Re: Swap clarification (Was: bill was my first "real" computer comoany customer"
On 11/13/18 2:37 PM, William Sudbrink via cctalk wrote: Fred Cisin wrote: Opened to public at 10:00 AM, by which time, the vendors had been buying each others stuff for quite a while. "It's worth getting a vendor table, just for the early admission!" That's true for just about any hamfest/swap meet, isn't it? Buy stuff right out of the back of the truck as it is unloaded. Bill S. My favorite thing is watching someone buy a thing from one table at a pretty good deal, then a few rows later, see that same guy at his own table, re-selling that same thing for 2x the price. --Jason
Re: Looking for optical grid mouse pad
There's a blue-and-black grid, and an all-black grid, at least with Sun mice. Mice that work on one won't work on the other. At least with the blue-and-black grid, spacing didn't seem to matter -- I've got three sizes of spacing, all three work with the mice that support it. Not sure if it applies to your situation, but the Mouse Systems mice with two holes, one emitting red light, work with the blue-and-black pads, and the newer Sun mice with a single hole works on the black grid. The blue-and-black grid looks metallic blue until you take a close look with a lighted magnifier. Thanks, Jonathan On Tue, Nov 13, 2018 at 5:40 PM Rico Pajarola via cctalk < cctalk@classiccmp.org> wrote: > On Tue, Nov 13, 2018 at 10:32 PM Tomasz Rola via cctalk < > cctalk@classiccmp.org> wrote: > > > On Sat, Nov 10, 2018 at 07:12:49PM +0100, Camiel Vanderhoeven via cctech > > wrote: > > > On 11/10/18, 6:49 PM, "Rico Pajarola" wrote: > > > > > > > > > > > > I have tried to print my own mousepad, but the mouse only works in > > > the y direction on it. > > > > > > there were 2 versions of that mousepad, and the symptom of using the > > > wrong one was that the mouse would only move in one direction. > > > > Out of curiosity, would it work if you printed this one-directional > > grid on a translucent plastic and overlaid it on top of white paper > > sheet? If yes, then would it work if you printed two such translucent > > plastic grids and ovelaid them one on the other turned 90 degrees and > > that on white paper? > > > I never tried, but I don't think this would work. AIUI, it has a minimum > and a maximum spacing for the lines. > > The white noise sheet "works" because some the black-white-black > transitions come with the right spacing, no matter what that spacing is (it > has to be the right order of magnitude, and it doesn't work as well as the > real thing). Crumpled tin-foil has been reported to work, too. > > > > > -- > > Regards, > > Tomasz Rola > > > > -- > > ** A C programmer asked whether computer had Buddha's nature. ** > > ** As the answer, master did "rm -rif" on the programmer's home** > > ** directory. And then the C programmer became enlightened... ** > > ** ** > > ** Tomasz Rola mailto:tomasz_r...@bigfoot.com ** > > >
Re: Font for DEC indicator panels
On 11/13/2018 10:28 AM, Liam Proven via cctalk wrote: On Tue, 13 Nov 2018 at 17:12, Jon Elson via cctalk wrote: Well, how DID they make panels? Letraset? :-) Yes, thanks, that was another brand of this technology! Jon
Re: Looking for optical grid mouse pad
here's one https://www.ebay.com/itm/192719727693 do you know if it needs a original coarse or fine grid pad? I'm surprised you don't have any Sun optical mice kicking around.
Remembering Bill Godbout
When I upgraded my first TRS80 from 4K to 16K, it was with 4116s from Godbout. The next time that I went in there, he had packaged up a whole bunch of 4116s into groups of 8 with a piece of paper giving directions for TRS80 installation.
Re: Swap clarification (Was: bill was my first "real" computer comoany customer"
Ok that i what I remember too The first one was great I went later one time years later and yea the feel had changed... the 2ed had no stacks of New varian 620 front panels and chassis! surplus and duck... wonder if he still has the 59 el camino? it was WONDERFUL! In a message dated 11/13/2018 4:33:28 PM US Mountain Standard Time, ci...@xenosoft.com writes: On Tue, 13 Nov 2018, ED SHARPE wrote: > YES! John Craig! > Thank you for the brain refresh! > how many shows a year does he do? I don't think that he has done one in MANY years. 40 years ago, he was doing them twice a year.
Bill Godbout
http://vcfed.org/wp/2018/11/13/r-i-p-bill-godbout-79/ :(
Re: desoldering (was Re: VAX 9440)
I have the combo unit including solder. I do not have any other experience with any high-end ware but I can say that this unit does all I need and does it well. On Tue, Nov 13, 2018 at 7:17 PM Chuck Guzis via cctalk < cctalk@classiccmp.org> wrote: > On 11/13/18 7:38 AM, Mark J. Blair via cctalk wrote: > > > Instead, I use two pencil-type irons, one in each hand, working under > > a stereo microscope. The tips are much better, and manipulating each > > tip independently provides great control of what's going on. Only > > drawback is that if you want to use a fancy, expensive iron, now you > > get to buy two of them. If you're tempted by a soldering station with > > two or more outputs, make sure that it can drive both simultaneously. > > There are dual-output stations that have two outputs but can only run > > one at a time, as well as ones which can drive two irons at once. > > After seeing the video on the ZD-985 some years ago on Dave's EEVBlog: > > https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ft50m8UU5WQ > > I've been wondering if it's a worthwhile tool. Does anyone have one of > these things? > > --Chuck > >
Re: desoldering (was Re: VAX 9440)
All this yammering about fancy desoldering gizmos harkens back memories of a "desoldering station" consisting of a hot soldering iron ... made of a hefty amount of copper (the kind you put in a pit of fire to heat up!) and a long, skinny screwdriver, or two, used to _very_ gently pry up ICs from each end while you ran the iron along the pins, loosening the IC a bit at a time until it popped loose. Clearing the pin holes of solder involved blowing through them as you heated up the pads ... with your breath, hopefully before the pads debonded from the PC board! There's no skill involved any more with the fancy-schmancy stuff ... That also harkens back to my days in the Navy when I would go visit the local Defense Reutilization and Marketing Office (DRMO), previously just called "The Dump". That's where all sorts of DoD-owned military and commercial grade equipment was sent as soon as the new models came along that the Air Force always got first (it helps when you don't have to drive your runways full of aircraft and fuel all over the world, like we do in the Navy!). Most of the Navy stuff showed up when ships got decommissioned ... a typical ship can stay in service for four or five decades, s ... anyone need any vacuum tubes, or a mechanical fire-control computer??? Do you know why the Air Force always builds the Officers Club first, and the runways last, on a new base? Congress will _always_ approve more money to finish a runway on a typically horribly-underbid DoD contract (that their brothers-in-law always seem to be involved with)! Anyway, as I was perusing the offerings, I wandered around a corner and there was a guy sitting over what can only be described as a medieval blacksmith's furnace. He was recovering the gold and other precious metals from boards and ICs by basically heating everything and collecting the metals as they dribbled out of the cracking, charring non-metals! He appeared to be positioning the materials over time to achieve various melting temperatures, which allowed him to pretty accurately collect each metal in sequence as the materials heated up. I can only wonder whether he wound up with a medical retirement, as I don't recall him wearing any kind of respirator, and it was being done in a large warehouse structure. Come to think of it, I'm surprised _I_ didn't wind up with a medical retirement, given the amount of time I spent in those places finding all sorts of great stuff! Speaking of inheriting Air Force hand-me-downs, a little-known factoid is that Admiral Grace Hopper (co-author of COBOL and an operator of the Harvard Mark IV) used to send her enlisted people around the Pentagon in the evenings to snag things left in the halls by Air Force offices to be carted off by the janitors. That included all of the furniture in her basement-level office and even the American Flag there (complete with heavy stand and oak pole with an eagle atop it). Few able-bodied military men escorted by armed guards ever wandered around in the basement of the Pentagon because of the dank, poorly lit (if at all) corridors, let alone a woman. However, Admiral Hopper wasn't just any woman, and there are rumors that the ne'er-do-wells scattered like cockroaches when they heard her coming (and that was easy to do, as she was always instructing someone about something very useful in conversations). I still have a Nanosecond piece of ~11.2-inch insulated 22-gauge solid wire that she handed out at her presentations - it's even signed, which means it has little marks that correspond to where her signature crossed its horizontal midpoint! She originally used them to explain to MBA-degreed flag officers why there was a noticeable delay between the then-new geosynchronous communications satellites located about 22,300 miles in altitude over the Equator, and satellite ground stations. She would show them a Nanosecond wire (the distance it would take for an electromagnetic wave to travel at the speed of light in one nanosecond) and then move it along an imaginary line-of-sight from a ground station to a satellite and start counting, "One nanosecond ... two nanoseconds ... three nanoseconds ... " until the audience members all exhibited the "Ah-HA!" moment on their faces. Then, she would repeat it along another path between the satellite and another ground station. Ain't computing history great??? All the Best, Jim
Re: Swap clarification (Was: bill was my first "real" computer comoany customer"
"Computer Swap America" run by John Craig. Santa Clara County Fairgrounds 344 Tully Roadnice El Camino(s?) Opened to public at 10:00 AM, by which time, the vendors had been buying each others stuff for quite a while. "It's worth getting a vendor table, just for the early admission!" On Tue, 13 Nov 2018, ED SHARPE wrote: YES!?? John?? Craig! Thank?? you?? ??for the?? brain?? refresh! how many shows a?? year?? does?? he?? do? I don't think that he has done one in MANY years. 40 years ago, he was doing them twice a year. Then "Northwest Computer Swap" started holding shows at San Mateo Fairgrounds. One time, Shugart showed up with a semi of "administrative returns" I bought a lot of my first SA300's, SA455, SA465, SA475 Then quite a few others. But, asian sellers of new computer stuff at good discounts began to be present at all of the shows, in increasing numbers. Eventually, there was very little used stuff anywhere other than the Foothill College Swap on second Saturday of each month. (outdoor parking lot, started before dawn, even in the rain) I think that it eventually moved to DeAnza? -- Grumpy Ol' Fred ci...@xenosoft.com
Re: Swap clarification (Was: bill was my first "real" computer comoany customer"
YES! John Craig! Thank you for the brain refresh! how many shows a year does he do? Ed# In a message dated 11/13/2018 3:15:02 PM US Mountain Standard Time, ci...@xenosoft.com writes: > computer fair in as I remember San Jose California … I believe it was > at the fairgrounds … (Fair was run by a pleasant guy (was his name > Craig or? Can someone clarify?) "Computer Swap America" run by John Craig. Santa Clara County Fairgrounds 344 Tully Road nice El Camino(s?) Opened to public at 10:00 AM, by which time, the vendors had been buying each others stuff for quite a while. "It's worth getting a vendor table, just for the early admission!"
Re: Got a Rainbow 100 and ...
On 11/10/18 10:47 PM, Alan Perry via cctalk wrote: Today I picked up a Rainbow 100. The seller bought it new for a specific need and he says that it had been sitting in his barn since '84. It looks like it was a dry barn because things look pretty clean for the most part aside from a thick layer of dust on everything. What I got was the system unit, a VR201 monitor, a keyboard, a vertical deskside stand for the system unit, and a LQP02 daisy wheel printer. I also got the MS-DOS and CP/M doc and software slip cover boxes. The CP/M disk box is still sealed and the CP/M docs are still in shrink wrap. The specific need that the seller bought it for involved MS-DOS, not CP/M. I last saw a Rainbow 100 in college around the time that the seller stopped using this system, so I am getting familiar with it now. I haven't powered anything on yet. ... 2. The belt that moves the print head is dried out and looks like, if the motor put any load on the belt, it will fail. Is any kind of replacement available? In case anyone else has a similar issue (including people searching the list archives in the future) ... I found a replacement for the belt on the LQP02. The belt is 10mm wide and the tooth pitch is 2mm. It was tricky to measure since, when I touched a tooth with the calipers, the tooth would break off or disintegrate. Using those parameters, I searched and found "BALITENSEN 5 Meter GT2 Open Timing Belt 10mm Wide 2mm Pitch for CNC 3D Printer Mendel Rostock Reprap" on Amazon. The old belt is under 37" long, so this 5 meter long piece that I got was long enough for a couple spares. I got the belt today. Cut a piece to length, installed it in the printer, and powered the printer up. The belt works so far. alan
Re: Font for DEC indicator panels
At 10:11 AM 13/11/2018 -0600, you wrote: >On 11/12/2018 08:51 PM, Fred Cisin via cctalk wrote: >> >> IFF DEC used a commercial font, then it should be possible >> to find it. >> >> But, it is extremely likely that they did NOT use a >> commercial font, and either had their graphics art people >> draw the characters as needed, or used reference patterns >> of their own that are NOT incorporated into a computer font. >> Were these DEC "fonts" fully formed, or a very fine bit >> pattern? >> >Well, how DID they make panels? I'm guessing that in the >beginning, it was all done manually with photo/optical >technology, the same stuff they used to make boards. Also, >used to screen print part numbers on sheet metal, power >supply parts, etc. So, they may have gotten pre-made >letters on some kind of carrier sheet, and transferred them >to a mylar sheet, and then photographically reproduced that >onto a master phototool, which was then used to make the >silk screen. This would be all standard technology to >anybody making PC boards in the 1960's - 1970's. > >While DEC got big enough to do this all in house or have one >of the providers in this area make it for them, they also >might have just picked a font they liked from somebody's >catalog. A LOT of advertising signage and all sorts of >graphics arts stuff was done by hand with photographic >technology at that time. Bishop Graphics comes to mind as a >provider of transferable lettering and of course, DIP >component patterns and such. > >I suspect that they didn't get into any digital graphics >technology until at least the later DEC-10 systems, so mid >1970's. > >Jon My mother was a commercial artist in those days, doing advertising, brochures, book layouts, illustrations, etc. And yes, you are right. For jobs with small amounts of text with various fonts they did it by hand using stick-down letters rub-transferred from sheets of letters. Then the offset printing sheets were produced photographically from the artist's layouts. Which incidentally allowed scaling, so the original stick-down fonts didn't have to be huge. Also it allowed distortion in X or Y, so standard fonts could be squished or stretched. Only they didn't use clear mylar film, just white card. Since unlike PCB production there were not such tight dimensional constraints. Also costs needed to be low. For instance that http://everist.org/pics/PDP-8S/fonts/font_2.png is very close to Eurostile that has been vertically squashed, blurred slightly to round line ends, and the slash inked by hand. Ref: http://everist.org/pics/PDP-8S/fonts/20181114_1680_eurostile.png (photo fromm book 'Computer type, M. Rogondino, 1991, pg 142.) You could mix hand-inked lettering with Letraset lettering since the photo-reproduction was forgiving of slight blemishes on the white and black. They saturated out. One company making the sheets of transfer lettering was Letraset. I recall using those films a few times in my teens (late 1960s) to put nice lettering on the faces of moving coil meters. I used Bishop tapes and pads for PCB layout a lot back then. They had some lettering but I don't think variety of fonts was their thing. Letraset had large catalogs of the fonts they had available. I'll see if I can find one of their catalogs at my mum's place. She still has all her art gear, including boxes of those lettering sheets. Btw, that post of mine never showed up. So some on the list saw it but it never reached me in Oz. Presumably some net filter didn't like the included links (to font source sites.) I've placed the text here: http://everist.org/pics/PDP-8S/fonts/2018113_to_cctalk.txt Guy
Re: Looking for optical grid mouse pad
On Tue, Nov 13, 2018 at 10:32 PM Tomasz Rola via cctalk < cctalk@classiccmp.org> wrote: > On Sat, Nov 10, 2018 at 07:12:49PM +0100, Camiel Vanderhoeven via cctech > wrote: > > On 11/10/18, 6:49 PM, "Rico Pajarola" wrote: > > > > > > > > I have tried to print my own mousepad, but the mouse only works in > > the y direction on it. > > > > there were 2 versions of that mousepad, and the symptom of using the > > wrong one was that the mouse would only move in one direction. > > Out of curiosity, would it work if you printed this one-directional > grid on a translucent plastic and overlaid it on top of white paper > sheet? If yes, then would it work if you printed two such translucent > plastic grids and ovelaid them one on the other turned 90 degrees and > that on white paper? > I never tried, but I don't think this would work. AIUI, it has a minimum and a maximum spacing for the lines. The white noise sheet "works" because some the black-white-black transitions come with the right spacing, no matter what that spacing is (it has to be the right order of magnitude, and it doesn't work as well as the real thing). Crumpled tin-foil has been reported to work, too. > -- > Regards, > Tomasz Rola > > -- > ** A C programmer asked whether computer had Buddha's nature. ** > ** As the answer, master did "rm -rif" on the programmer's home** > ** directory. And then the C programmer became enlightened... ** > ** ** > ** Tomasz Rola mailto:tomasz_r...@bigfoot.com ** >
RE: Swap clarification (Was: bill was my first "real" computer comoany customer"
Fred Cisin wrote: > Opened to public at 10:00 AM, by which time, the vendors had been buying > each others stuff for quite a while. "It's worth getting a vendor table, > just for the early admission!" That's true for just about any hamfest/swap meet, isn't it? Buy stuff right out of the back of the truck as it is unloaded. Bill S. --- This email has been checked for viruses by Avast antivirus software. https://www.avast.com/antivirus
Swap clarification (Was: bill was my first "real" computer comoany customer"
computer fair in as I remember San Jose California … I believe it was at the fairgrounds … (Fair was run by a pleasant guy (was his name Craig or? Can someone clarify?) "Computer Swap America" run by John Craig. Santa Clara County Fairgrounds 344 Tully Road nice El Camino(s?) Opened to public at 10:00 AM, by which time, the vendors had been buying each others stuff for quite a while. "It's worth getting a vendor table, just for the early admission!"
Re: TU58 tape formatter (was Re: rebuilding DC100A cartridges?)
On 11/13/2018 03:46 PM, Ethan Dicks via cctalk wrote: > On Sat, Nov 24, 2012 at 4:08 AM Eric Smith wrote: >>> It is remotely possible that there's an undocumented "format" command >>> in the protocol. However, I've heard multiple people claim that >>> special firmware was required. >> I spent some time reverse-engineering the firmware. There is only one >> undocumented opcode, decimal 10, and I haven't yet figured out what it >> does, but it definitely doesn't format a tape. > Is Opcode #10 the "Enter MRSP Mode" or is that something else? > > -ethan Same here, I asked while I was at DEC and the designer said need a special rig to do that and the important things was EOT and BOToptical sensors and the code with the basic patterns. The TU58 does not have an EOT or BOT sensor as it detects end marks on the tape. I think using disassembled code and adding the sensors its possible to put down the marks needed. Never explored it fully to prove that. It was easier to make a RAM-based TU58 work alike and at least one company did a floppy based TU58 work alike. Allison
bill was my first "real" computer comoany customer"
A BILL GODBOUT TALE C- Ed Sharpe Archivist for SMECC BEWARE THIS NARTIVE WANDERS>… A very old friend Bill Godbout of the s100 computer days and my first real commercial buyer of any large quantity of surplus electronics material from me when I went into the early part of my computer store and surplus electronics business was burned in the fire in Paradise I have been informed. Very sad - He was a great guy - I met him at a computer fair in as I remember San Jose California … I believe it was at the fairgrounds … (Fair was run by a pleasant guy (was his name Craig or? Can someone clarify?) with the neatest 59 El Camino Chevy Truck (Prior to this I had never seen a ’59 before (I would love one!) Steve Beleauh (sp?) in High School had a ‘64 ) were I had taken mainly a bunch of odds and ends but also some 8 inch floppy disc power supplies that Intel had scrapped at Empire metals ( Gary and Ray no doubt had something to do with those ending up there … Hi guys!) and a box of AC power cords and some parts and stuff now what would be considered scrap tooBill Godbout had set up to sell. (of course, he had all kids of computer stuff his company produced and other things he was a vendor for... He was a big guy in the BIZ in those days, We of course had some power cords and Bill and I when talking got on the topic of power cords for computers ... the new style...like all out pcs use now. ( the prior version on one end the normal 3 prog plug in the wall plug and the other had oval ends and round pins... and were available all over but not so the "NEW" style ( like we use now) I ended up with many many palate loads ITT Courier Terminal Company in Tempe Arizona ( They made IBM clone cluster terminal system - but unlike the IBM terminals had non-clicking keyboards)) was surplussing ... and had calculated the quantity and cost carefully and beat the Finkelstein Brothers -> Mhz Electronics and Semiconductor Surplus... Richard at MHz still alive Steve at Semi Passed away)... ALAS!! The brothers miscalculated or used that as a reason for not getting the lot in later conversations, but It set us up with more damn cords that I ever imagined I could even sell. ANYWAY... First deal I did with him Telling Bill Godbout of all these cords he says ... well... "TRUST ME" ... "ship them to me and on receipt I will send you a check!" and then he jokes about I shouldn’t trust anyone in this business saying TRUST ME! But I did and true to his word his check arrived which set me up with enough cash to make many other great buys of Minicomputers, parts and terminals as I started out. Actually I think that is were the money came from to buy my first PDP-8 from Richard at MHz Electronics he had laying about. It was a 8M or 8F like an 8E with omnibus but short case so only accepting one Buss backplane and it used LEDS in the front panel vs the light bulbs the 8E used. (I was later able to sell this for a large sum thus… increasing the ‘Computer Exchange’ working capital. Thanks Bill. You will always be in our book as one of the original good guys and thanks for being someone I could trust in dealings. God in Heaven... Take good care of old Bill for me...
Re: VAX 9440
I believe that a mini version of the VAX 9000 consisting of the main CPU rack can be set up for display, plus photos / posters of a full setup in the background. Add a terminal or two and we can demo the 9000 without breaking the bank. I did not check but even a few drives would suffice to demo the unit. What would be more impressive is not how many racks we get up and running but whether we network it and put the CPUs to work to do something interesting. We may even be able to bypass the huge DC power unit and just "plug in" each CPU directly using lower-AMP mains. I was inspecting the 9000 at System Source (Baltimore) this weekend, it's the same as what is at VCFed in New Jersey. I think if we keep it small we can actually use the 9000 without having to expand what power is already available at System Source or VCFed museum. Dave's LSSM may have enough to power everything as originally intended. I look forward to seeing that, too next time I go to Pittsburgh. I am lucky to live in between these three places. MyVAX 4000-705 is a baby compared with these 9000's but in the end they're the compatible and can talk to each other. It would be fun if we spent some time connecting our various VAXenz on a given day, an international event or something b On Tue, Nov 13, 2018 at 4:40 PM Evan Koblentz via cctalk < cctalk@classiccmp.org> wrote: > > The question is probably, could they afford the power bill? We have a > bunch of Crays and CDCs at the Computer History Museum, and if they were > operational, we'd probably have to take up a special very-large-hat-passing > collection > > http://vcfed.org/wp/contribute/ > > :) >
Re: Any News from the Nova @ 50 Event?
> Any chance someone could write it up? Pending approval and editing, I will release some video footage I took on my Youtube channel, Uniservo. No people, no discussion, just a walkaround of the hardware exhibits. There was real 4K video being shot (terabytes of it!) by professionals, but I do not know what the final plans of that footage will be. > Also, were there any announcements re. licensing etc? At some point there will be an official announcement, so I will refrain from saying what it was. I think Wild Hare is still in deep decompression mode. You had to be there... -- Will
Re: TU58 tape formatter (was Re: rebuilding DC100A cartridges?)
Mark J. Blair (NF6X) has a git repo with various TU58 firmware disassemblies here: https://gitlab.com/NF6X_Retrocomputing/tu58firmware
Re: TU58 tape formatter (was Re: rebuilding DC100A cartridges?)
On Tue, Nov 13, 2018 at 1:47 PM Ethan Dicks via cctalk < cctalk@classiccmp.org> wrote: > On Sat, Nov 24, 2012 at 4:08 AM Eric Smith wrote: > > I spent some time reverse-engineering the firmware. There is only one > > undocumented opcode, decimal 10, and I haven't yet figured out what it > > does, but it definitely doesn't format a tape. > > Is Opcode #10 the "Enter MRSP Mode" or is that something else? > I'm still not sure what it does, but it was present in the early 23-089e2 firmware, and gone (acts as no-op) in the later 23-294e2 and 23-389e2 firmware versions. MRSP mode requires a command 12 (hexadecimal?) according to this page: http://www.willsworks.net/pdp-11/tu58-emu but neither the 23-089e2 nor 23-389e2 firmware seem to include that. I haven't checked 23-294e2. Maybe there are other firmware versions that include the Enter MRSP command, or maybe I'm not correctly understanding how the command packet parsing works in the firmware.
Re: Rugged Nova/1601
On 11/6/18 1:22 AM, erik--- via cctech wrote: > Yes, lot of metal inside those Rolms. Although all Aluminium, they > are veeery heavy and I always wondered how many of them also have > been used in airborne applications, where weight is an issue ;-) One of the more interesting problems we faced at ROLM MSC (as opposed to the telecom side) was the fact that all hardware was designed to be tri-service. Salt spray and fungal resistance required that the cases be sealed with thermal frames to conduct heat to external heat exchangers, but that created interesting issues when sticking the box on an aircraft (but was a lifesaver with disk drives, as otherwise flying heads had a tendency to crash with altitude). The chassis ended up being quite heavy due to the hammer and drop tests (as others have noted, intended to simulate the shock of depth charges), as well as the shaker table tests (driven by a pair of Really Freaking Big McIntosh audio amps). The result of all of this was that the machines tended to be much heavier and thermally complex than they the might have needed to be for the Air Force, but the desire for commonality in some weapons systems (GLCM/SLCM comes to mind) across services made the choice a good one. As for the 1601 (aka AN/UYK-12(V)), it very much did exist and was exhibited in 1969 at the Fall Joint Computer Conference, one year after the Nova took its bow, running the same demo software. It was deployed as part of the AN/ALR-46 Radar warning system, which was found on the B-52, F-4 and F-111 Note that even the 1601 was a ROLM-specific design that implemented the DG instruction set under license. ROLM deviated from this somewhat with the 1602 and 1666, bolting in their own extensions to the ISA. The one-half-ATR chassis MSC-14 is actually a punch, where the S/140 prints and microcode were used more or less verbatim (although some tweaks were ultimately needed due to timing issues arising from the different card form factors); the Hawk was very much a ROLM-specific design and caused us software types some fits, because the the microcode guys frequently missed the "reserved, must be zero" and "reserved, may be zero" notes in Wallach's Eagle Architecture doc (at one point they proposed a loop-in-microcode approach to implementing the purge ATU instruction because it only showed up twice in the AOS/VS code base, until it was pointed out that the damn thing was executed on every context switch...) -- Christian Kennedy, Ph.D. ch...@mainecoon.com AF6AP | DB0692 | PG00029419 http://www.mainecoon.comPGP KeyID 108DAB97 PGP fingerprint: 4E99 10B6 7253 B048 6685 6CBC 55E1 20A3 108D AB97 "Mr. McKittrick, after careful consideration…"
Re: Looking for optical grid mouse pad
On Sat, Nov 10, 2018 at 07:12:49PM +0100, Camiel Vanderhoeven via cctech wrote: > On 11/10/18, 6:49 PM, "Rico Pajarola" wrote: > > > > I have tried to print my own mousepad, but the mouse only works in > the y direction on it. > > there were 2 versions of that mousepad, and the symptom of using the > wrong one was that the mouse would only move in one direction. Out of curiosity, would it work if you printed this one-directional grid on a translucent plastic and overlaid it on top of white paper sheet? If yes, then would it work if you printed two such translucent plastic grids and ovelaid them one on the other turned 90 degrees and that on white paper? -- Regards, Tomasz Rola -- ** A C programmer asked whether computer had Buddha's nature. ** ** As the answer, master did "rm -rif" on the programmer's home** ** directory. And then the C programmer became enlightened... ** ** ** ** Tomasz Rola mailto:tomasz_r...@bigfoot.com **
Any News from the Nova @ 50 Event?
I saw a brief positive post on Facebook, but nothing else. Any chance someone could write it up? Also, were there any announcements re. licensing etc? Steve --- Stephen Merrony
Re: Font for DEC indicator panels
Dec may have used a customized font. You could recreate it fairly easily using a font utility like Fontographer (my favorite... Really easy to use) or Font lab. They allow you to take a font that you like and modify the different glyphs to your taste. Wayne > On Nov 12, 2018, at 12:04 PM, Noel Chiappa via cctalk > wrote: > > So, anyone happen to know the font used in DEC's indicator panels: > > http://ana-3.lcs.mit.edu/~jnc/tech/DECIndicatorPanels.html > > or, at least, a very close match? > > For mockups we're doing, Dave B is using 'DejaVu Sans', but that's not a > really close match: the vertical bars are wider than in the DEC font, where > the verticals and horizontals are the same width. > > It would be nice to have a closer match when we go to turn out replicas. > (We're just about settled on the format for the QSIC RKV11-F/RPV11-D panels.) > > Noel >
Full story about Bill Godbout
http://vcfed.org/wp/2018/11/13/r-i-p-bill-godbout-79/ Evan Koblentz, director Vintage Computer Federation a 501(c)3 educational non-profit e...@vcfed.org (646) 546- www.vcfed.org facebook.com/vcfederation twitter.com/vcfederation
Update re: Bill Godbout
I communicated with the person who posted on alt.folklore.computers. The person is a close relative of Bill's; thus, the information about his tragic passing is true/confirmed. The person added, "He was living in Oreville, California and perished in his home on Thursday, Nov. 8. ... Bill was a great man, and THE smartest person I've ever known." Please do not disturb the AFC poster as they're in mourning. Evan Koblentz, director Vintage Computer Federation a 501(c)3 educational non-profit e...@vcfed.org (646) 546- www.vcfed.org facebook.com/vcfederation twitter.com/vcfederation
Re: Update re: Bill Godbout
Here is a GoFundMe started by Bill's son: https://www.gofundme.com/godbouttuckcampfirerelieffund
Re: Looking for optical grid mouse pad
Carmiel you lucky dog! How come you get TWO Titan's, all I want is ONE. I had one for about a year after it came out. I convinced their sales to park it in my office next to NASA JSC while we both were entertaining customers. I did some visualization work using Dore' and AVS. recently, I have built Dore' on a BSD and Linux box, and got the 'Flag' and 'Trunk' demos working. Let me know how you are coming, and the moment you run out of space for one of these, let me know. Randy From: cctech on behalf of Camiel Vanderhoeven via cctech Sent: Saturday, November 10, 2018 8:24 AM To: cctech Subject: Looking for optical grid mouse pad Hello everyone, A week ago, I took possession of a second Ardent Titan graphics supercomputer, and unlike the other Titan, this one is almost complete. There is one tiny bit missing, and that is a mouse pad. The mouse used with this systems is a Mouse Systems M4 variant (M4Q), and it does not appear to be a normal serial mouse. So, if anyone has one of those reflective mousepads with a grid of fine blue and grey lines that they don’t need, I’d be very happy to have it. I have tried to print my own mousepad, but the mouse only works in the y direction on it. For those who want to know, the Titan is outfitted as follows: 2 x Titan P3 vector processors (using a MIPS R3000 for scalar operations) 2 x 64 MB main memory Extended G2 Graphics 3 Maxtor 760 MB disks QIC-120 tapedrive 19” trinitron monitor with stereo bezel and 3d glasses Keyboard, mouse, knob box Titan OS 4.2 installed (plus version 3.0, 4.1, and 4.2 installation tapes) Dore, AVS, and PHIGS+ graphics environments Vectorizing FORTRAN compiler with LINPACK, EISPACK, and FFT libraries Matlab-Pro 3.5 (the Titan was the only computer ever that had Matlab as part of its bundled programs) Biodesign Biograf 3.0 molecular modeling application All bits and pieces, and all software appears to work. Camiel
Re: Looking for optical grid mouse pad
On 11/10/18, 6:49 PM, "Rico Pajarola" wrote: I have tried to print my own mousepad, but the mouse only works in the y direction on it. there were 2 versions of that mousepad, and the symptom of using the wrong one was that the mouse would only move in one direction. There was another version of the print-it-yourself mouse pad that's essentially just white noise, have you tried that? I know I need the one with the grid, because it’s shown in the documentation. I have just created and printed a simple grid, with two lines per millimeter. If someone has already created one that you can download and print that works, that would be great. Camiel
Re: VAX 9440
Amazing rescue! Hope nothing breaks. On 11/8/18, 3:55 AM, "cctalk on behalf of Evan Koblentz via cctalk" wrote: The VCF museum took delivery of a VAX 9440 today. It arrived in two 28-foot trailers. Here's our forklift driver beginning to unload the first truck: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1E-Q5xrsYXyjrZEZh92xIBhlStvvNUcRV/view?usp=sharing Here's a teaser picture of the main cabinet: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1bEpSMzBEeOvuDnzPQ9Npc7iYmDhjZq8c/view?usp=sharing The full system is 30-40 feet long when it's all set up! It is in pristine condition and was in service at a defense contractor until a couple of months ago. Rumor has it that we arranged for another one to land in Dave McGuire's Large Scale Systems Museum collection, and a third to be with Bob Roswell's System Source collection. :) Perhaps they'll post updates too!
Re: VAX 9440
That is a behemoth!! Did you ger that huge powerforming thingy that goes with it? I'm told that we got * everything *. Are you crazy enough to atempt a power-up? Yes.
Looking for optical grid mouse pad
Hello everyone, A week ago, I took possession of a second Ardent Titan graphics supercomputer, and unlike the other Titan, this one is almost complete. There is one tiny bit missing, and that is a mouse pad. The mouse used with this systems is a Mouse Systems M4 variant (M4Q), and it does not appear to be a normal serial mouse. So, if anyone has one of those reflective mousepads with a grid of fine blue and grey lines that they don’t need, I’d be very happy to have it. I have tried to print my own mousepad, but the mouse only works in the y direction on it. For those who want to know, the Titan is outfitted as follows: 2 x Titan P3 vector processors (using a MIPS R3000 for scalar operations) 2 x 64 MB main memory Extended G2 Graphics 3 Maxtor 760 MB disks QIC-120 tapedrive 19” trinitron monitor with stereo bezel and 3d glasses Keyboard, mouse, knob box Titan OS 4.2 installed (plus version 3.0, 4.1, and 4.2 installation tapes) Dore, AVS, and PHIGS+ graphics environments Vectorizing FORTRAN compiler with LINPACK, EISPACK, and FFT libraries Matlab-Pro 3.5 (the Titan was the only computer ever that had Matlab as part of its bundled programs) Biodesign Biograf 3.0 molecular modeling application All bits and pieces, and all software appears to work. Camiel
New to System/36
Just picked up an IBM System/36 5362 tonight. It is in pretty good physical condition with just a few minor scratches - other than needing a thorough cleaning. It has 2 60 MB hard disks in the unit. Not sure of the RAM capacity. Missing the the mode hard key. A few of us tried to get it running tonight. It came with a 3179 twin-ax terminal but no keyboard. We connected the terminal via a twinax cable direct from port 0 to the terminated Y adapter on the terminal. Never got any output on the terminal at any time other than the fairly empty status line. The S/36 front panel console light did illuminate after we connected the terminal. The key was locked to Normal but we were able to by-pass it with a jumper to get it into Service mode. The media that came with it only had disk 1 of an SSP release and we could not get that to IPL from floppy (mode 3 / panel 1000). It stepped the head motor forward and back a couple times, engaged the head, then immediately threw an error code. Any idea where I can get an SSP release for the S/36 5362 and how to write it to 8" floppies? Also where I might find a keyboard for the terminal and what can be done if anything to gauge the health of the hard drives? -Alan H.
Re: Bill Godbout
"drrt1...@gmail.com" posted on AFC this morning that Bill died in the Camp fire in Northern California on Thursday. Has anyone else heard about this? Google has no mention. Yet. How can we confirm? I emailed (on behalf of VCF) the person who posted it there but haven't yet heard back.
UniBone - access DEC PDP-11 UNIBUS under Linux
Guys, I'm about to finish another project: "UniBone" - a Linux-to-UNIBUS bridge, based on the BeagleBone Black. It is supposed to be a development platform for device emulation. At the moment it can emulate memory, emulate an RL11 controller with 4 RL drives attached, and act as UNIBUS hardware test adapter. There are some web pages at http://retrocmp.com/projects/unibone And I'll show it on VCFE.CH in Zurich on Nov 24/25, plugged into a PDP-11/05. Enjoy, Joerg
Re: VAX 9440
The question is probably, could they afford the power bill? We have a bunch of Crays and CDCs at the Computer History Museum, and if they were operational, we'd probably have to take up a special very-large-hat-passing collection http://vcfed.org/wp/contribute/ :)
Re: VAX 9440
Amazing rescue! Hope nothing breaks. Right now I'm just happy no * people * broke when it was delivered! Unloading it from two 28-foot trailers required five people, two pallet jacks, and a forklift.
Re: New to System/36
You will need the keyboard. Those terminals usually don't come up without it. Good news tho if the keyboard has been nicked, the protocol is compatible-ish with PS/2. I have successfully used $generic_ps2_keyboard with the right plug for it. Make sure to not hit the Windows key (or any other 'new' keys) - you'll lock up the terminal's firmware. You will also have to configure the terminal to use address 0 - Twinax busses have an address range of 0-7 and you need bus 0, address 0 for the console. Generally speaking, bringing up the system is similar to bringing up early AS/400s. /y On Sat, 10 Nov 2018 at 19:59, alan--- via cctalk wrote: > Just picked up an IBM System/36 5362 last night. It is in pretty good > physical condition with just a few minor scratches - other than needing > a thorough cleaning. It has 2 60 MB hard disks in the unit. Not sure > of the RAM capacity. Missing the the mode hard key. > > A few of us tried to get it running tonight. It came with a 3179 > twin-ax terminal but no keyboard. We connected the terminal via a > twinax cable direct from port 0 to the terminated Y adapter on the > terminal. Never got any output on the terminal at any time other than > the fairly empty status line. The S/36 front panel console light did > illuminate after we connected the terminal. The key was locked to > Normal but we were able to by-pass it with a jumper to get it into > Service mode. The media that came with it only had disk 1 of an SSP > release and we could not get that to IPL from floppy (mode 3 / panel > 1000). It stepped the head motor forward and back a couple times, > engaged the head, then immediately threw an error code. > > Any idea where I can get an SSP release for the S/36 5362 and how to > write it to 8" floppies? Also where I might find a keyboard for the > terminal and what can be done if anything to gauge the health of the > hard drives? > > -Alan H. >
Re: Looking for optical grid mouse pad
Congrats on that amazing find. On Sat, Nov 10, 2018 at 5:24 PM Camiel Vanderhoeven via cctech < cct...@classiccmp.org> wrote: > Hello everyone, > > > > A week ago, I took possession of a second Ardent Titan graphics > supercomputer, and unlike the other Titan, this one is almost complete. > There is one tiny bit missing, and that is a mouse pad. The mouse used with > this systems is a Mouse Systems M4 variant (M4Q), and it does not appear to > be a normal serial mouse. So, if anyone has one of those reflective > mousepads with a grid of fine blue and grey lines that they don’t need, I’d > be very happy to have it. > > > > I have tried to print my own mousepad, but the mouse only works in the y > direction on it. > there were 2 versions of that mousepad, and the symptom of using the wrong one was that the mouse would only move in one direction. There was another version of the print-it-yourself mouse pad that's essentially just white noise, have you tried that? > > > For those who want to know, the Titan is outfitted as follows: > > > > 2 x Titan P3 vector processors (using a MIPS R3000 for scalar operations) > > 2 x 64 MB main memory > > Extended G2 Graphics > > 3 Maxtor 760 MB disks > > QIC-120 tapedrive > > 19” trinitron monitor with stereo bezel and 3d glasses > > Keyboard, mouse, knob box > > > > Titan OS 4.2 installed (plus version 3.0, 4.1, and 4.2 installation tapes) > Dore, AVS, and PHIGS+ graphics environments > > Vectorizing FORTRAN compiler with LINPACK, EISPACK, and FFT libraries > > Matlab-Pro 3.5 (the Titan was the only computer ever that had Matlab as > part of its bundled programs) > > Biodesign Biograf 3.0 molecular modeling application > > > > All bits and pieces, and all software appears to work. > > > > Camiel > > > > > >
Re: Looking for optical grid mouse pad
On Sat, Nov 10, 2018 at 7:12 PM Camiel Vanderhoeven < camiel.vanderhoe...@vmssoftware.com> wrote: > On 11/10/18, 6:49 PM, "Rico Pajarola" wrote: > > > > I have tried to print my own mousepad, but the mouse only works in the y > direction on it. > > there were 2 versions of that mousepad, and the symptom of using the wrong > one was that the mouse would only move in one direction. > > > > There was another version of the print-it-yourself mouse pad that's > essentially just white noise, have you tried that? > > > > I know I need the one with the grid, because it’s shown in the > documentation. > the white noise mouse pad is not an official thing, but it's reported to work for some optical mice. I haven't tried it myself. YMMV. I have just created and printed a simple grid, with two lines per > millimeter. If someone has already created one that you can download and > print that works, that would be great. > The pad has different resolutions for x and y axis, and one axis (x axis?) seems to be more sensitive to wrong spacing (if the mouse only moves in one direction it could also be a symptom of a mousepad rotated by 90 degrees). So maybe you need to experiment with the grid size a bit. > > Camiel >
Re: TU58 tape formatter (was Re: rebuilding DC100A cartridges?)
On Sat, Nov 24, 2012 at 4:08 AM Eric Smith wrote: > > It is remotely possible that there's an undocumented "format" command > > in the protocol. However, I've heard multiple people claim that > > special firmware was required. > > I spent some time reverse-engineering the firmware. There is only one > undocumented opcode, decimal 10, and I haven't yet figured out what it > does, but it definitely doesn't format a tape. Is Opcode #10 the "Enter MRSP Mode" or is that something else? -ethan
Re: desoldering (was Re: VAX 9440)
On 11/13/18 7:38 AM, Mark J. Blair via cctalk wrote: > Instead, I use two pencil-type irons, one in each hand, working under > a stereo microscope. The tips are much better, and manipulating each > tip independently provides great control of what's going on. Only > drawback is that if you want to use a fancy, expensive iron, now you > get to buy two of them. If you're tempted by a soldering station with > two or more outputs, make sure that it can drive both simultaneously. > There are dual-output stations that have two outputs but can only run > one at a time, as well as ones which can drive two irons at once. After seeing the video on the ZD-985 some years ago on Dave's EEVBlog: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ft50m8UU5WQ I've been wondering if it's a worthwhile tool. Does anyone have one of these things? --Chuck
Re: Font for DEC indicator panels
> On Nov 13, 2018, at 12:12 PM, Al Kossow via cctalk > wrote: > > > > On 11/13/18 8:58 AM, Toby Thain via cctalk wrote: > >> I am not aware of one, but I can hunt around. I'm also waiting on a >> friend who might have an idea about the DX11 panel, which is a different >> font from this one. > > Wasn't the DX11 a Systems Concepts product? No, DEC Computer Special Systems. Unibus to IBM 360 channel adapter. I worked with the guy who used to support that device, he had a box of IBM 360 binary card decks (for the diagnostics) in his office. paul
Re: Font for DEC indicator panels
On 2018-11-13 10:21 AM, Noel Chiappa via cctalk wrote: > > From: Toby Thain > > > To get closer I'd need better images of the panels. > > Hi, I borrowed a DEC inlay from someone (a KA10 CPU bay) and scanned a chunk > of it (as much as I could fit into my A4 scanner :-) at 200 dpi: > > http://ana-3.lcs.mit.edu/~jnc/tech/jpg/KACPUPanel.jpg > > I have a TC08 inlay, but it's currently being used in my QSIC display (until > we can get the RKV11-F/RPV11-D inlay done :-), and I didn't want to yank it > out. As far as I can tell, it's the same font on the two of them. > > > > the closest I know of off the top of my head is Akzidenz Grotesk. > > The Akzidenz Grotesk Medium is indeed very, very close (other than the zero). "Standard Medium" appears to be an American trade name for Akzidenz Grotesk or clones. Unfortunately the AG "Q" is still wrong for your panel example, so this is not it. http://castletype.com/html/tipoteca/standard-norm-medium.html ^^ This is a revival, but the font is much older and was used for transit signage in NYC. --Toby > Do you happen to know if that font available for use in non-commercial > settings? > > Thanks! > > Noel >
Re: DEC Alpha Bug Check Crash
On 11/12/2018 1:30 PM, Patrick Finnegan via cctalk wrote: On Mon, Nov 12, 2018 at 12:22 PM Jon Elson via cctalk wrote: On 11/11/2018 11:36 PM, Douglas Taylor via cctalk wrote: This is most likely correct. I re-installed the OS on a different SD card/SCSI2SD device and got a successful graphics boot up. Do SD cards drop bits or go bad? UGH! Yes, they can. It SHOULD cause a device parity error, but I guess some of their coverage is less than 100% You can buy "industrially rated" flash memory cards such as the "SanDisk Industrial" labelled ones, which seems to help based on my experience with SD cards in industrial controls systems at work. Absolutely avoid cheap SD cards though, they aren't usually good for more than a few re-writes in a digital camera type situation (linearly write the card, and then erase the whole thing, repeat). Things like swap files on SD/CF cards may wear them out in a couple of hours of use. Pat And I was under the impression that my hardware problems were coming from the 20 year old Vax! Thanks for informing me.
Re: Font for DEC indicator panels
On 11/13/18 8:58 AM, Toby Thain via cctalk wrote: > I am not aware of one, but I can hunt around. I'm also waiting on a > friend who might have an idea about the DX11 panel, which is a different > font from this one. Wasn't the DX11 a Systems Concepts product?
Re: Font for DEC indicator panels
On 2018-11-13 10:21 AM, Noel Chiappa via cctalk wrote: > > From: Toby Thain > > > To get closer I'd need better images of the panels. > > Hi, I borrowed a DEC inlay from someone (a KA10 CPU bay) and scanned a chunk > of it (as much as I could fit into my A4 scanner :-) at 200 dpi: > > http://ana-3.lcs.mit.edu/~jnc/tech/jpg/KACPUPanel.jpg > Nice job, that's a good reference. > I have a TC08 inlay, but it's currently being used in my QSIC display (until > we can get the RKV11-F/RPV11-D inlay done :-), and I didn't want to yank it > out. As far as I can tell, it's the same font on the two of them. > > > > the closest I know of off the top of my head is Akzidenz Grotesk. > > The Akzidenz Grotesk Medium is indeed very, very close (other than the zero). > Do you happen to know if that font available for use in non-commercial > settings? I am not aware of one, but I can hunt around. I'm also waiting on a friend who might have an idea about the DX11 panel, which is a different font from this one. Forgetting about identifying the original for a moment, I just stumbled on this NEW (and very good) design, which is a bit closer to the DX11 and could be a suitable basis for a set of modern panels? You could license this font for your product and its branding (or documentation, web site, etc). It even has a monospaced variant: https://lettersfromsweden.se/font/lab-grotesque/ --Toby > > Thanks! > > Noel >
Re: Font for DEC indicator panels
On 2018-11-13 11:11 AM, Jon Elson via cctalk wrote:
> On 11/12/2018 08:51 PM, Fred Cisin via cctalk wrote:
>>
>> IFF DEC used a commercial font, then it should be possible to find it.
>>
>> But, it is extremely likely that they did NOT use a commercial font,
>> and either had their graphics art people draw the characters as
>> needed, or used reference patterns of their own that are NOT
>> incorporated into a computer font.
>> Were these DEC "fonts" fully formed, or a very fine bit pattern?
>>
> Well, how DID they make panels? I'm guessing that in the beginning, it
> was all done manually with photo/optical technology, the same stuff they
> used to make boards. Also, used to screen print part numbers on sheet
> metal, power supply parts, etc. So, they may have gotten pre-made
> letters on some kind of carrier sheet, and transferred them to a mylar
> sheet, and then photographically reproduced that onto a master
> phototool, which was then used to make the silk screen. This would be
> all standard technology to anybody making PC boards in the 1960's - 1970's.
Screenprinting. The production of the mask would have been done roughly
as I outlined: Camera ready ("mechanical") paste-up artwork, exposed via
process camera to a negative, and from then on the process is standard
contact exposures (vacuum frame, etching, etc).
>
> While DEC got big enough to do this all in house or have one of the
> providers in this area make it for them, they also might have just
> picked a font they liked from somebody's catalog. A LOT of advertising
> signage and all sorts of graphics arts stuff was done by hand with
> photographic technology at that time. Bishop Graphics comes to mind as
Yes, dry transfer is a possibility. But so is piecework phototypesetting.
> a provider of transferable lettering and of course, DIP component
> patterns and such.
>
> I suspect that they didn't get into any digital graphics technology
> until at least the later DEC-10 systems, so mid 1970's.
--Toby
>
> Jon
>
Re: Font for DEC indicator panels
On Tue, 13 Nov 2018 at 17:12, Jon Elson via cctalk wrote: > Well, how DID they make panels? Letraset? :-) -- Liam Proven - Profile: https://about.me/liamproven Email: lpro...@cix.co.uk - Google Mail/Hangouts/Plus: lpro...@gmail.com Twitter/Facebook/Flickr: lproven - Skype/LinkedIn: liamproven UK: +44 7939-087884 - ČR (+ WhatsApp/Telegram/Signal): +420 702 829 053
Re: Font for DEC indicator panels
On 11/12/2018 08:51 PM, Fred Cisin via cctalk wrote: IFF DEC used a commercial font, then it should be possible to find it. But, it is extremely likely that they did NOT use a commercial font, and either had their graphics art people draw the characters as needed, or used reference patterns of their own that are NOT incorporated into a computer font. Were these DEC "fonts" fully formed, or a very fine bit pattern? Well, how DID they make panels? I'm guessing that in the beginning, it was all done manually with photo/optical technology, the same stuff they used to make boards. Also, used to screen print part numbers on sheet metal, power supply parts, etc. So, they may have gotten pre-made letters on some kind of carrier sheet, and transferred them to a mylar sheet, and then photographically reproduced that onto a master phototool, which was then used to make the silk screen. This would be all standard technology to anybody making PC boards in the 1960's - 1970's. While DEC got big enough to do this all in house or have one of the providers in this area make it for them, they also might have just picked a font they liked from somebody's catalog. A LOT of advertising signage and all sorts of graphics arts stuff was done by hand with photographic technology at that time. Bishop Graphics comes to mind as a provider of transferable lettering and of course, DIP component patterns and such. I suspect that they didn't get into any digital graphics technology until at least the later DEC-10 systems, so mid 1970's. Jon
Re: VAX 9440
What a majestic system! When I saw the teaser picture of the backs of racks on Twitter, I was assuming something in the 11/78x series. I don't know anything about the 9440 yet, so it'll be fun to read up on that. -- Mark J. Blair, NF6X http://www.nf6x.net/
Re: desoldering (was Re: VAX 9440)
On the topic of desoldering tweezers: I don't like them. I've done tons of rework of components down to 0201 size. I consider 0201 to be difficult, but I found that once I could work on 0201 components at all, 0402 suddenly seemed easy to work with! Anyway, the tweezers I've used had poor tip alignment, tips too blunt for small components, and of course the whole handle has to be positioned in a plane such that both tips touch their corresponding terminals at the same time. And that was with high-end Metcal tweezers. Instead, I use two pencil-type irons, one in each hand, working under a stereo microscope. The tips are much better, and manipulating each tip independently provides great control of what's going on. Only drawback is that if you want to use a fancy, expensive iron, now you get to buy two of them. If you're tempted by a soldering station with two or more outputs, make sure that it can drive both simultaneously. There are dual-output stations that have two outputs but can only run one at a time, as well as ones which can drive two irons at once. -- Mark J. Blair, NF6X http://www.nf6x.net/
Re: Font for DEC indicator panels
> From: Toby Thain > To get closer I'd need better images of the panels. Hi, I borrowed a DEC inlay from someone (a KA10 CPU bay) and scanned a chunk of it (as much as I could fit into my A4 scanner :-) at 200 dpi: http://ana-3.lcs.mit.edu/~jnc/tech/jpg/KACPUPanel.jpg I have a TC08 inlay, but it's currently being used in my QSIC display (until we can get the RKV11-F/RPV11-D inlay done :-), and I didn't want to yank it out. As far as I can tell, it's the same font on the two of them. > the closest I know of off the top of my head is Akzidenz Grotesk. The Akzidenz Grotesk Medium is indeed very, very close (other than the zero). Do you happen to know if that font available for use in non-commercial settings? Thanks! Noel
Re: Font for DEC indicator panels
On 2018-11-13 8:38 AM, Paul Koning wrote: > > >> On Nov 13, 2018, at 8:08 AM, Toby Thain via cctalk >> wrote: >> >> On 2018-11-12 9:51 PM, Fred Cisin via cctalk wrote: >>> [Top posted to avoid trimming information that might be useful to many] >>> >>> IFF DEC used a commercial font, then it should be possible to find it. >>> >> >> Another plan of attack could be to find the corporate standards manuals >> that applied during the period. >> >> DEC is known for strict publication standards and typographic attention >> to detail so it's likely that there existed an internal written design >> standard for front panels that spelled out the information we are >> looking for. Are the DEC archives accessible? > > It would be great to find those but I haven't heard that they exist. > > The information might not be clear even if it's found. For example, there is > a copy of the DEC color standard online. But the color references it gives > are largely in obsolete systems, not the well understood Pantone system. So > even if they can be translated the job is not easy. > > As for fonts, one comment says that those panels are "typeset". Don't count > on that. Those that come from the era of phototypesetting might be, but > phototypesetting was only just starting to appear when the earlier of those > panels showed up. And while a phototypesetter might be used in the > documentation department, it would seem like an expensive and underused tool > for the department responsible for panel lettering. Standard templates seems > more likely. These panels are not drawn by lettering templates. They MAY be set by dry transfer, but phototypesetting is the more likely possibility (which was nearly 20 years old by 1970; an entire industry existed around piece setting, servicing graphic designers and print shops, and costs would have been quite reasonable; there was no need for DEC to have an inhouse typesetting system). Whether dry transfer or photoset, the layout was likely pasted up entire then photographed by process camera for purposes of mask making. > > Consider the history of the "digital" logo, as documented in the PostScript > reconstruction of it. That's clearly an example where the lettering was done > by a draftsman and reused ever since. > > Re Guy Dunphy's images: font_2 looks a lot like Microgramma, one of my > favorite fonts. Yes, it's labelled Eurostile, and Microgramma is a clone of that. Looks to me like the correct identification. But it's not an exact match because the horizontal and vertical segments are curved in letters like O rather than being straight. font_3 looks like the "digital" blocks logo without the blocks, so you might grab the PostScript file to see if that works. Bitstream Square 721 is also Eurostile. Another correct identification, in essence. Guy's font 1 is likely the same as some of the PDP-10 panels. It's in the grotesk family, but not Helvetica (the "R", "S" are the clearest proof). As I said, Akzidenz Grotesk is the closest I've found to this so far. > > On font names: "grotesk" (or "grotezk" in German) is a technical term for > sans-serif fonts, so it applies to things like Helvetica and Futura. ... > > If you can't find a good font, you can definitely trace the original images > and make your own. That's more work than you might expect but with modern > tools it isn't hard. I've done that with the DEC custom font that is used on > the covers of the earlier PDP-11 handbooks and manuals, a long time ago with > CorelDraw which isn't a good tool for that job. > > paul > >
Re: Font for DEC indicator panels
> On Nov 13, 2018, at 8:54 AM, Paul Koning via cctalk > wrote: > > > >> On Nov 13, 2018, at 8:42 AM, Paul Koning via cctalk >> wrote: >> >> >> >>> On Nov 13, 2018, at 12:11 AM, Steve Malikoff via cctalk >>> wrote: >>> >>> ... >>> In Noel's case the originals are probably not at hand, so there is >>> obviously no choice but to >>> recreate them. I can't help with the font but it makes me think of the >>> curved font on the front >>> of the PDP-11 consoles and in the handbook where the lowercase t has a >>> different length depending >>> on whether it is in or at the end of a word. >>> >>> Steve. >> >> I'm not sure if attachments work... if yes, here is my attempt at that font. >> I can post the FontForge source also if there is interest. >> >> Some of the letters are made up because I didn't have an actual example, the >> x is one. Most are taken from DEC documents. >> >> paul > > Ok, so attachments don't work. I'll take a look at Github. > > paul I created https://github.com/pkoning2/decstuff -- you can find the handbook font in fonts/Handbook. While I was at it I also dropped my "TECO in Python" in the "teco" directory. paul
Re: Font for DEC indicator panels
> On Nov 13, 2018, at 8:42 AM, Paul Koning via cctalk > wrote: > > > >> On Nov 13, 2018, at 12:11 AM, Steve Malikoff via cctalk >> wrote: >> >> ... >> In Noel's case the originals are probably not at hand, so there is obviously >> no choice but to >> recreate them. I can't help with the font but it makes me think of the >> curved font on the front >> of the PDP-11 consoles and in the handbook where the lowercase t has a >> different length depending >> on whether it is in or at the end of a word. >> >> Steve. > > I'm not sure if attachments work... if yes, here is my attempt at that font. > I can post the FontForge source also if there is interest. > > Some of the letters are made up because I didn't have an actual example, the > x is one. Most are taken from DEC documents. > > paul Ok, so attachments don't work. I'll take a look at Github. paul
Re: Font for DEC indicator panels
> On Nov 13, 2018, at 12:11 AM, Steve Malikoff via cctalk > wrote: > > ... > In Noel's case the originals are probably not at hand, so there is obviously > no choice but to > recreate them. I can't help with the font but it makes me think of the curved > font on the front > of the PDP-11 consoles and in the handbook where the lowercase t has a > different length depending > on whether it is in or at the end of a word. > > Steve. I'm not sure if attachments work... if yes, here is my attempt at that font. I can post the FontForge source also if there is interest. Some of the letters are made up because I didn't have an actual example, the x is one. Most are taken from DEC documents. paul
Re: Font for DEC indicator panels
> On Nov 13, 2018, at 8:08 AM, Toby Thain via cctalk > wrote: > > On 2018-11-12 9:51 PM, Fred Cisin via cctalk wrote: >> [Top posted to avoid trimming information that might be useful to many] >> >> IFF DEC used a commercial font, then it should be possible to find it. >> > > Another plan of attack could be to find the corporate standards manuals > that applied during the period. > > DEC is known for strict publication standards and typographic attention > to detail so it's likely that there existed an internal written design > standard for front panels that spelled out the information we are > looking for. Are the DEC archives accessible? It would be great to find those but I haven't heard that they exist. The information might not be clear even if it's found. For example, there is a copy of the DEC color standard online. But the color references it gives are largely in obsolete systems, not the well understood Pantone system. So even if they can be translated the job is not easy. As for fonts, one comment says that those panels are "typeset". Don't count on that. Those that come from the era of phototypesetting might be, but phototypesetting was only just starting to appear when the earlier of those panels showed up. And while a phototypesetter might be used in the documentation department, it would seem like an expensive and underused tool for the department responsible for panel lettering. Standard templates seems more likely. Consider the history of the "digital" logo, as documented in the PostScript reconstruction of it. That's clearly an example where the lettering was done by a draftsman and reused ever since. Re Guy Dunphy's images: font_2 looks a lot like Microgramma, one of my favorite fonts. But it's not an exact match because the horizontal and vertical segments are curved in letters like O rather than being straight. font_3 looks like the "digital" blocks logo without the blocks, so you might grab the PostScript file to see if that works. On font names: "grotesk" (or "grotezk" in German) is a technical term for sans-serif fonts, so it applies to things like Helvetica and Futura. (Another term is "gothic" -- confusing to laymen who think of that as a term for "Old English" fancy fonts, which it is not.) Up to the 1970s or so, you'd typically find a given font design with a single name, chosen by the original designer and used as the trademark by the foundry selling that font. "Helvetica" and "Futura" are examples. Later, people started copying fonts when computers made that easy, and US law allows this because it protects the name, as a trademark, but not the shape. This is why early versions of CorelDraw shipped with hundreds of familiar fonts with unfamiliar new names, like "Swiss" instead of "Helvetica" , or "Gatineau" (?) instead of "Garamond". Microsoft adopted this trick also, giving us Arial (Helvetica) and "Times New Roman" (Times Roman) among many others. At this point, you're likely to find the most popular fonts with hundreds of names. By the way, copies are often inferior (the CorelDraw ones for example) in that they have a lot more line segments since they are essentially tracings of the original rather than expertly constructed shapes. If you can't find a good font, you can definitely trace the original images and make your own. That's more work than you might expect but with modern tools it isn't hard. I've done that with the DEC custom font that is used on the covers of the earlier PDP-11 handbooks and manuals, a long time ago with CorelDraw which isn't a good tool for that job. paul
Re: Font for DEC indicator panels
On 2018-11-12 9:51 PM, Fred Cisin via cctalk wrote: > [Top posted to avoid trimming information that might be useful to many] > > IFF DEC used a commercial font, then it should be possible to find it. > Another plan of attack could be to find the corporate standards manuals that applied during the period. DEC is known for strict publication standards and typographic attention to detail so it's likely that there existed an internal written design standard for front panels that spelled out the information we are looking for. Are the DEC archives accessible? --Toby
Re: Font for DEC indicator panels
On 2018-11-13 12:11 AM, Steve Malikoff via cctalk wrote: > Guy said >> Hmm, I posted to the list about this 3 hours ago, and it hasn't appeared yet. >> Is there an extra vetting process for posts that include links to web sites? >> I included various links to font searching sites, cleaned-up samples of the >> DEC fonts >> from my own scan (online) of a DEC PDP-8/S panel, and specific fonts I found >> via >> search tools - that are very close or identical matches to the DEC panel >> fonts. >> >> Should I repost, or just wait till it appears? >> >> Guy > > I sometimes find delays posting to cctalk when I (located +10 GMT) post > before 10am local > time, ie. it is still the previous day on the cctalk server and most of the > rest of the > world. My post seems to disappear for up to ten hours or so. I don't recall > any trouble when > I post after 10am local time, it appears pretty much immediately. Well that's > what it seems > to be like, I could be wrong but I don't worry about it too much. > > Regarding fonts on reproduced panels. This is a common problem in vintage > vehicle restoration > when reproduction dataplates are made and sold. Some of the repos are redrawn > on computer and > retyped with a close font. > > However this isn't really good enough for a demanding restorer. I've even > seen a repro > nomenclature plate with a typo, which would be annoying considering the cost > of some of these > things. If you have access to the original, nothing really beats reproducing > the _image_ of > the panel with all its nuanced spacing, miniscule changes in letter size and > orientation > and the like rather than recreating the panel. > > In Noel's case the originals are probably not at hand, so there is obviously > no choice but to > recreate them. That's not realistic in this case. The only artwork we have is much too poor to be sources for redrawing, but we also know rather closely what family the originals are from (grotesks and sans available mid-century). >From off the shelf fonts we can get much closer than Deja Vu or Helvetica (although almost certainly not using free fonts). As you say, one of the challenges is that only a fraction of the diversity of pre-digital typefaces has survived into digital, and specimen books are also rare, but I'm checking with a couple of other typographers because the DX11 panel font might be digitally available. It seems weirdly familiar although I can't yet put a name to it. --Toby > I can't help with the font but it makes me think of the curved font on the front > of the PDP-11 consoles and in the handbook where the lowercase t has a > different length depending > on whether it is in or at the end of a word. > > Steve. > > >
