Re: Greaseweazle
On 2/1/2021 10:02 PM, Tom Hunter via cctalk wrote: It works well for me even with the copy protected disks ImageDisk can't copy with. The biggest problem imaging programs had trouble with was how to duplicate whatever errors were on the disk (as in abnormal patterns) when making a copy. I had the best luck with nearly everything with a package called copywright (I think). Big claim to fame was preserving the bit count on the track and spacing when writing. Simple software rarely bothered to do that. They could stretch the image to fit each track. Unless the copy "protector" looked at a way to fit to a generic disk with little variability in the manufacturing, the copy schemes didn't have a lot of other tricks once many of the weird crap was tried and defeated. I work for a company which sold a database program which actually was defeated by that after they fooled a lot of other programs. good to hear that Greasweazle works for that. I have one from Keir Fraser who does a good job of supporting it. Also FWIW, Facebook sucks etc. blah blah, but you can make a fairly low information account and join. FB works happily with adblock plus, and anti tracking for cookies turned up high, and I have a lot of utility machines, one can be rigged to allow FB use w/o any of the pain. At this writing there are 1192 members there. Of course all the questions that any media backup, archival, copy, etc. are generating is there, but there is no embargo on the information. The group is private mainly to keep out the rif raf who spam. I have several groups I manage and do the same. Better to block the membership being ad hoc than having to watch it if you want to keep it spam and bullshit free. thanks Jim
Re: Greaseweazle
There is also Kryoflux: https://kryoflux.com/ It works well for me even with the copy protected disks ImageDisk can't copy with. Tom Hunter On Tue, Feb 2, 2021 at 10:23 AM Al Kossow via cctalk wrote: > On 2/1/21 6:17 PM, John Foust via cctalk wrote: > > > Are you saying a flux recorder should have a better way of detecting > that problem? > > Yes, the way they do it now if you have one shot at recovering a disk you > are sure to fail. > > Imagedisk, even though it spends way too much time with the heads spinning > on the media at > least does real-time retries. the problem is you also need to be able to > stop and > assemble a complete image by splicing together multiple partial attempts. >
Re: Greaseweazle
On 2/1/21 6:17 PM, John Foust via cctalk wrote: Are you saying a flux recorder should have a better way of detecting that problem? Yes, the way they do it now if you have one shot at recovering a disk you are sure to fail. Imagedisk, even though it spends way too much time with the heads spinning on the media at least does real-time retries. the problem is you also need to be able to stop and assemble a complete image by splicing together multiple partial attempts.
Re: Greaseweazle
At 07:54 PM 2/1/2021, Al Kossow via cctalk wrote: >The workflow of 'squirt across a bitstream from the whole disk, let the PC >chew on it and maybe it's right' is fundamentally wrong >It may work on clean media but you are guaranteed of getting garbage after the >head clogs at some point during the march across the disk. Hmm, OK... So a dirty media problem eventually goops the head... Are you saying a flux recorder should have a better way of detecting that problem? And stop earlier? - John
Re: Greaseweazle
On 2/1/21 5:24 PM, John Foust via cctalk wrote: What aspects are they missing? The workflow of 'squirt across a bitstream from the whole disk, let the PC chew on it and maybe it's right' is fundamentally wrong It may work on clean media but you are guaranteed of getting garbage after the head clogs at some point during the march across the disk.
Re: Greaseweazle
At 06:15 PM 2/1/2021, Al Kossow via cctalk wrote: >On 2/1/21 4:13 PM, Chuck Guzis via cctalk wrote: >>any moderately capable >>modern MCU can do the job. > >and it is the software and the knowledge of what you need to do when >recovering media in volume these guys have no clue about What aspects are they missing? - John
Re: Greaseweazle
On Feb 1, 2021, at 5:07 PM, Antonio Carlini via cctalk wrote: > > Indeed. The important part is that someone's written some firmware. Oh, and > it's cheap too, of course. And that it's something available for the community to work with and improve, rather than something where people are hoping to profit off archival ventures. -- Chris
Re: Greaseweazle
On 02/02/2021 00:13, Chuck Guzis via cctalk wrote: There's also a similar implementation using a very inexpensive Cypress PSOC 6 ARM card that mounts on a 3.5" floppy connector (no cable). That would presumably be the FluxEngine (http://cowlark.com/fluxengine/index.html). I have the PSOC and I've loaded up the firmware. Now I just need to wire some parts together (PSU+floppy) and I can give it a quick whirl. It's what I've been saying for years--just about any moderately capable modern MCU can do the job. After all the Gotek emulator uses a nearly obsolescent STM32F107 or 105 MCU. The "blue pill" STM32F103 is quite a bit more capable. Glad people finally tumbled to this. Indeed. The important part is that someone's written some firmware. Oh, and it's cheap too, of course. Antonio -- Antonio Carlini anto...@acarlini.com
Re: OT: pints, pounds (Was: APL\360
On 01/02/2021 20:24, Chuck Guzis via cctalk wrote: Thank heavens that the Brits didn't come out with the 5150--we might have had to deal with Whitworth (BSW) fasteners. Nah, too many of them are similar to UNC/UNF, which would have just caused confusion. We'd have used BA sizes. -- Pete Pete Turnbull
Re: Greaseweazle
On 2/1/21 4:13 PM, Chuck Guzis via cctalk wrote: any moderately capable modern MCU can do the job. and it is the software and the knowledge of what you need to do when recovering media in volume these guys have no clue about
Re: Greaseweazle
On 2/1/21 3:24 PM, Al Kossow via cctalk wrote: > Eric Schlaepfer built a version with buffering and 5" and 8" connectors. > There is a fair amount of churn as what they want the hardware to be > and the project is siloed because of their insistence on using farcebook > for communications. Early on, I built one with buffering and played with it (I already had the parts in my hellbox), but I prefer to use a more capable MCU to to my work (i.e. not an STM32F1, but STM32F407). More memory, faster clocks; I could probably do hard disks with it, by just adding the differential buffers and writing some firmware. Not a whole lot of difference in cost, either--$10 for a 407 board with clock/calendar, SDHC SDIO,etc. There's also a similar implementation using a very inexpensive Cypress PSOC 6 ARM card that mounts on a 3.5" floppy connector (no cable). It's what I've been saying for years--just about any moderately capable modern MCU can do the job. After all the Gotek emulator uses a nearly obsolescent STM32F107 or 105 MCU. The "blue pill" STM32F103 is quite a bit more capable. Glad people finally tumbled to this. --Chuck
Re: Greaseweazle
On Mon, 1 Feb 2021, John Foust via cctalk wrote: At 04:58 PM 2/1/2021, geneb wrote: I've got one (F7+ Lightning version) and I've used it with 5.25" and 8" disks. I've got plans to use it with 8" disks, but I've not done it yet. You'll need to get the FDADAP from here: http://www.dbit.com/fdadap.html in order to use it with the GW. Already have one of those. Did you say you have it working with eight inch? Not yet. It's on my TODO list. g. -- Proud owner of F-15C 80-0007 http://www.f15sim.com - The only one of its kind. http://www.diy-cockpits.org/coll - Go Collimated or Go Home. Some people collect things for a hobby. Geeks collect hobbies. ScarletDME - The red hot Data Management Environment A Multi-Value database for the masses, not the classes. http://scarlet.deltasoft.com - Get it _today_!
Re: Greaseweazle
At 04:58 PM 2/1/2021, geneb wrote: >I've got one (F7+ Lightning version) and I've used it with 5.25" and 8" disks. > I've got plans to use it with 8" disks, but I've not done it yet. You'll need >to get the FDADAP from here: http://www.dbit.com/fdadap.html in order to use >it with the GW. Already have one of those. Did you say you have it working with eight inch? - John
Re: Greaseweazle
On Mon, 1 Feb 2021, John Foust via cctalk wrote: https://github.com/keirf/Greaseweazle I heard about this today and I'm surprised I hadn't heard about it on this list before. Flux reading and writing from all sizes of floppy? Anyone here using one? I'd love to get it working for 8 inch, 5 1/4, 3 1/2 drives here in my shop. On Mon, 1 Feb 2021, geneb via cctalk wrote: I've got one (F7+ Lightning version) and I've used it with 5.25" and 8" disks. I've got plans to use it with 8" disks, but I've not done it yet. You'll need to get the FDADAP from here: http://www.dbit.com/fdadap.html in order to use it with the GW. If you are READing 8" disks, and ONLY READing, then you can get away with a simpler caable. The main time that you might need the fdadap is for TG43 for writing. But, the fdadap is a convenient way to not have to make a cable. It looks promising. The docs on the website are a little thin. It could use some instructions written for somebody who has never seen it before. For example, " type gw -h to see available commands" could certainly stand to be expanded to list the commands, and provide discussion of what each one does. Even if it is "obvious". The examples for Specifying Tracks were not bad, but could use some beginner support, such as explaining that heads are 0,1 and a 40 track drive numbers from 0-39, not 1-40, etc. Documentation should also always include a list of EVERY error code, with a more detailed explanation of what each one actually means. And, some explanations of how to tell whether you need to do double stepping, including what the incorrect results will look like if you get it wrong. Including what the resulting file will look like for trying to read an unformatted track. Explanation of FM, MFM, and GCR encoding, or at least pointers to places where those are discussed. But, it is not the worst example that I have ever seen of: "It doesn't need any documentation. Just run the program. The menus in the program tell you everything that you could need to know." With XenoCopy, I found that I needed to include a Quick Start A Tutorial A Reference Even with that, an enormous amount of handholding was needed. Including, of course, answers to questions of HOW-TO do thing that the program clearly stated it could not do, such as reading Apple 5.25" disks without additional hardware.
Re: Greaseweazle
On 2/1/21 2:35 PM, John Foust via cctalk wrote: https://github.com/keirf/Greaseweazle I heard about this today and I'm surprised I hadn't heard about it on this list before. Flux reading and writing from all sizes of floppy? Anyone here using one? I'd love to get it working for 8 inch, 5 1/4, 3 1/2 drives here in my shop. - John Eric Schlaepfer built a version with buffering and 5" and 8" connectors. There is a fair amount of churn as what they want the hardware to be and the project is siloed because of their insistence on using farcebook for communications.
Re: Greaseweazle
On Mon, 1 Feb 2021, John Foust via cctalk wrote: https://github.com/keirf/Greaseweazle I heard about this today and I'm surprised I hadn't heard about it on this list before. Flux reading and writing from all sizes of floppy? Anyone here using one? I'd love to get it working for 8 inch, 5 1/4, 3 1/2 drives here in my shop. I've got one (F7+ Lightning version) and I've used it with 5.25" and 8" disks. I've got plans to use it with 8" disks, but I've not done it yet. You'll need to get the FDADAP from here: http://www.dbit.com/fdadap.html in order to use it with the GW. g. -- Proud owner of F-15C 80-0007 http://www.f15sim.com - The only one of its kind. http://www.diy-cockpits.org/coll - Go Collimated or Go Home. Some people collect things for a hobby. Geeks collect hobbies. ScarletDME - The red hot Data Management Environment A Multi-Value database for the masses, not the classes. http://scarlet.deltasoft.com - Get it _today_!
Re: Greaseweazle
I have one, been trying to get it going for a bit now with an 8" shugart SA801. I am now just struggling to get power to the shugart, need a few commercial AMP mate-n-lok connectors and some new caps for the shugart supply I have that gave up the ghost. Seems neat, but I am very much learning disk archival still. I did get HT-11 online, my RX01/02 imaging pipeline is great :) -Eric On Mon, Feb 1, 2021, 4:41 PM John Foust via cctalk wrote: > > https://github.com/keirf/Greaseweazle > > Anyone here using one? I'd love to get it working for 8 inch, > 5 1/4, 3 1/2 drives here in my shop. > >
Greaseweazle
https://github.com/keirf/Greaseweazle I heard about this today and I'm surprised I hadn't heard about it on this list before. Flux reading and writing from all sizes of floppy? Anyone here using one? I'd love to get it working for 8 inch, 5 1/4, 3 1/2 drives here in my shop. - John
RE: cctalk Digest, Vol 76, Issue 29
> I can still count quite rapidly up to 31 on one hand (either one). That is a neat trick. I have a hard time counting to 21 unless I take off my pants. 73 Eugene W2HX -Original Message- From: cctalk On Behalf Of Mark Moulding via cctalk Sent: Saturday, January 30, 2021 3:45 PM To: cctalk@classiccmp.org Subject: Re: cctalk Digest, Vol 76, Issue 29 From: dwight > If we'd thought about it we could count to 1023 on our fingers. I used to play string bass in a symphony, and there were many times that there would be long periods of rest, where it was important to count the bars (measures) going by so as to come back in at the right time. To this day (that was 40+ years ago) I can still count quite rapidly up to 31 on one hand (either one). Higher numbers slow me down a bit... Old bass joke: During the last movement of Beethoven's 9th symphony, there is a very long tacit (rest) for the basses. So the bass section all went over to the bar across the street for a drink or three. To keep the conductor from passing by their entry, they put a rubber band around his music. So the situation was... Bottom of the ninth, basses loaded, score tied. (sorry...) ~~ Mark Moulding
Re: Epson QX-10 hard drive
On Mon, Feb 1, 2021 at 7:15 AM Jules Richardson via cctalk < cctalk@classiccmp.org> wrote: > On 1/31/21 12:35 PM, Warner Losh via cctalk wrote: > > Greetings > > > > I recently purchased a QCS external hard disk on ebay. This was one of > the > > companies that was selling DEC Rainbow hard drives. I had hoped it was an > > old Rainbow drive with interesting to me bits... Turns out it is an Epson > > QX-10 hard drive, full of interesting to bits for the QX-10 CP/M > > enthusiast. I've had trouble finding a suitable community to note this in > > should there be people around that care... so I thought I'd ask here is > > people know of good CP/M groups and/or QX-10/16 groups, mailing lists, > irc > > channels, discord servers, etc I could find. > > I'm not aware of anything, unfortunately. I've got a QX-10 that was > originally one of Epson's sales demo machines, and got taken around to > prospective customers by one of their sales reps - which does mean that it > was well looked after and came with a *lot* of documentation (and media, > but nothing "exciting" beyond the usual OS, Valdocs etc.). > > Did you happen to take an image of the drive contents? > Yes. I do. It looks to be CP/M format, with 3 maybe 4 partitions. I've had a couple of requests, so I uploaded it to https://people.freebsd.org/~imp/qx-10-disk.img Raw sector dump, in physical order, of all the tracks. 4 heads, 16 sectors per track, 480 cylinders. Cylinder 480 and higher could be read, but were in a different format, so all bets are off as to what's there in this dump. The SASI to MFM adapter is a WD1002, but it wasn't in the loop when I imaged things. Can't talk SASI at the moment anyway, so there's no extra data I could glean from that, at least in a quick pass over the WD1002 docs. > (hanging a hard disk off mine would be fun, but I think they were SASI to > the external enclosure, and there was a SASI interface which plugged into > the expansion slots - I'm not sure if the latter is documented anywhere) > Yes, the unit I got was an external unit sold by QCS, which sold units for Apple, TRS-80, IBM PC, DEC Rainbow, Expson QX-10 and a few others I'm sure I've forgotten. It has the SASI to MFM adapter card connected to the mini-scribe disk. I got it mostly for playing with Rainbow stuff, but it doesn't have to wind up there... Warner
Re: OT: pints, pounds (Was: APL\360
On 01/02/2021 20:07, Fred Cisin via cctalk wrote: A US pint of water weighs 1.043 pounds. One "fluid ounce" (volume) of water weighs 1.043 ounces (weight)! That's also a US measure. An imperial fluid ounce is 28.4ml and a floz of water weighs 28.4g, same as an avoirdupois ounce. In fact it's defined (or was) as the volume of water that weighs one ounce. -- Pete Pete Turnbull
Re: OT: pints, pounds (Was: APL\360
On 2/1/21 12:07 PM, Fred Cisin via cctalk wrote: > Instead, it just means that British pubs are not as stingy with their > beer. And, it doesn't need to be chilled to almost frozen to make it > drinkable. No, as I said, it's that Americans (of the US variety) are authentically English, using the 1588 standard, than their overseas cousins, who use the Imperial 1824 one. Simple, that. Importing the IBM PC 5150 into Europe must have caused a bit of a kerfuffle. All of those SAE fasteners--e.g. 6-32 bolt used extensively. #6 bolt size with 32 threads per inch. It wasn't really until the clone makers got into the picture with their metric hardware. The result is that most recent PCs employ a macaronic assortment of fasteners. Thank heavens that the Brits didn't come out with the 5150--we might have had to deal with Whitworth (BSW) fasteners. --Chuck
bit numbering (Was: APL\360
From: Chuck Guzis Numbering of bits in a word is also interesting. Is the high order bit in a 64 bit word, bit 0 or bit 63? Both conventions have been employed. On Mon, 1 Feb 2021, John Ames via cctalk wrote: This one has always boggled me, because it's the one aspect of the Endian Wars where there's a simple, straightforward answer grounded in basic mathematics - base ^ digit-number only gives the correct place-value when the lowest-order bit is numbered zero. It's beyond my ken how anybody thought the reverse was *valid,* let alone a good idea. It probably originated from our system of writing numbers with most significant on the left, least significant on the right. Then combined with somebody not even thinking in terms of "one's place"/"ten's place", or "one's place"/"two's place"/"four's place" etc. and simply numbering from left to right. It is unfortunate that they were permitted to do so.
OT: pints, pounds (Was: APL\360
I had always been told, "A pint is a pound, the world around." On Mon, 1 Feb 2021, Liam Proven via cctalk wrote: Aha! Does that mean a pint of water weighs 1lb? Interesting. I did not know. That is what it MEANS. But, it's not quite right. It's off by about 4%. A US pint of water weighs 1.043 pounds. One "fluid ounce" (volume) of water weighs 1.043 ounces (weight)! How much do you suppose a "pint" of ice cream weighs? And, not all beer has the same specific gravity. Alcohol is less dense than water. And, of course, further variation with temperature and atmospheric pressure. And, if you are in England, "A pint of water weighs a pound and a quarter." Fortunately, that is NOT a difference in the force of gravity! Or, at least MOSTLY not. THAT heavy thought would be difficult to work around. Despite very minor variances in gravity, Earth is MOSTLY HARMLESS. Instead, it just means that British pubs are not as stingy with their beer. And, it doesn't need to be chilled to almost frozen to make it drinkable. I wish that there were a pub open. But, "The Albatross" (pub in Berkeley) has closed down. forever. Can't stay in business with a lockdown. I can get beer delivered! Coincidentally, it is Corona beer! -- Grumpy Ol' Fred
Re: APL\360
> On Feb 1, 2021, at 2:34 PM, Dave Wade G4UGM via cctalk > wrote: > >>> ... >>> I had always been told, "A pint is a pound, the world around." >> >> Aha! Does that mean a pint of water weighs 1lb? >> >> Interesting. I did not know. > > Typical American statement, where "world" means "United States". Its only a > pound in the USA. In the UK it’s 1.25 lbs and even in Canada, before > metrication, it was 20floz same as UK. > In many metric countries the old word for a pound, so in German for example > "pfund" informally refers to 500 grams, a little more than an American pint > and rather less than UK pint... > It gets worse because I understand that in the Caribbean (which as an English > man I pronounce differently to the rest of the world) you will find both size > pint in use That would fit tradition. A lot of the Imperial unit names were at one time also used in the rest of Europe. But their definition varied randomly, often from town to town. I have a book about sailing ships that gives the dimensions in "Amsterdam feet", which by the way have 11 inches per foot, not 12. My father, a metrologist, had a history book discussing the pre-metric systems of units of Europe. The units were often set by the ruler of the day (e.g., the "ell" might match the arm of the prince in charge at that time). Sometimes not, though. The book had a lovely picture showing the way the standard "foot" was estabished in one German principality: officials gathered outside the town church in some town, stopped the first 12 adult males leaving Mass, and had them line up their feet. They captured that measurement, divided by 12, presto, the standard foot. For that place and time, anyway. So don't be surprised that there are lots of pounds, ounces, etc. -- that's just how it's always been done. Much later, there were three different inches: the UK one, the US one, and the Canadian one. At least in theory. In reality they were so close that it's unlikely any instrument could tell the difference. And precision calibration was done with Johansson blocks, which followed the Canadian definition (25.4 mm exactly). paul
Re: APL\360
> On Feb 1, 2021, at 2:13 PM, David Bridgham via cctalk > wrote: > > ... > Sure, one can get into the story that our numbers come from Arabic and > Arabic is written right-to-left so in fact they were originally > little-endian and just didn't get flipped around when incorporated into > left-to-right languages but that's all lost in the past. Today, we > write numbers, in English, big-endian so it's no surprise at all that > some computers followed that common practice. In Hebrew at least, numbers are written left to right. Also, as I understand it, in Arabic our numbers are called "Indian numbers" in recognition of the fact that they originated in India. They came to Europe via Arabia, but that's not their point of origin apparently. paul
Re: RD51 reduced write current signal?
> On Feb 1, 2021, at 2:32 PM, Dennis Boone via cctalk
> wrote:
>
>> I realized I also don't know the RD31 and RD32.
>
> The rest of the list I found long ago is:
>
> RD31Seagate ST-225 20 MB
> RD32Seagate ST-251 42 MB
> RD51Seagate ST-412 10 MB
> RD52Quantum Q54031 MB
>
> It's clearly incomplete, as you found there were two different devices
> used for one of th RD models.
>
> De
Excellent.
The Pro technical manual clearly mentions two RD52 variants, the other one is
an Atasi 3046. And the rumored CDC RD52 is a 9415-36 ("Wren I").
paul
RE: APL\360
> -Original Message- > From: cctalk On Behalf Of Liam Proven via > cctalk > Sent: 01 February 2021 19:15 > To: General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts > > Subject: Re: APL\360 > > On Mon, 1 Feb 2021 at 20:00, Fred Cisin via cctalk > wrote: > > > > I had always been told, "A pint is a pound, the world around." > > Aha! Does that mean a pint of water weighs 1lb? > > Interesting. I did not know. Typical American statement, where "world" means "United States". Its only a pound in the USA. In the UK it’s 1.25 lbs and even in Canada, before metrication, it was 20floz same as UK. In many metric countries the old word for a pound, so in German for example "pfund" informally refers to 500 grams, a little more than an American pint and rather less than UK pint... It gets worse because I understand that in the Caribbean (which as an English man I pronounce differently to the rest of the world) you will find both size pint in use > > > I had already assumed that pub prices had inflated to higher than a pound. > > It was under £1 for ½litre of beer when I got here. In fact it was under US$1/ > US 1pt. Now it's a bit more. > > Cheapest I had was CzK 17 for half a litre. At the time that was about 50¢. > > > Such worries call for having a few pints. > > It is one of the things I miss most in lockdown. And there's no electricity > supply in my man-cave/basement so I can't even go down there and play > with my old computers. :-( > > > > -- > Liam Proven – Profile: https://about.me/liamproven > Email: lpro...@cix.co.uk – gMail/gTalk/gHangouts: lpro...@gmail.com > Twitter/Facebook/LinkedIn/Flickr: lproven – Skype: liamproven > UK: +44 7939-087884 – ČR (+ WhatsApp/Telegram/Signal): +420 702 829 053 Dave G4UGM Still stresssed after talking about mail routing at a USA Microsoft Exchange Conference
Re: APL\360
On 2/1/21 1:59 PM, John Ames via cctech wrote: > This one has always boggled me, because it's the one aspect of the > Endian Wars where there's a simple, straightforward answer grounded in > basic mathematics - base ^ digit-number only gives the correct > place-value when the lowest-order bit is numbered zero. It's beyond my > ken how anybody thought the reverse was *valid,* let alone a good > idea. For all that I agree with you that little-endian is clearly the right answer and for exactly the reason you state, it's pretty easy to see where big-endian representation came from. That's how we write numbers in English, we write them big-endian. There ya go, it's as simple as that. Sure, one can get into the story that our numbers come from Arabic and Arabic is written right-to-left so in fact they were originally little-endian and just didn't get flipped around when incorporated into left-to-right languages but that's all lost in the past. Today, we write numbers, in English, big-endian so it's no surprise at all that some computers followed that common practice. Dave
Re: APL\360
> From: Chuck Guzis > Numbering of bits in a word is also interesting. Is the high order bit > in a 64 bit word, bit 0 or bit 63? Both conventions have been employed. This one has always boggled me, because it's the one aspect of the Endian Wars where there's a simple, straightforward answer grounded in basic mathematics - base ^ digit-number only gives the correct place-value when the lowest-order bit is numbered zero. It's beyond my ken how anybody thought the reverse was *valid,* let alone a good idea.
Re: RD51 reduced write current signal?
> I realized I also don't know the RD31 and RD32. The rest of the list I found long ago is: RD31Seagate ST-225 20 MB RD32Seagate ST-251 42 MB RD51Seagate ST-412 10 MB RD52Quantum Q54031 MB It's clearly incomplete, as you found there were two different devices used for one of th RD models. De
Re: APL\360
On 2/1/21 11:00 AM, Fred Cisin via cctalk wrote: >> On 2021-02-01 10:59, Liam Proven via cctalk wrote: >>> I do not know what a fluid ounce is, or how many are in a pint. > On Mon, 1 Feb 2021, emanuel stiebler via cctalk wrote: >> not enough? >> ;-) > > I had always been told, "A pint is a pound, the world around." > I had already assumed that pub prices had inflated to higher than a pound. Or for that matter, fluid ounces, of which there are 20 UK ounces to a UK pint, but only 16 US ounces to a US pint. It all derives from the 1824 Weights and Measures Act in the UK. By that time, the US had elected to stay with the Elizabethan Exchequer standard (ca. 1588). It might be argued that, as far as measurement goes, the US is more authentically English than the UK. Three barleycorns, dry and round... --Chuck
Re: RD51 reduced write current signal?
> On Feb 1, 2021, at 2:17 PM, Dennis Boone via cctalk > wrote: > >> I've now tracked down analogous manuals for all Pro drives except for >> the RD53, I don't know what kind of drive that is. > > I believe: > > RD53Micropolis 1325 71 MB > RD54Maxtor XT2190 159 MB Thanks. RD54 isn't supported on the Pro as far as I know, too many cylinders. RD53 is at the exact upper limit of what the Pro controller can address. I realized I also don't know the RD31 and RD32. paul
Re: RD51 reduced write current signal?
> I've now tracked down analogous manuals for all Pro drives except for > the RD53, I don't know what kind of drive that is. I believe: RD53Micropolis 1325 71 MB RD54Maxtor XT2190 159 MB De
Re: APL\360
On Mon, 1 Feb 2021 at 20:00, Fred Cisin via cctalk wrote: > > I had always been told, "A pint is a pound, the world around." Aha! Does that mean a pint of water weighs 1lb? Interesting. I did not know. > I had already assumed that pub prices had inflated to higher than a pound. It was under £1 for ½litre of beer when I got here. In fact it was under US$1/ US 1pt. Now it's a bit more. Cheapest I had was CzK 17 for half a litre. At the time that was about 50¢. > Such worries call for having a few pints. It is one of the things I miss most in lockdown. And there's no electricity supply in my man-cave/basement so I can't even go down there and play with my old computers. :-( -- Liam Proven – Profile: https://about.me/liamproven Email: lpro...@cix.co.uk – gMail/gTalk/gHangouts: lpro...@gmail.com Twitter/Facebook/LinkedIn/Flickr: lproven – Skype: liamproven UK: +44 7939-087884 – ČR (+ WhatsApp/Telegram/Signal): +420 702 829 053
Re: RD51 reduced write current signal?
> On Feb 1, 2021, at 1:36 PM, Warner Losh wrote: > > > > On Mon, Feb 1, 2021 at 10:54 AM Paul Koning via cctalk > wrote: > Looking at the DEC Pro documentation there's some ambiguity I'm trying to > figure out. > > The hard drive documentation talks about the "reduced write current" signal. > In one place it's explicitly described as relevant to the RD50 only. But > later on in the RD50/RD51 chapter the signal is described generally, without > any indication that RD51 ignores it. > > Does anyone know which is correct? If RD51 also uses it, how does the right > value get set? What IS the right value, anyway? > > The RD51 was the ST-412 while the RD50 was the ST-506. There's a combined > OEM manual for these drives. > http://www.bitsavers.org/pdf/seagate/ST412_OEMmanual_Apr82.pdf which has the > answer. It's used in the ST406, but ignored in the ST-412. See Page 16 for > the notes. > > Based on that, I think it's pretty safe to say the RD50 needed it, but the > RD51 and newer did not. Great information, thanks! I've now tracked down analogous manuals for all Pro drives except for the RD53, I don't know what kind of drive that is. Learned some other interesting things. The Pro technical manual says the write precomp register should be set to do precomp starting at cylinder 256 for the RD52. That's correct for the Quantum model (8 head). It's wrong for the Atasi, which is the other "RD52" variant mentioned in the manual; its documentation says it should be cylinder 320. And the CDC RD52, mentioned in internal documents (I don't know if it shipped) is a CDC Wren, which has a strange rule: precomp "recommended for all cylinders, required for cylinder > 128". paul
Re: APL\360
My point was that the metric system is easier because we chose to use a decimal number system. Things like using fractional measurements as in the Imperial system are actually better for designing with. Fractional numbers work better with things like cross sectional areas and strength. Look at typical metric bolt sizes. I agree things like ounces per pound are broken thinking. Giving up fractional dimensions to make it easer to match our decimal number system is also broken. Dwight From: cctalk on behalf of Liam Proven via cctalk Sent: Monday, February 1, 2021 7:59 AM To: General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts Subject: Re: APL\360 On Sat, 30 Jan 2021 at 02:56, dwight via cctalk wrote: > I constantly see people claiming how much better decimal is than the English > system of meassurment. Um. I am a native English speaker, as well as an English citizen, and I count in decimal. Do you mean metric (SI / Systeme Internationale) versus Imperial measurements? If so, I 100% aver that metric is far better. I am 53 years old. I did not learn Imperial at school, in any of the 3 countries where I went to school (UK, Nigeria, Isle of Man.) I know some of the units; I think of a few things, such as human beings, computer screens, and pizzas, in Imperial units. People's height in feet & inches is more meaningful to me than in metres, but I can cope. People's weight in stones. Beer in pints. Speeds in MPH. But that's about all. I have never managed to learn how many ounces in a pound, or pounds in an stone, or stones in a hundredweight. I do not know what a fluid ounce is, or how many are in a pint. I do not know how many yards in a mile. They're all arbitrary numbers and it makes no sense. SI units are 100% easier by any metric. Yes, that is intentional. -- Liam Proven – Profile: https://about.me/liamproven Email: lpro...@cix.co.uk – gMail/gTalk/gHangouts: lpro...@gmail.com Twitter/Facebook/LinkedIn/Flickr: lproven – Skype: liamproven UK: +44 7939-087884 – ČR (+ WhatsApp/Telegram/Signal): +420 702 829 053
Re: APL\360
On 2021-02-01 10:59, Liam Proven via cctalk wrote: I do not know what a fluid ounce is, or how many are in a pint. On Mon, 1 Feb 2021, emanuel stiebler via cctalk wrote: not enough? ;-) I had always been told, "A pint is a pound, the world around." I had already assumed that pub prices had inflated to higher than a pound. And more recently, through tangents on this list, I realized that a pint wasn't even the same size, the world around. Such worries call for having a few pints.
Re: APL\360
We don't need another big-endian/little-endian battle On Mon, 1 Feb 2021, Peter Corlett via cctalk wrote: Little-endian tends to be more useful when doing multi-word arithmetic. Big-endian is handy for text and human-readable numbers. That there are heated arguments over which endianness is best mainly tells us that there's bugger all in it either way. After all, the word "endian" is a satirical device in Gulliver's Travels. But, since computers weren't common among his readers in 1726, they wouldn't have understood the competing computer architectures of Lilliput and Blefescu, so he had to rewrite the issue in terms of opening eggs. https://www.ling.upenn.edu/courses/Spring_2003/ling538/Lecnotes/ADfn1.htm
Re: RD51 reduced write current signal?
On Mon, Feb 1, 2021 at 10:54 AM Paul Koning via cctalk < cctalk@classiccmp.org> wrote: > Looking at the DEC Pro documentation there's some ambiguity I'm trying to > figure out. > > The hard drive documentation talks about the "reduced write current" > signal. In one place it's explicitly described as relevant to the RD50 > only. But later on in the RD50/RD51 chapter the signal is described > generally, without any indication that RD51 ignores it. > > Does anyone know which is correct? If RD51 also uses it, how does the > right value get set? What IS the right value, anyway? > The RD51 was the ST-412 while the RD50 was the ST-506. There's a combined OEM manual for these drives. http://www.bitsavers.org/pdf/seagate/ST412_OEMmanual_Apr82.pdf which has the answer. It's used in the ST406, but ignored in the ST-412. See Page 16 for the notes. Based on that, I think it's pretty safe to say the RD50 needed it, but the RD51 and newer did not. Warner
Re: APL\360
On Sat, 30 Jan 2021 at 03:27, dwight via cctalk wrote: If we'd thought about it we could count to 1023 on our fingers. On Mon, 1 Feb 2021, Tor Arntsen via cctalk wrote: Some sheep herders in (IIRC) the Caucasus do, or did at least. I learned about that some decades ago. Counting sheep on their fingers. I use the system sometimes. counting sheep, . . . My ex asked me whether I was playing piano in my sleep.
Re: Just curious how many Hewlett-Packard Integral computers were sold. We have one here at the SMECC Museum that we are building a display around it for.
Australian HP museum site... yes kudos to them! What wonderful work they have done and some of the friendliest peple around! Even though I pull a copy down from there. If it is,for something we have in the collection I also try to get original manuals too.. On Sunday, January 31, 2021 Tony Duell wrote: On Sun, Jan 31, 2021 at 6:25 AM Frank McConnell via cctalk wrote: > > On Jan 30, 2021, at 10:09, ED SHARPE via cctalk wrote: > > Hi Doug! No, we do not have a copy of this HP JOURNAL. We do not have > > manuals either. We,are lucky to have the unit wonder if you can still > > order ink for the printer. I do have an unopened ink cartrige. You can get scans of the manuals from the Australian HP museum site Do you have any expansion boards in it? Extra memory is very useful (and you can turn any of the boards into a 1MByte one by adding the chips and changing links). As is an RS232 interface (something that IMHO should have been built-in) Do NOT leave the ink cartridge in the machine. The ink is somewhat corrosive and if it leaks onto the flexiprint that connects the cartridge to the logic PCB it will damage it. Due to the layout of the machine the flexiprint is longer than the one in a normal Thinkjet so you can't just raid one of those for spares. Yes there is a way to kludge it with ribbon cable and connectors but it's best not to have the problem in the first place. > > HP 51604A. I was surprised a few months ago to find that Staples claims to > be able to sell new HP cartridges. Looking earlier today, HP can too! > > Seriously, we’re talking about ink cartridges including replacement print > heads for printers manufactured in 1983. I was equally surprised to find that ink ribbons for the Epson HX20 laptop (M160 printer mechanism) along with the ones for the narrower M150 mechanism are still being made. But as I've said before, I'd rather find parts for a machine made 30 years ago than one made 5 years ago. -tony
Re: APL\360
On 2021-02-01 11:40, Chuck Guzis via cctalk wrote: > Whose pint? UK Imperial pint = 568 ml. US liquid pint = 473 ml. That explains some conversations I had with people there ;-)
RD51 reduced write current signal?
Looking at the DEC Pro documentation there's some ambiguity I'm trying to figure out. The hard drive documentation talks about the "reduced write current" signal. In one place it's explicitly described as relevant to the RD50 only. But later on in the RD50/RD51 chapter the signal is described generally, without any indication that RD51 ignores it. Does anyone know which is correct? If RD51 also uses it, how does the right value get set? What IS the right value, anyway? paul
Re: APL\360
On 2/1/21 5:26 AM, Peter Corlett via cctalk wrote: > On every CPU I've used, LSB has always been bit 0. Unlike endianness, this > is clearly better than the other way round since the value is 2**bit_number > and the bit number doesn't change if the value is converted into a different > word width. I take it then, that you've never programmed a S/360 CPU? --Chuck
Re: APL\360
It's actually 568.26. Easy to work out, in Canada the gallon is defined as being 454609 ten millionths of a cubic metre, Nigel Nigel Johnson, MSc., MIEEE, MCSE VE3ID/G4AJQ/VA3MCU Amateur Radio, the origin of the open-source concept! Skype: TILBURY2591 nw.john...@ieee.org On 2021-02-01 11:40 a.m., Chuck Guzis via cctalk wrote: > On 2/1/21 8:10 AM, emanuel stiebler via cctalk wrote: >> On 2021-02-01 10:59, Liam Proven via cctalk wrote: >>> I do not know what a fluid ounce is, or how many are in a pint. >> not enough? >> ;-) >> > Whose pint? UK Imperial pint = 568 ml. US liquid pint = 473 ml. > > Both are one-eighth of a gallon, but US and UK gallons differ. > > Trivia for today. > > --Chuck
Re: APL\360
On 2/1/21 8:10 AM, emanuel stiebler via cctalk wrote: > On 2021-02-01 10:59, Liam Proven via cctalk wrote: >> I do not know what a fluid ounce is, or how many are in a pint. > > not enough? > ;-) > Whose pint? UK Imperial pint = 568 ml. US liquid pint = 473 ml. Both are one-eighth of a gallon, but US and UK gallons differ. Trivia for today. --Chuck
Re: APL\360
On 2021-02-01 10:59, Liam Proven via cctalk wrote: > I do not know what a fluid ounce is, or how many are in a pint. not enough? ;-)
Re: APL\360
On Sat, 30 Jan 2021 at 02:56, dwight via cctalk wrote: > I constantly see people claiming how much better decimal is than the English > system of meassurment. Um. I am a native English speaker, as well as an English citizen, and I count in decimal. Do you mean metric (SI / Systeme Internationale) versus Imperial measurements? If so, I 100% aver that metric is far better. I am 53 years old. I did not learn Imperial at school, in any of the 3 countries where I went to school (UK, Nigeria, Isle of Man.) I know some of the units; I think of a few things, such as human beings, computer screens, and pizzas, in Imperial units. People's height in feet & inches is more meaningful to me than in metres, but I can cope. People's weight in stones. Beer in pints. Speeds in MPH. But that's about all. I have never managed to learn how many ounces in a pound, or pounds in an stone, or stones in a hundredweight. I do not know what a fluid ounce is, or how many are in a pint. I do not know how many yards in a mile. They're all arbitrary numbers and it makes no sense. SI units are 100% easier by any metric. Yes, that is intentional. -- Liam Proven – Profile: https://about.me/liamproven Email: lpro...@cix.co.uk – gMail/gTalk/gHangouts: lpro...@gmail.com Twitter/Facebook/LinkedIn/Flickr: lproven – Skype: liamproven UK: +44 7939-087884 – ČR (+ WhatsApp/Telegram/Signal): +420 702 829 053
Re: APL\360
On Fri, 29 Jan 2021 at 22:14, Fred Cisin via cctalk wrote: > such as 42 > WHATDOYOUGETWHENYOUMULTIPLYSIXBYNINE 👍 -- Liam Proven – Profile: https://about.me/liamproven Email: lpro...@cix.co.uk – gMail/gTalk/gHangouts: lpro...@gmail.com Twitter/Facebook/LinkedIn/Flickr: lproven – Skype: liamproven UK: +44 7939-087884 – ČR (+ WhatsApp/Telegram/Signal): +420 702 829 053
Re: Epson QX-10 hard drive
On 1/31/21 12:35 PM, Warner Losh via cctalk wrote: Greetings I recently purchased a QCS external hard disk on ebay. This was one of the companies that was selling DEC Rainbow hard drives. I had hoped it was an old Rainbow drive with interesting to me bits... Turns out it is an Epson QX-10 hard drive, full of interesting to bits for the QX-10 CP/M enthusiast. I've had trouble finding a suitable community to note this in should there be people around that care... so I thought I'd ask here is people know of good CP/M groups and/or QX-10/16 groups, mailing lists, irc channels, discord servers, etc I could find. I'm not aware of anything, unfortunately. I've got a QX-10 that was originally one of Epson's sales demo machines, and got taken around to prospective customers by one of their sales reps - which does mean that it was well looked after and came with a *lot* of documentation (and media, but nothing "exciting" beyond the usual OS, Valdocs etc.). Did you happen to take an image of the drive contents? (hanging a hard disk off mine would be fun, but I think they were SASI to the external enclosure, and there was a SASI interface which plugged into the expansion slots - I'm not sure if the latter is documented anywhere) cheers Jules
Re: APL\360
On Fri, Jan 29, 2021 at 01:12:55PM -0800, Chuck Guzis via cctalk wrote: [...] > Most old (pre S/360) digit/character-addressable architectures were > big-endian (i.e. higher-order characters occupied lower addresses) > Even PDP-11 isn't strictly little-endian, though Intel X86 definitely is. I note that modern x86 and ARM have big-endian load and store operations, so while both architectures are little-endian by default, there is no extra overhead for handling big-endian data. Little-endian tends to be more useful when doing multi-word arithmetic. Big-endian is handy for text and human-readable numbers. That there are heated arguments over which endianness is best mainly tells us that there's bugger all in it either way. After all, the word "endian" is a satirical device in Gulliver's Travels. > Numbering of bits in a word is also interesting. Is the high order bit in > a 64 bit word, bit 0 or bit 63? Both conventions have been employed. On every CPU I've used, LSB has always been bit 0. Unlike endianness, this is clearly better than the other way round since the value is 2**bit_number and the bit number doesn't change if the value is converted into a different word width. When it comes to I/O devices which don't do arithmetic, either convention may appear. Hardware people rarely pick names or conventions that make sense to software people.
Re: APL\360
On Mon, 1 Feb 2021 at 10:34, Tor Arntsen via cctalk wrote: > > Some sheep herders in (IIRC) the Caucasus do, or did at least. I > learned about that some decades ago. Counting sheep on their fingers. > I use the system sometimes. Fred Pohl's short story "Digits and Dastards" explains it well. I used to use it at my fencing club. Matches are normally first to 15 points -- first to 10 if we were busy. I'd keep score on my fingers in binary, left for one player, right for the other.. -- Liam Proven – Profile: https://about.me/liamproven Email: lpro...@cix.co.uk – gMail/gTalk/gHangouts: lpro...@gmail.com Twitter/Facebook/LinkedIn/Flickr: lproven – Skype: liamproven UK: +44 7939-087884 – ČR (+ WhatsApp/Telegram/Signal): +420 702 829 053
Re: APL\360
On Wed, Jan 20, 2021 at 02:05:37PM -0700, ben via cctalk wrote:
[...]
> I don't see languages in general have improved since the the mid
> 1960's. Hardware and language models don't reflect each other,
> and don't have extendable data sizes and types.
> PL/I seems to have been the best,but too tied to IBM.
> C standard 2131 complex numbers
> C standard 2143 dubble complex numbers
> Every machine I can think of had a carry flag of some type
> yet no language uses that to extend it self.
You're describing a failing in C and similar languages stuck in the 1960s.
Here's a Rust method that does add-exposing-carry:
https://doc.rust-lang.org/nightly/std/primitive.u32.html#method.overflowing_add
The documentation doesn't explicitly say "carry" because Rust is
architecture-neutral and it's down to LLVM to decide how to express it in
machine code, but on x86 (and probably ARM) the boolean return value comes
directly from the carry flag.
> I don't believe in objects because data structures don't have classes, but
> are more similar to each other. A window A structure is like window B but
> details are different. That makes things look portable when they are not.
> Constants still
> seem to be embedded in data structures, rather than abstract.
> -- zero array
> define LIMIT abc
> blah array[LIMIT]
> ...
> i = 0 while i< LIMIT array[i] = 0 i = i + 1 endw
> I would like say
> let LIMIT = abc
> blah array[LIMIT]
> i = 0 while i< array:LIMIT array[i] = 0 i = i + 1 endw
You "don't believe in objects" yet then describe a problem which only exists
due to the lack of them and then present OO pseudocode to solve it. A lot of
OO languages suck of course, but the fundamental idea of encapsulation is
not the bit that sucks. Here's it in Rust, where it takes in an arbitrary
array (pedantically, "slice", a (pointer, element count)-tuple) and
determines its length at runtime:
pub fn clear_indexed(array: &mut [usize]) {
for index in 0 .. array.len() {
array[index] = 0;
}
}
(The code for C-style fixed-length arrays looks broadly similar but has a
bit more boilerplate because they're less useful.)
Iterating over indices is generally discouraged for a number of reasons, not
least being that the index may be out-of-bounds, but also because it can
inhibit vectorisation or parallelisation. You have no choice in broken
languages such as C, but many languages provide some notion of iteration
which guarantees to not go out-of-bounds:
pub fn clear_iterator(array: &mut [usize]) {
for elem in array {
*elem = 0;
}
}
Both code fragments generate equivalent assembly in this trivial example
because the Rust compiler could prove at compile time that the index
variable can't go out-of-bounds. In more complex real-world code it cannot
reliably do so and will insert a run-time check which aborts if the index is
out-of-bounds. Or if it's C, trundle on and corrupt things.
Oddly enough, the state of the art has moved on a bit in the half-century
since C was invented. It's just that quite a lot of programmers haven't yet
noticed.
Re: Epson QX-10 hard drive
On Sun, 31 Jan 2021 at 19:36, Warner Losh via cctalk wrote: > > Greetings > > I recently purchased a QCS external hard disk on ebay. This was one of the > companies that was selling DEC Rainbow hard drives. I had hoped it was an > old Rainbow drive with interesting to me bits... Turns out it is an Epson > QX-10 hard drive, full of interesting to bits for the QX-10 CP/M > enthusiast. I've had trouble finding a suitable community to note this in > should there be people around that care... so I thought I'd ask here is > people know of good CP/M groups and/or QX-10/16 groups, mailing lists, irc > channels, discord servers, etc I could find. I'm not in it, but https://www.facebook.com/groups/cpmusers ...? There's some interest in the GEM-DEV group on simpits.com -- GeneB is your man there. www.deltasoft.com is a starting point. -- Liam Proven – Profile: https://about.me/liamproven Email: lpro...@cix.co.uk – gMail/gTalk/gHangouts: lpro...@gmail.com Twitter/Facebook/LinkedIn/Flickr: lproven – Skype: liamproven UK: +44 7939-087884 – ČR (+ WhatsApp/Telegram/Signal): +420 702 829 053
Re: APL\360
On Sat, 30 Jan 2021 at 03:27, dwight via cctalk wrote: > If we'd thought about it we could count to 1023 on our fingers. > Dwight Some sheep herders in (IIRC) the Caucasus do, or did at least. I learned about that some decades ago. Counting sheep on their fingers. I use the system sometimes. -Tor
