Re: Compuserve
On Sun, Jan 10, 2021 at 6:46 PM John Foust via cctalk wrote > > From '85 until '94 or so, I saved my transcripts from visiting > CompuServe, PeopleLink, Delphi, Genie, BIX, the Well, etc. > This is an incredible archive on its own. Are you willing to share the source files? I'd enjoy just wandering through the raw data. It's probably been over 30 years since I've even seen the CIS forum message format (not counting a few moments ago, of course.) -j
Re: interesting manual find - usermanual.wiki
On Sun, Jan 10, 2021 at 7:38 PM Randy Dawson via cctalk < cctalk@classiccmp.org> wrote: > Ran across this, give it a try. > > There are tons of old (and new) manuals in there. > > Randy Strange site, no indication who runs it. It looks like a search engine but they appear to host all of the documents their search comes up with. But I don't think they're original scans.
ISO Technico info, pics, doc scans, etc.
Models SS-16, TEC-9900-SS, TR-9000-SS aka Technico/Rosse TR-9000-SS "Super Star", or any other. I think a couple of list members have indicated here or elsewhere in the past that they had SS-16's at least. Thanks for any help, jbdigriz
Re: Compuserve
At 09:57 AM 1/11/2021, Ethan O'Toole wrote: >>So how could you organize all that into a web database and interface? > >Could you put a text front end on it that emulates the original CIS? I'd say the first step is defining a SQL database structure to hold it all, then the code to display it, and sure, maybe an interactive emulation would be nifty... but note that CompuServe messages disappeared on their own. A forum could only hold so many, and the oldest were flushed. So an emulation would need to pick a moment in time to emulate. In today's interface style, I'd say you'd want to be able to search it all, then view a message in context with the rest of its thread. >>Am I going to trust my parser to have never made a mistake? >>Or do I need to read a half-million posts to confirm it didn't? > >Search for your name? Not that simple. After you'd navigated to the email area and asked to display a particular waiting message, it only showed date / from / subject at the top, and at least in 1995, it actually put the "Distribution: To: John Foust - Syndesis Corporation > [76004,1763]" at the bottom after the message! For Internet gateway'd email, it showed the full message as is, with the raw headers and/or "Content-type:" and left you to figure it out on your own. - John
Re: Compuserve
I was often free-flagged on CIS and many other services so surfing was free. For the kids out there, in today's dollars CompuServe was about $20 an hour. As a young lad, the high costs of things like CompuServe is why I stuck to BBS systems, until the internet came along. Perl parser to separate individual forum posts. I have about 400 megs of messages, on the order of 525,000 messages. I split each post into its own XML file, tagging the pieces (from, to, subject, etc.) That is awesome! You should definitely get that stuff on the web!! I've left the hard part of constructing the web software to make it all readable and searchable. #: 126608 S0/Sysop's Corner 29-Oct-95 00:20:12 Sb: #126546-#Problem Uploading Files Fm: Betty Clay 76702,337 To: Shawn/Silent Paw 74777,2602 (X) This would be caused by the entire forum running out of blocks in the library. Steve handles that, and I'm sure he has noticed and requested more by now. It is quite likely that we won't get them before Monday, though. Sometimes there's no one around to handle the request on weekends. Like this message, some sections were "sysop" and perhaps should be considered non-public. My transcripts also have stuff from before and after the forum posts. Who knows, maybe someone would find interesting the "What's new this week" intro menu you'd see at login. Or better yet, the file libraries. Each section had a "data library". Each file showed a filename, timestamp and size, uploader PPN and name, and title line and keywords and a paragraph of description. I have some listings of the file areas. I may also have the original files I downloaded. All that could be linked into a new web version, too. Maybe there are some text-based public live group chats (conferences), too. So how could you organize all that into a web database and interface? Could you put a text front end on it that emulates the original CIS? A modern emulator that emulated the UI from the original on the internet.. It would also make sense for me to improve my parser to separate out each email I sent or received. I'd be eager to release the public forum posts but I also don't want to release my private emails. Makes sense Am I going to trust my parser to have never made a mistake? Or do I need to read a half-million posts to confirm it didn't? Search for your name? I have to believe that other people saved transcripts of CompuServe forums if not other services, too. Ideally there could be a way to add everyone's messages to the reconstruction. Indeed, google ' "Sb:" "Fm:" "To:" sysop cis ' and you'll see other bits and pieces of CompuServe transcripts. https://www.google.com/search?q=%22Sb%3A%22+%22Fm%3A%22+%22To%3A%22+sysop+cis I don't know what it was like inside CIS back then, but I can't help but wonder if any magtape archives left the building. I asked an Amiga forum owner if he saved anything... he said "no" but maybe other forum owners did. As an aside, keep in mind that the people running CIS forums held a contract with CIS and they were paid. For many, it was their sole income. Some ran several forums and made quite a bit of money at it. I was very surprised to learn the web-based http://forums.compuserve.com/ existed until three-four years ago. - John
Re: Got DSM-11 running, any manuals online?
> On Jan 9, 2021, at 4:55 PM, David Gesswein via cctalk > wrote: > > On Sat, Jan 09, 2021 at 01:06:19PM -0700, Warner Losh wrote: >> >> DEC standard 144 of any help? >> http://bitsavers.org/pdf/dec/standards/EL-00144_B_DEC_STD_144_Disk_Standard_for_Recording_and_Handling_Bad_Sectors_Nov76.pdf >> >> Warner >> > > Thanks for looking. > > That standard is only capable of marking bad sectors. It doesn't have the > information on where the bad sectors were remapped to. I took a quick look > at the DSM image. It looks like cylinder 511 is where the controller > tables are. This cylinder does have a different format. The data didn't > match this standard. DEC Std 144 is for older disks, not MSCP. It is the format for telling the OS where the bad sectors are, so the file system creation tool can mark those sectors as unavailable. That doesn't involve remapping (at least not on the OS I know). The bad sectors still exist in the address space, they are just not free so they won't be used. The MSCP revectoring is a more complex mechanism where the controller tweaks the logical block numbering address space so it appears to be error-free. I assume it's a generalization of the spare-sector feature of the RM80, but as others have pointed out, with MSCP this was an internal matter of the controller and I don't know of any DEC standard for it. In fact, the details are likely to depend on the properties of individual drives. paul
Re: Compuserve
On Sun, 10 Jan 2021, Grant Taylor via cctalk wrote: On 1/10/21 7:16 PM, James B DiGriz wrote: Synchronet is still very much "a thing". Yes, and no. Yes, there is /a/ product named Synchronet, probably from the same vendor or subsidiary. However, I don't think that it is the /same/ product. It's the same package, by the same author. Rob Swindell(author) released Synchronet as open source a number of years ago. I currently run v3.18c, which is the current release version. You can run it in Windows, Linux, or *BSD. MS-DOS and OS/2 versions are also available under the "legacy" branch. Downloads: http://www.synchro.net/download.html If v3 won't import the DOS message bases automagically, I'm quite sure that if you email Rob, he can help make this happen. g. -- Proud owner of F-15C 80-0007 http://www.f15sim.com - The only one of its kind. http://www.diy-cockpits.org/coll - Go Collimated or Go Home. Some people collect things for a hobby. Geeks collect hobbies. ScarletDME - The red hot Data Management Environment A Multi-Value database for the masses, not the classes. http://scarlet.deltasoft.com - Get it _today_!
