[cctalk] SMS Scientific Micro Systems corp history?

SMS was based in Mountain View starting in the 70's. They sold DEC-compatible Q-bus storage systems in the early 80's and transitioned into IBM PC disk storage ASICs and boards under the OMTI brand in the late 80s. What happened to them after that? Some CC'er in Silicon Valley must know :-)

[cctalk] Soviet tube/transistor/IC spec source

For those working with ex-Soviet equipment from the 60’s and 70’s here’s a remarkable resource: https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/GOVPUB-C13-6925b02fb6dcaa88935be001eb551b4c/pdf/GOVPUB-C13-6925b02fb6dcaa88935be001eb551b4c.pdf I am astonished that I found it in this in the US National Bureau

[cctalk] Concorde cabin display technology?

Not quite computer tech but I figure this is the best place to ask: Does anyone recognize the display tech that was used on the Concorde's in-cabin display? Examples: https://samchui.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/02/CON15.jpg https://samchui.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/02/CON16.jpg The

[cctalk] 100% Tape Seal (soft kind) failure

I've been reporting on 9-track tape seal failures over at least the past 2 decades here. I first noticed the problem in the very early 2000's, and thought it was just random onesy-twosy failures, possibly contributed to by ozone in LA region, but over the past 20 years the failures have

Wednesday CWT logger survey - very biased and unscientific :-)

A quick look-see at the 1900Z Wed 6/15/2022 "Contestonlinescore.com" page shows 89 folks reporting their real-time score, and even identifies what kind of logger was used to report the score. Of these 89 real-time score reporters, 86 were using N1MM+. And 3 were using DXlog. There were 389

Slashed letter O, unslashed letter zero

Paul writes: > As for the slashed letter O, that's strange. Certainly it is not CDC > practice; the only place I ever ran into this is with IBM, I always > considered it an example of IBM doing > things the weird way. So it sounds like whoever bought those Teletype > machines had them

Re: Ever seen a Cromemco Cyclops in the wild?

Bill, thanks in particular for the reference to the August 1976 Cromemco catalog. I definitely remember the Dazzler graphics on the cover but somehow had lost memory of the camera on the second to last page. Tim

Ever seen a Cromemco Cyclops in the wild?

I think a Stanford AI lab has one in a display case. Any others out there? It was supposedly "commercial" but I don't even remember ever seeing an ad for the Cyclops from Cromemco and I had a really good stash of Cromemco literature and hardware. I do remember the BYTE article where you pop

Re: UNIBUS FTGH: EMM / CMU MICRORAM memories

The Microram was a multipurpose solid state memory chassis sold by EMM (Electronic Memories and Magnetics) with what we called later in the 1970's a "personality board" that plugged it into each different CPU's backplane. They sold a similar system (maybe even plug compatible at some level)

Re: Too many DEC binders

Starting around the VMS 5.5 era, isn’t anything from then or later on the Condist documentation CD’s? And thus we don’t have to make a priority for scanning? Tim N3QE

Tape seals?

Just a reminder: "Tape seal" is a generic name (or defunct trademark?) for the wrap-around plastic tape hanger for half-inch magtape reels. There's a flexible white (soft plastic) or beige (hard plastic) belt with a clamp (sometimes black) and a hanger. They usually had a little place to put a

Elliott 5-level code: just in case you have some oddball 5-level paper tapes

Immensely happy this morning to have finally tracked this down. This is a 5-level code by Elliott used on many of their computers. It seems to have used standard looking 5-level teletype I/O devices but with custom typewheel and keyboard/function bar encoding. It has 3 things in common with

Unix tools, Bill Webb, UBC, TRIUMF

I recovered several pieces of Unix media – all of which I think made it into TUHS/PUPS collection - at UBC in the mid-1990’s while I was working at TRIUMF. Those Unix disks and tapes came from a SERF sale (Surplus Equipment Recycling Facility) on UBC main campus, not from TRIUMF. Bill Webb was

Re: VT100's

Zane, are you talking about the VT100 specifically, or the whole VT1xx line? My gut feeling is that the VT100 was at most 20% of the production in the whole VT1xx line. The internal expandability of the VT100 was a cool idea, but overall sales of VT101, VT102, VT131, and VT132 have to dwarf the

Re: Fairly Extensive Singer/Friden "System Ten" Computer System for Rescue

I had been told for decades that there was a flight simulator that used a Singer System Ten and that United Airlines operated it outside Chicago for some unreasonably long time. This was "Urban Legend you wouldn't believe it but that's what the bosses wanted" stuff back in the 1990's. Using a

Re: Computer tape quantities in the 70's or 80's?

Chuck writes: > I'd probably start with the US Commerce Department. In their industrial > report summaries, the product code is "36950 11" > e.g.: https://tinyurl.com/y8ks3mdd for 1987-88 Wow, Chuck, that is fascinating info that I had no idea was so easily accessed. Thank you! It looks like

Computer tape quantities in the 70's or 80's?

Bitsavers has preserved a couple of key marketing studies that help me understand the wide world of disk storage in the 70's and 80's. For example http://www.bitsavers.org/pdf/dec/competitiveAnalysis/Engineering_Strategy_Review_Mar82.pdf has numbers both for DEC and world disk market. DEC sales

Re: Whence 556?

The 729 CE manual quotes 555 BPI. I’m not sure when it became 556. http://bitsavers.trailing-edge.com/pdf/ibm/magtape/729/223-6845_729_CEman_1959.pdf The IBM 728 was 248 BPI. Before that it was the nice round number 200 BPI. I tried permutations of standard IPS and round number data rates and

Nice Video on the Hershey Fonts

Very nice presentation by Frank Griesshammer on the subject of the Hershey Fonts: https://vimeo.com/153653610 He does a superb job explaining how a font invented in 1967 by a mathematical physicist at a US Weapons Lab became essential for the last 40 years of technical writing. And is also an

Where is the memory on the AP-101S memory board?

Michael Umbricht has uploaded this wonderful hi-res picture of an AP-101S - the Space Shuttle computer solid state memory board - to Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_System/4_Pi#/media/File:IBM_AP-101S_memory_board.jpg I see a lot of 54F series TTL, some Dale resistor arrays, and

Apple ][ PS

Local friend has an Apple ][+ with fried and cooked PS PCB. I used to replace a capacitor and/or diode when the PS's would do the I-can't-start-click-click but it feels like for this one, I'm gonna need a bigger boat. 20+ years ago, complete aftermarket power supply replacements for Apple ][

RIP Jerry Pournelle - Firsts

He seems to have been the first to mention ARPANET in a popular hobbyist-type context like BYTE. (Leading him to get kicked off ARPANET!) Tim

IEEE publishes "In Search of the Original Fortran Compiler" - Paul McJones

IEEE Annals of the History of Computing just published (in past few months) Paul McJones article "In Search of the Original Fortran Compiler". Many of us have been following Paul's efforts (and helping out in different ways) for the past 15 years, via cctalk and other mailing lists, the SPG,

Apple ][ PS and more - Ken Shirriff's blog

I just recently discovered Ken Shirriff's blog which has a lot of interesting stuff. e.g. http://www.righto.com/2012/02/apple-didnt-revolutionize-power.html discusses not just outlandish claims about the Apple II power supply, but also the evolution of switching power supplies in computers

The Mysterious Zoso

Al struck a memory cell I haven't used in at least a quarter century. No, I do not know who The Mysterious Zoso actually was but he was legendary. His flaming just barely crosses the line into early trench industry journalism I guess. Certainly not the shine of Charlie Matco or Ted Dziuba, but

Re: BBS software for the PDP 11

I know of several very different PDP-11 BBS's using very disparate architectures. Some were run on RT-11 or RSTS-11 entirely inside a BASIC program that managed every element of call answering, logging in, and disconnection. And others took advantage of TSX-11, RSX-11 and RSTS-11 login

Ethernet 1973/1974

Al just recently put this up on Bitsavers, November 1974 drawings for the first 2.94MHz Ethernet transceiver: http://bitsavers.trailing-edge.com/pdf/xerox/alto/ethernet/Ethernet_Transceiver_Electrical_Characteristics.pdf Neat to see the 15 pin AUI to Thicknet transceiver (well, a lower

RE: Panel ID?

lt;cctalk@classiccmp.org> Subject: Re: Panel ID? On Fri, May 12, 2017 at 12:17 PM, Shoppa, Tim via cctalk <cctalk@classiccmp.org<mailto:cctalk@classiccmp.org>> wrote: Cory asks: > http://www.radar58.com/panel/ I had always thought Transistor Electronics Corporation had some

Re: Panel ID?

Cory asks: > http://www.radar58.com/panel/ I had always thought Transistor Electronics Corporation had something to do with CDC (both in Minneapolis) but CHM tells me I was wrong: it was a spin-off from Univac: http://www.computerhistory.org/brochures/companies.php?alpha=t-z=com-42bc22fbb9812

Hershey Fonts now 50 years old

I grew up with X-Y scope displays, their associated electrostatic printers, and Calcomp pen plotters. To draw letters and symbols on these, we used Fortran libraries driven by data tables to make "Hershey Characters". This year, the Hershey Font system and libraries turn 50 years old:

Model 33 wiring complexity

The Model 33's I bought back when I was a teenager, were all ex-Telex use and had exceedingly complicated wiring harnesses as well as built-in modems. They had paper tape readers and punches with various auto-start/auto-stop relay options. The exceedingly complex wiring harnesses were to add

Re: Ford-Higgins Powerframe QBUS Docs

Wow, I thought I had seen every obscure third-party Q-bus and Unibus chassis and backplane through the 70's/80's/90's but I had never heard of "Ford Higgins Power Frame" until today. It's a very stylized case obviously built around that disk drive but otherwise reminds me a lot of the DEC grey

Re: Did we miss the 20th anniversary of classiccmp?

I am living proof that a good Fortran Programmer can write spaghetti code in any language. Fortran by default starts all of its array indices at 1 so I would argue that we are now in year 21. A C programmer would disagree. Tim N3QE Sent from my VAX-11/780 > On Apr 21, 2017, at 10:47 AM, Jay

Did we miss the 20th anniversary of classiccmp?

A FAQ in my old emails show the founding of the Classiccmp mailing list as being 20 years and 1 month ago. March 13 1997 was when Bill Whitson first set up the classiccmp list at the University of Washington. Tim N3QE Sent from my VAX-11/780

Bitsavers size

Ben asks: > Just how big is the server? > As a wish list, I've always wanted that as a offline set of DVD's for the > common stuff. The bitsavers archive is 267 Gbytes. So at 4.7G per DVD, it comes out to almost 60 DVD's. I remember a PDQ Bach radio quiz show where the prize was The Wagner

Soviet PDP-11/J11 Clones

Terry Kennedy has recently put up some gorgeous pictures of PDP-11, especially J11, Russian clone chips and Russian clone CPU boards at https://www.glaver.org/blog/?p=959 Great commentary, too! Tim N3QE

Re: Does anyone here know Siemens STL?

Charles Dickman wrote: > The puzzling (and frustrating) thing about these industrial control > languages is how primitive they are. There is lots of talk about IIoT > and Industry 4.0, but at the bottom much of it is essentially handed > written machine code. Well, I still get to program in

New Jonathan Coulton text adventure/classic terminal music video

Yes, I know the video was made by using “retro-terminal” software http://www.secretgeometry.com/apps/cathode/ on modern hardware, but the spirit of the Infocom games is still there : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TvVNxqosZ7s The spot halfway

MUMPS in the news

http://www.politico.com/agenda/story/2017/03/vista-computer-history-va-conspiracy-000367