RE: Cleaning RK05 packs (Was: LGP-30 Memory Drum Update)
Here is the exact reference for the clean room wipes: Berkshire DURX 670 Item #: DR670.0404.10 4"x4" (10cm x10 cm) Non-woven Polyester/Cellulose And isopropyl alcohol we use is 99.9%, not just 99 as I said. Marc -Original Message- We use 6"x6" clean room rated wipes (I think they were either Berkshires or Kimwipes) from Grainger and 99% isopropyl alcohol from Fry's. Won't scratch, free of microscopic dust and lint, and 99% alcohol will leave no drying marks (it's typically the last rinse in IC manufacturing). May cost you a bit. Wipe your work area before and use clean room gloves. Marc > On Jan 5, 2017, at 6:40 AM, Al Kossow wrote: > > isopropyl alcohol works. TFE is better, if you have some stashed. > > If you can find them anywhere, Texwipe made a plastic wand that looks > like a tongue depressor with a slit down the middle and a lint free > sleeve called the Texsleeve (tx300 sleeve, tx800 wand) that you would > use to clean heads > > Minor head crashes leave a tar-like residue that you need to remove. A > pack inspector is a handy thing to have (spinle with microscope and > illuminator on the rack and pinion) to look for surface damage.
RE: Spinning up RL02 w/o head load ? (was Cleaning RK05 packs)
>Paul Koning wrote: >one would think unplugging the power to the head actuator coils ... One might think that, and that plan works for an RK05, but an RL02 is smarter. Unless the heads go on cylinder within a few seconds of the head load signal, the drive logic just faults and spins down again. Not very useful... What's needed is a way to stall or fake out the drive startup state machine logic. Bob
RE: Drum Computers (Was Cleaning things (was Cleaning RK05 packs (Was: LGP-30 Memory Drum Update)))
Allison wrote; >I envy the chance to restore a LGP-30 or for that fact play with one. >Many of the things I remember >mid sixties on are now gone or were rare then. Like small desk sized drum >computers using transistors or first generation IC (RTL and RDTL). I so regret not having rescued an old computer that I played with through all four years of high school. The machine was made by Minnesota Mining and Manufacturing (aka 3M Corporation). Today, there seems to be no record that 3M ever was in the computer business. But...it was. The system was designed expressly for process control. Kind of makes sense for 3M to develop a system like this, since most of the manufacturing they did needed process controls, and at the time, computers were getting to into that role in place of electromechanical systems. The system was given to our high school by the local Natural Gas public utility that used the system from the mid-1960's through the early-1970's for monitoring and controlling gas flow in pipelines. It was replaced by more modern computer, a PDP-11 of some variety, IIRC. This 3M machine was a dual processor system, with two identical CPUs that could communicate to each other through a common register located in an I/O rack. The original process control software was designed so that both CPUs would operate in tandem, each doing a different part of the job. One CPU mainly did all of the I/O interfacing and data normalization, and the other CPU did the number crunching and processing for the process control, feeding results back to the I/O CPU to control the physical stuff, and generating reports on an IBM typebar-type output typewriter. Operator interaction with the process control system was through a Teletype 33-ASR terminal. The CPUs were transistorized. I recall that the cards were arranged in a U fashion looking at the CPU chassis from the top, some power supply circuitry and relays at the top of the U, the circuit cards making up the sides and bottom of the U, and the drum memory module in the middle.. Each CPU was something like 12RU height, and were in a small desk-high standard 19" equipment rack, with the CPUs stacked one above the other. The CPUs were 24-bit word machines, with an 8K-word magnetic drum as main memory.Instructions had five bits for the opcode, and two address fields, one for operand location (drum address in block/track/sector format) or in the case of some instructions a short constant number), and also a next instruction address (again in block/track/sector format). The I/O rack had the interprocessor communication register, along with registers for reading the time from a transistorized Parabam real-time clock (HH:MM:SS) in 24-hour time (The clock had those wonderful projection-type incandescent displays to show the current time), a Teletype current-loop interface at 110 baud, an interface for communication the IBM wide-carriage output typewriter (which we never we able to get working), and a whole slew of relay outputs, contact closure inputs, digital to analog converters with line drivers, and comparators with counters connected that could act as software-driven analog to digital converters, event counters, etc. One last output interface was a register that was write-only that could enable or disable an old Mallory Sonalert that would generate an ear-splitting shriek when turned on. There were also two banks of decimal thumbwheel switches, one with three digits, and another with 8 digits, that could be read from the CPU 4-bits at a time through an I/O register. When I got to high school in 1974, the drum in one of the CPUs had suffered a bearing failure and crashed hard. The instructor of the computing curriculum looked into seeing if the drum could be repaired, but it would have been prohibitively expensive, so the drum was removed from this CPU and used as a prop for illustrating different types of memory technology to his students. The other CPU ran fine through my years of high school, and I learned a great deal about programming at the machine level from the old 3M (I for the life of me can't remember the model number of the machine). I fondly remember writing an "alarm clock" program where a time in HHMMSS form could be wheeled into the low six digits of the eight-digit thumbwheel register, and when the time there matched the time on the Parabam clock, it'd fire off the Sonalert, and print an arbitrary message on the teletype repeatedly until the program was halted by dialing a stop code read from the three digit thumbwheel switch bank when the program was started. Once the program was started, I'd scramble the three digit thumbwheels, so no one but me would know the code to stop the program. You might think that you could just press the "STOP" button on the console...but there was a Plexiglas cover with a small padlock lock on it that covered the console controls...and I h
Boot Loader for 3P+S on IMSAI
I have an IMSAI that I am restoring. The basics appear to be working (front panel, CPU and RAM cards). I have a Processor Tech, 3P+S card that is next on the list for testing. I have the manual, but the card was not configured for RS-232...not sure what it was configured for but it doesn't match anything in the manual. I plan to reconfigure it for RS-232. I'm trying to locate boot loader code for that board to allow serial uploading of files from a PC to the IMSAI? I have boot loader code for a 2SIO board on an Altair that I restored awhile back, and would like to find something similar for the 3P+S. I want to be able to toggle in a boot loader routine and then initiate an upload from the PC to IMSAI -- something similar to this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YwC1T9oLK1U&t=212s (at 1:10s in) but with a 3P+S board on an IMSAI. Also, a picture of your RS-232 configured card and wiring of the edge connectors would be helpful to make sure I get things right. Any help is appreciated. Thanks, Win whe...@gmail.com
Re: Boot Loader for 3P+S on IMSAI
The manual pretty much has the exact config for that port 20 is all you have to remember Bill Degnan twitter: billdeg vintagecomputer.net On Jan 6, 2017 7:41 PM, "Win Heagy" wrote: > I have an IMSAI that I am restoring. The basics appear to be working > (front panel, CPU and RAM cards). I have a Processor Tech, 3P+S card > that is next on the list for testing. I have the manual, but the card > was not configured for RS-232...not sure what it was configured for > but it doesn't match anything in the manual. I plan to reconfigure it > for RS-232. I'm trying to locate boot loader code for that board to > allow serial uploading of files from a PC to the IMSAI? I have boot > loader code for a 2SIO board on an Altair that I restored awhile back, > and would like to find something similar for the 3P+S. I want to be > able to toggle in a boot loader routine and then initiate an upload > from the PC to IMSAI -- something similar to this > https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YwC1T9oLK1U&t=212s > (at 1:10s in) but with a 3P+S board on an IMSAI. > > Also, a picture of your RS-232 configured card and wiring of the edge > connectors would be helpful to make sure I get things right. Any help > is appreciated. > > Thanks, Win > whe...@gmail.com >
Re: Seeking English version of LGP-30 Maintenance Manual
I might have an extra manual or two, send me a private email with your mailing address On Fri, Jan 6, 2017 at 1:45 PM, Cory Heisterkamp wrote: > Christian Corti had made available the German version of the LGP-30 > Maintenance Manual, copied here: > http://ed-thelen.org/comp-hist/LGP-30MaintenanceManual-German.pdf > > > Ed Thelen had OCR’d and translated some of the pages, but I’m looking for a > copy of the complete English version if someone has it available. A search > of the CBI archives didn’t turn up anything, either. > > > > If only paper copies exist, I would be glad to pay postage, scan, and send > back the manual if someone out there has it. Thanks- Cory >
Re: Spinning up RL02 w/o head load ? (was Cleaning RK05 packs)
On Fri, Jan 6, 2017 at 6:27 PM, Robert Armstrong wrote: > Speaking of spinning up a pack without loading the heads, can anyone tell > me how to do this on an RL01/2 drive? I am pretty sure you unplug the positioner motor from the DC power supply PCB. You have to remove the latter (4 corner screws and a plastic cover that identifies the testpoints) and it's a 2 pin plug on the underside (component side) of the board. -tony
Re: Yugoslavian Computer Magazine Cover Girls of the 1980s and 1990s
I liked the one with the guy seated at a "desk" which is apparently outfitted with nothing more than a color dot-matrix printer and a telephone set. Must be a serious power-user, then.. But, at least to my eye, the women are much more attractive than the typical eastern-european models - with their unending parade of angular eyes and faces with unnaturally high cheekbones. On Fri, Jan 6, 2017 at 3:47 PM, Peter Corlett wrote: > On Fri, Jan 06, 2017 at 06:45:56PM +0100, Liam Proven wrote: > > An image gallery of cheesy -- and cheese-cakey -- magazine covers from > > what were for me the golden days. > > But the UK mags weren't ever like this. > > However, CRASH and Zzap!64 had some rather homoerotic covers instead, > painted > by Oli Frey. Just the thing for confused teenage boys still too young to > reach the > top shelf in the newsagent's. > > He's still around, and sells some right mucky paintings these days. > >
Re: Spinning up RL02 w/o head load ? (was Cleaning RK05 packs)
> On Jan 6, 2017, at 1:27 PM, Robert Armstrong wrote: > >> Rick Bensene wrote: > >> 1) I first mount the pack in a drive that has a good absolute filter, and > has >> had the head load disabled, and spin it for a few hours. > > Speaking of spinning up a pack without loading the heads, can anyone tell > me how to do this on an RL01/2 drive? I don't know a specific answer, but one would think unplugging the power to the head actuator coils would do the job. paul
Re: Morrow MD-3P Portable MicroDecision
On 01/06/2017 11:54 AM, Al Kossow wrote: > > www.ebay.com/itm/302178528335 > > bought for the CHM collection. > > > This is the first one I've ever seen. I don't remember if the Morrow > sons auctioned one off when they were selling off George's shop. > > It's essentially a MicroDecision III and MT-70 terminal according to > the notes I scanned. Nice looking unit, but no--I've never seen another. --Chuck
Spinning up RL02 w/o head load ? (was Cleaning RK05 packs)
> Rick Bensene wrote: >1) I first mount the pack in a drive that has a good absolute filter, and has > had the head load disabled, and spin it for a few hours. Speaking of spinning up a pack without loading the heads, can anyone tell me how to do this on an RL01/2 drive? Thanks, Bob Armstrong
Seeking English version of LGP-30 Maintenance Manual
Christian Corti had made available the German version of the LGP-30 Maintenance Manual, copied here: http://ed-thelen.org/comp-hist/LGP-30MaintenanceManual-German.pdf Ed Thelen had OCR’d and translated some of the pages, but I’m looking for a copy of the complete English version if someone has it available. A search of the CBI archives didn’t turn up anything, either. If only paper copies exist, I would be glad to pay postage, scan, and send back the manual if someone out there has it. Thanks- Cory
Re: Yugoslavian Computer Magazine Cover Girls of the 1980s and 1990s
On Fri, Jan 06, 2017 at 06:45:56PM +0100, Liam Proven wrote: > An image gallery of cheesy -- and cheese-cakey -- magazine covers from > what were for me the golden days. > But the UK mags weren't ever like this. However, CRASH and Zzap!64 had some rather homoerotic covers instead, painted by Oli Frey. Just the thing for confused teenage boys still too young to reach the top shelf in the newsagent's. He's still around, and sells some right mucky paintings these days.
Homebrew Z80
Hey guys.. I bought this Homebrew Z80 machine from what I assume is the early 80s (going by the chips). Pretty sure it's a Netronics keyboard but wondering if any of you have seen a design like this one. I'm just curious if it came from a magazine article or something as it goes beyond the typical basic homebrew and even appears to have some ROMs. I'm not sure what the TOS ROM is though. I've put some pics of it here: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/0B4pq0-BHd2x6bjY3MTRZbGRCQmM?usp=shar ing Thoughts/opinions welcome.
Morrow MD-3P Portable MicroDecision
www.ebay.com/itm/302178528335 bought for the CHM collection. This is the first one I've ever seen. I don't remember if the Morrow sons auctioned one off when they were selling off George's shop. It's essentially a MicroDecision III and MT-70 terminal according to the notes I scanned.
Re: Yugoslavian Computer Magazine Cover Girls of the 1980s and 1990s
* Liam Proven [170106 12:46]: > An image gallery of cheesy -- and cheese-cakey -- magazine covers from > what were for me the golden days. > > But the UK mags weren't ever like this. > > Some of the names, and the typos, are highly amusing. > > http://imgur.com/gallery/3Jlqh There was text in those pics?
Re: Cleaning things (was Cleaning RK05 packs (Was: LGP-30 Memory Drum Update))
On 01/06/2017 07:32 AM, David Bridgham wrote: > On 01/05/2017 08:13 PM, allison wrote: > >> Lots of ifs, mights, and maybes. My knowledge is from actually owning >> and maintaining a Cessna since 1979 and so far that has not been an issue. > Yup, that's just how the discussion in the aircraft community went. One > group would point out that Simple Green contained chemicals known to > corrode aluminum while another group would say they'd been using the > stuff on their airplanes and hadn't noticed any problems. Then the > company came out with Simple Green Extreme, promoting it as being safe > for aircraft though never actually saying, as far as I saw, that the > regular Simple Green wasn't safe. > > I see that as the maker responded to a perceived problem and did their marketing! The bottom line is its seriously off topic and likely not an issue. To get on topic over the years I've used a number of things deemed bad with full success. An example was a few Altair era board with green crud plus dirt from the prior holder storing them. The green crud was the gold over copper plated contacts without nickel over copper. I decided to keep them and ran them through the dishwasher with the usual dishwasher caustic cleaner (cascade) and the oven dry them. They came out looking better than factory and it even cleaned the contacts. They tested fine and I stripped the damaged gold and re-plated the contacts with electroless tin (didn't have the materials for nickel then gold) and sill have them. Back then the locals on the board told me the boards would be ruined. When doing repairs or restoration the person/organization doing it needs to fist have goals, then process, and the skills to implement them and maybe even mitigate side effects. What process they use and can apply is dependent on available materials and the available skills. Our advantage now is is world wide near instant communication to ask what is best, easy, fast, or cheap. I envy the chance to restore a LGP-30 or for that fact play with one. Many of the things I remember mid sixties on are now gone or were rare then. Like small desk sized drum computers using transistors or first generation IC (RTL and RDTL). Allison
Yugoslavian Computer Magazine Cover Girls of the 1980s and 1990s
An image gallery of cheesy -- and cheese-cakey -- magazine covers from what were for me the golden days. But the UK mags weren't ever like this. Some of the names, and the typos, are highly amusing. http://imgur.com/gallery/3Jlqh -- Liam Proven • Profile: https://about.me/liamproven Email: lpro...@cix.co.uk • Google Mail/Talk/Plus: lpro...@gmail.com Twitter/Facebook/Flickr: lproven • Skype/LinkedIn/AIM/Yahoo: liamproven UK: +44 7939-087884 • ČR/WhatsApp/Telegram/Signal: +420 702 829 053
Re: cctech Digest, Vol 30, Issue 15
On Thu, Jan 5, 2017 at 8:15 PM, Tim Mann wrote: > ... xtrs (http://tim-mann.org/xtrs.html) emulates LD A,R > by putting an 8-bit random number in A. Of course that's cheesy and wrong > -- especially bit 7 being random instead of retaining a 0 from reset or the > last value written to it -- but at least it works OK with Ethan's > subroutine. The subroutine may loop a few times due to the value randomly > being negative or zero until it escapes the first time the value is > randomly positive. Hi, Tim, Yep. That should work, though it would be interesting to see how that biases the numbers as used as percentages in the game code (really, the granularity is that many events have a medium chance of occurring and a few events have a low chance of occurring. Some stuff is just "color" - as in randomly printing dialog fragments to simulate intelligent NPC behavior. As long as the numbers coming out aren't biased to the lower quintile, gameplay should be fine. > The pointer that someone posted to > http://www.worldofspectrum.org/faq/reference/z80reference.htm#RRegister may > inspire me to fix the emulation, though it looks like a bit of work to get > it exactly right... I worked with Peter Shorn, the author of altairz80 on Simh, to do a fairly good implementation. I did a simple "increment and wrap on 7-bits" bump in the dispatch loop, which is first-order-approximate, but the true solution has to do with all the extended commands and shifts that add extra M1 cycles. The new code for altairz80 is at http://schorn.ch/altair_beta.php My latest adventure is figuring out why there's a different problem with CP/M 3.0 Plus on the Commodore 128. VICE appears to do the "random number in R" trick (I haven't inspected the code, but I have a short Z-80 app that reads and prints the R register several times) and the game program does not have a problem in reading R, _but_ it seems to matter in a different place, where there's a BDOS 10 Call to read buffered console input, one version of CP/M (from Jan 1985) does all the right things, but two newer versions (Dec 1985 and May 1987) don't respond after prompting the user for input. I haven't tried xtrs yet, in part because there already is a TRS-DOS version of this game (which wouldn't need CP/M, and I haven't ever fiddled with running CP/M on real Tandy hardware). Thanks for the response! -ethan
Re: Cleaning RK05 packs (Was: LGP-30 Memory Drum Update)
>>The latter 91% is safe for many uses and is water clear it leaves no residue >>(however one must assure its dry after). And what type of microscope did you use to determine there is no residue ? On Thu, Jan 5, 2017 at 9:23 AM, allison wrote: > On 1/5/17 8:36 AM, 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. >> >> Ed >> -- > > > In the past from the local print and painting supplier "De-natured alcohol" > Usually in a pint or gallon can (this is USA). I also buy Lacquer thinner, > Acetone, Ethanol (99.4pure) and MEK in the same form all powerful > solvents and better than 99% pure. > > Rubbing alcohol is ok save for its isopropanol plus water (either 70% or > 91%). > The latter 91% is safe for many uses and is water clear it leaves no residue > (however one must assure its dry after). > > There is also Rubbing Alcohol that is ethanol plus water with an added > denaturant > (toxic) to render it safe for skin use and not for drinking. > > GC chemicals supplies two different residue free solvent cleaners. > > My favorite head cleaner was banned in many places Xylene, takes curd > off like no tomorrow. May melt the user too. > > As to cleaning and repairing the drum... DO NOT TOUCH ANYTHING UNTIL > YOU ARE SURE of the process to be applied. That applies to solvents, wipes, > and all. Use gloves! Test solvents near an edge or other area that is not > critical. > > > Allison > > >> Ik email, dus ik besta. >> BTC : 1J5fajt8ptyZ2V1YURj3YJZhe5j3fJVSHN >> LTC : LP2WuEmYPbpWUBqMFGJfdm7pdHEW7fKvDz >> >> On Thu, January 5, 2017 14:22, Noel Chiappa wrote: >>> >>> > From: Klemens Krause >>> >>> > We clean our RK05 disks in a very robust way: with cheap burning >>> spirit >>> > and paper towels. ... We rubbed away thick black traces from >>> occasional >>> > head crashes and we never removed the oxide coating with this >>> torture. >>> >>> I am about to get a large batch of RK05 packs, so I am interested in the >>> details of this. >>> >>> First, what is 'burning spirit'? (I assume this is a straight translation >>> into English of some German term, but not knowing German... :-) After >>> poking >>> around with Google for a while (hampered no little by the fact that it's >>> the >>> name of a band, and also a term in World of Warcraft :-), it seems like >>> it >>> might be acetone? >>> >>> Noel >>> >> > >
Re: Cleaning RK05 packs (Was: LGP-30 Memory Drum Update)
On 01/05/2017 08:13 PM, allison wrote: > Lots of ifs, mights, and maybes. My knowledge is from actually owning > and maintaining a Cessna since 1979 and so far that has not been an issue. Yup, that's just how the discussion in the aircraft community went. One group would point out that Simple Green contained chemicals known to corrode aluminum while another group would say they'd been using the stuff on their airplanes and hadn't noticed any problems. Then the company came out with Simple Green Extreme, promoting it as being safe for aircraft though never actually saying, as far as I saw, that the regular Simple Green wasn't safe.
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. Surely no methanol as this is lethal. Also no dye. Spiritus is a clear and highly volatile liquid. It's also very cheap, a one liter bottle is around 2 Euros. Christian
Re: Cleaning RK05 packs (Was: LGP-30 Memory Drum Update)
We use 6"x6" clean room rated wipes (I think they were either Berkshires or Kimwipes) from Grainger and 99% isopropyl alcohol from Fry's. Won't scratch, free of microscopic dust and lint, and 99% alcohol will leave no drying marks (it's typically the last rinse in IC manufacturing). May cost you a bit. Wipe your work area before and use clean room gloves. Marc Sent from my iPad > On Jan 5, 2017, at 6:40 AM, Al Kossow wrote: > > isopropyl alcohol works. TFE is better, if you have some stashed. > > If you can find them anywhere, Texwipe made a plastic wand that looks like > a tongue depressor with a slit down the middle and a lint free sleeve > called the Texsleeve (tx300 sleeve, tx800 wand) that you would use to clean > heads > > Minor head crashes leave a tar-like residue that you need to remove. A pack > inspector > is a handy thing to have (spinle with microscope and illuminator on the rack > and pinion) > to look for surface damage. > > On 1/5/17 5:22 AM, Noel Chiappa wrote: >>> From: Klemens Krause >> >>> We clean our RK05 disks in a very robust way: with cheap burning spirit >>> and paper towels. ... We rubbed away thick black traces from occasional >>> head crashes and we never removed the oxide coating with this torture. >> >> I am about to get a large batch of RK05 packs, so I am interested in the >> details of this. >> >> First, what is 'burning spirit'? (I assume this is a straight translation >> into English of some German term, but not knowing German... :-) After poking >> around with Google for a while (hampered no little by the fact that it's the >> name of a band, and also a term in World of Warcraft :-), it seems like it >> might be acetone? >> >>Noel >
