date:20181125

Not to beat a dead horse, but I ran across "Â Â Â  " in a text file when 
read via a web browser this evening and wanted to share my findings as 
they seemed timely.


On 11/22/18 5:55 PM, Guy Dunphy via cctalk wrote:
Anyway, I was wondering how Ed's emails (and sometimes others elsewhere) 
acquired that odd corruption.


IMHO it's not corruption as much as it is incompatibility.

Answer: Ed's email util … interpret the user typing space twice in 
succession, as meaning "I really, really want there to be a space here, 
no matter what." So it inserts a 'no-break space' unicode character, 
which of course requires a 2-byte UTF-8 encoding.


What I'm not sure of is how the 0xC2 0xA0 translates to 0xC3 0xA2 that 
is the Â character.


I think that the 0xC2 0xA0 pair is treated as two independent 
characters.  Thus 0xC2 is "Â", and 0xA0 is a non-breaking space.


I don't know what happens to the non-breaking space, but the Â and the 
space (0x20) that is after 0xC2 0xA0 (three byte sequence being 0xC2 
0xA0 0x20) is included and becomes "Â " which is what we see in reply 
text.  (Encoded as 0xC3 0x83 0x20.)


So, arguably, improperly processed / translated text that results in 
0xC3 0x83 0x20 / "Â " should have been a non-breaking space followed by 
a space.


This jives with both Ed's email and the document that I was reading that 
prompted this email.



Then adds a plain ASCII space 0x20 just to be sure.


I don't think it's adding a plain ASCII space 0x20 just to be sure. 
Looking at the source of the message, I see =C2=A0, which is the UTF-8 
representation followed by the space.  My MUA that understands UTF-8 
shows that "=C2=A0 " translates to "  ".  Further, "=C2=A0 =C2=A0" 
translates to "   ".


Some of the reading that I did indicates that many things, HTML 
included, use white space compaction (by default), which means that 
multiple white space characters are reduced to a single white space 
character.  So, when Ed wants multiple white spaces, his MUA has to do 
something to state that two consecutive spaces can't be compacted. 
Hence the non-breaking space.


=C2=A0 quite literally translates to a space character that can't be 
compacted.  Thus "=C2=A0 =C2=A0" is really " " or "   ".


Multiple successive spaces will need to be a mixture of space and 
non-breaking space characters.


So, the plain ASCII space 0x20 after (or before) =C2=A0 is not there 
just to be sure.


Personally I find it more interesting than annoying. Just another example 
of the gradual chaotic devolution of ASCII, into a Babel of incompatible 
encodings. Not that ASCII was all that great in the first place.


As stated in another reply, I don't think ASCII was ever trying to be 
the Babel fish.  (Thank you Douglas Adams.)


Takeaway: Ed, one space is enough. I don't know how you got the idea 
people might miss seeing a single space, and so you need to type two or 
more.


I wondered if it wasn't a typo or keyboard sensitivity issue.  I 
remember I had to really slow down the double click speed for my grandpa 
(R.I.P.) so that he could use the mouse.  Maybe some users actuate keys 
slowly enough that the computer thinks that it's repeated keys.  ¯\_(ツ)_/¯


But it isn't so. The normal convention in plain text is one space 
character between each word.


The operative word is "convention", as in commonly accepted but not 
always the case behavior.  ;-)


And since plain ASCII is hard-formatted, extra spaces are NOT ignored 
and make for wider spacing between words.


It seems as if you made an assumption.  Just because the underlying 
character set is ASCII (per RFC 821 & 822, et al) does not mean that the 
data that they are carrying is also ASCII.  As is evident by the 
Content-Type: header stating the character set of UTF-8.


Especially when textual white space compression does exactly that, 
ignore extra white spaces.


Which  looksvery   odd, even if your mail utility didn't try to 
do something 'special' with your unusual user input.


I frequently use multiple spaces with ASCII diagrams.

+--+
| This |
|  is  |
|   a  |
|  box |
+--+

That will not look like I intended it with white space compression.

Btw, I changed the subject line, because this is a wider topic. I've been 
meaning to start a conversation about the original evolution of ASCII, 
and various extensions. Related to a side project of mine.


I'm curious to know more about your side project.



--
Grant. . . .
unix || die

Re: SPARCstation 20 with SCSI2SD





On 11/25/18 7:49 PM, Ethan via cctalk wrote:




The NVRAM is totally dead; I've been reloading the IDPROM contents each
time. I've already ordered replacement NVRAMs from China; we'll see how
they do. Otherwise, I'll be going with the filing/coin cell trick.


Interesting. Are they no longer made? I should get one for my Voyager.


They are still made. I usually get M48T08s or M48T18s from Mouser.

In the long run, it is probably a good idea to mod the IDPROM to use an 
external, replaceable battery, Glitch Works makes a board that one can 
solder on to do that 
(https://www.tindie.com/products/glitchwrks/gw-48t08-1-repair-board-module/).


alan

Re: Text encoding Babel. Was Re: George Keremedjiev


Therefore, for use with current computers, 32 bits would be needed.
Some games can be played with mixing sizes by doing things like setting 
high bit, for 128 7 bit characters plus 32768 15 bit characters, and 
2147483648 31 bit characters.


On Sun, 25 Nov 2018, ben via cctalk wrote:

REAL COMPUTERS USE 18 BITS...  RUNS
BEN.


Alas, "current" computers use 8, 16, 32.
They totally fail to understand the intrinsic benefits of 9, 12, 18, 24, 
and 36 bits.

Re: SPARCstation 20 with SCSI2SD

2018-11-25 Thread Ethan via cctalk


I was hoping to just emulate it for now to avoid potentially bad hardware,
but seems like I need to use the real hardware to avoid potentially bad
software! :)


Ah cool. I was at a friend's brother's house on a work trip out to Silicon 
Valley. One of his friends was there, with something amazing running in 
QEMU. It was a work in progress, but he said that there were a lot of 
issues because QEMU was too accurate in emulating the MIPS procressors and 
in addition to this, there was bugs in his former employer's hardware that 
had software work-arounds in the real OS. So when trying to run that OS on 
the emulated system the accuracy worked against him.



The NVRAM is totally dead; I've been reloading the IDPROM contents each
time. I've already ordered replacement NVRAMs from China; we'll see how
they do. Otherwise, I'll be going with the filing/coin cell trick.


Interesting. Are they no longer made? I should get one for my Voyager.


Not sure; but, I can say, I've got SunOS 4.1.3 finally installed, and am
now looking at a sparse SunView desktop.


Very cool


Trying to build MazeWar results in:

ld: Undefined symbol
  ___bb_init_func
  DREG_SEG
*** Error code 2

Not sure yet what to look for, but the source does say it was tested on
SunOS 3.1 and 3.4. So, I am trying to compile it on something a bit later.


Sun compiler I assume and not a GCC?


--
: Ethan O'Toole

Re: SPARCstation 20 with SCSI2SD

2018-11-25 Thread Kyle Owen via cctalk

On Sun, Nov 25, 2018 at 9:14 PM  wrote:

> Since you said QEMU, you are emulating this? If on the real hardware, is
>
the NVRAM memory dead? Looks like it doesn't know what kind of hardware it
> is. Real hardware will loose nvram battery and need to be replaced and
> reprogrammed, or you can file it down and jumper a battery into it.
>

I was hoping to just emulate it for now to avoid potentially bad hardware,
but seems like I need to use the real hardware to avoid potentially bad
software! :)

The NVRAM is totally dead; I've been reloading the IDPROM contents each
time. I've already ordered replacement NVRAMs from China; we'll see how
they do. Otherwise, I'll be going with the filing/coin cell trick.

There is also probably a bunch of environment variables in the NVRAM as to
> the CD-ROM SCSI path and OS scsi path and stuff on the Sun. It's been a
> long time since Sun boxes for me, so unfortuantely I've forgotten a lot of
> it. But if it's all reset or non-existant it could be a source of issues
> if my memory is right (It definitely is on SGI hardware.)
>

Not sure; but, I can say, I've got SunOS 4.1.3 finally installed, and am
now looking at a sparse SunView desktop.

Trying to build MazeWar results in:

ld: Undefined symbol
   ___bb_init_func
   DREG_SEG
*** Error code 2

Not sure yet what to look for, but the source does say it was tested on
SunOS 3.1 and 3.4. So, I am trying to compile it on something a bit later.

Thanks,

Kyle

Re: SPARCstation 20 with SCSI2SD

2018-11-25 Thread Ethan via cctalk


Well, got the last problem solved rather quickly: I tried using 512 byte
sectors for the emulated CDROM instead of SCSI2SD's default of 2048 for a
CDROM, and that did the trick. Working my way through the SunOS 4.1.3
installation process now on the SS-20.


Was just thinking the 512 byte thing might be an issue. Early Toshiba 
Cd-ROMs had a solder jumper that would switch this, and is was needed for 
some early systems. SGI Indigo R3000 and below was one, and I guess Sun 
was another. I think NeXT also requires the 512 byte block CD-ROM.


Since you said QEMU, you are emulating this? If on the real hardware, is 
the NVRAM memory dead? Looks like it doesn't know what kind of hardware it 
is. Real hardware will loose nvram battery and need to be replaced and 
reprogrammed, or you can file it down and jumper a battery into it.


There is also probably a bunch of environment variables in the NVRAM as to 
the CD-ROM SCSI path and OS scsi path and stuff on the Sun. It's been a 
long time since Sun boxes for me, so unfortuantely I've forgotten a lot of 
it. But if it's all reset or non-existant it could be a source of issues 
if my memory is right (It definitely is on SGI hardware.)



--
: Ethan O'Toole

Re: SPARCstation 20 with SCSI2SD

2018-11-25 Thread Kyle Owen via cctalk

Well, got the last problem solved rather quickly: I tried using 512 byte
sectors for the emulated CDROM instead of SCSI2SD's default of 2048 for a
CDROM, and that did the trick. Working my way through the SunOS 4.1.3
installation process now on the SS-20.

>
If anyone has some advice on how to get QEMU or TME working, I'd still be
all ears.

Thanks,

Kyle

Re: Text encoding Babel. Was Re: George Keremedjiev

2018-11-25 Thread ben via cctalk


On 11/25/2018 6:34 PM, Fred Cisin via cctalk wrote:

On Mon, 26 Nov 2018, Tomasz Rola via cctalk wrote:

To supply this train of thought with some numbers:

- my copy of Common Lisp HyperSpec claims 978 symbols (i.e. words) on
  its alphabetical index; many words have modifiers (a.k.a. keyword
  options, with default values) which increases the number at least
  twofold, IMHO, if one agrees that each combo should be counted as
  different word, to which I would say yes

- I have read somewhere that Japanese pupil after graduating from
  elementary school is supposed to know 1000 kanjis by heart (there
  is a standardised set, I have a book)


Would those "modifiers of words" qualify as ADJECTIVES?


The Japanes phonetic alphabets, Katakana and Hirigana, have 46 letters 
each, almost twice that with diacritics.
I have heard that Japanese Kanji has more than 50,000 words/characters 
(for which 16bits would fit, but be a little risky).  But, that in 
common usage, 1100 to 2000 words comprise most of common usage.  
Wikipedia says that as of 2010, the student requirement is 2136.


Japanese Kanji and Chinese have substantial overlap, but there is no way 
that you could squeeze both into 16 bits, without leaving out important 
stuff.


Therefore, for use with current computers, 32 bits would be needed.
Some games can be played with mixing sizes by doing things like setting 
high bit, for 128 7 bit characters plus 32768 15 bit characters, and 
2147483648 31 bit characters.





REAL COMPUTERS USE 18 BITS...  RUNS
BEN.

Re: Text encoding Babel. Was Re: George Keremedjiev

ASL is   quite  different than  English... you can sign in English or  you can 
sign in ASL  The  ASL  has a different sentence structure. When I  was  first 
learning  about  the  Deaf Teletype  revolution  (We have a collection of  a 
diverse group of  TTY both  mechanical and  CRT and portable  and ...  I would  
correspond  via  email  with a young  person that  sold  us   some ttys  and 
wondered  why it  was almost  a different  sentence  structure, almost  like  
Yoda  but  if  you  look at  both closely  not  really  the  exact  same.  Hard 
 to  explain... but  English and ASL  utilize  2  different   Sentence 
structuring ... or  so it  appears  to me.

 
If  you  learn  ASL and Signing  well there is a  good need  for  excellent 
interpreters out there.
 
And  yes,  always  looking for  ANYTHING  related to the  history of  TTY  and 
other  assertive  communications  devices.
 
Ed#
 
 
In a message dated 11/25/2018 5:46:55 PM US Mountain Standard Time, 
cctalk@classiccmp.org writes:

 
There are still MANY schools arguing about whether to accept ASL (American 

Sign Language, as used by Deaf people). I would think that therefore, BSL 
(British Sign Language) should qualify

Re: e-mail, character sets, encodings (was Re: George Keremedjiev)

2018-11-25 Thread Toby Thain via cctalk

On 2018-11-25 7:45 PM, Bill Gunshannon via cctalk wrote:
> It's not a mailing list problem.  It's not even a mail problem. It's a
> 
> Mail User Agent problem.  It is a display problem.  It is up to the
> 
> users mail program to display the email as it was sent.  Unless the
> 


Did you really double space this email like a high school essay? Don't
see that every day.

--T

Re: Text encoding Babel. Was Re: George Keremedjiev


On Mon, 26 Nov 2018, Tomasz Rola via cctalk wrote:

To supply this train of thought with some numbers:

- my copy of Common Lisp HyperSpec claims 978 symbols (i.e. words) on
  its alphabetical index; many words have modifiers (a.k.a. keyword
  options, with default values) which increases the number at least
  twofold, IMHO, if one agrees that each combo should be counted as
  different word, to which I would say yes

- I have read somewhere that Japanese pupil after graduating from
  elementary school is supposed to know 1000 kanjis by heart (there
  is a standardised set, I have a book)


Would those "modifiers of words" qualify as ADJECTIVES?


The Japanes phonetic alphabets, Katakana and Hirigana, have 46 letters 
each, almost twice that with diacritics.
I have heard that Japanese Kanji has more than 50,000 words/characters 
(for which 16bits would fit, but be a little risky).  But, that in common 
usage, 1100 to 2000 words comprise most of common usage.  Wikipedia says 
that as of 2010, the student requirement is 2136.


Japanese Kanji and Chinese have substantial overlap, but there is no way 
that you could squeeze both into 16 bits, without leaving out important 
stuff.


Therefore, for use with current computers, 32 bits would be needed.
Some games can be played with mixing sizes by doing things like setting 
high bit, for 128 7 bit characters plus 32768 15 bit characters, and 
2147483648 31 bit characters.

Re: Text encoding Babel. Was Re: George Keremedjiev

2018-11-25 Thread Tomasz Rola via cctalk

On Sun, Nov 25, 2018 at 04:46:50PM -0800, Fred Cisin via cctalk wrote:
[...]
> Is FORTRAN considered modern enough?
[...]
> What about APL?  Although its structure is fairly straight-forward,
> it does, indeed, have a unique character set.

To supply this train of thought with some numbers:

 - my copy of Common Lisp HyperSpec claims 978 symbols (i.e. words) on
   its alphabetical index; many words have modifiers (a.k.a. keyword
   options, with default values) which increases the number at least
   twofold, IMHO, if one agrees that each combo should be counted as
   different word, to which I would say yes

 - I have read somewhere that Japanese pupil after graduating from
   elementary school is supposed to know 1000 kanjis by heart (there
   is a standardised set, I have a book)

-- 
Regards,
Tomasz Rola

--
** A C programmer asked whether computer had Buddha's nature.  **
** As the answer, master did "rm -rif" on the programmer's home**
** directory. And then the C programmer became enlightened...  **
** **
** Tomasz Rola  mailto:tomasz_r...@bigfoot.com **

Re: Text encoding Babel. Was Re: George Keremedjiev


On Sun, 25 Nov 2018, Frank McConnell via cctalk wrote:
I have been told that in the 1960s taking a course in FORTRAN 
programming fulfilled the foreign language requirement at UC Berkeley.


Not currently, and I have some doubt about then.

But, there are conflicting staatements.
One section requires that it be a MODERN language, but with specific 
exceptions for ASL and "classical languages, such as Latin and Greek".

Is FORTRAN considered modern enough?

There are still MANY schools arguing about whether to accept ASL (American 
Sign Language, as used by Deaf people). I would think that therefore, BSL 
(British Sign Language) should qualify.



What about APL?  Although its structure is fairly straight-forward, it 
does, indeed, have a unique character set.

Re: e-mail, character sets, encodings (was Re: George Keremedjiev)

2018-11-25 Thread Bill Gunshannon via cctalk

It's not a mailing list problem.  It's not even a mail problem. It's a

Mail User Agent problem.  It is a display problem.  It is up to the

users mail program to display the email as it was sent.  Unless the

user doesn't want to see anything in character sets other than

their favorite.  Nothing along the way should change anything

in an email message.  The endpoint should receive whatever the

beginning point sent out and either handle it or not.  But it is the

endpoints responsibility to try to display it accurately.  I often

send emails (and post on USENET) characters that are not a part

of ASCII or the English alphabet.  I certainly don't want someone

in between to modify what I send.


bill


On 11/25/18 7:00 PM, ED SHARPE via cctalk wrote:
> Hi  Frank  and  others-
> Yea it  is  only here   we  have  the  problem. or  at leased this is the 
> only  list  serve that  does not  like  it.
>   
> I  wondered if  something  could be handled at the listserv  end  or  not  
> but I have littleknowledge of list serves alas...
>   
> Sad  when people   spent  more   time  on characters  rather than  George the 
>   museum archivist that passed away.
>
>   
> George  worked his  ass off to achieve what  he  did.
>   
> Google him  and  read  about  his  early days. You will be  surprised and  
> you might   find yourself  thankful  for  how easy  you  had  it.
>   
> I did not  know  him  all that  well  but I did  provide his  PDP-8  classic  
> with the  plexis  when He was  first starting up It  was a  beauty and in the 
> 200 serial number  range as  I  remember. We kept  #18 classic  Plexi for  
> SMECC
>   
> I  had  not  planned on selling it  as   always  handy to have a  #2  for an 
> offsite display and you do not have to disturb the in-house  display but 
> George seems  so  focused and  intense on  making a  museum  too  so  who  
> could  say no to that? I  wish I  had.  traveled to  see his  effort  up  
> close.
>   
> Project this  week is  to  find  someone  one  with a UNIVAC  422 or   the 
> predecessor  UNIVAC Digital trainer.  I can NOT BELIEVE I am fortunate enough 
>  to be the only one   with a UNIVAC  422'
>   
> That is all for now...  I  think  I  hear   a half of  turkey and leftover 
> dressing in the refrig  wailing to  be consumed.
>   
> Ed#  www.smecc.org
>   
>   
>   
> In a message dated 11/25/2018 4:32:34 PM US Mountain Standard Time, 
> cctalk@classiccmp.org writes:
>
>   
> Most mail servers sending inbound messages to the list include the encoding
>
> scheme in the header. The mailer program should process and translate the
> email message body accordingly...in theory anyway. The set up and testing
> of a sampling of encoding variations would reveal which interpreters were
> missing in our particular list's relay process. Someone could create tests
> with the most common 20 or so encoding schemes and a character set dump and
> document the results etc. Anyone have the time for that? I dont really
> think asking persons to fix their email program is the solution, it's a
> mailing list fix/enhancement. I bet there is documentation on such a
> procedure I can't imagine we are the first to encounter this problem. It's
> fixable
> B
>
> On Sun, Nov 25, 2018, 3:24 PM Frank McConnell via cctalk <
> cctalk@classiccmp.org wrote:
>
>> Very old mail programs indeed have no understanding whatsoever of
>> character sets or encoding. They simply display data from the e-mail file
>> on stdout or equivalent. If you are lucky, the character set and encoding
>> in the e-mail match the character set and encoding used by your terminal.
>>
>> The early-to-mid-1990s MIME work was in some part about allowing e-mail to
>> indicate its character set and encoding, because at that point in time
>> there were many character sets and multiple encodings. Before that, you
>> had to figure them out from your correspondent's e-mail address and the
>> mess on your screen or printout.
>>
>> And really it's not just about the mail program, it's about the host
>> operating system and the hardware on which it runs and which you are using
>> to view e-mail. Heavy-metal characters are likely to look funny on a
>> terminal built to display US-ASCII like an HP 2645. Your chances get
>> better if the software has enough understanding of various Roman-language
>> text encodings and you are using an HP 2622 with HP-ROMAN8 character
>> support and the connection between your host and terminal is
>> eight-bit-clean. But then you get something that uses Cyrillic and now
>> you're looking at having another HP 2645 set up to do Russian. And hoping
>> your host software knows how to deal with those character sets and
>> encodings too!
>>
>> -Frank McConnell
>>
>> On Nov 25, 2018, at 9:55, ED SHARPE via cctalk wrote:
>>> seems only the very old mail programs do not adapt to all character
>> sets?
>>>
>>> In a message dated 11/25/2018 6:19:52 AM US Mountain Standard Time,
>> cctalk@classiccmp.org writes:
>>>
>>>

Re: Text encoding Babel. Was Re: George Keremedjiev

We have a tendency to be remarkably ethnocentric.  When you apply for a 
job, do you send them a copy of your RESUME?

There is an exit on 280 for "La Canada" road.

For most European languages (I did say MOST), an 8 bit extended ASCII 
could be adequate.


"Recently" (1981), I was disappointed in IBM's character extensions for 
the 5150.  We got smiley faces, but not even pound-sterling nor Yen!


16 bits would presumably be adequate for designing a character set for 
most phonetic alphabets. (I did say MOST).


When I got my Epson HC-20's (like the HX-20, but including Katakana), and 
my Epson RC-20 (wristwatch, Z80 like, with RAM, ROM, and serial port)
I started to try to learn a little Japanese.  I didn't get very far, but I 
did at least learn the sounds of Katakana, and could sound out words 
written in it (a LOT of computer materials use Katakana for non-Japanese 
words, such as "monitor")


But, full inclusion of pictographic languages (Kanji, etc.) would require 
more than 16 bits.



--
Grumpy Ol' Fred ci...@xenosoft.com

Re: DEC Professional 350 ROMs

2018-11-25 Thread shadoooo via cctalk

Hello,
this is what I found:

These ROMS can
be read on an EPROM programmer as an MC68766 part,
as long as the programer strobes CS or OE when reading
each consecutive address. Most will do that.

They can be directly replaced with pin-compatible EPROM
MC68766 or MCM68766C35 but these are obsolete though
easily available as surplus parts for about 10 dollars
each. The SCM90448C might also be a direct replacement.

Modern EPROM 27HC641 aka M27HC641 can be used and is pin
compatible, as long as you cook the data before burning,
because A10 and A12 (if I remember correctly) are swapped.

Hope this helps.


Andrea

Re: e-mail, character sets, encodings (was Re: George Keremedjiev)

Hi  Frank  and  others-
Yea it  is  only here   we  have  the  problem. or  at leased this is the only  
list  serve that  does not  like  it.

I  wondered if  something  could be handled at the listserv  end  or  not  but 
I have littleknowledge of list serves alas...

Sad  when people   spent  more   time  on characters  rather than  George the   
museum archivist that passed away. 

George  worked his  ass off to achieve what  he  did.

Google him  and  read  about  his  early days. You will be  surprised and  you 
might   find yourself  thankful  for  how easy  you  had  it. 

I did not  know  him  all that  well  but I did  provide his  PDP-8  classic  
with the  plexis  when He was  first starting up It  was a  beauty and in the 
200 serial number  range as  I  remember. We kept  #18 classic  Plexi for  SMECC

I  had  not  planned on selling it  as   always  handy to have a  #2  for an 
offsite display and you do not have to disturb the in-house  display but George 
seems  so  focused and  intense on  making a  museum  too  so  who  could  say 
no to that? I  wish I  had.  traveled to  see his  effort  up  close. 

Project this  week is  to  find  someone  one  with a UNIVAC  422 or   the 
predecessor  UNIVAC Digital trainer.  I can NOT BELIEVE I am fortunate enough  
to be the only one   with a UNIVAC  422'

That is all for now...  I  think  I  hear   a half of  turkey and leftover 
dressing in the refrig  wailing to  be consumed.

Ed#  www.smecc.org 

In a message dated 11/25/2018 4:32:34 PM US Mountain Standard Time, 
cctalk@classiccmp.org writes:

Most mail servers sending inbound messages to the list include the encoding

scheme in the header. The mailer program should process and translate the
email message body accordingly...in theory anyway. The set up and testing
of a sampling of encoding variations would reveal which interpreters were
missing in our particular list's relay process. Someone could create tests
with the most common 20 or so encoding schemes and a character set dump and
document the results etc. Anyone have the time for that? I dont really
think asking persons to fix their email program is the solution, it's a
mailing list fix/enhancement. I bet there is documentation on such a
procedure I can't imagine we are the first to encounter this problem. It's
fixable
B

On Sun, Nov 25, 2018, 3:24 PM Frank McConnell via cctalk <
cctalk@classiccmp.org wrote:

> Very old mail programs indeed have no understanding whatsoever of
> character sets or encoding. They simply display data from the e-mail file
> on stdout or equivalent. If you are lucky, the character set and encoding
> in the e-mail match the character set and encoding used by your terminal.
>
> The early-to-mid-1990s MIME work was in some part about allowing e-mail to
> indicate its character set and encoding, because at that point in time
> there were many character sets and multiple encodings. Before that, you
> had to figure them out from your correspondent's e-mail address and the
> mess on your screen or printout.
>
> And really it's not just about the mail program, it's about the host
> operating system and the hardware on which it runs and which you are using
> to view e-mail. Heavy-metal characters are likely to look funny on a
> terminal built to display US-ASCII like an HP 2645. Your chances get
> better if the software has enough understanding of various Roman-language
> text encodings and you are using an HP 2622 with HP-ROMAN8 character
> support and the connection between your host and terminal is
> eight-bit-clean. But then you get something that uses Cyrillic and now
> you're looking at having another HP 2645 set up to do Russian. And hoping
> your host software knows how to deal with those character sets and
> encodings too!
>
> -Frank McConnell
>
> On Nov 25, 2018, at 9:55, ED SHARPE via cctalk wrote:
> >
> > seems only the very old mail programs do not adapt to all character
> sets?
> >
> >
> > In a message dated 11/25/2018 6:19:52 AM US Mountain Standard Time,
> cctalk@classiccmp.org writes:
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >> On Nov 21, 2018, at 4:46 PM, Bill Gunshannon via cctalk <
> cctalk@classiccmp.org> wrote:
> >>
> >>
> >>> On 11/21/18 5:19 PM, Fred Cisin via cctalk wrote:
> >>> Ed,
> >>> It is YOUR mail program that is doing the extraneous insertions, and
> >>> then not showing them to you when you view your own messages.
> >>>
> >>> ALL of us see either extraneous characters, or extraneous spaces in
> >>> everything that you send!
> >>> I use PINE in a shell account, and they show up as a whole bunch of
> >>> inappropriate spaces.
> >>>
> >>> Seriously, YOUR mail program is inserting extraneous stuff.
> >>> Everybody? but you sees it.
> >>>
> >>
> >> I don't. I didn't see it until someone replied with a
> >>
> >> copy of the offending text included.
> >>
> >>
> >> bill
> >>
> > same here. i didnt see them until some replies included the text.
> >
> > kelly
> >
>
>

Re: Text encoding Babel. Was Re: George Keremedjiev


On 11/25/18 3:53 PM, Liam Proven wrote:

It's been enlightening!


:-)


Some I was ready for.

E.g. In French or Spanish, both of which I can speak to some extent, 
letters  like á or ó are not seen as separate letters: French would call 
them a-acute, an a with an acute accent. Ç is a c with a cedilla.  Etc.


If they are not seen as separate letters, then do their meaning's 
change?  Or is the different accent more for pronunciation?


But in Swedish/Norwegian/Danish -- I speak basic Norwegian and rudimentary 
Swedish -- ø and å and ä and so on are not a or o with accents on: 
they are _different letters_ that come at the end of the alphabet.


I assume that they have different meanings (if that applies to letters) 
and are uses as different as "A" and "q".


Czech is like that. Š and Č and Ž and many more that my Mac can't 
readily type are _extra letters_ which come after the unmodified form 
in the alphabet.


~twitch~

I don't even know how to properly describe something that visually looks 
like letters (glyphs?) to me, but may be an imprecise simplification on 
my part.


Without them, you can't write correct Czech. It's worse than writing 
English without the letter E.


Usually you can guess but not always.

Byt means flat, apartment; b y-acute t means the verb "to be".

You can probably work that out, but you can't always. A restaurant 
menu would be hopelessly corrupted as both "raw" and "with cheese" 
are quite likely.


Indeed.


Sure, my office street name:  Křižíkova

K, r haček, i, z haček, i acute, k o v a.


I had to zoom my font to see enough detail in Křižíkova, but it does 
look like things came through just like you describe.  (They even made 
it through my shell script that I use to re-flow text in replies.)



A hacek is like an upside down circumflex: ^

Also known as a caron.


ACK


Oh yes. It's quite a minefield.


/me blinks and shakes his head.

Czech keyboards have so many extra letters, the *numbers* are on shift 
combinations!


~chuckle~


Well yes.

I believe Mr Corlett here rejects all mail from gmail.com -- except 
mine... ;-)


¯\_(ツ)_/¯



--
Grant. . . .
unix || die

Re: Text encoding Babel. Was Re: George Keremedjiev

2018-11-25 Thread Frank McConnell via cctalk

On Nov 25, 2018, at 15:44, Sean Conner wrote:
>  I even heard of a high school in Tennessee who said computer languages
> fulfill the "foreign language requirements" ... who'da thunk?

I have been told that in the 1960s taking a course in FORTRAN programming 
fulfilled the foreign language requirement at UC Berkeley.

-Frank McConnell

Re: e-mail, character sets, encodings (was Re: George Keremedjiev)


On 11/25/18 4:32 PM, Bill Degnan via cctalk wrote:
Most mail servers sending inbound messages to the list include the 
encoding scheme in the header.  The mailer program should process 
and translate the email message body accordingly...in theory anyway. 


Most email handling programs don't need to bother with what the data is, 
as they just move the data.  This largely includes email list managers. 
This really only becomes a concern if something is modifying part of the 
message (data) as it moves through the system.


The set up and testing of a sampling of encoding variations would reveal 
which interpreters were missing in our particular list's relay process. 


cctalk is using Mailman, and I'm fairly sure that Mailman does handle 
this properly.  Or if there is a bug it has likely been found & 
resolved.  In the event that a bug is found, I think that it would be 
best to report it upstream to Mailman so they can fix it, and then 
install the updates when they are released.


Someone could create tests with the most common 20 or so encoding schemes 
and a character set dump and document the results etc.  Anyone have the 
time for that?


I doubt that this is necessary.

Based on what I've seen, Mailman is handling the message (data) just 
fine.  It's passing the Ed's messages with the UTF-8 =C2=A0 
(quoted-printable) encoded parts just fine.


I dont really think asking persons to fix their email program is 
the solution


I agree that it's asking an end user to fix their email client is the 
most viable solution.



it's a mailing list fix/enhancement.


I disagree.

I'm not convinced that this is a problem in email.

I question how many people are seeing the symptoms -and- what email 
client they are using.


If someone knowingly chooses to use an email client that doesn't support 
UTF-8, then ¯\_(ツ)_/¯  That's their choice.  I just hope that they are 
informed in their choice.


I bet there is documentation on such a procedure I can't imagine we are 
the first to encounter this problem.  It's fixable


If you really do think that this is a problem with the mailing list, I'd 
suggest bringing the problem up on the Mailman mailing list.  Mark S. is 
very responsive and can help people fix problems / configurations in 
short order.




--
Grant. . . .
unix || die

Re: Text encoding Babel. Was Re: George Keremedjiev

2018-11-25 Thread Sean Conner via cctalk

It was thus said that the Great Bill Gunshannon via cctalk once stated:
> 
> On 11/25/18 5:42 PM, Grant Taylor via cctalk wrote:
> > On 11/23/18 5:52 AM, Peter Corlett via cctalk wrote:
> >> Worse than that, it's *American* ignorance and cultural snobbery 
> >> which also affects various English-speaking countries.
> >
> > Please do not ascribe such ignorance with such a broad brush, at least 
> > not without qualifiers that account for people that do try to respect 
> > other people's cultures.
> >
> >
> Q.  What do you call someone who speaks three languages?
> 
> A. Trilingual.
> 
> Q.  What do you call someone who speaks two languages?
> 
> A. Bilingual.
> 
> Q.  What do you call someone who speaks one language?
> 
> A. American.

  As an American, a friend of mine from Sweden (who himself speaks at least
three languages) considered me multilingual.  Of course, my other languages
are BASIC, Assembly, C, Forth ...

  I even heard of a high school in Tennessee who said computer languages
fulfill the "foreign language requirements" ... who'da thunk?

> OK, it's a joke. (I'm American and speak 4 languages.)

  -spc (Who speaks English and perhaps a dozen words in German, but
plenty of computer languages ... )

Re: e-mail, character sets, encodings (was Re: George Keremedjiev)

2018-11-25 Thread Bill Degnan via cctalk

Most mail servers sending inbound messages to the list include the encoding
scheme in the header.  The mailer program should process and translate the
email message body accordingly...in theory anyway.  The set up and testing
of a sampling of encoding variations would reveal which interpreters were
missing in our particular list's relay process.  Someone could create tests
with the most common 20 or so encoding schemes and a character set dump and
document the results etc.  Anyone have the time for that?  I dont really
think asking persons to fix their email program is the solution, it's a
mailing list fix/enhancement.  I bet there is documentation on such a
procedure I can't imagine we are the first to encounter this problem.  It's
fixable
B

On Sun, Nov 25, 2018, 3:24 PM Frank McConnell via cctalk <
cctalk@classiccmp.org wrote:

> Very old mail programs indeed have no understanding whatsoever of
> character sets or encoding.  They simply display data from the e-mail file
> on stdout or equivalent.  If you are lucky, the character set and encoding
> in the e-mail match the character set and encoding used by your terminal.
>
> The early-to-mid-1990s MIME work was in some part about allowing e-mail to
> indicate its character set and encoding, because at that point in time
> there were many character sets and multiple encodings.  Before that, you
> had to figure them out from your correspondent's e-mail address and the
> mess on your screen or printout.
>
> And really it's not just about the mail program, it's about the host
> operating system and the hardware on which it runs and which you are using
> to view e-mail.  Heavy-metal characters are likely to look funny on a
> terminal built to display US-ASCII like an HP 2645.  Your chances get
> better if the software has enough understanding of various Roman-language
> text encodings and you are using an HP 2622 with HP-ROMAN8 character
> support and the connection between your host and terminal is
> eight-bit-clean.  But then you get something that uses Cyrillic and now
> you're looking at having another HP 2645 set up to do Russian. And hoping
> your host software knows how to deal with those character sets and
> encodings too!
>
> -Frank McConnell
>
> On Nov 25, 2018, at 9:55, ED SHARPE via cctalk wrote:
> >
> > seems only the  very old   mail programs  do not adapt  to all character
> sets?
> >
> >
> > In a message dated 11/25/2018 6:19:52 AM US Mountain Standard Time,
> cctalk@classiccmp.org writes:
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >> On Nov 21, 2018, at 4:46 PM, Bill Gunshannon via cctalk <
> cctalk@classiccmp.org> wrote:
> >>
> >>
> >>> On 11/21/18 5:19 PM, Fred Cisin via cctalk wrote:
> >>> Ed,
> >>> It is YOUR mail program that is doing the extraneous insertions, and
> >>> then not showing them to you when you view your own messages.
> >>>
> >>> ALL of us see either extraneous characters, or extraneous spaces in
> >>> everything that you send!
> >>> I use PINE in a shell account, and they show up as a whole bunch of
> >>> inappropriate spaces.
> >>>
> >>> Seriously, YOUR mail program is inserting extraneous stuff.
> >>> Everybody? but you sees it.
> >>>
> >>
> >> I don't. I didn't see it until someone replied with a
> >>
> >> copy of the offending text included.
> >>
> >>
> >> bill
> >>
> > same here. i didnt see them until some replies included the text.
> >
> > kelly
> >
>
>

Re: Text encoding Babel. Was Re: George Keremedjiev


On 11/25/18 3:51 PM, Bill Gunshannon via cctalk wrote:

Q.  What do you call someone who speaks three languages?

A. Trilingual.

Q.  What do you call someone who speaks two languages?

A. Bilingual.

Q.  What do you call someone who speaks one language?

A. American.


Monolingual.


OK, it's a joke. (I'm American and speak 4 languages.)


I've heard it before.  I know there are a LOT of monolingual people in 
the world that don't live in the U.S.A.  But I'll guess that percentage 
wise, the U.S.A. is probably up there for monolingual people.




--
Grant. . . .
unix || die

Re: Text encoding Babel. Was Re: George Keremedjiev

2018-11-25 Thread Bill Gunshannon via cctalk


On 11/25/18 6:06 PM, Chuck Guzis via cctalk wrote:
> On 11/25/18 2:53 PM, Liam Proven via cctalk wrote:
>> On Sun, 25 Nov 2018 at 23:42, Grant Taylor via cctalk
>>  wrote:
>>
>>> I bet you see all sorts of things that I'm ignorant of.
>> It's been enlightening!
> I routinely get Turkish and Greek spam in my mailbox--and I've gotten
> Cyrillic-alphabet stuff as well.
>
> Shrug.  We all live on the same planet.
>
I live in the US and while I see less of it now than I used to,

at the University I used to get SPAM in Korean, Chinese,

Japanese, Cyrillic, Arabic, Hebrew and a couple of time

even Amharic.  Thus the reason ASCII is no longer the

"standard".


bill

Re: Text encoding Babel. Was Re: George Keremedjiev

2018-11-25 Thread Chuck Guzis via cctalk

On 11/25/18 2:53 PM, Liam Proven via cctalk wrote:
> On Sun, 25 Nov 2018 at 23:42, Grant Taylor via cctalk
>  wrote:
> 
>> I bet you see all sorts of things that I'm ignorant of.
> 
> It's been enlightening!

I routinely get Turkish and Greek spam in my mailbox--and I've gotten
Cyrillic-alphabet stuff as well.

Shrug.  We all live on the same planet.

--Chuck

Re: Text encoding Babel. Was Re: George Keremedjiev

2018-11-25 Thread Liam Proven via cctalk

On Sun, 25 Nov 2018 at 23:42, Grant Taylor via cctalk
 wrote:

> I bet you see all sorts of things that I'm ignorant of.

It's been enlightening!

Some I was ready for.

E.g. In French or Spanish, both of which I can speak to some extent,
letters  like á or ó are not seen as separate letters: French would
call them a-acute, an a with an acute accent. Ç is a c with a cedilla.
Etc.

But in Swedish/Norwegian/Danish -- I speak basic Norwegian and
rudimentary Swedish -- ø and å and ä and so on are not a or o with
accents on: they are _different letters_ that come at the end of the
alphabet.

Czech is like that. Š and Č and Ž and many more that my Mac can't
readily type are _extra letters_ which come after the unmodified form
in the alphabet.

Without them, you can't write correct Czech. It's worse than writing
English without the letter E.

Usually you can guess but not always.

Byt means flat, apartment; b y-acute t means the verb "to be".

You can probably work that out, but you can't always. A restaurant
menu would be hopelessly corrupted as both "raw" and "with cheese" are
quite likely.

> > For example, right now, I am in my office in Křižíkova. I can't
> > type that name correctly without Unicode characters, because the ANSI
> > character set doesn't contain enough letters for Czech.
>
> Intriguing.  Is there an old MS-DOS Code Page (or comparable technique)
> that does encompass the necessary characters?

Don't know. But I suspect there weren't many PCs here before the
Velvet Revolution in 1989. Democracy came around the time of Windows
3.0 so there may not have been much of a commerical drive.

> Would you please provide an example?

Sure, my office street name:  Křižíkova

> (I'm curious if my email client
> will display things properly.)

K, r haček, i, z haček, i acute, k o v a.

A hacek is like an upside down circumflex: ^

Also known as a caron.

> Oh my.  I had no idea that accent characters made such a difference. But
> I consider that to be my personal ignorance living in the U.S.A.  I do
> NOT think it's anybody's fault by my own.  I'll defend others if someone
> tries to say that their native / local regional norm is the problem.

Oh yes. It's quite a minefield.

Czech keyboards have so many extra letters, the *numbers* are on shift
combinations!

> I will say that I think everybody has their own individual prerogative
> to filter email as they see fit.  They just need to know that they are
> doing and own the fact that they might be causing unintentional harm.
>
> P.S.  Resending from the correct email address.  —  A recent Thunderbird
> update broke the Correct-Identity add-on.  :-(

Well yes.

I believe Mr Corlett here rejects all mail from gmail.com -- except mine... ;-)

-- 
Liam Proven - Profile: https://about.me/liamproven
Email: lpro...@cix.co.uk - Google Mail/Hangouts/Plus: lpro...@gmail.com
Twitter/Facebook/Flickr: lproven - Skype/LinkedIn: liamproven
UK: +44 7939-087884 - ČR (+ WhatsApp/Telegram/Signal): +420 702 829 053

RE: TCL Terminal

2018-11-25 Thread Dave Wade via cctalk

> -Original Message-
> From: cctalk  On Behalf Of Al Kossow via
> cctalk
> Sent: 25 November 2018 17:22
> To: cctalk@classiccmp.org
> Subject: Re: TCL Terminal
> 
> 
> 
> On 11/25/18 8:56 AM, Dave Wade via cctalk wrote:
> 
> > I can't seem to get into ant set-up menus, and I am sure it used to
> > show these, Does any one have any documents on these?
> 
> try holding down the space bar on powerup
> 

No

> dumps of the firmware would be nice
> 

I think that’s the only way I will find out if there is a setup menu. I am 
beginning to think it might be a dedicated function terminal with no config 
options.
It does work as a terminal on but its not ANSI/VT. When I run EDIT on the VAX 
it goes into some graphics mode.
I have put it on to my ToDo list but don't hold your breath. 

Dave
G4UGM

Re: Removing PVA from a CRT

Saving this  thread!
Thanks  for the great info and hints  as we have a stack of HP  254x terminals  
and some of them  graphics  hi end  ones... have  no idea if they  will light 
off for  not but thankful to have  even as  static  displays. 

Ed Sharpe  Archivist for  SMECC  

In a message dated 11/25/2018 12:27:56 PM US Mountain Standard Time, 
cctalk@classiccmp.org writes:

>

> The heat pads are worth a shot if they can maintain temp long enough to do
> the job, though you'll be up against quite a bit of thermal mass with that
> thick glass. The old trick that people are still using today with vintage
> 21" CRT's is to put them in a kiddie pool outside and let the sun warm the
> water. You don't want to start too hot for risk of cracking the glass.
> *Glances out window* I can tell you that trick wouldn't work here today,
> nor for 6 more months.
>
> If you have a way of ensuring the optically clear adhesive sheet bonds
> evenly and won't yellow, I don't see why that wouldn't work. I recall
> someone did do the foam tape/packing tape operation and then DID fill the
> void with a PVA type liquid material. Risky to ensure all the air bubbles
> made their way out, for sure. -C
>
>
>

I did some tiny bit of research into this when I dealt with my HP2640 B and
a VR201. The former was in a condition where just a tiny fraction in the
middle of the screen attached to the glass so it almost fell of by itself.
With the VR201 the story was a bit different. I didn't want to heat it up
like most people seems to be doing when looking at the Youtube clips. I
checked the solubility of the PVA (PVAc really, PVA is something different)
in water and nothing happened at all. I tried to heat the water a bit but
no change. I am not sure how come people are successful with this method.
But I investigated PVAc a bit and found out that it is soluble in various
esters. I bought a bottle of Butylacetate and indeed it made it dissolve
quite well. Butylacetate is mostly used as as solvent for polyester paints,
and I think it is an ingredient in what women use for removing nail polish
(when not using acetone). BTW Acetone is also dissolving PVAc very well but
the boiling temperature is much lower. As far as I can understand
Butylacetate is not very harmful to deal with either.

What I did wash to inject butylacetate using a long needle syringe in
between the front glass and the CRT and let it rest for a few days. I put
some plastic wrap around to contain the butylacetate a bit more and then I
repeated it a couple of times until the front glass simply fell off.

This is the method I will use in future with my other screens that have the
same problem (HP2645, HP9835, HP9845, (Possibly also the Tektronix 4016
depending on the type of front glass used).

/Mattis

Re: Text encoding Babel. Was Re: George Keremedjiev

2018-11-25 Thread Bill Gunshannon via cctalk


On 11/25/18 5:42 PM, Grant Taylor via cctalk wrote:
> On 11/23/18 5:52 AM, Peter Corlett via cctalk wrote:
>> Worse than that, it's *American* ignorance and cultural snobbery 
>> which also affects various English-speaking countries.
>
> Please do not ascribe such ignorance with such a broad brush, at least 
> not without qualifiers that account for people that do try to respect 
> other people's cultures.
>
>
Q.  What do you call someone who speaks three languages?

A. Trilingual.

Q.  What do you call someone who speaks two languages?

A. Bilingual.

Q.  What do you call someone who speaks one language?

A. American.



OK, it's a joke. (I'm American and speak 4 languages.)


bill

Re: Text encoding Babel. Was Re: George Keremedjiev


On 11/23/18 11:27 AM, Tomasz Rola via cctalk wrote:
Well, that was low hanging fruit. But if he indeed turns it off and the 
problem is not gone, that will be a bit of puzzle. Will require some way 
to compare mailboxes in search of pattern in missing emails... Which may 
or may not be obvious... which will lead to more puzzles... oy maybe I 
should have stayed muted and let others do the job...


I'd question modern anti-spam techniques like DMARC and DKIM.  I'd 
suggest checking the mailing list to see if there is any information 
about bounces.


You can probably see crumbs of missing messages in message flow (likely 
already happening), the References: & In-Reply-To: headers, and the list 
archive.




--
Grant. . . .
unix || die

Re: Text encoding Babel. Was Re: George Keremedjiev


On 11/23/18 4:12 AM, Liam Proven via cctalk wrote:

That's English-language cultural snobbery.


I don't think I'd go that far.

I'd suspect it's an unfortunate false positive of a spam filtering 
technique that Guy uses.


Does the technique have some negative side effects?  Sure.

Are said side effects intentional?  I doubt it.

I'm a native Anglophone but I live in a non-English speaking country, 
Czechia.


I bet you see all sorts of things that I'm ignorant of.

For example, right now, I am in my office in Křižíkova. I can't 
type that name correctly without Unicode characters, because the ANSI 
character set doesn't contain enough letters for Czech.


Intriguing.  Is there an old MS-DOS Code Page (or comparable technique) 
that does encompass the necessary characters?


It can cope with some Western European letters needed for Spanish, 
French etc., but not even enough for the Norwegian letter ``ø''. So 
I can type the name of the district of Prague I'm in -- Karlín -- 
and you'll probably see that, but the street name, I am guessing not.


Would you please provide an example?  (I'm curious if my email client 
will display things properly.)  Feel free to pick any example that you 
like so that you don't have to reveal information you might want to keep 
private.


"Krizikova" is usually close enough but it's not correct. Those letters 
are important. E.g. "sýrové" means cheesy, but "syrové" means 
raw. That's a significant difference.


Oh my.  I had no idea that accent characters made such a difference. But 
I consider that to be my personal ignorance living in the U.S.A.  I do 
NOT think it's anybody's fault by my own.  I'll defend others if someone 
tries to say that their native / local regional norm is the problem.


It matters to me and I'm not even Czech and don't speak it particularly 
well...


Fair enough.

So if you tried to mail me something at work -- the address I normally 
use, for instance for the Alphasmart Dana Wireless on the way to to 
me from Baltimore right now -- and you get a reply saying "package for 
[streetname] undeliverable" in the subject -- you'd just reject it.


That's basically discriminating against people who don't speak your 
language, and in my book, that's not OK.


I will say that I think everybody has their own individual prerogative 
to filter email as they see fit.  They just need to know that they are 
doing and own the fact that they might be causing unintentional harm.


P.S.  Resending from the correct email address.  —  A recent Thunderbird 
update broke the Correct-Identity add-on.  :-(




--
Grant. . . .
unix || die

Re: Text encoding Babel. Was Re: George Keremedjiev


On 11/23/18 5:52 AM, Peter Corlett via cctalk wrote:
Worse than that, it's *American* ignorance and cultural snobbery which 
also affects various English-speaking countries.


Please do not ascribe such ignorance with such a broad brush, at least 
not without qualifiers that account for people that do try to respect 
other people's cultures.


The pound sign is not in US-ASCII, and the euro sign is not in ISO-8859-1, 
for example.


Well, seeing as how ASCII, the /American/ Standard Code for Information 
Interchange, is inherently /American/, I don't personally fault it for 
not having currency symbols for other languages / regions.


Instead, I consider ASCII to be a limited standard.  Hence why so much 
effort has gone into other standards to overcome this, and other, 
limitation(s).


I do not know for sure, but I'm confident that other character sets 
don't have characters / glyphs from other languages.


I'm sure that there is room for a discussion of why ASCII is used as the 
underlying character set for network services and the imposition that it 
imposes on international friends and colleagues.


Amusingly, peering through my inbox in which I have mail in both Dutch 
and English, the only one with a UTF-8 subject line is in English. It 
was probably composed on a Windows box which "helpfully" turned a hyphen 
into an en-dash.


I'm trying to NOT search my mailbox.

I'd be more curious about the number of bodies that contain UTF-8 or 
UTF-16 that can encode more characters / glyphs.  It's my understanding 
that without some special quite modern extensions, non-ASCII is shunned 
in headers, including the Subject: header.


P.S.  Resending from the correct email address.  —  A recent Thunderbird 
update broke the Correct-Identity add-on.  :-(




--
Grant. . . .
unix || die

e-mail, character sets, encodings (was Re: George Keremedjiev)

2018-11-25 Thread Frank McConnell via cctalk

Very old mail programs indeed have no understanding whatsoever of character 
sets or encoding.  They simply display data from the e-mail file on stdout or 
equivalent.  If you are lucky, the character set and encoding in the e-mail 
match the character set and encoding used by your terminal.

The early-to-mid-1990s MIME work was in some part about allowing e-mail to 
indicate its character set and encoding, because at that point in time there 
were many character sets and multiple encodings.  Before that, you had to 
figure them out from your correspondent's e-mail address and the mess on your 
screen or printout.

And really it's not just about the mail program, it's about the host operating 
system and the hardware on which it runs and which you are using to view 
e-mail.  Heavy-metal characters are likely to look funny on a terminal built to 
display US-ASCII like an HP 2645.  Your chances get better if the software has 
enough understanding of various Roman-language text encodings and you are using 
an HP 2622 with HP-ROMAN8 character support and the connection between your 
host and terminal is eight-bit-clean.  But then you get something that uses 
Cyrillic and now you're looking at having another HP 2645 set up to do Russian. 
And hoping your host software knows how to deal with those character sets and 
encodings too!

-Frank McConnell

On Nov 25, 2018, at 9:55, ED SHARPE via cctalk wrote:
> 
> seems only the  very old   mail programs  do not adapt  to all character 
> sets? 
> 
> 
> In a message dated 11/25/2018 6:19:52 AM US Mountain Standard Time, 
> cctalk@classiccmp.org writes:
> 
>  
> 
> 
>> On Nov 21, 2018, at 4:46 PM, Bill Gunshannon via cctalk 
>>  wrote:
>> 
>> 
>>> On 11/21/18 5:19 PM, Fred Cisin via cctalk wrote:
>>> Ed,
>>> It is YOUR mail program that is doing the extraneous insertions, and 
>>> then not showing them to you when you view your own messages.
>>> 
>>> ALL of us see either extraneous characters, or extraneous spaces in 
>>> everything that you send!
>>> I use PINE in a shell account, and they show up as a whole bunch of 
>>> inappropriate spaces.
>>> 
>>> Seriously, YOUR mail program is inserting extraneous stuff.
>>> Everybody? but you sees it.
>>> 
>> 
>> I don't. I didn't see it until someone replied with a
>> 
>> copy of the offending text included.
>> 
>> 
>> bill
>> 
> same here. i didnt see them until some replies included the text.
> 
> kelly
>

Re: UniBone - access DEC PDP-11 UNIBUS under Linux

2018-11-25 Thread Kevin McQuiggin via cctalk

Wow, fantastic!!!

Sent from my iPhone

> On Nov 12, 2018, at 05:33, Jörg Hoppe via cctech  
> wrote:
> 
> Guys,
> 
> I'm about to finish another project:
> "UniBone" - a Linux-to-UNIBUS bridge, based on the BeagleBone Black.
> 
> It is supposed to be a development platform for device emulation.
> At the moment it can emulate memory, emulate an RL11 controller with 4 RL 
> drives attached, and act as UNIBUS hardware test adapter.
> 
> There are some web pages at http://retrocmp.com/projects/unibone
> And I'll show it on VCFE.CH in Zurich on Nov 24/25,  plugged into a PDP-11/05.
> 
> Enjoy,
> Joerg
>

Re: Removing PVA from a CRT

2018-11-25 Thread Mattis Lind via cctalk

>
> The heat pads are worth a shot if they can maintain temp long enough to do
> the job, though you'll be up against quite a bit of thermal mass with that
> thick glass. The old trick that people are still using today with vintage
> 21" CRT's is to put them in a kiddie pool outside and let the sun warm the
> water. You don't want to start too hot for risk of cracking the glass.
> *Glances out window* I can tell you that trick wouldn't work here today,
> nor for 6 more months.
>
> If you have a way of ensuring the optically clear adhesive sheet bonds
> evenly and won't yellow, I don't see why that wouldn't work. I recall
> someone did do the foam tape/packing tape operation and then DID fill the
> void with a PVA type liquid material. Risky to ensure all the air bubbles
> made their way out, for sure. -C
>
>
>

I did some tiny bit of research into this when I dealt with my HP2640 B and
a VR201. The former was in a condition where just a tiny fraction in the
middle of the screen attached to the glass so it almost fell of by itself.
With the VR201 the story was a bit different. I didn't want to heat it up
like most people seems to be doing when looking at the Youtube clips. I
checked the solubility of the PVA (PVAc really, PVA is something different)
in water and nothing happened at all. I tried to heat the water a bit but
no change. I am not sure how come people are successful with this method.
But I investigated PVAc a bit and found out that it is soluble in various
esters. I bought a bottle of Butylacetate and indeed it made it dissolve
quite well. Butylacetate is mostly used as as solvent for polyester paints,
and I think it is an ingredient in what women use for removing nail polish
(when not using acetone). BTW Acetone is also dissolving PVAc very well but
the boiling temperature is much lower. As far as I can understand
Butylacetate is not very harmful to deal with either.

What I did wash to inject butylacetate using a long needle syringe in
between the front glass and the CRT and let it rest for a few days. I put
some plastic wrap around to contain the butylacetate a bit more and then I
repeated it a couple of times until the front glass simply fell off.

This is the method I will use in future with my other screens that have the
same problem (HP2645, HP9835, HP9845, (Possibly also the Tektronix 4016
depending on the type of front glass used).

/Mattis

Re: Sun Optical Mouse and pad

2018-11-25 Thread Jeffrey S. Worley via cctalk

I had a Sparcstation 4/330 with optical mouse, without the pad.  Of
course I wanted one, and eventually found one, but in the interim, I
did what an old hack suggested and printed myself a grid on paper. 
Works peachy.  The spacing of the grid will determine the tracking
speed of the mouse.  Graph paper works if you get a fine grid.  Try
.5cm.

Just to get you on the road til' your pad gets to you.  My old hack
told me they had a problem with the pads disappearing and had a file on
their network for folks to just print themselves one for the day.

Jeff

Re: TCL Terminal

2018-11-25 Thread Chuck Guzis via cctalk

On 11/25/18 9:55 AM, Al Kossow via cctalk wrote:
> 'TCL' are the initials of the person who created the first Ethernet 
> transceiver (Tat Lam).
> 
> 
> https://books.google.com/books?id=ooBqdIXIqbwC=PA73=PA73

I note that the same section mentions Jim Theornton.  I recall on a trip
to CDC ARHOPS in Arden Hills, seeing a backhoe trenching around the
employee parking lot.  The path didn't make much sense, so I asked a
co-worker about it.  "Oh, that's Jim Thornton laying his coax loop."...

--Chuck

Re: George Keremedjiev

seems only the  very old   mail programs  do not adapt  to all character sets? 


In a message dated 11/25/2018 6:19:52 AM US Mountain Standard Time, 
cctalk@classiccmp.org writes:

 


> On Nov 21, 2018, at 4:46 PM, Bill Gunshannon via cctalk 
>  wrote:
> 
> 
>> On 11/21/18 5:19 PM, Fred Cisin via cctalk wrote:
>> Ed,
>> It is YOUR mail program that is doing the extraneous insertions, and 
>> then not showing them to you when you view your own messages.
>> 
>> ALL of us see either extraneous characters, or extraneous spaces in 
>> everything that you send!
>> I use PINE in a shell account, and they show up as a whole bunch of 
>> inappropriate spaces.
>> 
>> Seriously, YOUR mail program is inserting extraneous stuff.
>> Everybody? but you sees it.
>> 
> 
> I don't. I didn't see it until someone replied with a
> 
> copy of the offending text included.
> 
> 
> bill
> 
same here. i didnt see them until some replies included the text.

kelly

Re: TCL Terminal

'TCL' are the initials of the person who created the first Ethernet transceiver 
(Tat Lam).

https://books.google.com/books?id=ooBqdIXIqbwC=PA73=PA73

He also sold the first 10mbit transceiver and repeater.

On 11/25/18 9:41 AM, Chuck Guzis via cctalk wrote:
> Don't know the exact product, but TCL INc. was in Fremont, CA and was a
> maker of various bits of LAN gear.
> 
> --Chuck
>

Re: TCL Terminal

2018-11-25 Thread Chuck Guzis via cctalk

Don't know the exact product, but TCL INc. was in Fremont, CA and was a
maker of various bits of LAN gear.

--Chuck

Re: TCL Terminal




On 11/25/18 9:22 AM, Al Kossow via cctalk wrote:

> try holding down the space bar on powerup


this also works to get into local test on the mtx 1483

i was able to get this to work with a Compaq 122-key kb but not with the 
102-key telex kb I tried

Re: TCL Terminal

you accidentally included a pic of the memorex terminal as picture 1 so there 
isn't a picture of the
back of the board. I'm assuming there is an AT keyboard connector on the TCL

On 11/25/18 9:22 AM, Al Kossow via cctalk wrote:
> 
> 
> On 11/25/18 8:56 AM, Dave Wade via cctalk wrote:
> 
>> I can't seem to get into ant set-up menus, and I am sure it used to show
>> these, Does any one have any documents on these?
> 
> try holding down the space bar on powerup
> 
> dumps of the firmware would be nice
> 
>

Re: TCL Terminal




On 11/25/18 8:56 AM, Dave Wade via cctalk wrote:

> I can't seem to get into ant set-up menus, and I am sure it used to show
> these, Does any one have any documents on these?

try holding down the space bar on powerup

dumps of the firmware would be nice

Re: DEC Professional 350 ROMs

2018-11-25 Thread Glen Slick via cctalk

On Sun, Nov 25, 2018, 5:20 AM Rob Jarratt via cctalk  I have some ROMs from two DEC Pro 350s I want to image. My programmer fails
> to identify them automatically. From the technical manual it would seem
> that
> they are two 8K ROMS in a DIP24 package. I have tried to pick some other
> model of ROM and read them, but I am not convinced I am reading them
> correctly as a result (top 4K all 1s).
>
> On the other pair one of them is marked:
>
> /B8250
>
> MM51264KXL/N
>
> 23-115E4-00
>
> TP-03
>
>
>
> And the other is marked:
>
> Mostek 8252
>
> MK36C25N-5
>
> 23-116E4-00
>
> TP01
>

The 23-115E4 and 23-116E4 pair images are available here:

http://www.dunnington.info/public/DECROMs/

TCL Terminal

2018-11-25 Thread Dave Wade via cctalk

Folks,

While sorting through my pile of 3270 terminals I came across a little
plastic box with 2 x 9-pin rs232, 1x25pin printer port and one VGA port. On
taking the lid off it seems it's a terminal for NYCE made by TCL but I can
find no info on the net.

I put a few pics of it here:-

 

https://1drv.ms/f/s!Ag4BJfE5B3onkY8FlfveCwr73J5HIw

 

I can't seem to get into ant set-up menus, and I am sure it used to show
these, Does any one have any documents on these?

Searching on google is hampered by the fact there is a TCL language.

 

Dave Wade

G4UGM & EA7KAE

Re: Working Ardent Titan on Youtube

2018-11-25 Thread Noel Chiappa via cctalk

> From: Camiel Vanderhoeven

> I have a fully working Ardent Titan with some interesting software on
> it - the bundled version of MATLAB, and BIOGRAF, a molecular modeling
> application

Neat! Excellent! Do you have the source for any/all of the software on it?

Noel

Re: Working Ardent Titan on Youtube

2018-11-25 Thread Jon Elson via cctalk


On 11/25/2018 08:42 AM, Camiel Vanderhoeven via cctech wrote:

Now that my mousepad problem has been solved, and I have a fully working Ardent 
Titan with some interesting software on it – the bundled version of MATLAB, and 
BIOGRAF, a molecular modeling application – I decided to make a short video 
about this system in which I show the hardware and demonstrate some of the 
software: https://youtu.be/tMSnnt3iFz0

  



WOW!  Just wow!  That is pretty impressive, but for 1987, it 
is truly awesome!


Jon

Working Ardent Titan on Youtube

2018-11-25 Thread Camiel Vanderhoeven via cctalk

Now that my mousepad problem has been solved, and I have a fully working Ardent 
Titan with some interesting software on it – the bundled version of MATLAB, and 
BIOGRAF, a molecular modeling application – I decided to make a short video 
about this system in which I show the hardware and demonstrate some of the 
software: https://youtu.be/tMSnnt3iFz0

 

For those who haven’t heard of the system; the 1987 Ardent Titan (later renamed 
the Stardent 1500) was the first system that combined vector processors (as in 
a Cray-like architecture) and a graphics engine on the same backplane, and was 
the highest-performing graphics supercomputer for a short while. In the end, 
however, a longer than planned time to market and a forced merger with Stellar 
Computer caused the premature demise of the company.

 

Cleve Moler, the inventor of MATLAB, worked at Ardent for three years, which is 
one of the reasons the Titan was the only computer ever to come with MATLAB as 
part of its bundled software. As I found out later – after creating this video 
– the version of MATLAB on the Titan was unique, because it included a “render” 
command, which would plot a 3D surface using the Doré graphics library. On 
other platforms, MATLAB could only render mesh plots. It wasn’t until 1992 that 
the mainstream version of MATLAB gained 3D surface rendering.

 

Cleve wrote a number of articles on his blog about the Titan, one of which 
(https://blogs.mathworks.com/cleve/2013/12/09/the-ardent-titan-part-2/) 
describes how the Titan was used to create a video of a vibrating L-shaped 
membrane. With a little help from Cleve, I’m trying to recreate this video. A 
first effort – which isn’t quite right yet – can be seen here: 
https://youtu.be/-XeabDqRAG8

 

I hope some of you enjoy these!

 

Camiel

Re: Looking for optical grid mouse pad

2018-11-25 Thread Camiel Vanderhoeven via cctalk

Just to let you all know,

I received an IMSI (Mouse Systems M4) mouse with mousepad, and that mousepad 
works with the Ardent's mouse as well.

Camiel

On 11/14/18, 8:42 AM, "cctalk on behalf of Camiel Vanderhoeven via cctalk" 
 wrote:

It is a mouse systems mouse, model M4Q, and it has the two holes (one red 
light, one infrared), so I'll need the blue-and-black grid. I've hopefully 
bought a correct one off eBay, just waiting for it to arrive.

Camiel

On 11/14/18, 3:32 AM, "cctalk on behalf of systems_glitch via cctalk" 
 wrote:

There's a blue-and-black grid, and an all-black grid, at least with Sun
mice. Mice that work on one won't work on the other. At least with the
blue-and-black grid, spacing didn't seem to matter -- I've got three 
sizes
of spacing, all three work with the mice that support it.

Not sure if it applies to your situation, but the Mouse Systems mice 
with
two holes, one emitting red light, work with the blue-and-black pads, 
and
the newer Sun mice with a single hole works on the black grid. The
blue-and-black grid looks metallic blue until you take a close look 
with a
lighted magnifier.

Thanks,
Jonathan

On Tue, Nov 13, 2018 at 5:40 PM Rico Pajarola via cctalk <
cctalk@classiccmp.org> wrote:

> On Tue, Nov 13, 2018 at 10:32 PM Tomasz Rola via cctalk <
> cctalk@classiccmp.org> wrote:
>
> > On Sat, Nov 10, 2018 at 07:12:49PM +0100, Camiel Vanderhoeven via 
cctech
> > wrote:
> > > On 11/10/18, 6:49 PM, "Rico Pajarola"  wrote:
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > > I have tried to print my own mousepad, but the mouse only works in
> > > the y direction on it.
> > >
> > > there were 2 versions of that mousepad, and the symptom of using 
the
> > > wrong one was that the mouse would only move in one direction.
> >
> > Out of curiosity, would it work if you printed this one-directional
> > grid on a translucent plastic and overlaid it on top of white paper
> > sheet? If yes, then would it work if you printed two such 
translucent
> > plastic grids and ovelaid them one on the other turned 90 degrees 
and
> > that on white paper?
> >
> I never tried, but I don't think this would work. AIUI, it has a 
minimum
> and a maximum spacing for the lines.
>
> The white noise sheet "works" because some the black-white-black
> transitions come with the right spacing, no matter what that spacing 
is (it
> has to be the right order of magnitude, and it doesn't work as well 
as the
> real thing). Crumpled tin-foil has been reported to work, too.
>
>
>
> > --
> > Regards,
> > Tomasz Rola
> >
> > --
> > ** A C programmer asked whether computer had Buddha's nature.  
**
> > ** As the answer, master did "rm -rif" on the programmer's home
**
> > ** directory. And then the C programmer became enlightened...  
**
> > ** 
**
> > ** Tomasz Rola  mailto:tomasz_r...@bigfoot.com 
**
> >
>

Re: Text encoding Babel. Was Re: George Keremedjiev

2018-11-25 Thread Guy Dunphy via cctalk

At 07:27 PM 23/11/2018 +0100, you wrote:
>On Fri, Nov 23, 2018 at 07:01:17PM +0100, Liam Proven wrote:
>> On Fri, 23 Nov 2018 at 18:54, Tomasz Rola via cctalk
>>  wrote:
>> >
>> > Turn off trashing mails with Unicode in Subject and see if this solves
>> > a problem?
>> 
>> *Loud laughter in the office*
>> 
>> Well _played_, sir!
>
>Well, that was low hanging fruit.

Yes, I should have pre-empted that one. But glad it gave someone a laugh.

>But if he indeed turns it off and
>the problem is not gone, that will be a bit of puzzle.

It's not related. My cctalk filter runs before the UTF-8 trash filter,
and I check the trashbin regularly.

>Will require
>some way to compare mailboxes in search of pattern in missing
>emails... Which may or may not be obvious... which will lead to more
>puzzles... oy maybe I should have stayed muted and let others do the
>job...

Here's one check. See attached screen-cap of cctalk emails. Usually many per
day, but only one per day on the 15th & 16th Nov, none at all on the 17th.
Did the list actually go silent then? It's possible by random ebb and flow,
or maybe everyone was in shock over the awful Paradise fire death toll.
Which may be over 1000, unless a lot of people listed as missing do turn up.

Guy

DEC Professional 350 ROMs

2018-11-25 Thread Rob Jarratt via cctalk

I have some ROMs from two DEC Pro 350s I want to image. My programmer fails
to identify them automatically. From the technical manual it would seem that
they are two 8K ROMS in a DIP24 package. I have tried to pick some other
model of ROM and read them, but I am not convinced I am reading them
correctly as a result (top 4K all 1s).

 

Here are the markings. On one pair the ROMs are Motorola and one of them is
marked

LM8450

254E4

SCM

90448C

ID8402

 

On the other pair one of them is marked:

/B8250

MM51264KXL/N

23-115E4-00

TP-03

 

And the other is marked:

Mostek 8252

MK36C25N-5

23-116E4-00

TP01

 

I know that in all cases the last line is just an ID for the actual contents
and the last two have a DEC part number in the penultimate line.

 

I have found that using Motorola MCM68766 seems to read the ROMs from one of
the machines and I don't get verification errors when I try to read them
back again a few times, although the contents don't seem to have any
recognisable strings. Using Motorola MCM2716 gave me fewer bytes (of
course), but there seemed to be recognisable strings too.

 

The other pair of ROM chips from the second machine always give verification
errors. I don't know if they are bad, or if it is just timing problems given
that I am not using the right parameters for the ROM chip in the first
place.

 

Can anyone point me at a datasheet that might describe these ROMs, or at
least what they might be equivalent to so I can set my programmer
accordingly?

 

Regards

 

Rob

Re: A weird and ancient IBM offline memory device

2018-11-25 Thread Curious Marc via cctalk

The Noodle Snatcher! We have one of these in the CHM collection. 

Marc

 

From: cctech  on behalf of 
"cct...@classiccmp.org" 
Reply-To: Peter Van Peborgh , "cct...@classiccmp.org" 

Date: Tuesday, November 20, 2018 at 2:14 PM
To: "cct...@classiccmp.org" 
Subject: A weird and ancient IBM offline memory device

 

Vintage geeks,

 

Third attempt - hope springs eternal!

 

Do any of you know where I could get hold of IBM 2321 "Data Cell" media?

1960s-1970s.

 

See:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_2321_Data_Cell

 

If you do, I would like to get hold of one.

 

Many thanks,

 

Peter 

 

PS Apologies if I am boring you.

 

|| |  |   || |  |   ||

Peter Van Peborgh

62 St Mary's Rise

Writhlington  Radstock

Somerset BA3 3PD

UK

01761 439 234

|| |  |   || |  |   ||

Re: George Keremedjiev

2018-11-25 Thread Kelly Fergason via cctalk




> On Nov 21, 2018, at 4:46 PM, Bill Gunshannon via cctalk 
>  wrote:
> 
> 
>> On 11/21/18 5:19 PM, Fred Cisin via cctalk wrote:
>> Ed,
>> It is YOUR mail program that is doing the extraneous insertions, and 
>> then not showing them to you when you view your own messages.
>> 
>> ALL of us see either extraneous characters, or extraneous spaces in 
>> everything that you send!
>> I use PINE in a shell account, and they show up as a whole bunch of 
>> inappropriate spaces.
>> 
>> Seriously, YOUR mail program is inserting extraneous stuff.
>> Everybody? but you sees it.
>> 
> 
> I don't.  I didn't see it until someone replied with a
> 
> copy of the offending text included.
> 
> 
> bill
> 
same here.  i didnt see them until some replies included the text.

kelly

Re: Removing PVA from a CRT

2018-11-25 Thread Michael Thompson via cctalk

>
> Date: Mon, 19 Nov 2018 10:41:36 -0800
> From: Alan Perry 
> Subject: Removing PVA from a CRT
>
> I recently picked up a Rainbow 100. The PVA between the safety glass and
> the CRT on VR201 that came with it has broken down and failed badly.
>
> I have seen videos and read about removing the safety glass, cleaning out
> the PVA, and reattaching and resealing the safety glass.
>
> All that I have seen basically sticks the safety glass on at its edges and
> leaves a void where the PVA had been. It seems to me that the PVA was
> providing some implosion protection. Would it work to replace the PVA and
> attach the safety glass to the tube with an optically clear adhesive sheet?
> I have seen that this exists, but have never used it before.
>
> alan
>

When we fixed the VR14 at the RICM, we were concerned about the safety
aspects of removing the PVA and just using double-sided tape to hold the
outer glass in place. We bought a thin sheet of Lexan at Home Depot, put
the outer glass on a cookie sheet with the outside surface down, put the
sheet of Lexan on top, and put it in an oven. When the temperature hit 420F
(if I remember correctly) the Lexan softened and conformed to the inside of
the glass. We trimmed the Lexan to size, reassembled the Lexan and glass to
the front of the CRT, and glued the steel mounting band in place. It looks
great, and is probably a lot safer than just leaving the PVA out.

-- 
Michael Thompson

A weird and ancient IBM offline memory device

2018-11-25 Thread Peter Van Peborgh via cctalk

Vintage geeks,

Third attempt - hope springs eternal!

Do any of you know where I could get hold of IBM 2321 "Data Cell" media?
1960s-1970s.

See:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_2321_Data_Cell

If you do, I would like to get hold of one.

Many thanks,

Peter 

PS Apologies if I am boring you.

|| |  |   || |  |   ||
Peter Van Peborgh
62 St Mary's Rise
Writhlington  Radstock
SomersetBA3 3PD
UK
01761 439 234
|| |  |   || |  |   ||

Re: Removing PVA from a CRT

2018-11-25 Thread Curious Marc via cctalk

I like this idea, thanks for sharing. I might do the same for my HP 264x 
screens.

Marc

 

From: cctech  on behalf of 
"cct...@classiccmp.org" 
Reply-To: Michael Thompson , 
"cct...@classiccmp.org" 
Date: Tuesday, November 20, 2018 at 5:59 PM
To: "cct...@classiccmp.org" 
Subject: Re: Removing PVA from a CRT

 

When we fixed the VR14 at the RICM, we were concerned about the safety

aspects of removing the PVA and just using double-sided tape to hold the

outer glass in place. We bought a thin sheet of Lexan at Home Depot, put

the outer glass on a cookie sheet with the outside surface down, put the

sheet of Lexan on top, and put it in an oven. When the temperature hit 420F

(if I remember correctly) the Lexan softened and conformed to the inside of

the glass. We trimmed the Lexan to size, reassembled the Lexan and glass to

the front of the CRT, and glued the steel mounting band in place. It looks

great, and is probably a lot safer than just leaving the PVA out.

 

-- 

Michael Thompson

Re: Removing PVA from a CRT

2018-11-25 Thread Cory Heisterkamp via cctalk

On Nov 19, 2018, at 7:28 PM, Alan Perry wrote:

> In the video that I looked at, the guy cut 8 1/8" pieces of double-sided foam 
> tape, three each along the top and bottom and one on each side, then sealed 
> it with clear packing tape. It seemed to me that using some optically clear 
> adhesive sheet would accomplish both jobs.
> 
> I have some heat pads (gel in plastic that gets thrown in a microwave to heat 
> up) for loosening the screen adhesive on iPads and such. Can I use them to 
> get the remaining PVA to loosen up?
>> 
> 

The heat pads are worth a shot if they can maintain temp long enough to do the 
job, though you'll be up against quite a bit of thermal mass with that thick 
glass. The old trick that people are still using today with vintage 21" CRT's 
is to put them in a kiddie pool outside and let the sun warm the water. You 
don't want to start too hot for risk of cracking the glass. *Glances out 
window* I can tell you that trick wouldn't work here today, nor for 6 more 
months.

If you have a way of ensuring the optically clear adhesive sheet bonds evenly 
and won't yellow, I don't see why that wouldn't work. I recall someone did do 
the foam tape/packing tape operation and then DID fill the void with a PVA type 
liquid material. Risky to ensure all the air bubbles made their way out, for 
sure. -C

Re: Removing PVA from a CRT

In the video that I looked at, the guy cut 8 1/8" pieces of double-sided 
foam tape, three each along the top and bottom and one on each side, 
then sealed it with clear packing tape. It seemed to me that using some 
optically clear adhesive sheet would accomplish both jobs.

I have some heat pads (gel in plastic that gets thrown in a microwave to 
heat up) for loosening the screen adhesive on iPads and such. Can I use 
them to get the remaining PVA to loosen up?

On 11/19/18 1:10 PM, Cory Heisterkamp wrote:
Those retrace lines are likely an artifact of the brightness control 
being set too high. It's pretty typical with older monochrome TV sets. 
It also looks like there's insufficient vertical sweep, probably due 
to old capacitors.

On a CRT that small, I wouldn't be concerned about direct fitting the 
safety glass over the CRT. In fact, if it has an implosion band, that 
outer glass could possibly be for glare reduction only. Some TV 
collectors use foam tape around the perimeter of the CRT face as a 
cushion, then seal the glass to the face with a good quality tape.

The good news is that PVA is so bad that an hour soak in a tub of warm 
water should do the trick. -C

On Mon, Nov 19, 2018 at 3:02 PM Alan Perry via cctech 
mailto:cct...@classiccmp.org>> wrote:

On 11/19/18 12:18 PM, Warner Losh wrote:
>
>
> On Mon, Nov 19, 2018 at 11:41 AM Alan Perry via cctech
> mailto:cct...@classiccmp.org>
>> wrote:
>
>
>     I recently picked up a Rainbow 100. The PVA between the safety
>     glass and the CRT on VR201 that came with it has broken down and
>     failed badly.
>
>     I have seen videos and read about removing the safety glass,
>     cleaning out the PVA, and reattaching and resealing the
safety glass.
>
>     All that I have seen basically sticks the safety glass on at its
>     edges and leaves a void where the PVA had been. It seems to me
>     that the PVA was providing some implosion protection. Would it
>     work to replace the PVA and attach the safety glass to the tube
>     with an optically clear adhesive sheet? I have seen that this
>     exists, but have never used it before.
>
>     Also, I have never worked on a CRT before. I am trying to find a
>     local person who can observe me and stop me from doing something
>     stupid. If I can’t find someone, what am I more likely to do
>     wrong? How can I be sure I discharged it before touching it?
>
>
> I have a VR201 that's like this myself, and I've been too scared to
> try to fix it. Instead, I've tried bodging together various
hacks to
> try to get the signal into a modern composite to VGA converter...
>
>     Finally, a VR201 specific question. I booted the Rainbow
over the
>     weekend and, looking through broken-down PVA, I could see the
>     Rainbow has booted and I could enter DOS commands. I could also
>     see white retrace lines. What is the likely cause of that on a
>     35-year-old CRT?
>
>
> Pics?

Here is an attempt to use Facebook for image hosting here. If it
doesn't
work, I will put the image up on a real image hosting site.

https://scontent-sea1-1.xx.fbcdn.net/v/t1.0-9/46508514_10156808244977208_2306314600917762048_n.jpg?_nc_cat=105&_nc_ht=scontent-sea1-1.xx=81c3e1ded7cb1eb6b9d1200a604d9889=5C7778F1

alan
>
> Warner

Re: Removing PVA from a CRT





On 11/19/18 1:48 PM, Paul Koning wrote:



On Nov 19, 2018, at 4:01 PM, Alan Perry via cctech  
wrote:





Finally, a VR201 specific question. I booted the Rainbow over the
weekend and, looking through broken-down PVA, I could see the
Rainbow has booted and I could enter DOS commands. I could also
see white retrace lines. What is the likely cause of that on a
35-year-old CRT?


Pics?

Here is an attempt to use Facebook for image hosting here. If it doesn't work, 
I will put the image up on a real image hosting site.

https://scontent-sea1-1.xx.fbcdn.net/v/t1.0-9/46508514_10156808244977208_2306314600917762048_n.jpg?_nc_cat=105&_nc_ht=scontent-sea1-1.xx=81c3e1ded7cb1eb6b9d1200a604d9889=5C7778F1

alan

It looks like you turned the intensity up so far that the retrace didn't get 
blanked fully.  Not much choice about that given the bad screen, I suppose.


Actually, the intensity is turned all of the way up because that is 
where it happened to be when I connected everything up. I was so focused 
on whether DOS had booted that it didn't even click in my head that I 
could adjust the monitor to make it easier to read. I didn't notice that 
I had things turned all the way up or even notice the retrace lines 
until later when I looked at that picture.


alan

Re: Removing PVA from a CRT

2018-11-25 Thread Warner Losh via cctalk

On Mon, Nov 19, 2018 at 11:41 AM Alan Perry via cctech <
cct...@classiccmp.org> wrote:

>
> I recently picked up a Rainbow 100. The PVA between the safety glass and
> the CRT on VR201 that came with it has broken down and failed badly.
>
> I have seen videos and read about removing the safety glass, cleaning out
> the PVA, and reattaching and resealing the safety glass.
>
> All that I have seen basically sticks the safety glass on at its edges and
> leaves a void where the PVA had been. It seems to me that the PVA was
> providing some implosion protection. Would it work to replace the PVA and
> attach the safety glass to the tube with an optically clear adhesive sheet?
> I have seen that this exists, but have never used it before.
>
> Also, I have never worked on a CRT before. I am trying to find a local
> person who can observe me and stop me from doing something stupid. If I
> can’t find someone, what am I more likely to do wrong? How can I be sure I
> discharged it before touching it?
>

I have a VR201 that's like this myself, and I've been too scared to try to
fix it. Instead, I've tried bodging together various hacks to try to get
the signal into a modern composite to VGA converter...

Finally, a VR201 specific question. I booted the Rainbow over the weekend
> and, looking through broken-down PVA, I could see the Rainbow has booted
> and I could enter DOS commands. I could also see white retrace lines. What
> is the likely cause of that on a 35-year-old CRT?
>

Pics?

Warner

Re: Removing PVA from a CRT

2018-11-25 Thread Cory Heisterkamp via cctalk

Those retrace lines are likely an artifact of the brightness control being
set too high. It's pretty typical with older monochrome TV sets. It also
looks like there's insufficient vertical sweep, probably due to old
capacitors.

On a CRT that small, I wouldn't be concerned about direct fitting the
safety glass over the CRT. In fact, if it has an implosion band, that outer
glass could possibly be for glare reduction only. Some TV collectors use
foam tape around the perimeter of the CRT face as a cushion, then seal the
glass to the face with a good quality tape.

The good news is that PVA is so bad that an hour soak in a tub of warm
water should do the trick. -C

On Mon, Nov 19, 2018 at 3:02 PM Alan Perry via cctech 
wrote:

>
>
> On 11/19/18 12:18 PM, Warner Losh wrote:
> >
> >
> > On Mon, Nov 19, 2018 at 11:41 AM Alan Perry via cctech
> > mailto:cct...@classiccmp.org>> wrote:
> >
> >
> > I recently picked up a Rainbow 100. The PVA between the safety
> > glass and the CRT on VR201 that came with it has broken down and
> > failed badly.
> >
> > I have seen videos and read about removing the safety glass,
> > cleaning out the PVA, and reattaching and resealing the safety glass.
> >
> > All that I have seen basically sticks the safety glass on at its
> > edges and leaves a void where the PVA had been. It seems to me
> > that the PVA was providing some implosion protection. Would it
> > work to replace the PVA and attach the safety glass to the tube
> > with an optically clear adhesive sheet? I have seen that this
> > exists, but have never used it before.
> >
> > Also, I have never worked on a CRT before. I am trying to find a
> > local person who can observe me and stop me from doing something
> > stupid. If I can’t find someone, what am I more likely to do
> > wrong? How can I be sure I discharged it before touching it?
> >
> >
> > I have a VR201 that's like this myself, and I've been too scared to
> > try to fix it. Instead, I've tried bodging together various hacks to
> > try to get the signal into a modern composite to VGA converter...
> >
> > Finally, a VR201 specific question. I booted the Rainbow over the
> > weekend and, looking through broken-down PVA, I could see the
> > Rainbow has booted and I could enter DOS commands. I could also
> > see white retrace lines. What is the likely cause of that on a
> > 35-year-old CRT?
> >
> >
> > Pics?
>
> Here is an attempt to use Facebook for image hosting here. If it doesn't
> work, I will put the image up on a real image hosting site.
>
>
> https://scontent-sea1-1.xx.fbcdn.net/v/t1.0-9/46508514_10156808244977208_2306314600917762048_n.jpg?_nc_cat=105&_nc_ht=scontent-sea1-1.xx=81c3e1ded7cb1eb6b9d1200a604d9889=5C7778F1
>
> alan
> >
> > Warner
>
>

Re: Removing PVA from a CRT

On 11/19/18 12:18 PM, Warner Losh wrote:

On Mon, Nov 19, 2018 at 11:41 AM Alan Perry via cctech
mailto:cct...@classiccmp.org>> wrote:

I recently picked up a Rainbow 100. The PVA between the safety
glass and the CRT on VR201 that came with it has broken down and
failed badly.

I have seen videos and read about removing the safety glass,
cleaning out the PVA, and reattaching and resealing the safety glass.

All that I have seen basically sticks the safety glass on at its
edges and leaves a void where the PVA had been. It seems to me
that the PVA was providing some implosion protection. Would it
work to replace the PVA and attach the safety glass to the tube
with an optically clear adhesive sheet? I have seen that this
exists, but have never used it before.

Also, I have never worked on a CRT before. I am trying to find a
local person who can observe me and stop me from doing something
stupid. If I can’t find someone, what am I more likely to do
wrong? How can I be sure I discharged it before touching it?

I have a VR201 that's like this myself, and I've been too scared to
try to fix it. Instead, I've tried bodging together various hacks to
try to get the signal into a modern composite to VGA converter...

Finally, a VR201 specific question. I booted the Rainbow over the
weekend and, looking through broken-down PVA, I could see the
Rainbow has booted and I could enter DOS commands. I could also
see white retrace lines. What is the likely cause of that on a
35-year-old CRT?

Pics?

Here is an attempt to use Facebook for image hosting here. If it doesn't
work, I will put the image up on a real image hosting site.

https://scontent-sea1-1.xx.fbcdn.net/v/t1.0-9/46508514_10156808244977208_2306314600917762048_n.jpg?_nc_cat=105&_nc_ht=scontent-sea1-1.xx=81c3e1ded7cb1eb6b9d1200a604d9889=5C7778F1

alan

Warner

Re: IBM 3270 Emulation Adapter (ISA)

2018-11-25 Thread Götz Hoffart via cctalk

On Sun, Nov 18, 2018 at 11:46:35PM -0800, jim stephens via cctalk wrote:
> 
> On 11/18/2018 11:00 PM, Patrick Finnegan via cctalk wrote:
> >I'm wondering if anyone knows where to find a copy of some software to
> >make an IBM 3270 Emulation Adapter (the short ISA one) useful. I hear
> >that IBM's PCOMM/3270 2.0 - 4.0 or so will work (on DOS) with the
> >card.

See also


http://vetusware.com/download/IBM%20PC%203270%20Emulation%20Program/?id=12086

perhaps that could help, too.

Regards
Götz

Removing PVA from a CRT