Re: FS: Cray J932SE system

[ethan]

SYS_CRAYHOST="wopr"
:-)
--
Chris Elmquist


:-)

Long gone, but probably some of my favorite boxes were Papa Smurf and 
Smurfette:

http://imgur.com/a/C2rGj

(The big blue Challenge XLs)

Other computers long gone in the pics as well, from the tinkering over the 
years! Was a big SGI fanboy.




--
Ethan O'Toole

MEM11 status update

[Guy Sotomayor]

I wanted to let folks know what the current status is on the MEM11
project.  I apologize in advance for the long post.

Previously I had mentioned that the emulator was fully functional (more
on that later) and that I was starting to debug the MEM11 firmware.  I
have made significant progress and I'm in the final stages of testing
the recovery image firmware and the configuration image firmware. In
reality, the recovery image firmware is a heavily stripped down version
of the configuration image firmware - I had to make space for all of the
strings, in the configuration image the strings are kept in FRAM. This
usually means that I can do most of the testing in the configuration image
and (with a few exceptions) I'm assured that it'll work properly in the
recovery image.

The recovery image is what will be in the J1's RAM (in the FPGA) after
reset.  It is also the "cold boot" loader.  Depending upon configuration
settings and a couple of jumpers, it looks for a version of firmware
to run.  Recall that there are up to 5 copies of the firmware:
2 copies of the "run time" firmware, this is what makes the MEM11
a set of Unibus devices
2 copies of the "configuration" firmware, this allows you to
configure the board, load new firmware, load/save memory, ROM
images and RS11 disk images
1 copy of the "configuration" firmware that is deemed "safe". This
copy cannot be updated except by the recovery image

The recovery image is part of the FPGA programming so it cannot be
updated in the field.

The recovery and configuration images support the XMODEM protocol for
uploading/downloading FRAM contents.

I'm going through and exhaustively testing all of the command and
checking that they produce the proper results and leave no extraneous
bits on the stack(s).

I haven't been able to do any testing on the XMODEM command yet because
I don't have support in the emulator for connecting other programs to
the console.  So once all of the other commands have been tested, I'm
going to extend the emulator to handle some other devices.  I'm also
going to add some scripting capabilities.  I'm getting really tired of
typing some commands (the first 3 in the session below are burned into
my brain).  It should also allow me to provide some capability to
emulate the Unibus side of things once I get to the point of testing
out the runtime firmware.


Here's a short session on using the emulator:

$ gforth emulator/j1-emulator.fs
J1> mode status 0008
J1> load 6 mem11-cfg.img
J1> get j1-boot-ram.img
J1> run
MEM11 Recovery Interface
MEM11 Firmware Version 0.4 (EMUL)
RECOVERY> help
Commands:
  BOOT Boot selected image
  CLEARClear specified memory region
  DUMP Dump out a section of FRAM
  MAP  Display FRAM address map
  MODIFY   Modifies contents of FRAM
  VERSION  Display version
  RESETPerform a HW reset
  XMODEM   Download into FRAM using XMODEM protocol
  SET  Set configuration information
  SHOW Show configuration information

Additional help:
  HELP 

RECOVERY> boot safe
MEM11 Command and Configuration Interface
MEM11 Firmware Version 0.3 (EMUL)
SAFE> help
Commands:
  BOOT Boot selected image
  CLEARClear specified memory region
  DUMP Dump out a section of FRAM
  ENABLE   Enable indicated UNIBUS device
  DISABLE  Disable indicated UNIBUS device
  EXAMINE  Examine J1's RAM
  LIST Lists names of images
  MAP  Display FRAM address map
  MODIFY   Modifies contents of FRAM
  POKE Change J1's RAM
  VERSION  Display version
  RESETPerform a HW reset
  XMODEM   Download into FRAM using XMODEM protocol
  SET  Set configuration information
  SHOW Show configuration information

Additional help:
  HELP 

SAFE> set defaults
SAFE> show dl11 0
ENABLED
SLOT:  3
CSR:   777560
LENGTH:10
INT VECTOR:060
INT PRIORITY:  BG4
BAUD RATE: 9600
PARITY:NONE
DATA BITS: 8
STOP BITS: 1
SAFE> show memory
ENABLED
BASE ADDR: 00
LENGTH:76
SAFE> show kw11l
DISABLED
SLOT:  7
CSR:   777540
LENGTH:10
INT VECTOR:100
INT PRIORITY:  BG6
LINE FREQ: 16667 uS
SAFE> list boot-image
 0 : 
 1 : 
 2 : 
 3 : 
B SAFE : MEM11 Config V0.3 (EMUL) Built on Fri Oct 9 20:18:31 PDT 2015
SAFE>
Execution Stopped at: PC:  016C
J1> help
Commands:
 HELP   - Help command
 DUMP   - Examine the contents of FRAM
 MODIFY - Modify the contents of FRAM
 EXAMINE- Examine the contents of J1 RAM
 PATCH  - Modify the contents of J1 RAM
 CLEAR  - Clear the contents of FRAM
 LOAD   - Load FRAM from a file
 SAVE   - Save FRAM into a file
 GET- Load J1 RAM from a file
 QUIT   - Exit the emulator
 RUN- Run the J1 program
 STEP   - Single step the next J1 instruction
 BREAKPOINT - Set a breakpoint
 CONTINUE   - Continue J1 execution
 .R - Dump the J1 return stack
 .S - Dump the J1 data stack
 .PC   

Re: Symbolics MCD-405 tape drive / Georgens Industries

[Josh Dersch]

On 10/8/15 3:53 PM, Josh Dersch wrote:
On Thu, Oct 8, 2015 at 11:15 AM, Al Kossow > wrote:


Does anyone have a loose 3M/Georgens MCD-405 tape drive they could
take board pictures
and firmware dumps from, or any of the other MCD-40 series tape
drives? I'm trying to
figure out how similar it is to the one in the Apple 40mb tape drive.


I believe I have one in my XL1200, I will check tonight.

- Josh


So, I'm a day late, but here are some pictures:

http://yahozna.dyndns.org/scratch/3m/

If this is the right drive, and if you need the EPROM dumped, let me 
know and I'll take care of it this weekend.


- Josh

Re: DEC H7140 (11/44) power supply revisions and general advice?

[Josh Dersch]

And as I just noted after Jay's response, the subject line should say 
"11/44" not "11/40."  Corrected...


- Josh


On 10/9/15 8:42 PM, Josh Dersch wrote:

Hey all --

Once again, I find myself in over my head debugging a power supply, 
this time an H7140 from a PDP-11/44.  Here's the skinny:


I examined the supply physically before experimenting and found a 
capacitor on the Bias/Interface board that was leaking, bursting and 
rather burned-out looking (not a great sign) -- this is capacitor C4 
in the printsets on Bitsavers 
(http://bitsavers.informatik.uni-stuttgart.de/pdf/dec/pdp11/1144/MP00897_11X44sys_Dec79.pdf) 
Everything else looked OK physically; I replaced the obviously bad 
capacitor at C4.


When power is applied (plugged in, breaker switch flipped to "On") the 
relay does not click - based on my readings of the manuals this should 
happen after the bias voltages are up to spec.  I measure 308VDC on 
the lugs on the top of the memory board, so that's at least something 
working.  Getting to other points to test voltages is a bit more 
difficult, especially with those high voltages in the way, what a nice 
design :).


Switching the front panel switch to "Local" (or any other position) 
has no effect -- no fans, no LEDs, nothing.  I've double-checked all 
the wiring and everything looks OK.


Capacitor C4 looks to be involved with the START-UP DRIVE signal 
circuitry (which drives the relay) so the behavior I'm seeing makes 
sense if C4 died and took a couple of things with it (or if something 
else died and took C4 with it).


Here's where it gets kind of odd -- I spent some time testing diodes 
and transistors in the related area near C4 and while doing so I 
noticed that there are four diodes (D1-D4) listed on the schematic 
that are missing from my board. "Missing" as in someone clipped them 
out at some point -- there are just nubs of the leads left.  I'm not 
sure why this would have been done, but there were a number of ECOs 
applied to this board (a few wires and resistors added) and I don't 
want to assume that if I just put four new diodes in that it won't 
cause other problems.  Anyone know if there were other revision levels 
of the bias/interface board that would have done away with these 
diodes?  Anyone have an H7140 they can easily crack open to compare?  
(It's actually relatively easy to get to, if you can get to the 
supply...)


Thanks as always,
Josh

Re: DEC H7140 (11/40) power supply revisions and general advice?

[Josh Dersch]

On 10/9/15 9:13 PM, Jay Jaeger wrote:

On 10/9/2015 10:42 PM, Josh Dersch wrote:

Capacitor C4 looks to be involved with the START-UP DRIVE signal
circuitry (which drives the relay) so the behavior I'm seeing makes
sense if C4 died and took a couple of things with it (or if something
else died and took C4 with it).

Here's where it gets kind of odd -- I spent some time testing diodes and
transistors in the related area near C4 and while doing so I noticed
that there are four diodes (D1-D4) listed on the schematic that are
missing from my board. "Missing" as in someone clipped them out at some
point -- there are just nubs of the leads left.  I'm not sure why this
would have been done, but there were a number of ECOs applied to this
board (a few wires and resistors added) and I don't want to assume that
if I just put four new diodes in that it won't cause other problems.
Anyone know if there were other revision levels of the bias/interface
board that would have done away with these diodes?  Anyone have an H7140
they can easily crack open to compare?  (It's actually relatively easy
to get to, if you can get to the supply...)

Thanks as always,
Josh


I have an HP drive (RK05 type packs) whose startup power supply had been
tampered with in very odd ways - missing parts, etc. (and maybe even
blown out circuit board traces - I forget - I haven't worked on that
drive in years).  I seem to recall that it looked like it had failed
catastrophically at some point.I ended up wiring in a 24V stand
alone supply temporarily as a startup supply and got the rest of the
supply going that way.  Maybe someone did something similar with your
supply, and then ran out of time / gave up.  Perhaps they clipped the
diodes out to test them.

I have an 11/40 and an 11/45, so I probably have an H7140 (but I don't
seem to have a spare anywhere, which surprises me a little, because I
got parts of another 11/40 at one point), but I recall that the things
are nightmare-ishly heavy to mount, and there is only one of me, so
unless the area in question is visible without taking the supply out of
the rack, I doubt that I can help very quickly.


Oh crap -- I just noticed that the subject line says 11/40; it's 
supposed to be *11/44*.  Fingers faster than brain (as is usually the case.)


As you may imagine, the 11/44 has a completely different supply than the 
11/40...


- Josh





JRJ

Re: DEC H7140 (11/40) power supply revisions and general advice?

[Jay Jaeger]

On 10/9/2015 10:42 PM, Josh Dersch wrote:
> 
> Capacitor C4 looks to be involved with the START-UP DRIVE signal
> circuitry (which drives the relay) so the behavior I'm seeing makes
> sense if C4 died and took a couple of things with it (or if something
> else died and took C4 with it).
> 
> Here's where it gets kind of odd -- I spent some time testing diodes and
> transistors in the related area near C4 and while doing so I noticed
> that there are four diodes (D1-D4) listed on the schematic that are
> missing from my board. "Missing" as in someone clipped them out at some
> point -- there are just nubs of the leads left.  I'm not sure why this
> would have been done, but there were a number of ECOs applied to this
> board (a few wires and resistors added) and I don't want to assume that
> if I just put four new diodes in that it won't cause other problems. 
> Anyone know if there were other revision levels of the bias/interface
> board that would have done away with these diodes?  Anyone have an H7140
> they can easily crack open to compare?  (It's actually relatively easy
> to get to, if you can get to the supply...)
> 
> Thanks as always,
> Josh
> 

I have an HP drive (RK05 type packs) whose startup power supply had been
tampered with in very odd ways - missing parts, etc. (and maybe even
blown out circuit board traces - I forget - I haven't worked on that
drive in years).  I seem to recall that it looked like it had failed
catastrophically at some point.I ended up wiring in a 24V stand
alone supply temporarily as a startup supply and got the rest of the
supply going that way.  Maybe someone did something similar with your
supply, and then ran out of time / gave up.  Perhaps they clipped the
diodes out to test them.

I have an 11/40 and an 11/45, so I probably have an H7140 (but I don't
seem to have a spare anywhere, which surprises me a little, because I
got parts of another 11/40 at one point), but I recall that the things
are nightmare-ishly heavy to mount, and there is only one of me, so
unless the area in question is visible without taking the supply out of
the rack, I doubt that I can help very quickly.

JRJ

Re: Q-bus I/O project

[Jay Jaeger]

On 10/9/2015 9:58 PM, John Wilson wrote:

> On Fri, Oct 09, 2015 at 09:48:18PM -0500, Jay Jaeger wrote:
>> Do U17,U15,U10,U6 perhaps have some solder bridges, or is that just some
>> flux hanging around?
> 
> It's flux, but thanks for the heads-up!  I went over everything with
> liquid-flux-soaked solder-wick and a stereo microscope ... there were a
> ton of solder bridges before.  Scrubbing the board in alcohol and then
> water gets 99% of the flux off, but turns the remainder white.  Now I've
> scraped most of it out with a razor blade.
> 
> Also, I think I have ninjas.  Cooking this board let out an unusually
> large cloud of vile rosin smoke, and until I aired the house out, there
> were weird thumps and bumps coming from every corner but there was
> nothing there when I turned to look.
> 

Maybe they were the "ghosts" from the latest episode of Dr. Who?  ;)

Either that, or the squirrels in the attic really don't like rosin
smoke.  ;;)

JRJ

DEC H7140 (11/40) power supply revisions and general advice?

[Josh Dersch]

Hey all --

Once again, I find myself in over my head debugging a power supply, this 
time an H7140 from a PDP-11/44.  Here's the skinny:


I examined the supply physically before experimenting and found a 
capacitor on the Bias/Interface board that was leaking, bursting and 
rather burned-out looking (not a great sign) -- this is capacitor C4 in 
the printsets on Bitsavers 
(http://bitsavers.informatik.uni-stuttgart.de/pdf/dec/pdp11/1144/MP00897_11X44sys_Dec79.pdf) 
Everything else looked OK physically; I replaced the obviously bad 
capacitor at C4.


When power is applied (plugged in, breaker switch flipped to "On") the 
relay does not click - based on my readings of the manuals this should 
happen after the bias voltages are up to spec.  I measure 308VDC on the 
lugs on the top of the memory board, so that's at least something 
working.  Getting to other points to test voltages is a bit more 
difficult, especially with those high voltages in the way, what a nice 
design :).


Switching the front panel switch to "Local" (or any other position) has 
no effect -- no fans, no LEDs, nothing.  I've double-checked all the 
wiring and everything looks OK.


Capacitor C4 looks to be involved with the START-UP DRIVE signal 
circuitry (which drives the relay) so the behavior I'm seeing makes 
sense if C4 died and took a couple of things with it (or if something 
else died and took C4 with it).


Here's where it gets kind of odd -- I spent some time testing diodes and 
transistors in the related area near C4 and while doing so I noticed 
that there are four diodes (D1-D4) listed on the schematic that are 
missing from my board. "Missing" as in someone clipped them out at some 
point -- there are just nubs of the leads left.  I'm not sure why this 
would have been done, but there were a number of ECOs applied to this 
board (a few wires and resistors added) and I don't want to assume that 
if I just put four new diodes in that it won't cause other problems.  
Anyone know if there were other revision levels of the bias/interface 
board that would have done away with these diodes?  Anyone have an H7140 
they can easily crack open to compare?  (It's actually relatively easy 
to get to, if you can get to the supply...)


Thanks as always,
Josh

VT52s, VT61s lots of DEC and DG keyboards- return trip through Maine, MA, NY, PA, OH, IN to IL

[Paul Anderson]

I'll be picking up a huge lot of DEC and some DG keyboards( no part numbers
yet) over the next few days. I know what some of the DEC gear is and the
condition of it, but not of the VTs. I would expect some power supply
problems, but have no idea of tube rot/burn or cosmetics, except that all
are complete.

I don't really want to have to ship any, but I have reached out to one list
member and will ship to him any possibly others. Boxing them, putting them
in a gaylord and putting them on a pallet is the best I can come up with.
This will be costly and labor intense, and if I have to ship, with one
exception, I would prefer 4 to 6 units at a time.

When I get home in a week or so I'll be putting out a list of unibus
options which include the backplane and boards- like DB11-A bus repeater,
DR11B, DH11s, a lot of com options, RH11, etc.

Any questions, please contact me off list.

Thanks, Paul

Re: Q-bus I/O project

[John Wilson]

On Fri, Oct 09, 2015 at 09:48:18PM -0500, Jay Jaeger wrote:
>Do U17,U15,U10,U6 perhaps have some solder bridges, or is that just some
>flux hanging around?

It's flux, but thanks for the heads-up!  I went over everything with
liquid-flux-soaked solder-wick and a stereo microscope ... there were a
ton of solder bridges before.  Scrubbing the board in alcohol and then
water gets 99% of the flux off, but turns the remainder white.  Now I've
scraped most of it out with a razor blade.

Also, I think I have ninjas.  Cooking this board let out an unusually
large cloud of vile rosin smoke, and until I aired the house out, there
were weird thumps and bumps coming from every corner but there was
nothing there when I turned to look.

John Wilson
D Bit

Re: Z system pics

[Christopher Satterfield]

Google Apps\Drive was having issues. Listed on their site as having had
issues earlier today. http://www.google.com/appsstatus#hl=en&v=status

Re: Q-bus I/O project

[Jay Jaeger]

Do U17,U15,U10,U6 perhaps have some solder bridges, or is that just some
flux hanging around?

JRJ

On 10/9/2015 8:38 PM, John Wilson wrote:
> This may never see the light of day (if the prototype turns out to be
> stillborn) but it's pretty and I can't resist posting a pic before I've
> powered it on and proven its uselessness:
> 
>   http://www.dbit.com/wilson/projects/qba.jpg
> 
> Officially it's for my morally repugnant attempts to earn a living (so it's
> supposed to be a Q-bus bridge that connects over Ethernet), but I wanted to
> still be able to do something fun in the very likely case that the Ethernet
> port doesn't work (no idea if my PCB layout is kosher for something as fast
> as the gigabit PHY's bus) or has uselessly high latency, so I added an SD
> card slot and made all the CPU-end terminators switchable, so it can act
> as just a plain peripheral (I'm mainly thinking disk controller -- I've
> already found a reason why the USB device port can't work), if its CPU's
> alive and can talk to the Q-bus.  We'll see.  Many many many chances for
> mistakes.  Five different power-supply voltages, for starters.
> 
> As always, I can't say enough good things about XMOS microcontrollers and
> OSHpark.com.
> 
> John Wilson
> D Bit
> 

Re: Q-bus I/O project

[Jay Jaeger]

Quite a piece of work.  I hope you can continue to plug away at it.

I get that bit about mistakes.  Even my simple PIC-based Documation card
reader interface board had a mistake (fortunately, one I could easily
fix without having to create a new board).  Fortunately, my Mark-8
boards ended up mistake free, but only because of hours and hours and
hours of cross-checking against the layouts in the Radio Electronics
sponsored flyer, the schematics and against know issues.  But those were
nothing like this thing's complexity.

JRJ

On 10/9/2015 8:38 PM, John Wilson wrote:
> This may never see the light of day (if the prototype turns out to be
> stillborn) but it's pretty and I can't resist posting a pic before I've
> powered it on and proven its uselessness:
> 
>   http://www.dbit.com/wilson/projects/qba.jpg
> 
> Officially it's for my morally repugnant attempts to earn a living (so it's
> supposed to be a Q-bus bridge that connects over Ethernet), but I wanted to
> still be able to do something fun in the very likely case that the Ethernet
> port doesn't work (no idea if my PCB layout is kosher for something as fast
> as the gigabit PHY's bus) or has uselessly high latency, so I added an SD
> card slot and made all the CPU-end terminators switchable, so it can act
> as just a plain peripheral (I'm mainly thinking disk controller -- I've
> already found a reason why the USB device port can't work), if its CPU's
> alive and can talk to the Q-bus.  We'll see.  Many many many chances for
> mistakes.  Five different power-supply voltages, for starters.
> 
> As always, I can't say enough good things about XMOS microcontrollers and
> OSHpark.com.
> 
> John Wilson
> D Bit
> 

Q-bus I/O project

[John Wilson]

This may never see the light of day (if the prototype turns out to be
stillborn) but it's pretty and I can't resist posting a pic before I've
powered it on and proven its uselessness:

http://www.dbit.com/wilson/projects/qba.jpg

Officially it's for my morally repugnant attempts to earn a living (so it's
supposed to be a Q-bus bridge that connects over Ethernet), but I wanted to
still be able to do something fun in the very likely case that the Ethernet
port doesn't work (no idea if my PCB layout is kosher for something as fast
as the gigabit PHY's bus) or has uselessly high latency, so I added an SD
card slot and made all the CPU-end terminators switchable, so it can act
as just a plain peripheral (I'm mainly thinking disk controller -- I've
already found a reason why the USB device port can't work), if its CPU's
alive and can talk to the Q-bus.  We'll see.  Many many many chances for
mistakes.  Five different power-supply voltages, for starters.

As always, I can't say enough good things about XMOS microcontrollers and
OSHpark.com.

John Wilson
D Bit

Re: FS: Cray J932SE system

[Chris Elmquist]

On Friday (10/09/2015 at 07:36PM -0400), et...@757.org wrote:
> 
> Here is some stuff from last time I played with it:
> https://users.757.org/~ethan/pics/geek/cray/

SYS_CRAYHOST="wopr"

:-)

-- 
Chris Elmquist

Re: WTT: My Amiga Mouse for your Atari ST Mouse!

[Zane Healy]

FYI, you used to be able to get a mouse that would work on either Atari or 
Amiga.  I don't know if you still can.  There are people that specialize in 
selling Atari gear.

Zane



On Oct 9, 2015, at 4:30 PM, et...@757.org wrote:

> Looking for an Atari ST mouse, have an extra Amiga mouse to trade?
> 
> Also looking to buy a 520ST power supply to complete a system if anyone knows 
> of extras.
> 
> 
> 
> --
> Ethan O'Toole
> 

FS: Cray J932SE system

[ethan]

If anyone knows anyone looking for a Cray,

Cray J932SE system. 32 proc, 2 megawords of RAM as I recall.

Has VME IO subsystem, HIPPI channels on a lot of the CPU boards 
(originally was 4 x J932SE in a hypercube via hippi IIRC.) Has 4 SCSI 
disks (9GB) although has room for lots more (system checks disk firmware 
vendor.)


I like it but no place to keep it and I don't want to keep moving it 
between rental house garages. It's currently in Norfolk Virginia, I'm in 
Northern Virginia. I have pics of it.


I'm not sure the Unicos build I have is compatible with it, it kernel 
panics on startup. I have some software, the SWS Sparcstation 5. Uses 3 x 
220v outlets @ 30 amps each.


Here is some stuff from last time I played with it:
https://users.757.org/~ethan/pics/geek/cray/

These are RARE. I think I know of two or three J932SE systems in the wild, 
one in Germany one in another foreign country.


Was looking for $8500 or so. Pound for pound such a better deal than an 
Altair.




--
Ethan O'Toole

WTT: My Amiga Mouse for your Atari ST Mouse!

[ethan]

Looking for an Atari ST mouse, have an extra Amiga mouse to trade?

Also looking to buy a 520ST power supply to complete a system if anyone 
knows of extras.




--
Ethan O'Toole

Smalltalk-78 resurrected in a web-browser

[Nigel Williams]

A mix of Smalltalk luminaries have resurrected Smalltalk-78 (a port of
Smalltalk-76 to an early 8086 prototype luggable called NoteTaker
http://bitsavers.trailing-edge.com/pdf/xerox/notetaker/) and it runs
in a modern web-browser using Javascript (even runs on an iPad but
will need changes to support touch).

http://lively-web.org/users/bert/Smalltalk-78.html

PDF describing what they did here:

http://www.freudenbergs.de/bert/publications/Ingalls-2014-Smalltalk78.pdf

According to this document there is yet to be published Java implementation too.

A 35-minute video presentation:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pTh65b8qSY8
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R3t13RHO3X8


Smalltalk-78 compliments the Smalltalk-72 Alto emulator from Dan
Ingalls released in 2013, although the link I found doesn't seem to
work anymore:

http://lively-web.org/users/Dan/ALTO-Smalltalk-72.html.

It almost works, but the display is messed up on Safari/Chrome.

Re: MFM Emulator

[fritz_chwo...@web.de]

Am 08.10.2015 um 07:12 schrieb Mike Ross:

If this thing is ready for prime time and going to get more widespread
use it would be an excellent idea to start developing a library of
ready-to-run disk images for various machines... perhaps a task best
collated by Bitsavers in their copious free time...?

I've just written to David to order a couple :)

Mike




Thats a good idea.

My hardware has a homemade  adaption of mfm-harddisk with 
omti-controller to a genie 3s cp/m system made  here in germany.
As the image will be useful mostly for myself (I don't know who has made 
an identically build)  I'll make an image and save it on a webserver

for archiving.

My ordered mfm-emulators are on the way and I'm very excited about them.

Greetings

fritz

UNIBUS RAM with Parity vs. None

[william degnan]

(cross posted to MARCH list)

Question about UNIBUS RAM with Parity vs. None

I assembled a pdp 11/05 in a BK11-K box with a sticky 5 light -  I can load
an address, but the 5 light will erroneously (often but not always) light
when I examine.  Once 5 is turned on it stays on, even if the toggle switch
is down.  Once this occurs I cannot deposit nor can I  examine contents of
RAM.  I intend to test the front panel to verify that toggle 5 is ok
electrically, this is a to-do.

The power checks out including DC LO AC LO.  I transplanted the CPU cards
into another system to test and they work also.  Aside from the console
itself, it must be a RAM problem.

The system has 8K Core
G235 (xy drive module)
H217D (memory stack)
G114 (sense / inhibit)
M8293 (memory control module)

My question - I have read, and to the best of my understanding believe I
can swap an H217D with an H217C in this box.

Anyone disagree, and if so why did DEC want their 11/05 S to use "D" model
core (D=parity) and not C (C=no parity)?  The PDP 11/40 I have uses C.

-- 
Bill

Re: Computers in Election Vigils - take two

[Jecel Assumpcao Jr.]

John Robertson asked:
> >After the fiasco about the Deibold machines changing votes during the 
> >Bush election of 2000, Brazil opted for them?

To which Alexandre Souza replied:
> Yep. Welcome to the land of the stupid.

Ok, I think we need some facts, here. Note that from the very first time
I used one of these machines to vote and noted that they typed in my
voter ID number using a little keyboard which had a cable going into the
voting "cabin" to prep the machine for my vote, my opinion of the whole
thing has be very negative. After all, I had only their word that they
were not saving my ID along with my vote - there was no hardware
limitation against it doing this. And I was not impressed to see a whole
PC used where a simple Z80 could have done the job my better. That said,
not everything is as bad as the above comments imply.

Brazil's government is divided into three parts: executive, legislative
and judicial. The first two use public elections to fill their ranks
while the third uses appointments. There is a special section within the
judicial branch which runs elections for the other two branches. This is
a full time section that does nothing but elections, with a federal
judge running the national TSE (superior electoral tribunal) which
controls the state based TREs (regional electoral tribunals).

When TSE decided to switch from paper ballots to voting machines in the
mid 1990s, they created a detailed specification and allowed interested
manufacturers to bid for the contract. Unisys was the winner for the
pilot stage, and several places tried the machines in the next election.
It was considered a success and a contract for enough machines for the
whole country was awarded to Procomp, the winner of this second round.

In the 2000 election for US president, the big deal was the messy
recounts of votes in some Florida districts that used very old voting
machines with punched cards. These machines had been used for decades
with no problems, but the close results of that particular race brought
the "hanging chads" to everyone's attention.

Over the next few US elections, Diebold machines started to be used and
caused a series of problems. Shortly after this, Dielbold bought the
brazillian company Procomp and so  inherited the contract for
maintenance and new machines for TSE. The designs of the voting machines
used in the USA and Brazil are unrelated and that the same company is
now involved in both is an accident of changing corporate structures.

One problem with the TSE/TRE scheme is that any lawsuits involving
elections are judged by the very people running them. As you might
imagine, they very rarely (if ever) find themselves to be wrong. On the
other hand, it is supposed to make it harder for frauds from candidates
participating in the elections.

Just so this is not completely off topic, I should mention that the
second generation of voting machines were based on the Cyrix MediaGX
processors, before they were bought by AMD and used in the One Laptop
Per Child. So though this was the late 1990s, we are talking about the
386/486 level machine - classic!

-- Jecel

Re: Z system pics

[Jim Carpenter]

On Fri, Oct 9, 2015 at 5:29 PM, Lyle Bickley  wrote:
> On Fri, 9 Oct 2015 14:34:50 -0500
> "Cindy Croxton"  wrote:
>
>> More pictures have been uploaded.
>>
>>
>>
>> https://drive.google.com/open?id=0BxqLDyoLYuCKZmNsZlo1U0JyVkE
>
> pictures work for me...

Working here now too. Seems Google Drive was having problems.

Jim

Re: Z system pics

[Lyle Bickley]

On Fri, 9 Oct 2015 14:34:50 -0500
"Cindy Croxton"  wrote:

> More pictures have been uploaded.
> 
>  
> 
> https://drive.google.com/open?id=0BxqLDyoLYuCKZmNsZlo1U0JyVkE

pictures work for me...

Lyle

-- 
Lyle Bickley
Bickley Consulting West Inc.
http://bickleywest.com
"Black holes are where God is dividing by zero"

Re: Z system pics

[Ryan K. Brooks]

Google drive has been down today.. across the States anyway.

On 10/9/15 3:51 PM, Jay Jaeger wrote:

I was able to see the photos just fine - but I also use Google Drive.

But if it was created as a share (read only) by URL, it ought to work
for everyone.

JRJ

On 10/9/2015 2:51 PM, Jim Carpenter wrote:

On Fri, Oct 9, 2015 at 3:34 PM, Cindy Croxton  wrote:

More pictures have been uploaded.



https://drive.google.com/open?id=0BxqLDyoLYuCKZmNsZlo1U0JyVkE



You sure about that URL? I get:

Google

500. That’s an error.

There was an error. Please try again later. That’s all we know.

Jim

Re: Z system pics

[Jay Jaeger]

I was able to see the photos just fine - but I also use Google Drive.

But if it was created as a share (read only) by URL, it ought to work
for everyone.

JRJ

On 10/9/2015 2:51 PM, Jim Carpenter wrote:
> On Fri, Oct 9, 2015 at 3:34 PM, Cindy Croxton  wrote:
>>
>> More pictures have been uploaded.
>>
>>
>>
>> https://drive.google.com/open?id=0BxqLDyoLYuCKZmNsZlo1U0JyVkE
>>
>>
> 
> You sure about that URL? I get:
> 
>Google
> 
>500. That’s an error.
> 
>There was an error. Please try again later. That’s all we know.
> 
> Jim
> 

Z system link correction

[Cindy Croxton]

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0BxqLDyoLYuCKVWNYVEk1cjJwLWM/view?usp=sharin
g

 

Try this link; it should work.

 

Cindy



---
This email has been checked for viruses by Avast antivirus software.
https://www.avast.com/antivirus

Re: Z system pics

[Jim Carpenter]

On Fri, Oct 9, 2015 at 3:34 PM, Cindy Croxton  wrote:
>
> More pictures have been uploaded.
>
>
>
> https://drive.google.com/open?id=0BxqLDyoLYuCKZmNsZlo1U0JyVkE
>
>

You sure about that URL? I get:

   Google

   500. That’s an error.

   There was an error. Please try again later. That’s all we know.

Jim

Re: HP & 800BPI / was Re: Tape cleaner on eBay

[Brent Hilpert]

On 2015-Oct-09, at 10:28 AM, Marc Verdiell wrote:
> Glen,
> I'm right in the middle of resuscitating an HP7970E (1600 bpi with the HP-IB
> interface). The main problem I had so far was the rubber in the reel hubs
> had completely fused to the tape reels that were left on the hubs. I had to
> disassemble the hub locking mechanism and use lots of careful X-Acto knife
> work to separate the two. A few tape rollers were rough or stuck - just
> oiled them for now. Then it started to work, I am very surprised. There are
> three red switches on the motor control board inside to make the tape go
> forward, reverse and fast rewind. So it's pretty easy to test if the
> transport works and the motor servos and tension arms move how they are
> supposed to.

I had that problem with the stuck reel hubs. Failed to take my own 
advice-to-self to leave the reels unmounted and they stuck again, although 
easier to get off this time as it hadn't been many years under pressure.


> Brent, 
> Wow, looked at your site, and you actually wrote a HP 2100 cross-assembler?
> Nice. Would it work for the HP21MX too? Did you compile it using the command
> line tools in XCode?

I had originally written it in a re-targetable cross-assembler in a 
now-outdated development environment under MacOS9. Last year rewrote someone 
else's assembler (C source) - it should work in any standard C environment. Was 
using it to re-assemble HPBASIC.

I'm not familiar enough with the 21MX machines to say what may have been 
added/changed from the early 2100's in assembly terms, but it shouldn't be 
difficult to add to the assembler. Can send you the source if you wish.

I had a simulator written in the old OS9 environment too, but haven't brought 
that into a current state.



> Marc
> 
> ==
> Date: Wed, 7 Oct 2015 13:29:37 -0700
> From: Brent Hilpert 
> To: "General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts"
>   
> Subject: HP & 800BPI / was Re: Tape cleaner on eBay
> Message-ID: <858603d2-2d79-45d6-993c-a8939d996...@cs.ubc.ca>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
> 
> On 2015-Oct-07, at 12:56 PM, Glen Slick wrote:
>> I have an 800BPI 7970B in a 2113B rack system. I've never gotten 
>> around to trying to get it up and running. Are they fairly reliable 
>> drives to get going again? I don't have any other 800BPI drives to 
>> write any tapes to read with it.
> 
>> On Wed, Oct 7, 2015 at 12:46 PM, Brent Hilpert  wrote:
> Well, the unit here was in pretty good physical condition as received.
> It had a cascading failure in the capstan driver but it was a fairly
> straightforward fix.
> I think there was one sluggish/partially-seized pulley bearing (freed up
> with some oil).
> Pretty rugged drives as you know. I wonder about the capstan rubber in the
> long term but I think that's about the only thing to worry about on age
> alone.
> I think bitsavers nowadays has manuals and schematics for the B version as
> you have, years ago I had to do some reverse-engineering for the capstan
> repair.
> This page is over ten years old and needs some updating, but FWIW:
>   http://www.cs.ubc.ca/~hilpert/e/HP21xx/HP2116CSys/index.html
> Note the tape drive repair log page linked there.

Z system pics

[Cindy Croxton]

More pictures have been uploaded.

 

https://drive.google.com/open?id=0BxqLDyoLYuCKZmNsZlo1U0JyVkE

 

Cindy



---
This email has been checked for viruses by Avast antivirus software.
https://www.avast.com/antivirus

Re: Computers in Election Vigils - take two

[Toby Thain]

On 2015-10-09 2:06 PM, Eric Christopherson wrote:

Forgive the question, but what is an "election vigil"? Just people
paying attention to the tallying at night after voting has closed?



Usually all day. It's a big deal for TV.

--Toby

Re: Computers in Election Vigils - take two

[Eric Christopherson]

Forgive the question, but what is an "election vigil"? Just people
paying attention to the tallying at night after voting has closed?

RE: HP & 800BPI / was Re: Tape cleaner on eBay

[Marc Verdiell]

Glen,
I'm right in the middle of resuscitating an HP7970E (1600 bpi with the HP-IB
interface). The main problem I had so far was the rubber in the reel hubs
had completely fused to the tape reels that were left on the hubs. I had to
disassemble the hub locking mechanism and use lots of careful X-Acto knife
work to separate the two. A few tape rollers were rough or stuck - just
oiled them for now. Then it started to work, I am very surprised. There are
three red switches on the motor control board inside to make the tape go
forward, reverse and fast rewind. So it's pretty easy to test if the
transport works and the motor servos and tension arms move how they are
supposed to.

Brent, 
Wow, looked at your site, and you actually wrote a HP 2100 cross-assembler?
Nice. Would it work for the HP21MX too? Did you compile it using the command
line tools in XCode?

Marc

==
Date: Wed, 7 Oct 2015 13:29:37 -0700
From: Brent Hilpert 
To: "General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts"

Subject: HP & 800BPI / was Re: Tape cleaner on eBay
Message-ID: <858603d2-2d79-45d6-993c-a8939d996...@cs.ubc.ca>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii

On 2015-Oct-07, at 12:56 PM, Glen Slick wrote:
> I have an 800BPI 7970B in a 2113B rack system. I've never gotten 
> around to trying to get it up and running. Are they fairly reliable 
> drives to get going again? I don't have any other 800BPI drives to 
> write any tapes to read with it.

>On Wed, Oct 7, 2015 at 12:46 PM, Brent Hilpert  wrote:
Well, the unit here was in pretty good physical condition as received.
It had a cascading failure in the capstan driver but it was a fairly
straightforward fix.
I think there was one sluggish/partially-seized pulley bearing (freed up
with some oil).
Pretty rugged drives as you know. I wonder about the capstan rubber in the
long term but I think that's about the only thing to worry about on age
alone.
I think bitsavers nowadays has manuals and schematics for the B version as
you have, years ago I had to do some reverse-engineering for the capstan
repair.
This page is over ten years old and needs some updating, but FWIW:
http://www.cs.ubc.ca/~hilpert/e/HP21xx/HP2116CSys/index.html
Note the tape drive repair log page linked there.

Re: Computers in Election Vigils - take two

[Warner Losh]

On Fri, Oct 9, 2015 at 10:55 AM, Alexandre Souza <
alexandre.tabaj...@gmail.com> wrote:

> After the fiasco about the Deibold machines changing votes during the Bush
>> election of 2000, Brazil opted for them?
>>
>
>Yep. Welcome to the land of the stupid.
>

The county I live in has paper ballots. You go, you color in the circles,
you have it sucked up into a machine that tallies it and places it in a
nice, neat stack locked in the machine. Electronic re-counts involve taking
the ballots out of the machine, putting them on top and then hitting a
button. 120 per second can be rescanned, so in a few minutes, the whole
recount is done. And, if there's ever a need, it can be done by hand...
Best of both worlds.

Warner

Re: Computers in Election Vigils - take two

[Alexandre Souza]

After the fiasco about the Deibold machines changing votes during the 
Bush election of 2000, Brazil opted for them?


   Yep. Welcome to the land of the stupid. 

Re: Computers in Election Vigils - take two

[John Robertson]

On 10/09/2015 4:50 AM, Alexandre Souza wrote:

lucky you. In Brazil we use vote machines made by diebold, which are as
weak in security as a carton box. And no independent entity can ressearch
its failures.


After the fiasco about the Deibold machines changing votes during the 
Bush election of 2000, Brazil opted for them?


That says a lot about your government I'm afraid. Not unlike US states 
that use Deibold equipment where there is no paper ballot to confirm the 
results after the voting is closed.


That is not democratic at all!

Canada still uses paper ballots for our federal elections. Our election 
voting stations have scrutineers who are volunteers from the various 
political parties running who watch over the proceedings and can call 
for assistance if something unusual happens.


Our local city election (Vancouver) uses a paper ballot that is read 
electronically, but the ballots exist in paper and can be counted by the 
various party scrutineers if they wish (and it happens in closely fought 
ridings).


Canada has had trouble with fake phone calls directing voters to 
non-existent polling stations in an effort to change the outcome where 
ridings are close (the candidates have almost equal chance of winning). 
This was traced to our current government's political party - and the 
governments' response was to change the way Elections Canada can report 
problems and help people to get out and vote - they made it harder 
sigh.


We shall see what happens on Oct 19 when our federal election happens.

John :-#(#



2015-10-09 8:24 GMT-03:00 Stefan Skoglund (lokal användare) <
a13st...@student.his.se>:


tor 2015-10-08 klockan 16:48 -0700 skrev Chuck Guzis:

On 10/08/2015 01:44 PM, Mattis Lind wrote:

Unfortunately SVT Öppet Arkiv is not available to anyone outside
Sweden, which is a pity. A great source.


If the original poster can provide the link(s) folks may want to use 
other methods to watch streaming video...



This interest for computers and election vigils come from the fact
that I had a email conversation with a person that was involved
when
DEC won the contract to for the election in 1976 in Sweden for SVT.
He was involved in adapting the VT30 system for TV use. Genlock and
stuff.

I found three clips in Öppet Arkiv which I trimmed down heavily.
These shows tend to be quite long anyhow. I hope SVT is not getting
mad now.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qDoFM3hfbic

Interesting.  Anent that, here's a nice article about the use of
computers in a US Presidential election in 1952:

http://www.npr.org/sections/alltechconsidered/2012/10/31/163951263/th
e-night-a-computer-predicted-the-next-president

I wonder if there aren't still some congressional districts where
votes
are counted by hand in the US.

--Chuck


All the votes is still counted by hand.
Both att election evening (by election workers) and afterwards
(multiple times) in the months after election.

The "Valvaka" is the election day TV-program, the computers is included
because people wants an early impression of who will be statsminister
in one week, it's an statistical exercise.

AT election day we have 3 different elections:
local municipality (really its "house" which then elects the cabinett
including "city major")
the same for "län" (country council)
and state (election elects the country's riksdag - "house")

Riksdagen elects statsminister (normally, the situation now is a bit
peculiar.)

The state administration thru its "länsstyrelser" (who is geographical
areas corresponding to "län/region" (country council) it responsible
for counting and tabulating votes (country council election and
riksdagen.)

Re: Computers in Election Vigils - take two

[Chuck Guzis]

On 10/09/2015 07:38 AM, Paul Koning wrote:


Very convenient for those who run the government that runs the
election process.

In the state where I live the setup (by law, as I recall) is a nice
hybrid.  Paper (mark sense) ballots, scanned by machine.  But anyone
can look at a ballot and see what it says, and you can recount them
by hand if necessary.  So the security of the counting machines is
not actually critical because they aren't the final authority.


We're mark-sense too, but with a key difference.  We have what amounts 
to a two-week voting period, with returned ballots sent by mail or 
deposited in special drop-boxes (which, when not used for voting, are 
used to collect tax payments).  No election-day scramble, no trying to 
find a polling place.


I miss the old system of voting in person, but the current one is much 
more difficult to manipulate and saves money at the same time.


--Chuck

Re: Computers in Election Vigils - take two

[Jon Elson]

On 10/09/2015 09:38 AM, Paul Koning wrote:


Very convenient for those who run the government that runs the election process.

In the state where I live the setup (by law, as I recall) is a nice hybrid.  
Paper (mark sense) ballots, scanned by machine.  But anyone can look at a 
ballot and see what it says, and you can recount them by hand if necessary.  So 
the security of the counting machines is not actually critical because they 
aren't the final authority.


Here in Missouri, we have touch screen machines that print a 
paper roll with human-readable vote info PLUS 2D bar codes 
for fast scanning, and the voter can watch the paper scroll 
by to verify the human-readable data agrees with their 
votes.  I think it puts time and date on the paper as well, 
so somebody can't run off a bunch of phony votes before or 
after the election hours.  The paper is like cash register 
tapes.  the first vote info is all electronic, but if there 
is a recount, the paper tapes can be examined.


Any voter can also opt for mark sense ballots.

Jon

Re: Computers in Election Vigils - take two

[Paul Koning]

> On Oct 9, 2015, at 7:50 AM, Alexandre Souza  
> wrote:
> 
> lucky you. In Brazil we use vote machines made by diebold, which are as
> weak in security as a carton box. And no independent entity can ressearch
> its failures.

Very convenient for those who run the government that runs the election process.

In the state where I live the setup (by law, as I recall) is a nice hybrid.  
Paper (mark sense) ballots, scanned by machine.  But anyone can look at a 
ballot and see what it says, and you can recount them by hand if necessary.  So 
the security of the counting machines is not actually critical because they 
aren't the final authority.

paul

Re: MFM Emulator

[Steven Hirsch]

On Thu, 8 Oct 2015, Ian Finder wrote:


I was one of the people who built the early rev boards David had.


Ditto


Excellent project, he is the man...


And then some!

Here are a few images for your crazy kids to get started with. I'll be 
adding more as they come in: http://x.quaalud.es/images/


Have you been able to turn that Horizon capture around and utilize it in 
emulation?  One of the last remaining nits we're fighting with is that N* 
Advantage captures do not read correctly when turned around in emulation.


Such a capture can be reformatted using the system utilities and will then 
work fine.


David is currently busy getting the latest run out the door so hopefully 
this will get debugged in the near future.




--

Re: Computers in Election Vigils - take two

[Alexandre Souza]

lucky you. In Brazil we use vote machines made by diebold, which are as
weak in security as a carton box. And no independent entity can ressearch
its failures.

2015-10-09 8:24 GMT-03:00 Stefan Skoglund (lokal användare) <
a13st...@student.his.se>:

> tor 2015-10-08 klockan 16:48 -0700 skrev Chuck Guzis:
> > On 10/08/2015 01:44 PM, Mattis Lind wrote:
> > > Unfortunately SVT Öppet Arkiv is not available to anyone outside
> > > Sweden, which is a pity. A great source.
> > >
> > > This interest for computers and election vigils come from the fact
> > > that I had a email conversation with a person that was involved
> > > when
> > > DEC won the contract to for the election in 1976 in Sweden for SVT.
> > > He was involved in adapting the VT30 system for TV use. Genlock and
> > > stuff.
> > >
> > > I found three clips in Öppet Arkiv which I trimmed down heavily.
> > > These shows tend to be quite long anyhow. I hope SVT is not getting
> > > mad now.
> > >
> > > https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qDoFM3hfbic
> >
> > Interesting.  Anent that, here's a nice article about the use of
> > computers in a US Presidential election in 1952:
> >
> > http://www.npr.org/sections/alltechconsidered/2012/10/31/163951263/th
> > e-night-a-computer-predicted-the-next-president
> >
> > I wonder if there aren't still some congressional districts where
> > votes
> > are counted by hand in the US.
> >
> > --Chuck
> >
>
> All the votes is still counted by hand.
> Both att election evening (by election workers) and afterwards
> (multiple times) in the months after election.
>
> The "Valvaka" is the election day TV-program, the computers is included
> because people wants an early impression of who will be statsminister
> in one week, it's an statistical exercise.
>
> AT election day we have 3 different elections:
> local municipality (really its "house" which then elects the cabinett
> including "city major")
> the same for "län" (country council)
> and state (election elects the country's riksdag - "house")
>
> Riksdagen elects statsminister (normally, the situation now is a bit
> peculiar.)
>
> The state administration thru its "länsstyrelser" (who is geographical
> areas corresponding to "län/region" (country council) it responsible
> for counting and tabulating votes (country council election and
> riksdagen.)
>

Re: Computers in Election Vigils - take two

[Stefan Skoglund (lokal användare)]

tor 2015-10-08 klockan 16:48 -0700 skrev Chuck Guzis:
> On 10/08/2015 01:44 PM, Mattis Lind wrote:
> > Unfortunately SVT Öppet Arkiv is not available to anyone outside
> > Sweden, which is a pity. A great source.
> > 
> > This interest for computers and election vigils come from the fact
> > that I had a email conversation with a person that was involved
> > when
> > DEC won the contract to for the election in 1976 in Sweden for SVT.
> > He was involved in adapting the VT30 system for TV use. Genlock and
> > stuff.
> > 
> > I found three clips in Öppet Arkiv which I trimmed down heavily.
> > These shows tend to be quite long anyhow. I hope SVT is not getting
> > mad now.
> > 
> > https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qDoFM3hfbic
> 
> Interesting.  Anent that, here's a nice article about the use of 
> computers in a US Presidential election in 1952:
> 
> http://www.npr.org/sections/alltechconsidered/2012/10/31/163951263/th
> e-night-a-computer-predicted-the-next-president
> 
> I wonder if there aren't still some congressional districts where
> votes 
> are counted by hand in the US.
> 
> --Chuck
> 

All the votes is still counted by hand.
Both att election evening (by election workers) and afterwards
(multiple times) in the months after election.

The "Valvaka" is the election day TV-program, the computers is included
because people wants an early impression of who will be statsminister
in one week, it's an statistical exercise.

AT election day we have 3 different elections:
local municipality (really its "house" which then elects the cabinett
including "city major")
the same for "län" (country council)
and state (election elects the country's riksdag - "house")

Riksdagen elects statsminister (normally, the situation now is a bit
peculiar.)

The state administration thru its "länsstyrelser" (who is geographical
areas corresponding to "län/region" (country council) it responsible
for counting and tabulating votes (country council election and
riksdagen.)