Re: Warren Stearns info.

[Vincent Slyngstad via cctalk]

From: Doug Ingraham via cctalk: Friday, August 11, 2017 3:53 PM

He has been working on a Flip Chip tester for a couple of years now and has
been using a bread boarded early version of this for several years.

I am hoping I can find someone with the knowledge and drive to continue
working on his tester as this is something that would greatly benefit those
of us who are trying to keep these machines alive.  I will try to collect
all the work he was doing on it together in one place for this purpose.  At
the moment I have his tester and his 8/a and 8/i projects.  His laptop is
with one of his brothers but I will get a copy of all his engineering and
data files.


He will be missed.  I'd be a poor replacement for Warren, but I'd be happy
to provide some continuity for his work.

I have an Eagle drawing of an early version of his tester breadboard -- not
sure if it is still current.  Wasn't he recently also using an Arduino or some
such with his laptop to drive test vectors?  I'd love to see that software, and
of course, the test vectors themselves for the many types of modules are a
key part.

Please let me know how I can help.

   Vince 

Re: Warren Stearns info.

[Chuck Guzis via cctalk]

On 08/11/2017 03:53 PM, Doug Ingraham via cctalk wrote:
> Warren Stearns passed away early on Sunday August 6th.  He suffered a heart
> attack on Friday the 4th and never recovered from that.  Warren was an avid
> collector and maintainer of DEC PDP-8 equipment.  He and I met almost 43
> years ago while in college and have kept in touch all this time because of
> our similar interest in these machines.  Warren recently assisted in
> bringing a PDP-12 back to life at the University of Minnesota in Duluth.
> He has been working on a Flip Chip tester for a couple of years now and has
> been using a bread boarded early version of this for several years.
> 
> I am hoping I can find someone with the knowledge and drive to continue
> working on his tester as this is something that would greatly benefit those
> of us who are trying to keep these machines alive.  I will try to collect
> all the work he was doing on it together in one place for this purpose.  At
> the moment I have his tester and his 8/a and 8/i projects.  His laptop is
> with one of his brothers but I will get a copy of all his engineering and
> data files.

Was Warren Stearns connected with Stearns Computer Systems, maker of the
short-lived Stearns PC?

--Chuck

Warren Stearns info.

[Doug Ingraham via cctalk]

Warren Stearns passed away early on Sunday August 6th.  He suffered a heart
attack on Friday the 4th and never recovered from that.  Warren was an avid
collector and maintainer of DEC PDP-8 equipment.  He and I met almost 43
years ago while in college and have kept in touch all this time because of
our similar interest in these machines.  Warren recently assisted in
bringing a PDP-12 back to life at the University of Minnesota in Duluth.
He has been working on a Flip Chip tester for a couple of years now and has
been using a bread boarded early version of this for several years.

I am hoping I can find someone with the knowledge and drive to continue
working on his tester as this is something that would greatly benefit those
of us who are trying to keep these machines alive.  I will try to collect
all the work he was doing on it together in one place for this purpose.  At
the moment I have his tester and his 8/a and 8/i projects.  His laptop is
with one of his brothers but I will get a copy of all his engineering and
data files.

-- 
Doug Ingraham
PDP-8 SN 1175

Re: Floppy Disk Images

[Mike Stein via cctalk]

I've got the Cromemco WDI and WDI-II S100 controllers for both the 8" 7xxx 
series and the 5" 5xxx series if they're of any use to you; as with most 
Cromemco stuff the documentation is also available.

If they're in fact Cromemco formatted there shouldn't be a problem, assuming 
they still work; if they're from a Corvus box it might be more challenging.

m

- Original Message - 
From: "Al Kossow via cctalk" 
To: 
Sent: Friday, August 11, 2017 4:58 PM
Subject: Re: Floppy Disk Images


> 
> 
> On 8/11/17 12:12 PM, Mattis Lind via cctalk wrote:
> 
>> There is a very nice MFM-emulator by David Gesswein.
> 
> It works very well. I've dumped several hundred 5" drives with it
> which resulted in added support for many different controllers in
> his decoder.
> 
> 8" shugart interface drives are rising on the list of importance for
> me. I've got several dozen with things that need to be imaged
> and a bunch of IMI drives which I'm less hopeful of because of
> their funky interface.
> 
> 
>

Re: Floppy Disk Images

[Al Kossow via cctalk]

On 8/11/17 12:12 PM, Mattis Lind via cctalk wrote:

> There is a very nice MFM-emulator by David Gesswein.

It works very well. I've dumped several hundred 5" drives with it
which resulted in added support for many different controllers in
his decoder.

8" shugart interface drives are rising on the list of importance for
me. I've got several dozen with things that need to be imaged
and a bunch of IMI drives which I'm less hopeful of because of
their funky interface.

Re: Floppy Disk Images

[Chuck Guzis via cctalk]

On 08/11/2017 10:58 AM, Marvin Johnston via cctalk wrote:
> I seem to recall this topic has been brought up a couple of times
> over the past 20 years or so that ClassicCmp has been in existance,
> but I can't find the info. And technology has advanced :).
> 
> I have probably at least 10,000 floppy disks of many flavors
> (formats, hard sector, soft sector, various TPI and Tracks/disk,
> 3.5"/5.25?/8", etc.) My most pressing/interesting issue is both
> Polymorphic and Lobo Drives/Systems 5.25" and 8" disks.

I don't think a solution exists to make real copies of *any arbitrary*
floppy.

Even the idea of two drives powered off the same motor, aligning index
holes, etc. will not work.   The reason is quite simple--on a low level,
what you read from a floppy is not what was written.  There are issues
that crop up during writing a floppy, such as bit shift and crowding
that must be compensated for--and it's very, very difficult to do this
on a "blind" basis without knowing something about the format.

This, after all, is what "write precompensation" is all about--an
intentional distortion of the write process to ensure that reading looks
more or less normal.

And this isn't dealing with various copy-protection schemes,
special-purpose replacement drive electronics boards (they exist) and
varying track densities (48, 96, 100, 135, 67.5 tpi) as well as the real
oddball stuff, such as Kodak/Drivetec floppies. I recently ran into a
floppy drive used on a CNC controller that has an utterly non-standard
track spacing--the manufacturer included in their PLC solely for reading
a disk of proprietary software--i.e. the PLC has *two* floppy drives;
one standard and the other just for those floppies.

I use a Catweasel to image my floppies--it does the job well, but so
will any decent modern microcontroller with a timer "capture" function.


--Chuck

Re: Floppy Disk Images

[Warner Losh via cctalk]

On Fri, Aug 11, 2017 at 12:08 PM, Christian Groessler via cctalk <
cctalk@classiccmp.org> wrote:

> Hi,
>
> On 08/11/17 19:58, Marvin Johnston via cctalk wrote:
>
>> And just to make it interesting, I have a number of hard disks (5mb to
>> maybe 20mb) of both 5.35" and 8". I've got several Lobo drives 8" hard
>> drives that I would love to get the information from since they came from
>> Lobo Drives when they shut down. Controllers could be a problem there.
>
>
I love kyroflux for the 300 rainbow floppies I just did. But you'll need a
supported drive, and the more exotic formats are dicier on main-stream
drives, though even the flippies work. And you can store it as flux
transitions, raw track data or arrays of sectors when reading data. I
thought I'd need that for the rainbow disks, but only the 123 disks had any
kind of odditiy as copy protection, but there's patches to cope with that.


> a related question (wanted to ask since long, but this post reminded me
> now):
>
> Is there a similar tool like IMD to dump (MFM-) hard disks?
>

There's a MFM emulator that also reads MFM hard disks.
https://www.pdp8.net/mfm/mfm.shtml is what I've used to image a couple of
MFM hard disks that I have. It also emulates MFM drives, which makes it
easy to switch between Venix and MS-DOS on my Dec Rainbow.

Warner

Re: Floppy Disk Images

[Mattis Lind via cctalk]

fredag 11 augusti 2017 skrev Christian Groessler via cctalk <
cctalk@classiccmp.org>:
>
>
>
> a related question (wanted to ask since long, but this post reminded me
> now):
>
> Is there a similar tool like IMD to dump (MFM-) hard disks?


There is a very nice MFM-emulator by David Gesswein. It not only is able to
emulate the disk but also read out the content. If there already is a
decoder you can get the decoded sectors as a dump, otherwise you need to
process the raw transitions yourself.  I have had success reading and
emulating DEC RQDX1/ RQDX2 as well as Cromemco STDC format with the mfm
emulator.

David is also very quick to help out when you encounter problems.

https://www.pdp8.net/mfm/mfm.shtml



> regards,
> chris
>
>
/Mattis

Re: Floppy Disk Images

[Christian Groessler via cctalk]

Hi,

On 08/11/17 19:58, Marvin Johnston via cctalk wrote:
And just to make it interesting, I have a number of hard disks (5mb to 
maybe 20mb) of both 5.35" and 8". I've got several Lobo drives 8" hard 
drives that I would love to get the information from since they came 
from Lobo Drives when they shut down. Controllers could be a problem 
there.



a related question (wanted to ask since long, but this post reminded me 
now):


Is there a similar tool like IMD to dump (MFM-) hard disks?

regards,
chris

Floppy Disk Images

[Marvin Johnston via cctalk]

I seem to recall this topic has been brought up a couple of times over 
the past 20 years or so that ClassicCmp has been in existance, but I 
can't find the info. And technology has advanced :).


I have probably at least 10,000 floppy disks of many flavors (formats, 
hard sector, soft sector, various TPI and Tracks/disk, 3.5"/5.25?/8", 
etc.) My most pressing/interesting issue is both Polymorphic and Lobo 
Drives/Systems 5.25" and 8" disks.


And just to make it interesting, I have a number of hard disks (5mb to 
maybe 20mb) of both 5.35" and 8". I've got several Lobo drives 8" hard 
drives that I would love to get the information from since they came 
from Lobo Drives when they shut down. Controllers could be a problem there.


My timetable is probably when I get back from a trip to VCFMW and visit 
family in September.


Is there any readily available technology/setup that will back up all of 
those disks AND reproduce them as needed?


Marvin

pdp-8/e restoration update.

[Rod Smallwood via cctalk]

Hi List

   Well I think I've found why the RX01 is not responding.

The device address (75) is not getting decoded on the controller because 
the CPU does not assert BUS I/O PAUSE L


Which it should do I think when it sees an IO instruction.

Do I have this right?

Rod Smallwood


--
Wanted one pdp-8/i rocker switch leaver to copy.

Re: VT50 print set

[Douglas Taylor via cctalk]

On 8/11/2017 3:13 AM, Mattis Lind via cctech wrote:

I found a VT50 print set in the heaps and recognized there were no copy on
bitsavers so I ran it through a scanner.

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/96935524/Datormusuem/VT50/VT50-print-set.pdf

Compared to the VT52 print set that is online this one contain plenty of
manufacturing information for the plastic shell of the terminal.


Interesting find.  There was a VT50 on ebay just a short while ago, it 
was right up the road from me.


I tried to contact the seller about local pickup but got no reply.  It 
appeared that the VT50 was upper


case only and maybe 12 lines.  Reminds me of the Hazeltine 1000 I had 
years ago.  I was able to


upgrade the character ROM in the Hazeltine to get lower case though.

Re: The SPERRY UNIVAC UTS 40 system + 8406 double-sided diskette subsystem : Restoration

[Al Kossow via cctalk]

On 8/11/17 5:40 AM, Dominique Carlier via cctalk wrote:
> Hi all,
> 
> I continued my investigations about the power supply if the 8406 subsystem.
> Here is what I observe:
> 
> With the PSU in charge, I mean with a disk drive connected but without the 
> +24V :
> +5V -5V +12V -12V: OK
> If I connect the +24V to the drive this is at this moment than the power 
> supply goes mad and sends erratic alternating
> voltages to the + & - 5V and + & - 12v.

It sounds like something is wrong with the disk drives, probably a shorted 
capacitor on the drive.

If you apply a resistive load on the 24v does the supply still go crazy?

Re: Disk imaging with IMD - question

[Richard Cini via cctalk]

So based on this entire thread I should probably hunt down some Shugart 850s to 
be safe. 

Rich

Sent from Verizon/AOL Mobile Mail

On Friday, August 11, 2017, Christian Corti via cctalk  
wrote:

On Thu, 10 Aug 2017, camiel.vanderhoeven--- via cctalk wrote:
> My workhorse 8" drives are some Ye-Data half-height ones. I still have about 
> a dozen of them as NOS. I believe they were made in 1993.

If you mean the Y-E DATA YD-180, well, they are QumeTrack 242 ;-)

Christian

Re: The SPERRY UNIVAC UTS 40 system + 8406 double-sided diskette subsystem : Restoration

[Dominique Carlier via cctalk]

Hi all,

I continued my investigations about the power supply if the 8406 subsystem.
Here is what I observe:

With the PSU in charge, I mean with a disk drive connected but without 
the +24V :

+5V -5V +12V -12V: OK
If I connect the +24V to the drive this is at this moment than the power 
supply goes mad and sends erratic alternating voltages to the + & - 5V 
and + & - 12v.


The question remains complete, which is the guilty component? :

http://www.zeltrax.com/classiccmp_forum/uts40/subsystem05.jpg

Is it possible that rectifier diodes become mad only when they have a 
significant load? Or is it finally a faulty capacitor that a ESR-meter 
can not detect as broken when is it not in charge?


Dominique

On 10/08/2017 20:07, Dominique Carlier via cctalk wrote:

Hi everybody,

After talking about this subject but in a thread following a sale - 
http://www.classiccmp.org/pipermail/cctalk/2017-July/036578.html - I 
decided to start here a thread but this time fully dedicated to the 
restoration of this rare computer, I named the SPERRY UNIVAC UTS 40 
and its Subsystem 8406 (2 X 8 "DSDD).

http://www.zeltrax.com/classiccmp_forum/1.jpg
http://www.zeltrax.com/classiccmp_forum/2.jpg
http://www.zeltrax.com/classiccmp_forum/3.jpg

I take the opportunity to show you the 4 motherboards of that beast in 
details (hi-res)

http://www.zeltrax.com/classiccmp_forum/uts40/4boards_presentation.jpg

The CPU board
http://www.zeltrax.com/classiccmp_forum/uts40/cpu_board.jpg

The communication board
http://www.zeltrax.com/classiccmp_forum/uts40/communication_board.jpg

A memory extension board
http://www.zeltrax.com/classiccmp_forum/uts40/memory_extension_board.jpg

And a - I don't know exactly - board
http://www.zeltrax.com/classiccmp_forum/uts40/unknown_board.jpg
(Any information ?)

In the other thread some topics were discussed, I will copy some part 
here in the idea of grouping these information.


This machine has an historical importance for me. I have an 
unforgettable memory of the data center in which my father worked. He 
sometimes took me with him in the early evening to start some 
procedures to be done during the night (process, tape backup, 
printing), my father worked on a UNIVAC 9200 II and then on a SPERRY 
UNIVAC 90/30. I remember the look of this big room in the dark, it was 
beautiful like a Christmas tree ;-) (that's what I was saying when I 
was five).


Me in 1980 at 6 ... yes, I had hair like the kid in the movie 
"Shining" ;-)

http://www.zeltrax.com/classiccmp_forum/uts40/dce1980.jpg

I even remember the exact configuration of the 90/30 : 3 X disk pack 
drive of 30 MB each, 3 X nine track tape drive Uniservo 10/14, a punch 
card reader/writer, a frightening and noisy drum printer, an 
indefinable number of UTS20D terminals, a beautiful Uniscope 100 that 
was standing next to the control panel on the central console, and a 
little bit later (1983) ... a UTS 40 and its subsystem. All these 
beautiful machines shone in the darkness of this data center during 
the night, it was beautiful, there was also the characteristic smell 
of hot machines in these places, well ventilated but smokers allowed. 
It is indeed of this time that I come to me an attraction for the 
technology and mainly for computers, preferably big, imposing and 
spectacular.


In 1987, my father acquired a VAX 8350 (3 X CPU - 6 X RA82H - 2 X TU81 
plus - a lot of VT220s and one VT340), progressively they started the 
migration from the 90/30  to the 8350, some part of the 90/30 are been 
progressively decommissioned and I received sometimes some gears. 
Notes that at the age of 14 I had only an Amiga 500 and a Commodore 
64, when I received the UTS 40 and its subsystem 8406 (with a UTS 20D 
bonus) in 1987 from my father's hands, I considered this computer as 
my first "serious" machine. Besides the sentimental value through the 
paternal donation, this machine evoked me the loved mainframes and 
computer terminals from my childhood.


I used this machine from 1988 to 1999 (the date of the breakdown). I 
wanted to give it a major utility in my own "data center" and under 
CP/M I coded in BASIC a program to manage a database, a kind of big 
help-memory-reminder, in which I noted all that passed by my mind, a 
lot of funny stuff, dreams, projects, technical stuff, music 
annotations, poetry... ;-)


Here I was 16 and so happy to have fun with my dear UTS 40 ^_^
http://www.zeltrax.com/classiccmp_forum/1989.jpg

My UTS 40 was ON every day and I used it constantly, the machine 
seemed indestructible however after 20 years of good and loyal 
services it began to show signs of fatigue. I had sometimes an error 
message during the POC TEST at initialization (RAM or ROM error, I can 
not remember). At this time I incriminated my brave cat who was 
watching me tapping on the keyboard and sleeped regularly on the top 
of the screen that served her as heater, thus blocking the normal 
ventilation of the machine.
Important thing : after a POC test 

Re: DEC Unibus, Omnibus and TTL Flip-Chips sought for!

[Mattis Lind via cctalk]

2017-08-11 11:07 GMT+02:00 Rod Smallwood via cctalk :

> Interesting - Card reader, Plotter and display controller
>

Absolutely. I have a Documation M200, Calcomp drumplotter and a DEC vector
screen that would be nice to interface. My PDP-8/L has a BA08 expansion box
with a lot of options wired into the backplane. Among those CR8/L and VC8/L
and VP8/L. For the 8/e and 11/10 it would be nice to have similar options..

/Mattis


>
> Rod
>
>
>
>
> On 11/08/2017 09:24, Mattis Lind via cctalk wrote:
>
>> Hello!
>>
>> I am looking for the following boards if anyone have them available:
>>
>> M829 / M8290 / M8291
>> M843
>> M842
>> M714
>> M716
>> A607
>> M701
>> M023
>> M704
>>
>> /Mattis
>>
>
> --
> Wanted one pdp-8/i rocker switch leaver to copy.
>
>

Re: DEC Unibus, Omnibus and TTL Flip-Chips sought for!

[Rod Smallwood via cctalk]

Interesting - Card reader, Plotter and display controller


Rod



On 11/08/2017 09:24, Mattis Lind via cctalk wrote:

Hello!

I am looking for the following boards if anyone have them available:

M829 / M8290 / M8291
M843
M842
M714
M716
A607
M701
M023
M704

/Mattis


--
Wanted one pdp-8/i rocker switch leaver to copy.

DEC Unibus, Omnibus and TTL Flip-Chips sought for!

[Mattis Lind via cctalk]

Hello!

I am looking for the following boards if anyone have them available:

M829 / M8290 / M8291
M843
M842
M714
M716
A607
M701
M023
M704

/Mattis

Re: Disk imaging with IMD - question

[Christian Corti via cctalk]

On Thu, 10 Aug 2017, camiel.vanderhoeven--- via cctalk wrote:
My workhorse 8" drives are some Ye-Data half-height ones. I still have about 
a dozen of them as NOS. I believe they were made in 1993.


If you mean the Y-E DATA YD-180, well, they are QumeTrack 242 ;-)

Christian

RE: VT50 print set

[Paul Birkel via cctalk]

Metric dimensions?  Isn't that rather unusual for DEC?

-Original Message-
From: cctalk [mailto:cctalk-boun...@classiccmp.org] On Behalf Of Mattis Lind 
via cctalk
Sent: Friday, August 11, 2017 3:13 AM
To: General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts
Subject: VT50 print set

I found a VT50 print set in the heaps and recognized there were no copy on
bitsavers so I ran it through a scanner.

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/96935524/Datormusuem/VT50/VT50-print-set.pdf

Compared to the VT52 print set that is online this one contain plenty of
manufacturing information for the plastic shell of the terminal.

Re: VT50 print set

[Paul Anderson via cctalk]

nice find...

On Fri, Aug 11, 2017 at 2:13 AM, Mattis Lind via cctalk <
cctalk@classiccmp.org> wrote:

> I found a VT50 print set in the heaps and recognized there were no copy on
> bitsavers so I ran it through a scanner.
>
> https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/96935524/Datormusuem/
> VT50/VT50-print-set.pdf
>
> Compared to the VT52 print set that is online this one contain plenty of
> manufacturing information for the plastic shell of the terminal.
>

VT50 print set

[Mattis Lind via cctalk]

I found a VT50 print set in the heaps and recognized there were no copy on
bitsavers so I ran it through a scanner.

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/96935524/Datormusuem/VT50/VT50-print-set.pdf

Compared to the VT52 print set that is online this one contain plenty of
manufacturing information for the plastic shell of the terminal.