Re: personal history of personal computers

[dwight via cctalk]

there is a sing rail that guide the head. At the back of the rail is a small 
nylon tab that holds it in place. The way they mad it, it is over stressed and 
will have failed. This means the rail is not held down securely. Eventually the 
rail will pop up, not being held down securely any more. You will find the 
first indication is that the disk will not eject properly. the temptation is to 
pull it out, thinking it is just a sticky eject, but that isn't the problem. It 
is catching on the head. Eventually it will catch really well and you'll rip 
the head of the mount. At this point the disk can not be repaired. It is an 
unusual drive, being single sided and requiring the DriveReady signal. It also 
has a build in cable instead of the standard edge connector and power 
connector. Most of the new drive no longer have the DriveReady signal, even as 
an option.
One can make changes to the software if you know how to use the data or sector 
pulse as a DriveReady.
This usually requires a one shot to hold the pulse for the software to 
recognize the pulse.
There are several things on can do with it. With a few simple modifications, 
one can increase the RAM ( mostly just installing ) but for text you can't have 
more than 100K. It is possible to use a newer version of the software that 
includes the assembler.
One of the more frustrating things is that it normally only has drivers for 
Cannon printers, with the excepting that it will also do the FX80 compatible 
printers. It is not too hard to write one's own printer drive and substitute it 
for one of the printer drivers. This is normally done such that it will use a 
portion of the disk and overlay in RAM for one of the drivers. I've done this 
to use a HP pcl5 type printer. ( I don't support all of the funny characters 
though ).
You can write your code in the editor and compile it into RAM. As an extension, 
it can be saved on onto the disk such that it is available the next time you 
use that disk.
As I recall, the official software is 1.73. The new code with the assembler is 
2.40 ( never released ). I have a copy of that version.
Anyway, the RAM can be expanded by putting chips into the sockets and adding 
socket to the last row. I've expanded the RAM even more by adding a large CMOS 
RAM to an unused address decoded area. One does have to make a minor hack and 
add a gate to deal with the high/low byte 68000. I just mount a IC dead bug but 
one does have to lift a couple leads of the 68000.
I use the extra RAM to recompile the Forth and editor software, to blow as an 
EPROM. I can compile it to run in the RAM space or the EPROM area. This allows 
me to test it first before changing the constant for the offset.
Dwight



From: cctalk  on behalf of Cameron Kaiser via 
cctalk 
Sent: Monday, January 4, 2021 3:19 PM
To: cctalk@classiccmp.org 
Subject: Re: personal history of personal computers

> There was a little known 68K machine. It was the Canon Cat.

I love the form factor of my Cat. Wish it was easier to "do things" with it
though.

> If you should ever get one, don't use the disk drive until you talk to me.

Don't leave us in suspense! However, mine seems to be fine.

--
 personal: http://www.cameronkaiser.com/ --
  Cameron Kaiser * Floodgap Systems * www.floodgap.com 
* ckai...@floodgap.com
-- Why is it you can only trust short, dumpy spies? -- Hogan, "Hogan's Heroes"

Re: Keyboard storage, part 2

[Alan Perry via cctalk]

Update to my update. Sun Type 6 requires box modification. Sun Type 3 
fits without modification.


On 1/4/21 6:31 PM, Alan Perry via cctalk wrote:


An update on keyboard storage, which I asked about here last month.

I ordered some USPS Large Flat Rate Priority Mail "board game" boxes. 
This is a size not usually available at the post office and come 25 in a 
pack. They are a good size for mailing (and I am glad that I ordered 
them so I can use them for that), but I don't think they work for 
keyboard storage. They are so much larger than the keyboards that I am 
storing that lots of packing material is needed so they don't move 
around. Also, they are designed to be sealed and shipped, so there isn't 
a convenient way to open them once they have been closed.


Next, I ordered the Uline keyboard boxes. I had to get 25 of them and 
they are not free ($2.70 per box plus tax and shipping). They can be 
open and closed. They are a much closer to the size of a keyboard 
(surprise, surprise!) so not much packing material needed, but they are 
slightly smaller than a Sun Type 5c (as well as Axil) keyboard and 
needed to modified for those two. No modification needed to store a Sun 
Type 4 or CompuAdd Sun-compatible keyboard in one. I haven't tried a Sun 
Type 6 yet.


To anyone in the Seattle area that need keyboard boxes, I will probably 
have 10-15 of them once I get all of my keyboards packed. If you would 
like any, let me know.


alan

Keyboard storage, part 2

[Alan Perry via cctalk]

An update on keyboard storage, which I asked about here last month.

I ordered some USPS Large Flat Rate Priority Mail "board game" boxes. 
This is a size not usually available at the post office and come 25 in a 
pack. They are a good size for mailing (and I am glad that I ordered 
them so I can use them for that), but I don't think they work for 
keyboard storage. They are so much larger than the keyboards that I am 
storing that lots of packing material is needed so they don't move 
around. Also, they are designed to be sealed and shipped, so there isn't 
a convenient way to open them once they have been closed.


Next, I ordered the Uline keyboard boxes. I had to get 25 of them and 
they are not free ($2.70 per box plus tax and shipping). They can be 
open and closed. They are a much closer to the size of a keyboard 
(surprise, surprise!) so not much packing material needed, but they are 
slightly smaller than a Sun Type 5c (as well as Axil) keyboard and 
needed to modified for those two. No modification needed to store a Sun 
Type 4 or CompuAdd Sun-compatible keyboard in one. I haven't tried a Sun 
Type 6 yet.


To anyone in the Seattle area that need keyboard boxes, I will probably 
have 10-15 of them once I get all of my keyboards packed. If you would 
like any, let me know.


alan

Re: personal history of personal computers

[Van Snyder via cctalk]

On Mon, 2021-01-04 at 19:53 -0500, Bill Degnan via cctalk wrote:
> Need to grease/lube it periodically

Is it English? I understand the English stopped building computers
because they couldn't figure out how to make them leak oil.
> On Mon, Jan 4, 2021, 6:20 PM Cameron Kaiser via cctalk <
> cctalk@classiccmp.org> wrote:
> > > There was a little known 68K machine. It was the Canon Cat.
> > 
> > I love the form factor of my Cat. Wish it was easier to "do things"
> > with itthough.
> > > If you should ever get one, don't use the disk drive until you
> > > talk to
> > me.
> > Don't leave us in suspense! However, mine seems to be fine.
> > -- personal:
> > http://www.cameronkaiser.com/ --  Cameron Kaiser * Floodgap Systems
> > * www.floodgap.com *ckai...@floodgap.com
> > -- Why is it you can only trust short, dumpy spies? -- Hogan,
> > "Hogan'sHeroes"

Re: personal history of personal computers

[Bill Degnan via cctalk]

Need to grease/lube it periodically

On Mon, Jan 4, 2021, 6:20 PM Cameron Kaiser via cctalk <
cctalk@classiccmp.org> wrote:

> > There was a little known 68K machine. It was the Canon Cat.
>
> I love the form factor of my Cat. Wish it was easier to "do things" with it
> though.
>
> > If you should ever get one, don't use the disk drive until you talk to
> me.
>
> Don't leave us in suspense! However, mine seems to be fine.
>
> --
>  personal:
> http://www.cameronkaiser.com/ --
>   Cameron Kaiser * Floodgap Systems * www.floodgap.com *
> ckai...@floodgap.com
> -- Why is it you can only trust short, dumpy spies? -- Hogan, "Hogan's
> Heroes"
>

Re: Dec RQDX: What kind of chips on it?

[Chris Zach via cctalk]

The Pro also has 16 sectors, that's a limitation of the sector address 
register.  I know the Pro format is different than the RQDXn format; the latter 
is larger presumably because of more sectors per track.  So that would fit.


That's good to know then, I won't try putting it in my Pro/380. I guess 
I *did* have an RQDX2 running in one of my pdp11's 30 years ago. Yeah, 
maybe: I had the BA11-SA's running at the time and I guess I just found 
a BA23 disk bulkhead and had a pile of spaghetti on the floor.


I'll think about buying one on Ebay unless someone here wants to trade 
an RQDX3 for one. Getting a working image of this disk copied off using 
pdp11_gui would be neat. Hm, would it then boot on a SIMH RQDX3 
controller since the image is not a bit image but an MCSP image?


On a related note, anyone have a set of P/OS 3.2 floppies I can borrow? 
I'd like to get a version of P/OS running that can support split I/D.


Chris

Re: Dec RQDX: What kind of chips on it?

[Paul Koning via cctalk]

> On Jan 4, 2021, at 7:04 PM, Warner Losh via cctalk  
> wrote:
> 
> On Mon, Jan 4, 2021 at 3:40 PM Chris Zach via cctalk 
> wrote:
> 
>> Can someone check to see if a RQDX2 used the Western Digital chips to
>> interface to MFM drives? Reason I'm asking is the MFM emulator can
>> identify an RQDX3, and also a Pro/350 controller but this particular
>> RD52 I have (which was verified by me to run Digital Mumps) is reading as:
>> 
>> root@beaglebone:~/mfm# ./mfm_read -a
>> Board revision C detected
>> Found drive at select 3
>> Returning to track 0
>> Drive RPM 3525.4
>> Matches count 36 for controller WD_1006
>> Header CRC: Polynomial 0x1021 length 16 initial value 0x
>> Sector length 512
>> Data CRC: Polynomial 0x1021 length 16 initial value 0x
>> Interleave mismatch previous entry 0, 9 was 1 now 0
>> Selected head 8 found 0, last good head found 7
>> Read errors trying to determine sector numbering, results may be in error
>> Number of heads 8 number of sectors 18 first sector 0
>> Unable to determine interleave. Interleave value is not required
>> Drive supports buffered seeks (ST412)
>> Disk has recalibrated to track 0
>> Stopping end of disk search due to recalibration
>> Number of cylinders 512, 37.7 MB
>> 
> 
> 18 sectors seems odd. The Rainbow had a limit of 16 sectors, but that may
> have been due to other reasons... It had a WD10xx controller.

The Pro also has 16 sectors, that's a limitation of the sector address 
register.  I know the Pro format is different than the RQDXn format; the latter 
is larger presumably because of more sectors per track.  So that would fit.

paul

Re: Dec RQDX: What kind of chips on it?

[Rick Murphy via cctalk]

On 1/4/2021 5:40 PM, Chris Zach via cctalk wrote:
Can someone check to see if a RQDX2 used the Western Digital chips to 
interface to MFM drives?


There's certainly nothing obviously Western Digital.

The board has a bunch of 74LS logic, several PALs, two 27128 EPROMs for 
firmware, and one 40 pin IC which is a T-11.  Part number 21-17311-01, 
which checks out, for that chip.


Bus interfaces - DC005, DC003.

Looks like random logic to interface to the drives, with the T11 doing 
the heavy lifting along with a bunch of PALs.

    -Rick

Re: Dec RQDX: What kind of chips on it?

[Warner Losh via cctalk]

On Mon, Jan 4, 2021 at 3:40 PM Chris Zach via cctalk 
wrote:

> Can someone check to see if a RQDX2 used the Western Digital chips to
> interface to MFM drives? Reason I'm asking is the MFM emulator can
> identify an RQDX3, and also a Pro/350 controller but this particular
> RD52 I have (which was verified by me to run Digital Mumps) is reading as:
>
> root@beaglebone:~/mfm# ./mfm_read -a
> Board revision C detected
> Found drive at select 3
> Returning to track 0
> Drive RPM 3525.4
> Matches count 36 for controller WD_1006
> Header CRC: Polynomial 0x1021 length 16 initial value 0x
> Sector length 512
> Data CRC: Polynomial 0x1021 length 16 initial value 0x
> Interleave mismatch previous entry 0, 9 was 1 now 0
> Selected head 8 found 0, last good head found 7
> Read errors trying to determine sector numbering, results may be in error
> Number of heads 8 number of sectors 18 first sector 0
> Unable to determine interleave. Interleave value is not required
> Drive supports buffered seeks (ST412)
> Disk has recalibrated to track 0
> Stopping end of disk search due to recalibration
> Number of cylinders 512, 37.7 MB
>

18 sectors seems odd. The Rainbow had a limit of 16 sectors, but that may
have been due to other reasons... It had a WD10xx controller.

Warner

Re: personal history of personal computers

[Cameron Kaiser via cctalk]

> There was a little known 68K machine. It was the Canon Cat.

I love the form factor of my Cat. Wish it was easier to "do things" with it
though.

> If you should ever get one, don't use the disk drive until you talk to me.

Don't leave us in suspense! However, mine seems to be fine.

-- 
 personal: http://www.cameronkaiser.com/ --
  Cameron Kaiser * Floodgap Systems * www.floodgap.com * ckai...@floodgap.com
-- Why is it you can only trust short, dumpy spies? -- Hogan, "Hogan's Heroes"

Dec RQDX: What kind of chips on it?

[Chris Zach via cctalk]

Can someone check to see if a RQDX2 used the Western Digital chips to 
interface to MFM drives? Reason I'm asking is the MFM emulator can 
identify an RQDX3, and also a Pro/350 controller but this particular 
RD52 I have (which was verified by me to run Digital Mumps) is reading as:


root@beaglebone:~/mfm# ./mfm_read -a
Board revision C detected
Found drive at select 3
Returning to track 0
Drive RPM 3525.4
Matches count 36 for controller WD_1006
Header CRC: Polynomial 0x1021 length 16 initial value 0x
Sector length 512
Data CRC: Polynomial 0x1021 length 16 initial value 0x
Interleave mismatch previous entry 0, 9 was 1 now 0
Selected head 8 found 0, last good head found 7
Read errors trying to determine sector numbering, results may be in error
Number of heads 8 number of sectors 18 first sector 0
Unable to determine interleave. Interleave value is not required
Drive supports buffered seeks (ST412)
Disk has recalibrated to track 0
Stopping end of disk search due to recalibration
Number of cylinders 512, 37.7 MB

Thanks!
CZ

Re: personal history of personal computers

[Fred Cisin via cctalk]

On the issue of the Cat re-formatting disks that it couldn't read, my 
suggestion was that they should add enough circuitry that it could 
recognize the existence of FM, MFM, and GCR formats.


Then, it could say, "This disk appears to already be formatted for a 
different kind of machine.  Would you like to erase it and reformat for 
this machine?"


I offered to provide data, so that if it could also identify recording 
format, number of sides formatted, and maybe even bytes per sector and 
sectors per track, it could expand the massge to include "The following 
machines are some of the possibilities of what it is formatted for:"


. . . and, of course, the ultimate would be to implement some other file 
systems, so that it could access what was on the disk.



--
Grumpy Ol' Fred ci...@xenosoft.com

Re: personal history of personal computers

[Glen Slick via cctalk]

On Mon, Jan 4, 2021, 1:38 PM Mike Loewen via cctalk 
wrote:

>
> Andy Molloy had a Canon Cat at VCF East in 2006. Unfortunately, it
> smoked.
>
> http://q7.neurotica.com/Oldtech/VCF-East2006/dscn4151-f.jpg


Someone could buy one from Jack and fix it up eBay 324441040706.

Re: personal history of personal computers

[Toby Thain via cctalk]

On 2021-01-04 4:38 p.m., Mike Loewen via cctalk wrote:
> 
>    Andy Molloy had a Canon Cat at VCF East in 2006. Unfortunately, it
> smoked.
> 
> http://q7.neurotica.com/Oldtech/VCF-East2006/dscn4151-f.jpg
> 

... there's one on ebay now FWIW.

--Toby

Re: personal history of personal computers

[Fred Cisin via cctalk]

On Mon, 4 Jan 2021, dwight wrote:

There was a little known 68K machine. It was the Canon Cat. Although, it was 
generally not intended as a development machine, in its short life, several 
applications were developed.
It was primarily sold as a word processor ( quite powerful one at that ). It 
had Forth running under the word processor. One could do both assembly and 
other things once one understood how to access the Forth.
If you should ever get one, don't use the disk drive until you talk to me.
It has a common problem that if you don't understand it will destroy the drive.
Dwight


That was an amazing machine.

Raskin was an amazing character.  He was responsible for many innovations 
and design decisions throughout the industry.

(and, I almost ended up getting his electric minivan)

I had a running argument with Jef.  If you have a room full of a variety 
of disks, including multiple MFM formats AND GCR, the default when it 
couldn't read a disk should NOT be to FORMAT it.


--
Grumpy Ol' Fred ci...@xenosoft.com

Re: personal history of personal computers

[Mike Loewen via cctalk]

   Andy Molloy had a Canon Cat at VCF East in 2006. Unfortunately, it smoked.

http://q7.neurotica.com/Oldtech/VCF-East2006/dscn4151-f.jpg

On Mon, 4 Jan 2021, dwight via cctalk wrote:


There was a little known 68K machine. It was the Canon Cat. Although, it was 
generally not intended as a development machine, in its short life, several 
applications were developed.
It was primarily sold as a word processor ( quite powerful one at that ). It 
had Forth running under the word processor. One could do both assembly and 
other things once one understood how to access the Forth.
If you should ever get one, don't use the disk drive until you talk to me.
It has a common problem that if you don't understand it will destroy the drive.
Dwight



From: cctalk  on behalf of Fred Cisin via cctalk 

Sent: Monday, January 4, 2021 11:35 AM
To: General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts 
Subject: Re: personal history of personal computers

On Mon, 4 Jan 2021, Liam Proven via cctalk wrote:

I suppose that the 68K only trickled down to the home/consumer market
after about 5 years. The original Mac was circa $2.5K and the Lisa was
around $10K -- *not* home computer prices for most people, even in the
USA.


And yet, . . .
I remember an Apple Lisa ad that showed a toddler playing with it on the
living room rug.  (Probably rolling the mouse around and making "VROOM!
VROOM!" noises, pretending that it was a car)
Similar ads for Macintosh and IBM PC.
The marketing people TRIED to portray them as home computers.
You can place an infant on a Cray Couch; that still doesn't make that a
home computer.

YES, a fully loaded IBM PC, complete with buying a full suite of software
from IBM WAS comparable in price to a complete Macintosh.   However, the
ENTRY point was lower.  You could buy a minimal machine and expand it
yourself.
My first TRS-80 was $400, because I used my own monitor and cassette.  And
then later, my own disk drives.
My first 5150 was less than $1500, because I used my own monitor, memory,
disk drives, and printer.


Segmented memory was a kludge, and not the only kludge.  Remember that a
DMA transfer could not straddle a 64K boundary!  Many programs, even
MS-DOS, failed to take that into account adequately!  It was not hard to
handle that particular one - just test for it, and rearrange your larger
data structures accordingly.


BUT, by building through a series of kludges, it was truly trivial to port
software as the machines progressed.  At time of release, IBM had
pre-planned to have VisiCalc and Easy-Writer.
Porting Wordstar to the PC was fast and easy; it took them longer to edit
the documentation (using a word processor?).
Porting SuperCalc (a major VisiClone) was very quick.


The opposite approach, of NO KLUDGES, resulted in much better product.
But, it took longer, AND, it meant a serious delay for software, since
any low-level software would then also need to be rewritten from scratch.
To avoid the PR nightmare of a machine with no software, Apple decided
that when the Macintosh would be released, it would come with four
significant software packages.  It ended up being scaled back to the four
being Mac-Write, Mac-Paint, Mac-Write, and Mac-Paint.  But, it came with
some usable software.
It took a long time before after-market software, even spreadsheets, were
available for the Macintosh.

--
Grumpy Ol' Fred  ci...@xenosoft.com



Mike Loewen mloe...@cpumagic.scol.pa.us
Old Technology  http://q7.neurotica.com/Oldtech/

Re: personal history of personal computers

[dwight via cctalk]

There was a little known 68K machine. It was the Canon Cat. Although, it was 
generally not intended as a development machine, in its short life, several 
applications were developed.
It was primarily sold as a word processor ( quite powerful one at that ). It 
had Forth running under the word processor. One could do both assembly and 
other things once one understood how to access the Forth.
If you should ever get one, don't use the disk drive until you talk to me.
It has a common problem that if you don't understand it will destroy the drive.
Dwight



From: cctalk  on behalf of Fred Cisin via cctalk 

Sent: Monday, January 4, 2021 11:35 AM
To: General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts 
Subject: Re: personal history of personal computers

On Mon, 4 Jan 2021, Liam Proven via cctalk wrote:
> I suppose that the 68K only trickled down to the home/consumer market
> after about 5 years. The original Mac was circa $2.5K and the Lisa was
> around $10K -- *not* home computer prices for most people, even in the
> USA.

And yet, . . .
I remember an Apple Lisa ad that showed a toddler playing with it on the
living room rug.  (Probably rolling the mouse around and making "VROOM!
VROOM!" noises, pretending that it was a car)
Similar ads for Macintosh and IBM PC.
The marketing people TRIED to portray them as home computers.
You can place an infant on a Cray Couch; that still doesn't make that a
home computer.

YES, a fully loaded IBM PC, complete with buying a full suite of software
from IBM WAS comparable in price to a complete Macintosh.   However, the
ENTRY point was lower.  You could buy a minimal machine and expand it
yourself.
My first TRS-80 was $400, because I used my own monitor and cassette.  And
then later, my own disk drives.
My first 5150 was less than $1500, because I used my own monitor, memory,
disk drives, and printer.


Segmented memory was a kludge, and not the only kludge.  Remember that a
DMA transfer could not straddle a 64K boundary!  Many programs, even
MS-DOS, failed to take that into account adequately!  It was not hard to
handle that particular one - just test for it, and rearrange your larger
data structures accordingly.


BUT, by building through a series of kludges, it was truly trivial to port
software as the machines progressed.  At time of release, IBM had
pre-planned to have VisiCalc and Easy-Writer.
Porting Wordstar to the PC was fast and easy; it took them longer to edit
the documentation (using a word processor?).
Porting SuperCalc (a major VisiClone) was very quick.


The opposite approach, of NO KLUDGES, resulted in much better product.
But, it took longer, AND, it meant a serious delay for software, since
any low-level software would then also need to be rewritten from scratch.
To avoid the PR nightmare of a machine with no software, Apple decided
that when the Macintosh would be released, it would come with four
significant software packages.  It ended up being scaled back to the four
being Mac-Write, Mac-Paint, Mac-Write, and Mac-Paint.  But, it came with
some usable software.
It took a long time before after-market software, even spreadsheets, were
available for the Macintosh.

--
Grumpy Ol' Fred  ci...@xenosoft.com

Re: APE - ALTAIR peripheripheral emulator

[Richard Cini via cctalk]

I actually have the content and it's on my ClassicCmp site. Jay and I are 
working to get it "published" to make it accessible.


Rich
 
--
Rich Cini
http://www.classiccmp.org/cini
http://www.classiccmp.org/altair32
 


On 1/4/21, 2:20 PM, "cctalk on behalf of jim stephens via cctalk" 
 wrote:



On 1/4/2021 3:07 AM, Paul Birkel via cctalk wrote:
> According to http://home.comcast.net/~forbin376/AboutUs.htm -- Frank 
Barberis.
>
> -Original Message-
> From: cctalk [mailto:cctalk-boun...@classiccmp.org] On Behalf Of jwest--- 
via cctalk
> Sent: Sunday, January 03, 2021 4:00 PM
> To: 'General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts'
> Subject: APE - ALTAIR peripheripheral emulator
>
> Anyone know who did/does the Altair peripheral emulator (not to be 
confused with the other APE, for Atari)?
>
> Originator give me a ring on email or via discord please 
>
> J
This is a link to the zip download


https://web.archive.org/web/20151002082400/http://home.comcast.net/~forbin376/Files/APE_1_0_2_0.zip

this is the home page for the project


https://web.archive.org/web/20150623115257/http://home.comcast.net/~forbin376/

comcast seems to have killed the site for me (at least from a couple of 
systems and network paths)

thanks
Jim

Re: personal history of personal computers

[Fred Cisin via cctalk]

On Mon, 4 Jan 2021, Liam Proven via cctalk wrote:

I suppose that the 68K only trickled down to the home/consumer market
after about 5 years. The original Mac was circa $2.5K and the Lisa was
around $10K -- *not* home computer prices for most people, even in the
USA.


And yet, . . .
I remember an Apple Lisa ad that showed a toddler playing with it on the 
living room rug.  (Probably rolling the mouse around and making "VROOM! 
VROOM!" noises, pretending that it was a car)

Similar ads for Macintosh and IBM PC.
The marketing people TRIED to portray them as home computers.
You can place an infant on a Cray Couch; that still doesn't make that a 
home computer.


YES, a fully loaded IBM PC, complete with buying a full suite of software 
from IBM WAS comparable in price to a complete Macintosh.   However, the 
ENTRY point was lower.  You could buy a minimal machine and expand it 
yourself.
My first TRS-80 was $400, because I used my own monitor and cassette.  And 
then later, my own disk drives.
My first 5150 was less than $1500, because I used my own monitor, memory, 
disk drives, and printer.



Segmented memory was a kludge, and not the only kludge.  Remember that a 
DMA transfer could not straddle a 64K boundary!  Many programs, even 
MS-DOS, failed to take that into account adequately!  It was not hard to 
handle that particular one - just test for it, and rearrange your larger 
data structures accordingly.



BUT, by building through a series of kludges, it was truly trivial to port 
software as the machines progressed.  At time of release, IBM had 
pre-planned to have VisiCalc and Easy-Writer.
Porting Wordstar to the PC was fast and easy; it took them longer to edit 
the documentation (using a word processor?).

Porting SuperCalc (a major VisiClone) was very quick.


The opposite approach, of NO KLUDGES, resulted in much better product. 
But, it took longer, AND, it meant a serious delay for software, since 
any low-level software would then also need to be rewritten from scratch. 
To avoid the PR nightmare of a machine with no software, Apple decided 
that when the Macintosh would be released, it would come with four 
significant software packages.  It ended up being scaled back to the four 
being Mac-Write, Mac-Paint, Mac-Write, and Mac-Paint.  But, it came with 
some usable software. 
It took a long time before after-market software, even spreadsheets, were 
available for the Macintosh.


--
Grumpy Ol' Fred ci...@xenosoft.com

Re: Rod Coleman's personal history of founding, building & running SAGE

[Stefan Skoglund via cctalk]

mån 2021-01-04 klockan 16:38 +0100 skrev Liam Proven via cctalk:
> 
> The Sinclair QL was arguably the first affordable mass-market 68K
> box,
> and it used the somewhat crippled 68008 and 8-bit RAM to keep costs
> down.
> 

The veird machine is the Luxor ABC 1600 computer.

It was a test from them together with a consulting firm to design and
sell a UNIX based system (an version of Sys III if i'm not wrong) using
an MC 68008 but with a A4 portrait monitor.

The weird thing: why did they try to use a crippled processor (but
it gave them cheaper peripherals)
but a fairly expensive graphical subsystem with monitor

Have and Have nots...

See http://www.datormuseum.se/computers/luxor/abc1600 
and yes it is Mattis Lind together with his father Rune who run this
little museum.

Re: APE - ALTAIR peripheripheral emulator

[jim stephens via cctalk]

On 1/4/2021 3:07 AM, Paul Birkel via cctalk wrote:

According to http://home.comcast.net/~forbin376/AboutUs.htm -- Frank Barberis.

-Original Message-
From: cctalk [mailto:cctalk-boun...@classiccmp.org] On Behalf Of jwest--- via 
cctalk
Sent: Sunday, January 03, 2021 4:00 PM
To: 'General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts'
Subject: APE - ALTAIR peripheripheral emulator

Anyone know who did/does the Altair peripheral emulator (not to be confused 
with the other APE, for Atari)?

Originator give me a ring on email or via discord please 

J

This is a link to the zip download

https://web.archive.org/web/20151002082400/http://home.comcast.net/~forbin376/Files/APE_1_0_2_0.zip

this is the home page for the project

https://web.archive.org/web/20150623115257/http://home.comcast.net/~forbin376/

comcast seems to have killed the site for me (at least from a couple of 
systems and network paths)


thanks
Jim

Re: Rod Coleman's personal history of founding, building & running SAGE

[Paul Koning via cctalk]

> On Jan 4, 2021, at 11:00 AM, emanuel stiebler via cctalk 
>  wrote:
> 
> On 2021-01-02 22:34, Fred Cisin via cctalk wrote:
>> On Sat, 2 Jan 2021, Liam via cctalk wrote:
>>>  I'm not really familiar with SAGE machines. They were not as
>>>  well-known in the UK, I think, being upmarket from the Apple ][ and
>>>  IBM PC, both of which were eye-wateringly expensive by UK standards of
>>>  the time.
>> 
>> Possibly, they weren't aimed at the same target audience.
>> 
>> Perhaps they were intended more to compete with machines such as PDP-11,
>> rather than Apple][ and IBM PC.
> 
> I was working 1981 with pdp11s and VAX780. Then I heard/read about the
> 68000, had to have one of those. Simple programming model, flat address
> space and really good performance. Signed up at a startup in Germany in
> 1982, had a lot of fun with all of them(68000, '10, '20, '30, '40). We
> basically only sold to research/labs.

I was at DEC at the time, and I remember discussions around the office saying 
"this is a VAX on a chip".  The instruction set made it feel that way.

Not long after that, Apollo Computer was founded to build workstations using 
the 68000.  They found out the hard way it is NOT a VAX on a chip.  The key 
design error is that the 68000 had page access aborts, not page faults -- they 
weren't restartable so you could not create virtual memory using its page 
access flags.  That mistake was fixed in the 68010.  I vaguely remember that 
Apollo worked around the issue by using a pair of 68000 chips running one cycle 
apart, so when the abort hit on the lead one you could stop the trailing one 
and fake a restartable page fault.

Some years later I wrote the fast packet handling code of the DECbridge 900 (?) 
-- FDDI to 6 Ethernet ports.  That used a 68040 at 25 MHz, and with careful 
design it could process a packet every 8 microseconds (12 microseconds if the 
destination address wasn't in the address cache CAM).  One trick was a memory 
system that did some operations on the rising edge and some on the falling 
edge, i.e., effectively a "2.5 cycle" access.  The other (mine) was to use the 
fact that the 68040 had a "RISC subset" of instructions and addressing modes 
that would run in one or two cycles, while the other instructions took MUCH 
longer.  By sticking to handwritten assembly language in the RISC subset I 
could make it go very fast.  It also required awareness of oddities like the 
fact that branch-taken is faster than branch-not-taken, the opposite of pretty 
much every other computer.

paul

Re: Rod Coleman's personal history of founding, building & running SAGE

[ben via cctalk]

On 1/4/2021 10:26 AM, Liam Proven via cctalk wrote:

On Mon, 4 Jan 2021 at 17:42, Bill Degnan  wrote:



Agreed.

A fully provisioned IBM PC / XT in 1981-4 was pretty expensive too, that's why 
8-bit machines continued to sell well into the later 80's.  16-bit was overkill 
for most home needs.  Apple would not have survived the 80's without their 
8-bit machine sales, and Commodore, Atari, Tandy


Definitely true.

And one thing that interests me is the double factoid:
[1] The companies that threw away their 8-bit line and did something
totally new for their 16-bit lines generally did better, and attempts
at backwards-compatibility failed

_except_

[2] For Intel/MICROS~1, who somehow managed to smoothly transition
from 8/16 → true 16-bit → 32-bit → 64-bit → multi-CPU →
multi-core/multi-CPU, across multiple expansion buses, memory
architectures and more...

I say IBM is the winner here. IBM 7030 Stretch gave IBM a design based 
on 8 bit bytes, that followed with the IBM 360. Salesman love bytes 
because now your 4K of memory (36/48 bits) is  32KB of IBM memory and 
time sharing because you can FAKE the need for real memory.

Ben Fan of 36 bits but not the PDP 10.

Re: Rod Coleman's personal history of founding, building & running SAGE

[Liam Proven via cctalk]

On Mon, 4 Jan 2021 at 17:42, Bill Degnan  wrote:

>
> Agreed.
>
> A fully provisioned IBM PC / XT in 1981-4 was pretty expensive too, that's 
> why 8-bit machines continued to sell well into the later 80's.  16-bit was 
> overkill for most home needs.  Apple would not have survived the 80's without 
> their 8-bit machine sales, and Commodore, Atari, Tandy

Definitely true.

And one thing that interests me is the double factoid:
[1] The companies that threw away their 8-bit line and did something
totally new for their 16-bit lines generally did better, and attempts
at backwards-compatibility failed

_except_

[2] For Intel/MICROS~1, who somehow managed to smoothly transition
from 8/16 → true 16-bit → 32-bit → 64-bit → multi-CPU →
multi-core/multi-CPU, across multiple expansion buses, memory
architectures and more...




-- 
Liam Proven – Profile: https://about.me/liamproven
Email: lpro...@cix.co.uk – gMail/gTalk/gHangouts: lpro...@gmail.com
Twitter/Facebook/LinkedIn/Flickr: lproven – Skype: liamproven
UK: +44 7939-087884 – ČR (+ WhatsApp/Telegram/Signal): +420 702 829 053

Re: Rod Coleman's personal history of founding, building & running SAGE

[Bill Degnan via cctalk]

> I suppose that the 68K only trickled down to the home/consumer market
> after about 5 years. The original Mac was circa $2.5K and the Lisa was
> around $10K -- *not* home computer prices for most people, even in the
> USA.
>
> The Sinclair QL was arguably the first affordable mass-market 68K box,
> and it used the somewhat crippled 68008 and 8-bit RAM to keep costs
> down.
>
> Before the Mac, I suppose that, as Cameron points out, the accurate
> comparison was with standalone multi-user machines such as the Sage
> and Alpha Micro. Desktop minicomputers, really.
>
>
Agreed.

A fully provisioned IBM PC / XT in 1981-4 was pretty expensive too, that's
why 8-bit machines continued to sell well into the later 80's.  16-bit was
overkill for most home needs.  Apple would not have survived the 80's
without their 8-bit machine sales, and Commodore, Atari, Tandy

Bill

Re: Rod Coleman's personal history of founding, building & running SAGE

[emanuel stiebler via cctalk]

On 2021-01-02 22:34, Fred Cisin via cctalk wrote:
> On Sat, 2 Jan 2021, Liam via cctalk wrote:
>>  I'm not really familiar with SAGE machines. They were not as
>>  well-known in the UK, I think, being upmarket from the Apple ][ and
>>  IBM PC, both of which were eye-wateringly expensive by UK standards of
>>  the time.
> 
> Possibly, they weren't aimed at the same target audience.
> 
> Perhaps they were intended more to compete with machines such as PDP-11,
> rather than Apple][ and IBM PC.

I was working 1981 with pdp11s and VAX780. Then I heard/read about the
68000, had to have one of those. Simple programming model, flat address
space and really good performance. Signed up at a startup in Germany in
1982, had a lot of fun with all of them(68000, '10, '20, '30, '40). We
basically only sold to research/labs.
Every time, somebody told us the PC is better, we asked them to run
their code on the 68000 and compare themselves. That's how easy it was
back than ;-)

We ran our own OS, own compilers, and also UCSD Pascal, CPM/68k, APL,
coherent Unix ...
Was a lot of fun. When I saw the Sage II on a fair, I thought it is a
pretty cool machine, but lacking graphics. Still was impressed with
their marketing ...

Cheers

Re: Rod Coleman's personal history of founding, building & running SAGE

[Liam Proven via cctalk]

On Mon, 4 Jan 2021 at 15:35, emanuel stiebler  wrote:
>
> I guess we have to be careful, comparing machines & CPUs.
> 68000 came out as a CPU in 1980/1981 (available on the market (?))
>
> You're comparing it to a ARM2 machine of 1987, where Motorola had the
> newer 68020, and 68030 by than ...

That's a fair objection. :-)

I suppose that the 68K only trickled down to the home/consumer market
after about 5 years. The original Mac was circa $2.5K and the Lisa was
around $10K -- *not* home computer prices for most people, even in the
USA.

The Sinclair QL was arguably the first affordable mass-market 68K box,
and it used the somewhat crippled 68008 and 8-bit RAM to keep costs
down.

Before the Mac, I suppose that, as Cameron points out, the accurate
comparison was with standalone multi-user machines such as the Sage
and Alpha Micro. Desktop minicomputers, really.

These were fading from the market when I started my first job in 1988.
The only ones I personally worked on were Jarograte Sprite machines --
of which barely a trace remains on the WWW now, sadly. I'd like to
know more about Jarogate and their products -- most of what I did was
helping migrate stuff _off_ them onto either 386s running SCO Xenix,
or small PC LANs.


-- 
Liam Proven – Profile: https://about.me/liamproven
Email: lpro...@cix.co.uk – gMail/gTalk/gHangouts: lpro...@gmail.com
Twitter/Facebook/LinkedIn/Flickr: lproven – Skype: liamproven
UK: +44 7939-087884 – ČR (+ WhatsApp/Telegram/Signal): +420 702 829 053

Re: Rod Coleman's personal history of founding, building & running SAGE

[emanuel stiebler via cctalk]

On 2021-01-03 19:08, Liam Proven via cctalk wrote:
> On Sun, 3 Jan 2021 at 03:53, Boris Gimbarzevsky  
> wrote:
>>
>>  Ran into 68000 processor for
>> first time in 1986 when my father bought a 512 K
>> Mac and couldn't believe performance of this CPU
> 
> It is odd. I had read of it, of course, but for me the revelation was
> getting an Acorn Archimedes in 1989, with an 8MHz ARM2, and seeing it
> blast past benchmarks of ~8MHz 68K machines such as the Amiga 500 or
> Atari 512 ST. It was about 4x faster, I believe.

I guess we have to be careful, comparing machines & CPUs.
68000 came out as a CPU in 1980/1981 (available on the market (?))

You're comparing it to a ARM2 machine of 1987, where Motorola had the
newer 68020, and 68030 by than ...

RE: APE - ALTAIR peripheripheral emulator

[Paul Birkel via cctalk]

According to http://home.comcast.net/~forbin376/AboutUs.htm -- Frank Barberis.

-Original Message-
From: cctalk [mailto:cctalk-boun...@classiccmp.org] On Behalf Of jwest--- via 
cctalk
Sent: Sunday, January 03, 2021 4:00 PM
To: 'General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts'
Subject: APE - ALTAIR peripheripheral emulator

Anyone know who did/does the Altair peripheral emulator (not to be confused 
with the other APE, for Atari)?

Originator give me a ring on email or via discord please 

J

Re: APE - ALTAIR peripheripheral emulator

[Liam Proven via cctalk]

On Mon, 4 Jan 2021 at 03:07, jwest--- via cctalk  wrote:
>
>  (not to be confused with the other APE, for Atari)?

There's also an Apricot emulator by that name:

https://ai.ansible.uk/ape.html

from
https://ai.ansible.uk/freebies.html

Plan 9 has an APE too...
http://doc.cat-v.org/plan_9/4th_edition/papers/ape

-- 
Liam Proven – Profile: https://about.me/liamproven
Email: lpro...@cix.co.uk – gMail/gTalk/gHangouts: lpro...@gmail.com
Twitter/Facebook/LinkedIn/Flickr: lproven – Skype: liamproven
UK: +44 7939-087884 – ČR (+ WhatsApp/Telegram/Signal): +420 702 829 053