Re: VT100 and/or VT105 rescued from scrap

On Wed, 21 Oct 2015, Paul Anderson wrote: The VT101,02,31, and 32 are the same, as are the VT100, 105, and 125. If you say they are the same, can you turn a VT101 into a VT102? Christian

Emulex QD32

Hi all, I'm trying to set up a MicroVAX II that has an SMD disk attached to an Emulex QD32 controller. I need to test and/or format the disk and so I'm looking for images of the Emulex diagnostic floppies (should be RX50 AFAIK). Those found at http://www.headcrashers.org/comp/rx50/ boot, but I

Re: Emulex QD32

On Fri, 30 Oct 2015, Jon Elson wrote: On 10/30/2015 09:42 AM, Christian Corti wrote: [...] AFAIK). Those found at http://www.headcrashers.org/comp/rx50/ boot, but I have not the faintest idea of how to start anything in there; even a "DIR" How about HELP or even "?" I seem

Re: Emulex QD32

On Fri, 30 Oct 2015, Jay Jaeger wrote: I also have a QD32. I have Emulex diagnostics, but on a TK50, and I don't have an image, nor do I have any diagnostic documentation. However, when I ran the diagnostic (many YEARS ago) on my uVax II (FVD32M) it was self-explanatory. [...] I wish it were t

Re: Emulex QD32

On Mon, 2 Nov 2015, Christian Corti wrote: I wish it were true in my case. I don't even get it running under SIMH. Is it possible that the error is because of the monitor not seeing the QD32? At least if I netboot NetBSD it doesn't see the QD32 either, only the RQDX3. [...] Pla

Re: Teletype services

On Thu, 5 Nov 2015, Chris Elmquist wrote: On Thursday (11/05/2015 at 10:59AM -0800), John Ball wrote: I've been trying for the past week to verify that telephony on my teletype machine (model 33) is functioning properly but the biggest hurdle I am running into is I have nothing to easily dial in

Re: WD9000 Pascal microengine schematics available

On Fri, 6 Nov 2015, Jos Dreesen wrote: Eric Smith and I have been looking for these for a long time. They are BASF floppies, though. As are mine... ( some 3M and CDC disk also part of the haul ) Does that mean they will need baking ? Never had any problems with 8" BASF floppies (and 5¼" BTW).

Re: Teletype services

On Sat, 7 Nov 2015, John Ball wrote: People have been nagging me for the last year to get a Panasonic 308. I've yet to come across one so far that wasn't weirdly priced, plus my parents aren't interested in a PBX being installed in their house. Pricy? Most of the time you can get them either fo

Re: PDP 11/03

On Mon, 9 Nov 2015, Johnny Billquist wrote: Normally, you'd call them Tx, Rx and GND, but anyway... No, you do not need to loop back any signals. DEC didn't like to abuse modem control for flow control. What about the connections between the TTL signals and the line drivers/receivers? There a

Re: VT100 - FUN

On Tue, 10 Nov 2015, rod wrote: They were for video in and out. You could sync the VT100 to a feed of mono video and the overlaid picture would appear on the screen and at the video out connector. AFAIR you couldn't. You had to synchronize the external video source to the VT100. Christian

Re: x86/DOS system backup via rs232?

On Thu, 12 Nov 2015, Tom Moss wrote: I've never seen anything works on the sector level, but there are plenty of There is DITU (Disk-Image Transfer Utility) for MS-DOS, and it's free including C source code. I use it e.g. to image the hard disk of a DOS PC into a file (either network or paral

Re: Tektronix 4051 RAMPACK - new design

On Sun, 15 Nov 2015, Bob Rosenbloom wrote: I was contacted by Micheal D. Cranford from the Tektronix Museum up in OR about a design for a ROM module for the Tektronix 4051 graphic computer. It looks to be a very useful item. See the description below. He's looking to build up some of them and m

Re: Could someone make the list do the thing in the subject line?

On Tue, 17 Nov 2015, et...@757.org wrote: By any chance could someone configure the mailing list to add or [cc] or [cct] into the beginning of the subject line? Not looking to filter, just not looking to delete messages. I *hate* modified subject lines, and I *hate* subjects that don't match

Re: Could someone make the list do the thing in the subject line?

On Tue, 17 Nov 2015, couryho...@aol.com wrote: COMBINE THEM THEN JUST ADD TWO LETTERS AND A DASH AS THUS CC- SOMEONE SUGGESTING THIS AND USING CAPITALS ONLY PROVES TO BE A MAIL NOOB ;-) Christian

Re: Ferroresonant transformers and 3278

On Mon, 21 Dec 2015, William Donzelli wrote: But considering the mix of 50 and 60 Hz stuff you likely have by now (that is what you get for moving!), spending some decent money on a real VFD might be worth it. I might think a cheap VFD may give ferroresonant iron fits with all those extra harmoni

Re: Floppy recovery

On Tue, 5 Jan 2016, Fred Cisin wrote: 1) if the alignment of the head of the original recording and of the overwrite head are not a perfect match, then there can be some residual data somewhat off axis. At a first thought I don't see how there can be residual data because there is the tunnel

Re: Alphatronic P2 Manuals

On Fri, 15 Jan 2016, Piero Andreini wrote: I scanned several manuals belong the Alphatronic P2 300dpi pdf no compression. Nice; is there any manual not found on ftp://computermuseum.informatik.uni-stuttgart.de/alphatronic/ ? And BTW, IMO 600dpi is a *minimum* nowadays. No matter what some pe

Re: Terminal Emulation for Windows - supporting Kermit File Transfer

On Mon, 25 Jan 2016, Oliver Lehmann wrote: Not so much of luck so far MS-DOS Kermit should run just fine under Windows, at least the last time I tried it... Christian

RE: HP 9000/382 Questions

On Mon, 25 Jan 2016, Rik Bos wrote: These tapes where used in a number of machine such as 9825, 9831, 9835, 9845, 9915, and 85A&B. There was also at least 1 external tape drive that used these [...] Aagh, I forgot about the HP85 some instrument programs where written for [...] For me, the mo

Re: Substituting DSHD for DSDD disks (or DS2D if you prefer)

On Tue, 26 Jan 2016, Chuck Guzis wrote: So did Intel on the MDS. I don't recall if there was any significant difference between Intel and HP MMFM encoding, however. The initial CRC value ($ vs. $) and the header (six vs. four bytes) are different, but the encoding was quite identical.

Re: The PDP11/04 has landed..

On Mon, 8 Feb 2016, Mattis Lind wrote: layers of of a multilayer PCB. As mentioned earlier in this thread I did such a conversion on a MSV11-D board more than 25 years ago and then I had to lift up this pin and connect it via an extra wire. What about the DRAM refresh? 4116 have a 7 bit refres

Re: Programming

On Mon, 8 Feb 2016, Ian S. King wrote: Yes, its faceplate reads 'PDP-11', not 'PDP-11/20'. Actually the faceplate reads 'pdp11' ;-) Christian

Re: Oregon Pascal tape found

On Tue, 9 Feb 2016, Pete Lancashire wrote: There are a few odd balls in 9-track as well, but the 556 was a typo. Really? I actually *do* have a 9 track tape drive (HP 7970) that has 200/556/800 bpi densities: http://computermuseum.informatik.uni-stuttgart.de/pics/hp1000/hp7970_2.jpg And it i

Re: Real tape drive densities

On Wed, 10 Feb 2016, CuriousMarc wrote: Note that Christian Corti stated that his drive is capable of 9-track operation. That's an E. It is not an E. (Apparently that will also write 9-track PE at 1600bpi, but it will write 9-track NRZI at 800bpi). I would know that ;-) Intere

Re: Real tape drive densities

On Fri, 12 Feb 2016, Curious Marc wrote: Can you confirm it can read and write 9 track formats in PE 1600 cpi? Was there ever a 7970B with PE? I have the manual matching this unit (serial number is marked on the cover page) and there's no mention of PE AFAIK. It's the 1971 version of the 7970

Re: Real tape drive densities

On Thu, 11 Feb 2016, Christian Corti wrote: I have a 7970B (-236) with options 127, 006, 007, 012 and 023. According to the HP 1000 Peripherals Selection Guide from 1982, page 16, option 236 specifies an 800bpi master magnetic tape subsystem with one drive and two-card 13181B interface

Re: Real tape drive densities

On Sun, 14 Feb 2016, Jay Jaeger wrote: Looking at this manual for the 7970B / 7970E I see that dual 7/9 track heads did exist. Yes, but only in read-only configurations. Yours has a plate that claims it has option 127 (as well as 6, 7, 12 and 23). The 127 implies a 9 track only head, but I

Re: Kim 1

On Wed, 17 Feb 2016, Jose Manuel wrote: I have a Kim 1 board. Please contact. So what? We have at least half a dozen KIM-1, some with expansion boxes, EPROM burners, memory extension, etc. ;-) Christian

Re: PCS Cadmus/QU68000 systems

On Wed, 17 Feb 2016, Peter Koch wrote: But this gives me the opportunity to ask wether anybody else out there still owns Cadmus equipment. If I will take these machines I might need spare parts and boot media (or tape images). Anybody has such stuff? Of course :-) We have I think three 9900 sys

RE: PDP-11/20 vd one that just says pdp 11 what are the date differences?? OEM?

On Mon, 22 Feb 2016, Paul Birkel wrote: My PDP-11 is labeled as "S-386" and dated 9/23/70, which I guess makes it fairly early in the production run (but I do wonder what the initial manufacturing rate was given the relative riskiness of this new architecture). Anyone have S# and dates for "plai

Re: Unix System V rel 1 on pdp-11?

On Wed, 2 Mar 2016, E. Groenenberg wrote: When looking for Unix distro's for rhe PDP-11, I did find information of how to make a System II using a Unix version 7 as it's base. I also came across some hits about the existence of System 5 Release 1 for the PDP-11 (basically intended to be only for

Re: Documentation on DEC's Omnibus Module M865 (Console Teletype Control)

On Thu, 3 Mar 2016, kra...@informatik.uni-stuttgart.de wrote: On Wed, 2 Mar 2016, Martin Meiner wrote: I am currently looking for documentation (configuration, SCH, ...) on DEC's M865 Teletype-interface. Not the M8650 or M8655, mind you. Could someone point me to the right direction? We have t

Re: Sequoia Computer Systems?

On Wed, 9 Mar 2016, Jay West wrote: Anyone have any pictures, datasheets, or other ephemera related to Sequoia Systems line of fault tolerant systems? That's what I found in the Computer Review No. 1 from 1987, page 351: SEQUOIA SYSTEMS: SEQUOIA POWER: 50.

Re: DEC RK05 Emergency Retract Batteries

On Mon, 14 Mar 2016, Doug Ingraham wrote: The only difference in NiMH and NiCd charging schemes occurs when rapid charging them. When rapid charging both types would use a DV/DT technique coupled with a temperature sensor. The DV/DT is much smaller for NiMH than NiCd. So if they went to the ef

RE: DEC RK05 Emergency Retract Batteries

On Mon, 14 Mar 2016, tony duell wrote: I am told some later drives used the spindle motor as a generator when the power failed to provide the power for emergency retraction. Yes, the HP 7905/7906 does this for example. Christian

Re: DEC RK05 Emergency Retract Batteries

On Tue, 15 Mar 2016, Paul Koning wrote: From the various comments, it sounds like NiMH is a useable substitute. On the other hand, NiCd batteries are still readily available. Yes, but NiCd cells really don't like being charged only and never discharged. And they tend to crystallise quite badly

NetBSD TK70 question

I'm not sure where I should start asking, so I'm starting here ;-) I have a problem reading TK70 (and probably TK50) tapes in NetBSD 3.0 on a MicroVAX II. There is absolutely no way of reading a single tape block with a simple read(). All I get is mt0: unknown opcode 0x80 status 0xc01 ignore

Re: Baydel Unibus disk systems

On Fri, 18 Mar 2016, Mike Ross wrote: I just have the controller board; I don't have any of the hard drives left. All I remember is the disk was an 8" and the interface is a single 40-pin cable; so not SMD and not SCSI. Far too early for IDE or ATA. Any suggestions for what the interface might ha

Re: NetBSD TK70 question (solved)

On Thu, 17 Mar 2016, Christian Corti wrote: simple read(). All I get is mt0: unknown opcode 0x80 status 0xc01 ignored [...] Ok, I was fishing deep in the TMSCP protocol manual, and after fiddling with the MSCP driver I found out that Opcode 0x80 (OP.END) alone (page A-2) means MSCP protocol

Re: A computer collection in Italy

On Tue, 5 Apr 2016, Pontus Pihlgren wrote: http://www.retrocomputing.net/ Looks like he has both an 11/780 (though it looks to be in pieces) and a 390. Impressive collection. ... that get's much smaller if you omit all those entries for flat band cables, connectors, heat sinks, power supplie

Re: Panaplex display history

On Sat, 30 May 2015, Jon Elson wrote: Is there a good reason why filament lamps were used on minicomputer front panels until the mid 1970s? Things like the PDP11/45, Philips P850, etc all used filament bulbs, not LEDs. Inertia! The 11/45 was designed before LEDs were available, and so they n

RE: IBM 5120

On Sun, 12 Jul 2015, Ali wrote: Congratulations and a very nice find there. If you get a chance, and are inclined, it would be great if you could image the disks and the manuals for BitSavers. I know at least one person (me ;)) who would appreciate it! My 5120 runs well enough but the screen ca

RE: PDP 11 gear finally moved

On Mon, 20 Jul 2015, Rich Alderson wrote: the aluminum electrolytics that indicate that, *no matter what*, they lose capacitance over time, until c. 14 years from manufacturer date they are at 10% of rating. Please excuse me, but this is utter nonsense. Most electrolytics in our machines are

RE: PDP 11 gear finally moved

On Tue, 21 Jul 2015, tony duell wrote: But yes, selenium rectifiers rarely work now (although there are exceptions) and when they fail they can take out the mains transformer. And they smell horrible (think of school dinner cabbage!) Huh? All devices with selenium rectifiers that I/we own are O

Re: Booting an IBM MP 3000 S/390 System

On Tue, 4 Aug 2015, Guy Sotomayor wrote: I spent some time today and made a video of my MP 3000 system booting up to z/OS. The video is here: http://youtu.be/WnJmeQR0GQU. I thought the P/390 was the smallest S/390? Christian

Re: SCSI Tape to TAP utility

On Sat, 8 Aug 2015, Chuck Guzis wrote: I've got a Linux utility to translate SIMH .tap to raw binary, if that's interesting to anyone. I would have thought that such utilities existed already. They probably do, but I have written my own set of tools for reading and writing TAP and AWS files,

Re: Writing 8" floppies with SuperCard Pro

On Tue, 11 Aug 2015, Jay Jaeger wrote: Aside from the write pre-comp thing which you seem to have in hand (and which is generally handled by the *drive*, not the controller, i.e., the bit timing from the controller does not change, as far as I know), one Au contraire. Write precompensation is

Re: FYI gmane cctalk group

On Tue, 25 Aug 2015, Doug Jackson wrote: This about screen pretty much sums it up. http://gmane.org/about.php [...] Severalmailing list archives exist, but these are all hidden under a web interface. Reading mail that way is not convenient. Reading mail as if it we

Re: FYI gmane cctalk group

On Tue, 25 Aug 2015, jwsmobile wrote: Also injecting the list into the usenet mess violates any rights the authors here have in who reads the discussion. Of course who can chime in is controlled, but I'm just paranoid enough I'd not like to have all this firing off into all the usenet crevass

Re: no, not retrobrite

On Fri, 4 Sep 2015, Jay West wrote: No, there's no retrobrite involved. Just a normal spray on household cleaner, followed by Magic Eraser and a lot of elbow grease. Yep, Magic Eraser is a wonderful thing. Or for those on my side of the world: Sidol Kunststoffreiniger Can't imagine anything bet

Re: Problem with RF73 DSSI disk

On Fri, 4 Sep 2015, j...@cimmeri.com wrote: culture re what is offensive. His remarks did not bother me because they were "typically German." Maybe me saying that will offend Holm... lol... Hey, they weren't "typically German"... we don't want to make generalizations, do we? I think the

Re: Tu10 pdp11

On Sat, 5 Sep 2015, Al Kossow wrote: They were common. I worked on a bunch of them. Expect the vacuum sensors to be bad in the columns. I think Guy still has a couple of them. We've repaired them with cut outs from latex gloves. The problem is the membrane that became brittle with the time. O

Re: punchcard svg file available

On Thu, 10 Sep 2015, Simon Claessen wrote: btw. in the Netherlands where I live, they are called ponskaarten and are nowhere to be find also. We only have one box of fresh cards and one box of used cards with our IBM 029. Of course the unused cards stay in the depot until we can do something us

Re: punchcard svg file available

On Fri, 11 Sep 2015, Dave Wade wrote: Could not find anything on their web site... You have to ask them directly, they should still have all the means because they also do ATB stuff. That's what we did a few years ago, but our "project" stalled because they wanted some obscure file format for

Re: Getting an ibm as/400

On Thu, 14 Apr 2016, Yvan Janssens wrote: Also, DD won't work on those disks; you'll have to use sg_utils and use raw SCSI commands to dump the disks. Linux DD uses the system calls to read block devices, and interestingly enough, they only support multiples of 512b for sector size on that. Dump

Re: PDP-11/05 microcode dump?

On Sat, 7 May 2016, Mattis Lind wrote: What are the failure modes of PROMs? I had a PROM fail on the 11/45 CPU board. This PROM is responsible for the Conditional Codes handling. There was one output that had failed. I think that the output drivers may fail, because I was able to temporarily

RE: VT101 screen adjustment

On Tue, 10 May 2016, tony duell wrote: Yes indeed. Fortunately this one wielded under my trimmer and all is properly aligned now. All I need to do now is troubleshoot the keyboard circuit which I hope is the same as the VT102... In general it is a bad idea to cure faults by adjustments. Unless

Re: Hex file formats (Was: PDP11 M9301-Yx ROM dumps)

On Fri, 13 May 2016, Peter Coghlan wrote: for information about it has turned up very little except for a reference on the DECUS website to: V00250 UCAMS: Universal Cross-Assembler for Microprocessors Version: February 1987 Oh yes, the good old "Universal Cross-Assembler für Mik

Re: New *square* 1:1 26.5" LCD monitor 1920x1920

First I want to note that everybody is missing the subject about *square 1:1* displays... On Mon, 16 May 2016, Ethan Dicks wrote: I have been keeping my eye out for older panels. I have some 12" 4:3 and a few 17" 4:3 and I think one 19" 4:3. Never run across anything larger. I don't think th

Seeking OS for Altos 486 S1000

Hi, I was given an Altos 486 Series 1000, and albeit its name sounds promising, it's not the classic Z80 based Altos 486, but a modern UNIX machine with i486 processor (non-PC architecture) from around 1992. Problem: no tapes, no hard disk (was removed as it contained sensitive data). Has some

Re: Keyboards and Mice (was Model M, NEC ProSpeed)

On Tue, 31 May 2016, Chuck Guzis wrote: 3-button, serial, RS232 ADB, USB and PS2. I can't recall ever needing to use or using the middle button a 3-button mouse. How do you paste text then? And there are quite a few applications that use the middle button to scroll the visible layer (e.g. gs

Re: Keyboards and Mice (was Model M, NEC ProSpeed)

On Wed, 1 Jun 2016, Chuck Guzis wrote: At random, I've flipped over the 4 keyboards nearest me to read thelabel. All say "Model M" along with the plant number. The part and FRU varies; the one I'm typing this on is 1391401 for the part number. And all my keyboards say "MANUFACTURED IN UNITED

Re: options for replacing failed small ROMs in PDP-11

On Fri, 24 Jun 2016, Fritz Mueller wrote: In bringing up and debugging my PDP 11/45, I found that one of my GRA (M8101) spares has a failed ALU subsidiary ROM. It's a pretty standard little 32x8 ROM in a 16-pin DIP, and the truth table is in the 11/45 print set. Some years ago I had to replac

Re: "Key" to open an HP 264X terminal

On Mon, 27 Jun 2016, CuriousMarc wrote: side in which you have to insert a "key". Is the key just a small blade tool or does it have to be more special shape than that? Yepp, it's just a small blade; you could use a strong paper clip or a small blade screwdriver instead. Christian

Re: Reproduction micros

On Sat, 16 Jul 2016, Peter Corlett wrote: main compelling feature of the A2000 was the built-in hard disk. The A2000 did *not* have a built-in hard disk, that was the A3000. The A2000 was just an "updated" A1000 in a large desktop case with Zorro slots... completely braindead. Christian

Re: Cray J932SE (was Re: Straight 8 up on Ebay just now)

On Tue, 19 Jul 2016, Swift Griggs wrote: The photo of that unit is entertaining. Whoever buys it will need to setup 3x 30A 220v outlets. That's going to make some licensed electrician very happy. Why? 32A 3-phase CEE connectors (the red ones) are very common, especially since most electrical i

Re: Decoding kryoflux stream for HP9895A

On Tue, 20 Sep 2016, Eric Smith wrote: On Tue, Sep 20, 2016 at 7:42 AM, Denise de Vries wrote: Does anyone know of documentation for the HP9895A format with its own M2FM encoding? I have a kryoflux preservation stream but so far can make no sense of it. I've successfully decoded Intel M2FM d

Re: DEC bus transceivers

On Mon, 24 Oct 2016, Paul Koning wrote: You need to look at the PDP-11 UNIBUS Design Description document on Bitsavers. Firstly, in section 4-1, it specifies which chips to use and recommends not using a whole list of other chips. The only recommended chips are: 8640, 8641 and 8881. Sure.

Re: DEC bus transceivers

On Tue, 25 Oct 2016, Guy Sotomayor Jr wrote: OK, re-reading the first part of section 5.2.5, it?s pretty clear that the Unibus is 120-ohm: A bus terminator is defined as a Unibus element or part of an element containing a resistive network which connects to the end of a Unibus segment and matche

Re: For sale 128K Core RAM Industrial PDP 11/40 Massbus System

On Sun, 30 Oct 2016, allison wrote: Later versions like 2.9 and V7 do want I&D. That's wrong. We run 2.9BSD on our 11/34, initially on two RL01 disks, now on one RL01 (as boot and swap device) and one RA80 (there is a third-party MSCP driver for 2.9BSD). I need to upgrade the machine with a

Re: General TC11 DECtape diagnostic/formatter questions

On Tue, 8 Nov 2016, Josh Dersch wrote: with the TC11 system," and I haven't managed to find it. I *have* found this: http://mirrors.pdp-11.ru/inf.informatik.uni-stuttgart.de/pdp11/dtf.mac ... which is simply a mirror of our FTP server at ftp://ftp.informatik.uni-stuttgart.de/pub/cm/... I enhan

Re: General TC11 DECtape diagnostic/formatter questions

On Wed, 9 Nov 2016, Noel Chiappa wrote: Having just looked at the original :-), it did have two messages: "ready drive 0 and type y" and "tcf: error" Seems the original must have been the XXDP TC11 DECtape formatter program by Robert J. Collins. I have no clue where I found the RT11 versi

Re: General TC11 DECtape diagnostic/formatter questions

On Thu, 10 Nov 2016, Noel Chiappa wrote: BTW, I noticed a couple of places in DTF.MAC where error checking code was commented out, e.g.: ;EHLT4:XX ;HALT WITH BLK#IN LIGHTS, CONTINUE ; MOV #257.,R0;TO FIND DATA WORD POSITION ; ADD TOG1,R0

Re: Paper tape carriers and paper tape

On Fri, 11 Nov 2016, Al Kossow wrote: No one is making new 80 column punched card stock either. No stock, or no cards? I would think that one of the paper manufacturers would be putting out postcard stock of the right specifications. This has been discussed for several years here. No one i

Re: Doug Englebart - mouse!

On Thu, 17 Nov 2016, jos wrote: On 17.11.2016 17:18, Murray McCullough wrote: Today in the age of pointer-graphics, ie., using a mouse, is a very important day: Nov. 17, 1970, Doug Engelbart, of SRI, Menlo Park, CA, invented the mouse or granted a patent for "X-Yposition indictator for a grahics

Re: Fwd: NCD16 images. Was: NCD19 / Xncd19

On Thu, 17 Nov 2016, Al Kossow wrote: Fred, could you make these files readable, please Reading about NCD images I went digging in our archives and found a QIC tape containing NCD16 stuff (apparently NCDware 2.2.0) dated 1990/1991. Here's the file: ftp://computermuseum.informatik.uni-stuttgar

Re: HP1631D Logic Analyzer..Software???

On Mon, 5 Dec 2016, Glen Slick wrote: I tried using ImageDisk on a PC to read the two HP 1630 3.5-inch floppies I have (10304 8085 preprocessor, 10342 HP-IB, RS-232C/V.24, RS-449 preprocessor). It appeared to be able to read the expected data just fine. Singled sided disk with 16 256-byte sectors

Re: Transporting an LGP-30

On Fri, 23 Dec 2016, Cory Heisterkamp wrote: Yep Chuck, this is the CA machine. I was surprised it never reared its head on classiccmp the past few days. -C If you tell me its serial number I can eventually tell you who was/were the previous owner(s) ;-) Christian

Re: Transporting an LGP-30

On Fri, 23 Dec 2016, Cory Heisterkamp wrote: I recently became the owner of an LGP-30, supposedly in 'working' condition. However, the machine is roughly 2000 miles from me and will need to be transported by freight. Before it's palletized, are there any special precautions I should take to ens

Re: Transporting an LGP-30

On Sat, 24 Dec 2016, william degnan wrote: Here are my notes on the LGP 30 http://www.vintagecomputer.net/browse_thread.cfm?id=596 There are several errors in those notes: - "The basic (hardware) bootstrap in LGP-30 mnemonic format:" There is no hardware bootstrap. - The addresses in the boo

Re: Transporting an LGP-30

On Mon, 26 Dec 2016, Adam Sampson wrote: "Underhill Engineering Co Ltd" painted on the top in the eBay pictures (if you squint) is a bit of a giveaway! I was only able to see "Under...". They have a nice page about the machine's history: http://www.underhill.ca/land-survey-project/15/underhil

Re: Transporting an LGP-30

On Fri, 30 Dec 2016, Jon Elson wrote: Is your drum in good condition? Ours was full of dust, and 3 tracks had been ground down to the brass due to dust packing under the heads. You can relocate bad tracks as there are a couple of spare tracks. And the drum is made of aluminium, not brass. C

Re: Transporting an LGP-30

On Mon, 2 Jan 2017, Jon Elson wrote: (For reference, we were talking about my experiences with a Bendix G-15, not an LGP-30.) So, I think the G-15 drum had a brass sleeve that might have How should I know? Change the subject then! Christian

Re: LGP-30 Memory Drum Update

On Tue, 3 Jan 2017, Paul Koning wrote: The key questions for reconstructing such a device is what the modulation scheme is, and the pulse pattern. There might be marker pulses for sector start, for example, or that might just be derived from a counter in the controller. It's in the maintenan

Re: LGP-30 Memory Drum Update

On Tue, 3 Jan 2017, Al Kossow wrote: There are running LGP-30s. Should be short work with a digital oscillosope to capture the flux changes. Hopefully, someone has done this already. Of course, we did this initially in 1999 when we got our first LGP-30, and a couple of times later on. The las

Re: LGP-30 Memory Drum Update

On Tue, 3 Jan 2017, Jon Elson wrote: So, does the LGP-30 have permanent storage on the drum, or is it erased by a magnet at every revolution? Yes, the three timing tracks, and the upper half of the instruction counter(!). The upper half containts the number of the following sector and is used

Re: LC8-P (M8365) PDP8 printer interface schematics

On Tue, 3 Jan 2017, Ethan Dicks wrote: On Tue, Jan 3, 2017 at 8:04 PM, Charles Dickman wrote: I am looking for schematics or any documentation for the LA180 interface for the PDP8/e. A scan would be great. I want to see if I can use it to interface to a Centronics interface printer. I don't h

Re: LGP-30 Memory Drum Update

On Wed, 4 Jan 2017, Cory Heisterkamp wrote: I'm far from an expert, but it certainly looks like an oxide coating to me. I'm reminded of the folklore when IBM was developing the RAMAC and Yes, it is ferric oxide. http://www.radar58.com/temp/drum.jpg http://www.radar58.com/temp/drum2.jpg Hmm,

Re: Cleaning RK05 packs (Was: LGP-30 Memory Drum Update)

On Thu, 5 Jan 2017, E. Groenenberg wrote: We have a similar common name for it being 'brand spiritus'. It's basically 90% - 92% alcohol, with the rest being methanol and water and it's color is blue-ish. German "Spiritus", as it's called here, usually is 94% ethanol, 1-2% butanone and water.

Re: What's the rarest or most unusual computer-related item do you own? [Tek 4132]

On Tue, 17 Jan 2017, Chuck Guzis wrote: I find it curious that what seems to be collected in the minicomputer area seems to be gear of major brands. Me too :-) Does anyone collect Varian minis? Yes! We have a couple of Varian 620/f (some with expansion boxes) Or General Automation? Yes!

Re: Varian, GA was: Re: What's the rarest or most unusual computer-related item do you own?

On Tue, 17 Jan 2017, Al Kossow wrote: let me see what I can get to on it. we got a ton of stuff from the stuff we bought in Germany That is where our GA stuff comes from ;-) So probably you could have manuals and software for the SPC-16. Christian

Re: How do you clean your vintage computers?

On Thu, 19 Jan 2017, Andy Cloud wrote: 1. What do you use to clean the exterior plastic and/or metal if applicable? I'm always worried about staining the plastic using strong solvent... could you also include what type of cloth/sponge/anything you use :) The best for cleaning plastics is this:

Re: PAL video in the states

On Thu, 19 Jan 2017, Chris Osborn wrote: I do it by using a GBS8200 to convert the RGB output to VGA. I also use "VGA" is RGB, too ;-) I guess you mean converting CCIR timing to "VGA" timing. This is not a matter of simple conversion; you need to recreate the picture (like sample it and outpu

Re: Please identify this circuit board

[Exceptionally top-posting...] There are two modules each containing eight pulse transformers. That's it. The left module has the cover removed. No memory, no register. This board is from 1971, so it would contain some TTL FFs or RAM (e.g. 7489) for registers. Christian On Wed, 1 Feb 2017,

Re: Please identify this circuit board

On Thu, 2 Feb 2017, dwight wrote: Are you sure the cores are transformers and not memory cores? Yes, because (ROM) memory would have *many* wires through each core / around each transformer rod. Christian

Re: Logic Analysers

On Thu, 2 Feb 2017, Adrian Graham wrote: is fixed 5v. Also you'd expect that sampling at four times the clock speed (they'll both do 25Mhz with 6 channels) then every pulse would be picked up. No, because the pulse length may be far inferiour to the sample clock rate. You may also need to capt

Unidentified (CDC?) panel

Hello, amongst other panels and things (CDC 6600 dead start panel, PDP-15 frontpanel) I got this one: http://up.picr.de/28257957bg.jpg I *guess* it also comes from the CDC 6600 but I'm not sure. Can anyone identify it? Christian

Re: New batch of pdp8 OMNIBUS to USB interface! Please Read and react!

On Mon, 13 Feb 2017, Philipp Hachtmann wrote: - the USB connector will be replaced by a mini (NOT micro!!) USB connector. What's wrong with USB-B? I consider both Mini and Micro as not mechanically reliable, i.e. I fear that the cable will unplug itself or the mechanical strain will break the

Re: Siemens T100 Terminal with Paper Tape - Available

On Wed, 8 Dec 2021, Monty McGraw wrote: I have this terminal in my garage - sitting on its custom stand. That's a plain standard current loop telex machine using CCITT2 code. The more modern electronic version of it is the T1000 (that was available as 5-bit CCITT2 and 8-bit ASCII). Christia

Re: Siemens T100 Terminal with Paper Tape - Available

On Thu, 9 Dec 2021, nico de jong wrote: You need a COM port (or simulator) and a little box converting RS232 to 50 BPS serial.  Diagrams can be found everywhere. But you could also look at There isn't such a converter thing ;-) What you mean is a converter between current loop and V.28. To be p

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