't provide it and you can't pay them to add/change a transformer. You have to be in a commercial area to get that. Fortunately for me, my tastes in minicomputers runs "small", so my largest machines have a 30A 110V single-phase plug (frequently to an H-861, but not always). The Cray is single phase, the only thing I've ever owned that was 3 phase was the laser stuff. Now my solid state laser projector uses 100 watts and producsed half the power of the argon that used to take 3ph @ 30A (and still tripped the breaker sometimes.) I've heard sometimes the utility will indeed give you 3phase but you have to pay them to replace the transformer and it's very very expensive. Normally it's people buying used milling equipment that are after it from my experience. There are rotary converters and solid state converters but probably not ideal for huge loads. The Cray uses 5 x Pioneer magnetics power supplies that I believe are identical to those in the Sun E1. The smaller rack with the VME chassis and hard drives -- good chance the power supplies are okay with 110/120v. The disk trays at least are just good quality SMPS that do 5/12 in each drawer (was 4 x 9GB full height disk per drawer.) The Pioneer Magnetics supplies that run the computational part are like 48vdc out @ 5000W each so not sure if they would run on 120V but if so -- it would be a real high amperage load. Note - in the modern datacenter in the US it's not uncommon for everything to be run on 208, but everything would run on 120. -- Ethan O'Toole
Re: Cray J932SE (was Re: Straight 8 up on Ebay just now)
On Tue, 19 Jul 2016, Paul Koning wrote: > Yes, and time dependent as well. I grew up in Holland; in the 1970s, we > had 3 phase in our house because we had an electric cooking range. As you probably know, that's not usual the setup in North America, even for folks with electric ranges. > In the USA, if you're a home owner with a need for 3 phase power, you > probably have to get a phase converter. Fortunately those are not hard > to get, and solid state ones (variable frequency motor controllers) can > be rather inexpensive. I've been responsible for bringing 3-phase into several new buildings. I'd totally endorse a VFC in most cases (except that it's one more part to break if that's a concern). The reason is that the lowest cost I've seen in Colorado was $4500 and the most is $7000 from Xcel. I've *never* heard of them simply saying "Oh your old transformer will handle that just fine." YMMV -Swift
Re: Cray J932SE (was Re: Straight 8 up on Ebay just now)
On Tue, 19 Jul 2016, Paul Koning wrote: > It all depends on what you're comfortable with. My original point was that it's not trivial. I'd stand by that point no matter how comfortable someone is with the install. Of course, even that is subjective, I suppose. If you have tons of time, money, and you were born with rubber duck feet, okay, sure, it's trivial for that particular human-duck hybrid. :-) My real point is that if someone thinks they are just going to un-do a few screws on the breaker panel, slap in a 30A breaker, and they are done: that's not realistic. That's kinda how using the word "trivial" struck me along with the original description, at least. Maybe I'm over-thinking it. > There are plenty of books explaining to homeowners how to wire outlets, > add breakers, and even larger scale stuff like replacing whole panels. Perhaps it wasn't obvious, but I've also done this type of work myself before, IRL. I choose not to use as much jargon, but that does not mean I'm speaking about hypotheticals. Personally, I don't need the Amazon book, though others might appreciate that. Again, I wasn't saying, "OMG, that's impossible!" My points were, simply "It's not trivial" and "It's a tad bit dangerous to trivialize it.". > Yes, it takes time to do it right, and installing conduit and thick wire > demands some muscle. Clearly, it's not for everyone. I think most able-bodied folks would have the "muscle" to do it. It doesn't require winning any strongman competitions. No matter if you are a skinny little waif like me or some bodybuilding strongman, as I'm sure you all are. The issue I was bringing up wasn't despair at the inhuman physical strength required (joke!), but that it's going to take time, energy, and money... ie... subjectively non-trivial resources. To your point, it's definitely going to be cheaper to do it yourself versus using a licensed electrician, and it's not black magic. > Then again, neither is carpentry, or plumbing. Fair enough, but there isn't as much of a chance for instant-electrocution-death involved with plumbing and carpentry. Putting in 3-phase 208 isn't rocket science, but it can definitely kill you, burn your house down, or ruin your gear if you do it wrong. Of course, plumbing and carpentry done wrong could eventually flood your house or cause it to fall down in some extreme cases, too. The results just *usually* aren't quite as immediate and dramatic as electrical mistakes are. > Personally, I will readily do electrical work, plumbing on a more > limited basis, carpentry hardly at all. To your point, I'm quite the opposite. I'm a woodworker and setup to do just about any kind of carpentry imaginable. I don't have the butt-crack power (or the slightest detectable will) to properly plumb, that's for sure. When it comes to electrical work the issue is often permitting and inspection that are a problem in my area (building boom etc..) that makes it non-trivial. That and dealing with Xcel Energy, who could probably screw up a wet-dream, for the feeds. > Other people have a completely different list of what they would > undertake. For example, a lot of people would not tinker with software > or networks. Agreed. > This very definitely is an area where, if you're not 100% comfortable > with the job, the right answer is to pay to have it done. Yeah, that's sort of my underlying point. While it might be easy to some people in terms of them not feeling intimidated by the task, it still will take some time, effort, money, and risk to your person (small or large depending on your levels of caution and experience). -Swift
Re: Cray J932SE (was Re: Straight 8 up on Ebay just now)
> On Jul 19, 2016, at 12:53 PM, Mousewrote: > >> [...], especially since most electrical installations (even domestic) >> are 3-phase. > > This, I believe, must be location-specific. In North America, it is > usual for domestic electrical feeds to be only two-phase (that is, they > are the two sides of a centre-tapped secondary - the two hot wires are > 180 degrees out of phase with one another). Yes, and time dependent as well. I grew up in Holland; in the 1970s, we had 3 phase in our house because we had an electric cooking range. But ours was the only house in the block with 3 phase service; all our neighbors cooked with gas. In the USA, if you're a home owner with a need for 3 phase power, you probably have to get a phase converter. Fortunately those are not hard to get, and solid state ones (variable frequency motor controllers) can be rather inexpensive. I have one for the 3-phase motor on the lathe in the barn. $100 for a 3 hp model, as I recall, though that may have been on sale. VFCs should even work for 3 phase 400 Hz power, just the thing if you have a CDC Cyber tucked away in the basement. paul
Re: Cray J932SE (was Re: Straight 8 up on Ebay just now)
On Tue, Jul 19, 2016 at 12:53 PM, Mousewrote: >> [...], especially since most electrical installations (even domestic) >> are 3-phase. > > This, I believe, must be location-specific. In North America, it is > usual for domestic electrical feeds to be only two-phase (that is, they > are the two sides of a centre-tapped secondary - the two hot wires are > 180 degrees out of phase with one another). Right... and in my area (hardly unique, I'd wager), you cannot get 3-phase in residential areas. The shared transformers on the poles don't provide it and you can't pay them to add/change a transformer. You have to be in a commercial area to get that. Fortunately for me, my tastes in minicomputers runs "small", so my largest machines have a 30A 110V single-phase plug (frequently to an H-861, but not always). Code in my area allows for homeowners to do some of their own wiring, but for projects larger than, essentially, outlet and toggle-switch replacement, permits are required (but enforcement is, of course, negligible unless something goes horribly wrong). They did just amend code locally to _prohibit_ landlords from self-repair of electrical (and I think gas and plumbing) in rental properties, because of several high-profile fires caused by inexpert work. So you can work on your own domicile, but not your tenants'. -ethan
Re: DEC H-500 Computer Lab pins and docs (was Re: Straight 8 up on Ebay just now)
On Tue, Jul 19, 2016 at 12:26 PM, Vincent Slyngstadwrote: > From: Ethan Dicks: Tuesday, July 19, 2016 8:29 AM >> >> Does anyone have a modern source of pins that fit the socket holes in >> the Computer Lab? ISTR there are a few of us here who have an H-500, >> but very few, or no, patch cables. I think Molex pins have been tried >> and rejected. > > Nope. I've been looking for those for some time. I didn't like the Molex > pins, as their retention clips aren't really the right thing and scratch the > brass rings that should interface smoothly with the proper brass taper pins. Right. It was your experiences I was thinking of with Molex pins. I myself have no original pins to measure. > I have an old scan of the teacher's guide at > http://www.so-much-stuff.com/pdp8/pdf/ This is certainly a contemporary teacher's guide, but it's stylistically and typographically 1960s and does not resemble the one I'm remembering. Was there perhaps a later DEC logic lab from 1972 to 1975 that would have had a later manual? Perhaps that's what I'm thinking of. I just remember being given a workbook by a relative who was a school teacher right about the time I was first learning logic and BASIC. It had problems and large blank sections for drawing your work, among other differences. -ethan
Re: Cray J932SE (was Re: Straight 8 up on Ebay just now)
> [...], especially since most electrical installations (even domestic) > are 3-phase. This, I believe, must be location-specific. In North America, it is usual for domestic electrical feeds to be only two-phase (that is, they are the two sides of a centre-tapped secondary - the two hot wires are 180 degrees out of phase with one another). /~\ The ASCII Mouse \ / Ribbon Campaign X Against HTMLmo...@rodents-montreal.org / \ Email! 7D C8 61 52 5D E7 2D 39 4E F1 31 3E E8 B3 27 4B
Re: Cray J932SE (was Re: Straight 8 up on Ebay just now)
On Tue, 19 Jul 2016, Swift Griggs wrote: The photo of that unit is entertaining. Whoever buys it will need to setup 3x 30A 220v outlets. That's going to make some licensed electrician very happy. Why? 32A 3-phase CEE connectors (the red ones) are very common, especially since most electrical installations (even domestic) are 3-phase. We have several in our museum, for example for the IBM 1130, the IBM 3340 disk drives and the three-rack HP system. You can also have 16A CEE connectors. Older installations may still have Perilex connectors. Christian
Re: Cray J932SE (was Re: Straight 8 up on Ebay just now)
>> [...electrical wiring...] > This very definitely is an area where, if you're not 100% comfortable with t$ Also, know your own limits. A depressing number of people think they're more competent than they are. For example, I once had a neighbour who replaced an outlet in his kitchen. Turned off the breaker, removed the old one, put in the new one, all very nice. Turned the breaker for that circuit back on and popped the service main breaker. When I investigated, it turned out the new outlet still had the bridging piece that shorts together the hots for the two outlets, and this was a kitchen outlet and thus had separate circuits for each half (and, as is often the case, they were on adjacent fingers in the breaker box and thus on different phases). So, of course, the new outlet shorted the two hot phases together. He didn't have the experience to recognize that those shorting pieces exist, to realize that having four conductors instead of three coming to the outlet - or its being a kitchen outlet - likely means the two halves are on different circuits and thus likely different phases, or the electrical understanding to put those facts together. Which wouldn't've been a problem, except that he thought he was fine - he didn't bring me in until the main service breaker blew. (He did, fortunately, have enough sense for that to tickle his "something I don't understand happened, call for help" reaction.) I've been doing electrical work since I was maybe ten or twelve, when I helped my parents wire the house they were building. (My father inspected my work first; then, this being de rigeur there-and-then, it was inspected by a suitable authority. Only then was it energized.) I don't hesitate to do routine house electrical work, maybe even installing 30A outlets (though I'd make sure I looked up the appropriate gauge of wire, and probably then used the next larger gauge). But I'd call in someone more experienced for something well outside my own experience, like (say) dealing with 600/600 service. I would say that, if you don't have a good deal of experience, find someone who does to look over your work before you energize it. Indeed, some jurisdictions require that for work done by unlicensed persons - or at least used to, and I would assume some still do. Even if yours doesn't, it strikes me as the smart thing to do. /~\ The ASCII Mouse \ / Ribbon Campaign X Against HTMLmo...@rodents-montreal.org / \ Email! 7D C8 61 52 5D E7 2D 39 4E F1 31 3E E8 B3 27 4B
Re: DEC H-500 Computer Lab pins and docs (was Re: Straight 8 up on Ebay just now)
From: Karl-Wilhelm Wacker: Tuesday, July 19, 2016 9:25 AM Does anyone have one of the patch cables, and can they measure the diameter of the pin and it's length? Also, is it a straight pin or like a bannana jack with springy sides? It is a smooth-walled brass taper pin with a crimp connector for the wire. There's a photo at http://www.so-much-stuff.com/pdp8/computerlab/computerlab.php you can click on for a (slightly) better view. The diameter is similar to the pins that go in the old connectors that DEC used for current loop connectors. Wider at the wire end, though, to provide the wedging action. The central feature, which is seldom seen anymore, is the taper that allows the pin to smoothly insert, yet firmly wedge in there when inserted. That makes it more suitable, in my opinion, as it's really hard to screw anything up (other than having it still a little loose because you didn't insert it firmly). I can attempt to measure one up. Vince
Re: Cray J932SE (was Re: Straight 8 up on Ebay just now)
On 07/19/2016 08:29 AM, Paul Koning wrote: > Or hobbyist. It's pretty trivial, after all. If you live in a state > where that's not allowed, that would be an issue. But in NH, for > example, homeowners can do their own electrical work. I wouldn't do > work on the meter box or other always-live parts, but anything that > can be powered down isn't an issue. For one thing, I know from > experience that the fact someone has a license doesn't necessarily > make him qualified to do electrical work. A big concern would be getting basic service. I'd probably want a secondary 200A panel for this, so the local utility would probably drop a second transformer in my front yard (there's buried 12KV service running up my driveway). At least getting the extra panel would involve a licensed electrician and inspections. What would be a bigger concern is any HVAC needs. The EPA has been getting very predatory in their regulation of refrigerants and who is qualified to handle them. New proposed regulations are even more stringent. Life is very good if you're a licensed HVAC tech today. --Chuck
Re: DEC H-500 Computer Lab pins and docs (was Re: Straight 8 up on Ebay just now)
From: Ethan Dicks: Tuesday, July 19, 2016 8:29 AM Does anyone have a modern source of pins that fit the socket holes in the Computer Lab? ISTR there are a few of us here who have an H-500, but very few, or no, patch cables. I think Molex pins have been tried and rejected. Nope. I've been looking for those for some time. I didn't like the Molex pins, as their retention clips aren't really the right thing and scratch the brass rings that should interface smoothly with the proper brass taper pins. Also, the 1969 Computer Lab Handbook is on bitsavers (in 'dec/handbooks'). I recall a 8.5"x11" book on the Computer Lab, newer layout, probably a 1970s publication date, possibly a teacher's guide. I was given one as a kid, but it vanished decades ago. Anyone remember this? Anyone have one for scanning? I have an old scan of the teacher's guide at http://www.so-much-stuff.com/pdp8/pdf/ This came from another listmember, years ago. Perhaps I should link to it from http://www.so-much-stuff.com/pdp8/computerlab/computerlab.php Vince
Re: DEC H-500 Computer Lab pins and docs (was Re: Straight 8 up on Ebay just now)
Does anyone have one of the patch cables, and can they measure the diameter of the pin and it's length? Also, is it a straight pin or like a bannana jack with springy sides? There is a company www.mill-max.com that makes almost any type of pin/socket that you can think of - take a look thru their con-line catalog. Karl - Original Message - From: "william degnan" <billdeg...@gmail.com> To: "General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts" <cctalk@classiccmp.org> Sent: Tuesday, July 19, 2016 11:32 AM Subject: Re: DEC H-500 Computer Lab pins and docs (was Re: Straight 8 up on Ebay just now) On Tue, Jul 19, 2016 at 11:29 AM, Ethan Dicks <ethan.di...@gmail.com> wrote: On Tue, Jul 19, 2016 at 5:01 AM, <couryho...@aol.com> wrote: > also a Rare Digital DEC H-500 Computer Lab, 1960s, Same Switches as > PDP-8/I, Vintage for 700+ > > ( we have an extra one of these Computer Lab, if anyone here is > interested) Does anyone have a modern source of pins that fit the socket holes in the Computer Lab? ISTR there are a few of us here who have an H-500, but very few, or no, patch cables. I think Molex pins have been tried and rejected. Also, the 1969 Computer Lab Handbook is on bitsavers (in 'dec/handbooks'). I recall a 8.5"x11" book on the Computer Lab, newer layout, probably a 1970s publication date, possibly a teacher's guide. I was given one as a kid, but it vanished decades ago. Anyone remember this? Anyone have one for scanning? -ethan I have the Computer Lab Workbook, not Handbook. Maybe that's what you're looking for. -- @ BillDeg: Web: vintagecomputer.net Twitter: @billdeg <https://twitter.com/billdeg> Youtube: @billdeg <https://www.youtube.com/user/billdeg> Unauthorized Bio <http://www.vintagecomputer.net/readme.cfm>
Re: Cray J932SE (was Re: Straight 8 up on Ebay just now)
The other thing that's not trivial is that if you make a mistake, you will likely either: 1. Die. 2. Burn down your house. 3. Ruin some expensive and rare gear. To me, that all sounds like a helluva pain and != trivial. Then again, I'm a software guy. What do I know? :-P Some fun pics: https://users.757.org/~ethan/pics/office/IMG_0208.JPG https://users.757.org/~ethan/pics/office/IMG_0209.JPG 30A 208 pulled from panel temporary to run argon laser. That was before I installed the 36KvA UPS. The little power supply in the back takes in 3 phase 208A @ 30A and uses 2 gallons a minute of water, then drops like 70 amps of DC at 60V or something to the laser. Something really nasty and lethal. There might be other pics on my flickr of the Cray through the years at www.flickr.com/photos/ethanotoole Had 4, sold 3, kept one for years... but it's up for sale cause hobbies/interests have changed a bit and storage space/power (still have more than my fair share of older computers.) I work near all the datacenters in Ashburn Virginia and I've been tempted to see about finding some space for it. The buildings often have a ton of unused space. -- Ethan O'Toole
Re: Cray J932SE (was Re: Straight 8 up on Ebay just now)
> On Jul 19, 2016, at 11:58 AM, Swift Griggswrote: > > On Tue, 19 Jul 2016, Paul Koning wrote: >>> On Jul 19, 2016, at 10:54 AM, Swift Griggs wrote: >>> On Tue, 19 Jul 2016, et...@757.org wrote: Hmp. Well the Cray J932SE on there is legit :-) >>> The photo of that unit is entertaining. Whoever buys it will need to setup >>> 3x 30A 220v outlets. That's going to make some licensed electrician very >>> happy. >> Or hobbyist. It's pretty trivial, after all. If you live in a state >> where that's not allowed, that would be an issue. > > With respect, in my view, it's not trivial. ... That's real physical work > in my book and may non-trivially eat your weekend. > > The other thing that's not trivial is that if you make a mistake, you will > likely either: 1. Die. 2. Burn down your house. 3. Ruin some expensive > and rare gear. > > To me, that all sounds like a helluva pain and != trivial. Then again, I'm > a software guy. What do I know? :-P It all depends on what you're comfortable with. There are plenty of books explaining to homeowners how to wire outlets, add breakers, and even larger scale stuff like replacing whole panels. https://www.amazon.com/Wiring-Simplified-Based-National-Electrical/dp/097929455X is one nice example, compact but densely packed. Yes, it takes time to do it right, and installing conduit and thick wire demands some muscle. Clearly, it's not for everyone. Then again, neither is carpentry, or plumbing. Personally, I will readily do electrical work, plumbing on a more limited basis, carpentry hardly at all. Other people have a completely different list of what they would undertake. For example, a lot of people would not tinker with software or networks. This very definitely is an area where, if you're not 100% comfortable with the job, the right answer is to pay to have it done. paul
Re: Cray J932SE (was Re: Straight 8 up on Ebay just now)
On Tue, 19 Jul 2016, Paul Koning wrote: > > On Jul 19, 2016, at 10:54 AM, Swift Griggswrote: > > On Tue, 19 Jul 2016, et...@757.org wrote: > >> Hmp. Well the Cray J932SE on there is legit :-) > > The photo of that unit is entertaining. Whoever buys it will need to setup > > 3x 30A 220v outlets. That's going to make some licensed electrician very > > happy. > Or hobbyist. It's pretty trivial, after all. If you live in a state > where that's not allowed, that would be an issue. With respect, in my view, it's not trivial. As you point out, it's not actually allowed everywhere. Unless you are some kind of local townie who knows all the bylaws, you'd need to call your local building/permitting office to be sure. I've lived in several places where it was definitely not allowed. In (al)most all places, you also need a permit to do the work, even if the PtB let you do it as an unlicensed hobbyist. Also, any given rinky-dink home electrical panel box isn't always going to support 30A breakers, might be out of room, or might not magically grant you the service-line current you may require (or in the case of 3-phase, the third phase you are going to need). You'll also need to find a route to get the proper sized wire in to the walls to feed the L6-30 or whatever receptacles you need, and install the outlets. That's real physical work in my book and may non-trivially eat your weekend. The other thing that's not trivial is that if you make a mistake, you will likely either: 1. Die. 2. Burn down your house. 3. Ruin some expensive and rare gear. To me, that all sounds like a helluva pain and != trivial. Then again, I'm a software guy. What do I know? :-P -Swift
Re: DEC H-500 Computer Lab pins and docs (was Re: Straight 8 up on Ebay just now)
On Tue, Jul 19, 2016 at 11:32 AM, william degnanwrote: >> Also, the 1969 Computer Lab Handbook is on bitsavers (in >> 'dec/handbooks'). I recall a 8.5"x11" book on the Computer Lab, newer >> layout, probably a 1970s publication date, possibly a teacher's guide. >> I was given one as a kid, but it vanished decades ago. Anyone >> remember this? Anyone have one for scanning? >> > I have the Computer Lab Workbook, not Handbook. Maybe that's what you're > looking for. The PDF floating around (bitsavers, elsewhere) is entitled "Computer Lab Workbook", my mistake, but it's the size of DEC handbooks. I've seen a cover for the first edition dated 1968, and the PDF is of a second edition, dated 1969. What I'm looking for is a (probably) later publication, approx 8.5"x11" and around 1/2" thick. Totally different contents. -ethan
Re: Cray J932SE (was Re: Straight 8 up on Ebay just now)
> On Jul 19, 2016, at 10:54 AM, Swift Griggswrote: > > On Tue, 19 Jul 2016, et...@757.org wrote: >> Hmp. Well the Cray J932SE on there is legit :-) > > The photo of that unit is entertaining. Whoever buys it will need to setup > 3x 30A 220v outlets. That's going to make some licensed electrician very > happy. Or hobbyist. It's pretty trivial, after all. If you live in a state where that's not allowed, that would be an issue. But in NH, for example, homeowners can do their own electrical work. I wouldn't do work on the meter box or other always-live parts, but anything that can be powered down isn't an issue. For one thing, I know from experience that the fact someone has a license doesn't necessarily make him qualified to do electrical work. paul
DEC H-500 Computer Lab pins and docs (was Re: Straight 8 up on Ebay just now)
On Tue, Jul 19, 2016 at 5:01 AM,wrote: > also a Rare Digital DEC H-500 Computer Lab, 1960s, Same Switches as > PDP-8/I, Vintage for 700+ > > ( we have an extra one of these Computer Lab, if anyone here is > interested) Does anyone have a modern source of pins that fit the socket holes in the Computer Lab? ISTR there are a few of us here who have an H-500, but very few, or no, patch cables. I think Molex pins have been tried and rejected. Also, the 1969 Computer Lab Handbook is on bitsavers (in 'dec/handbooks'). I recall a 8.5"x11" book on the Computer Lab, newer layout, probably a 1970s publication date, possibly a teacher's guide. I was given one as a kid, but it vanished decades ago. Anyone remember this? Anyone have one for scanning? -ethan
Re: Cray J932SE (was Re: Straight 8 up on Ebay just now)
The photo of that unit is entertaining. Whoever buys it will need to setup 3x 30A 220v outlets. That's going to make some licensed electrician very happy. At the old small office I would just pop some breakers out and replace them with 2 pole 30 amp ones. When it was at the hackerspace there was some sort of fused cut off switch box on the wall, so I terminated a twistlock 30A and ran from there over to a subpanel that had the 3 twistlocks for the Cray cabinets. I used A-B B-C C-A phases, so 208V each. I still have the subpanel and also a SquareD Powerlogic monitor w/ CTs and stuff that are mounted to the board that was with the system (might be visible in the picture.) I used a rubber core cable to run between the two -- which I originally had picked up to temporary run a 6 watt argon laser system with from time to time. I originally had 4 of the J932SE systems, they were all HIPPI'ed together to form one system when used for power engineering for nuclear subs or something (Bechtel.) I dunno, it was all secret and they destroyed all of the hard drives and such from the system. I never really thought the power was that crazy, I work in datacenters and these days there are single racks using twice what the Cray takes! I worked with a Cray for a while of about the same vintage (pre-SGI Cray running UNICOS and using an Sun SPARC Classic as a helper). It was a large telco (MCI) and used for fraud-detection on calling cards. It was a UNICOS-based system in a private Colorado Springs datacenter about two blocks from some sort of manufacturing site for Cray (the building is on Rockrimmon in Colorado Springs - the former home of the late Seymour Cray). I thought the whole rig was interesting, but it was barely a few weeks before the whole company went through a near-death experience (two words: Bernie Ebbers) and I walked across the street to another company and scored a new gig (it was the late 90's, you could do that sort of thing then). I never got a chance to get really proficient with the hardware or with UNICOS. It was my singular regret with that gig, though. Very cool! NASA LaRC had a J916 system used by some scientists for something, other than that I don't know of any others. I was a SGI guy at the same place, had some nice boxes.
Cray J932SE (was Re: Straight 8 up on Ebay just now)
On Tue, 19 Jul 2016, et...@757.org wrote: > Hmp. Well the Cray J932SE on there is legit :-) The photo of that unit is entertaining. Whoever buys it will need to setup 3x 30A 220v outlets. That's going to make some licensed electrician very happy. I worked with a Cray for a while of about the same vintage (pre-SGI Cray running UNICOS and using an Sun SPARC Classic as a helper). It was a large telco (MCI) and used for fraud-detection on calling cards. It was a UNICOS-based system in a private Colorado Springs datacenter about two blocks from some sort of manufacturing site for Cray (the building is on Rockrimmon in Colorado Springs - the former home of the late Seymour Cray). I thought the whole rig was interesting, but it was barely a few weeks before the whole company went through a near-death experience (two words: Bernie Ebbers) and I walked across the street to another company and scored a new gig (it was the late 90's, you could do that sort of thing then). I never got a chance to get really proficient with the hardware or with UNICOS. It was my singular regret with that gig, though. -Swift
Re: Straight 8 up on Ebay just now
That said I'd figure though some of the higher prices such as the current PDP8/I and GT40 are setting for want of bids, they aren't that far from what you have to pay to get said systems on demand. This one may go for around the opportunistic price, and be lower, but $10 to $12k isn't going to be surprising. Hmp. Well the Cray J932SE on there is legit :-) -- Ethan O'Toole
Re: Straight 8 up on Ebay just now
there is an 8i with similar crazy price but different user id hmmm beware? also a Rare Digital DEC H-500 Computer Lab, 1960s, Same Switches as PDP-8/I, Vintage for 700+ ( we have an extra one of these Computer Lab, if anyone here is interested) Ed# _www.smecc.org_ (http://www.smecc.org) In a message dated 7/19/2016 12:07:02 A.M. US Mountain Standard Time, jwsm...@jwsss.com writes: On 7/18/2016 10:23 PM, Sam O'nella wrote: > There may be some archives here or vcf with enough prices. Iirc i thought i remember one selling for something pretty high (8000/12000?) X years ago although i think like this it's a calculated price of doubling the last sale they saw. Although apple 1s seem to accomplish whatever that law is called :-) I think Straight 8's are nearly to the point that other systems which have published tracking inventories. There are very few, this one looks complete, or near complete. That said I'd figure though some of the higher prices such as the current PDP8/I and GT40 are setting for want of bids, they aren't that far from what you have to pay to get said systems on demand. This one may go for around the opportunistic price, and be lower, but $10 to $12k isn't going to be surprising.
Re: Straight 8 up on Ebay just now
EEEKK!!! and it is not the one with the Plexiglas surrounds... kaaa ching..$$$ It does have a nice a/d unit Ed# In a message dated 7/19/2016 12:07:02 A.M. US Mountain Standard Time, jwsm...@jwsss.com writes: On 7/18/2016 10:23 PM, Sam O'nella wrote: > There may be some archives here or vcf with enough prices. Iirc i thought i remember one selling for something pretty high (8000/12000?) X years ago although i think like this it's a calculated price of doubling the last sale they saw. Although apple 1s seem to accomplish whatever that law is called :-) I think Straight 8's are nearly to the point that other systems which have published tracking inventories. There are very few, this one looks complete, or near complete. That said I'd figure though some of the higher prices such as the current PDP8/I and GT40 are setting for want of bids, they aren't that far from what you have to pay to get said systems on demand. This one may go for around the opportunistic price, and be lower, but $10 to $12k isn't going to be surprising.
Re: Straight 8 up on Ebay just now
On 7/18/2016 10:23 PM, Sam O'nella wrote: There may be some archives here or vcf with enough prices. Iirc i thought i remember one selling for something pretty high (8000/12000?) X years ago although i think like this it's a calculated price of doubling the last sale they saw. Although apple 1s seem to accomplish whatever that law is called :-) I think Straight 8's are nearly to the point that other systems which have published tracking inventories. There are very few, this one looks complete, or near complete. That said I'd figure though some of the higher prices such as the current PDP8/I and GT40 are setting for want of bids, they aren't that far from what you have to pay to get said systems on demand. This one may go for around the opportunistic price, and be lower, but $10 to $12k isn't going to be surprising.
Re: Straight 8 up on Ebay just now
There may be some archives here or vcf with enough prices. Iirc i thought i remember one selling for something pretty high (8000/12000?) X years ago although i think like this it's a calculated price of doubling the last sale they saw. Although apple 1s seem to accomplish whatever that law is called :-)
Re: Straight 8 up on Ebay just now
Our core in any of our classic 8 has never worked it didn't 30 years ago either. .. just the thought of how many failed components yikes! . something to procrastinate about.. but I hate to hack out buckets of components. ... Ed# www.smecc.org Sent from my Verizon, Samsung Galaxy smartphone Original message From: "Ian S. King" <isk...@uw.edu> Date: 7/18/16 17:29 (GMT-07:00) To: "General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts" <cctalk@classiccmp.org> Subject: Re: Straight 8 up on Ebay just now Absent physical trauma, core seems pretty durable. The electronics around it may fail but the core planes themselves seem robust. At least that's been my experience. -- Ian On Mon, Jul 18, 2016 at 2:17 PM, Ethan Dicks <ethan.di...@gmail.com> wrote: > On Mon, Jul 18, 2016 at 5:02 PM, <et...@757.org> wrote: > >> 25,000, Alexandria, Va. > >> Josh Dersch can have one for his home and for work. > > > > Is that a dream price for such a system or realistic? > > Curious myself. They don't come up every day. The description says: > "Last turned on the lights worked but the memory appeared not to > work." I think from posts on similar systems, it could easily be > dirty marginal switch contacts or PSU issues, etc, vs damaged core. > > > I notice the corrosion on the front key. > > I'll happily sell him a clean key for a mere 1%... > > -ethan > -- Ian S. King, MSIS, MSCS, Ph.D. Candidate The Information School <http://ischool.uw.edu> Dissertation: "Why the Conversation Mattered: Constructing a Sociotechnical Narrative Through a Design Lens Archivist, Voices From the Rwanda Tribunal <http://tribunalvoices.org> Value Sensitive Design Research Lab <http://vsdesign.org> University of Washington There is an old Vulcan saying: "Only Nixon could go to China."
Re: Straight 8 up on Ebay just now
On Mon, Jul 18, 2016 at 5:02 PM,wrote: >> 25,000, Alexandria, Va. >> Josh Dersch can have one for his home and for work. > > Is that a dream price for such a system or realistic? Curious myself. They don't come up every day. The description says: "Last turned on the lights worked but the memory appeared not to work." I think from posts on similar systems, it could easily be dirty marginal switch contacts or PSU issues, etc, vs damaged core. > I notice the corrosion on the front key. I'll happily sell him a clean key for a mere 1%... -ethan
Re: Straight 8 up on Ebay just now
On Mon, Jul 18, 2016 at 1:58 PM, jim stephenswrote: > 25,000, Alexandria, Va. > > Josh Dersch can have one for his home and for work. > Yeah, that's a pleasant dream :). I'd have to sell my car and a couple of vital organs first... > > BTW, about the other nice system noted here, I was hoping the 11/20 would > stay off the radar and not go for a zillion bucks, so much for that idea. > At least I have the means to go to Tucson and get it if I'm nuts and go for > it. > It was on the radar before it was posted here; it had 11 bids when I got up this morning and it had barely been listed for 12 hours. If it doesn't break $10K I'll be surprised. - Josh > > Thanks > Jim >
Re: Straight 8 up on Ebay just now
25,000, Alexandria, Va. Josh Dersch can have one for his home and for work. Is that a dream price for such a system or realistic? I notice the corrosion on the front key.
Straight 8 up on Ebay just now
25,000, Alexandria, Va. Josh Dersch can have one for his home and for work. BTW, about the other nice system noted here, I was hoping the 11/20 would stay off the radar and not go for a zillion bucks, so much for that idea. At least I have the means to go to Tucson and get it if I'm nuts and go for it. Thanks Jim