Re: Viking SCSI controller RS232 adapter

[Daniel Seagraves via cctalk]

> On Jun 28, 2022, at 1:29 PM, Douglas Taylor via cctalk 
>  wrote:
> 
> On 6/28/2022 12:58 PM, Douglas Taylor via cctalk wrote:
>> I have a couple of these boards but have never got into the on-board monitor 
>> which requires an adapter board that allows a terminal to talk to the 
>> controller board and do various things.
>> 
>> Looking at the manual on bitsavers there is almost enough info to construct 
>> my own adapter board.  Has anyone ever built there own adapter to the 
>> controller?
>> 
>> Doug
>> 
> I wasn't clear about this.  The Viking board I have is a dual width q-bus 
> board that connects SCSI  disk or tape devices VAXes or PDP11s using MSCP 
> protocol.   In the bitsavers manual on figure 8 is a drawing of the 'Serial 
> Port Cable Adapter'.  Table 2 lists the pin-out of the 50 pin IDC connector 
> and which lines are used for what signal.  In that list are these RS232 
> connections:
> 
> IDC pin 20 -> CON TX (RS232)
> 
> IDC pin 22 -> CON Rx (RS232)
> 
> IDC pin 28 -> FP TX (RS232)
> 
> IDC pin 30 -> FP TX (RS232)
> 
> I was able to trace these IDC connections back to an ICL232 chip on the 
> Viking board which is an RS232 driver chip.
> 
> My question is which of these RS232 lines are brought out to the 'Serial Port 
> Cable Adapter'?  Which ground do I use?  What do CON and FP stand for?
> 
> I am trying to de-bug one of the boards and would like to get into the 
> on-board monitor and see what it tells me about the board configuration.

For the UDT at least the RS232 lines are regular RS232 and the plug I made for 
communicating with it was just an old PC serial pigtail bodged onto a short 
SCSI ribbon cable.

I would expect CON to be CONfiguration port; No idea what FP is for.

Re: What happened to control-data.info and controlfreaks.org?

[Daniel Seagraves via cctalk]

> On Nov 18, 2021, at 8:22 AM, Michael Kerpan  wrote:
> 
> What happened? Looking back at my emails, the list was operating normally 
> until September 3. Then it just stopped. There were normal discussions going 
> on. There was no flood of spam. As far as I can tell, nothing occured that 
> would trigger a rage quit.

A news article was posted wherein another party was credited with creating 
DTCyber and a screenshot showed that party had removed his advertisements from 
the software.

The GPL does not have an advertising clause, and he did not have grounds to 
demand the advertisement be restored, so he decided it best to delete 
everything.

Re: What happened to control-data.info and controlfreaks.org?

[Daniel Seagraves via cctalk]

> On Nov 18, 2021, at 12:53 AM, Jim Carpenter via cctalk 
>  wrote:
> 
> Is anybody able to access these sites? I just get redirected to Google.
> 
> Jim

Quite simply, Tom got mad, took his ball, and went home. It is my understanding 
that everything has been deleted and won’t be restored.

Re: Early Programming Books

[Daniel Seagraves via cctalk]

> On Jun 21, 2021, at 4:47 PM, Rich Alderson via cctalk  
> wrote:
> 
>> Date: Sun, 20 Jun 2021 22:19:02 -0600
>> From: ben via cctalk 
> 
>> LISP still can't be compiled.
> 
> May I respectfully suggest that you don't know WTF you're talking about?

I’ll save you some time and trouble, because I’d learned to stop arguing with 
people who hold this opinion:

“WELL ACKSHUALLY” (push glasses up) “THE LISP MACHINES WERE MICROCODED WHICH 
MEANS THERE IS NO REAL LISP MACHINE, THE UNDERLYING MICROENGINE IS THE REAL 
PROCESSOR, AND IT DOES NOT RUN LISP, SO LISP MACHINES DID NOT EXIST.”

They then move the goalposts around regarding what is considered a REAL 
PROCESSOR and what is not until you give up and they “win” by default.

I will now go back to refusing to talk about or work on lisp projects anymore 
because The Community has beaten any will to do so out of me.

Re: Writings on AI from 17 years ago....

[Daniel Seagraves via cctalk]

> On May 24, 2021, at 3:31 PM, Chris Zach via cctalk  
> wrote:
> 
> Well if it winds up in the dumpster then that's yet another lesson to not 
> trust "Museums". It's actually funny than MC was taken from the storage shed 
> and turned up at another "Museum”.

I would expect them to sell it to some wealthy investor who wants to put it in 
a basement for eventual resale as “The first AI computer” or something like 
that in a decade or two.

In any event, us mortals would never see it again.

Re: Need a BASIC expert

[Daniel Seagraves via cctalk]

> On Apr 21, 2021, at 6:19 AM, Bill Degnan via cctalk  
> wrote:
> 
> It is not too hard to imagine a professional programmer who took a copy of
> Dartmouth BASIC and adapted it for this flavor of BASIC, but I personally
> dont have any reference docs about it or proof.

I’m not sure I would describe it as “professional” but at one point my employer 
did pay me to hack up a copy of Bywater BASIC to produce CGI headers rather 
than its usual banner. This was so we would have .bas files starting with 
#!/usr/bin/basic that were called as CGI executables.

Re: DEC pin

[Daniel Seagraves via cctalk]

> On Mar 31, 2021, at 1:38 AM, Curious Marc via cctalk  
> wrote:
> 
> I’ll blame it on Kyle and Fritz, I could not resist…
> 
> https://curiousmarcs-store.creator-spring.com/listing/VAXinated

As a PDP-10 partisan I am anti-VAX. I feel it is my duty to make a big stink 
about this, but do not wish to expend list resources in doing so. Please 
pretend I made a big stink about it and be offended and/or pleased as you feel 
would be appropriate.

Re: Greaseweazle

[Daniel Seagraves via cctalk]

> On Feb 2, 2021, at 8:51 AM, John Foust via cctalk  
> wrote:
> 
> How else will products improve?  

I don’t know what planet you’re from but here on modern-day Earth we don’t 
improve anything anymore. We just bitch and scream on the internet and find 
reasons to drive people out so nobody contributes. Contributing things is 
egotistical anyway. You’re not making yourself look good, you’re making 
everyone else look bad. Anyway, whoever bitches longest and loudest wins 
because they’ve drove away all the people dragging things down. This is 
indisputable fact! Perfection is achieved when there is nothing left to take 
away, so if we take away everything by destroying a project the project has 
achieved peak perfection. This is technically correct, which is the only kind 
of correct that matters, which means I cannot be proven wrong and I win forever.

(It should not need to be pointed out that the preceding was in highest 
sarcasm, yet here we are)

Re: Future of cctalk/cctech - text encoding

[Daniel Seagraves via cctalk]

> On Jun 18, 2020, at 4:03 AM, Lars Brinkhoff via cctalk 
>  wrote:
> 
> Peter Coghlan wrote:
>> Does anyone use ASCII anymore?
> 
> I read and write my email with Emacs running in a terminal emulator.
> I rarely need anything beoynd codepoint 126.

I vote we move the list to an Exchange server behind a SSL VPN and mandate the 
use of Outlook, then force all messages to be in quoted-printable encoding. 
This way nobody “wins” and everyone is equally miserable. It’s only fair.

Re: Living Computer Museum

[Daniel Seagraves via cctalk]

I’ve been just kinda skimming along in this thread, I’ve been busy; Just wanna 
make sure I have everything down...

0: If you sent anything to a museum, you’ve been fleeced - you’re an idiot.
1: If you didn’t send anything to a museum, you’re a hoarder - you’re an idiot.
2: If you send things to a museum they will be destroyed, museums are full of 
idiots.
3: If you send things to a museum they will be taken care of, museums keep out 
the idiots.
4: Museums are for physical display only and a proper museum will prioritize 
long-term physical stability at the cost of operational capability.
5: Museums are for physical interaction only and a proper museum will 
prioritize operational capability at the cost of long-term physical stability.
6: If you start or join an ongoing internet slapfight, you’re an asshole.
7: If you avoid starting or joining an ongoing internet slapfight, you’re a 
coward.
10: I’m not an idiot, you’re an idiot.
11: No, I’m not an idiot, YOU’RE an idiot!
12: For having read this far, I am the biggest idiot of all.

Sound good?

Re: UniBone: Linux-to-DEC-UNIBUS-bridge, year #1

[Daniel Seagraves via cctalk]

> On Nov 20, 2019, at 10:37 AM, Chris Zach via cctalk  
> wrote:
> 
> Gotta drag this stuff out and take a look. Oh and RD54's are *slow* compared 
> to ESDI disks and controllers. Ouchies!

Can’t be worse than my original plan, which was to use a Viking SCSI controller 
and hack all the things to support it. Bit fiddling happened in the driver, in 
exec mode. I actually had a hacked standalone DSKDMP that knew how to format 
“packs” on it, but it was so dog slow I never bothered writing a timesharing 
driver for it, instead waiting until someone came up with a better solution.

Re: UniBone: Linux-to-DEC-UNIBUS-bridge, year #1

[Daniel Seagraves via cctalk]

> On Nov 19, 2019, at 9:35 PM, Josh Dersch  wrote:
> 
> Joerg is the one building and selling the board, I'm just a satisfied 
> customer who's also been hacking new device support into it.  I'll keep y'all 
> posted as to when I make progress on this.
> 
> Also if anyone has a KS they could, uh, "lend" me it sure would speed up the 
> development process and I'm sure you'd eventually get it back someday.
> 
> (Kidding.)

Well, I was expecting to have to do all of the work myself. There’s still the 
problem of the disk Unibus itself to solve - the disk UBA doesn’t terminate 
into a normal Unibus. It goes into the disk RH11 directly, and the bus is 
terminated on the far end of the RH11. I’d either have to buy another Unibus 
backplane to plug the Unibone into, or find a way to plug the cables from the 
UBA directly into the Unibone. This still leaves the issue of terminating the 
bus. The ideal scenario would be if the first slot of a RH11 (where the bus 
jumper comes in) can accommodate the (quad card) Unibone without issues, the 
rest of the RH11 boards can simply be pulled without breaking bus continuity, 
and the normal terminator in the far slot can be used. I haven’t looked at any 
prints or anything yet.

The “second” Unibus is otherwise normal.

Re: UniBone: Linux-to-DEC-UNIBUS-bridge, year #1

[Daniel Seagraves via cctalk]

> On Nov 19, 2019, at 7:39 AM, Chris Zach via cctech  
> wrote:
> 
> Ah. Another solution to the fabled "MASSBUS" to anything adapter? Putting it 
> in at the RH11-C level would remove a fair bit of complexity, then you could 
> simply emulate all the Massbuss insanity through the relatively simple 
> registers that an RH11 uses

That’s the plan; That and getting a Chaosnet so I can connect my CADR to my 
KS10 when I get them both working at the same time.

Re: UniBone: Linux-to-DEC-UNIBUS-bridge, year #1

[Daniel Seagraves via cctalk]

> On Nov 19, 2019, at 5:41 AM, Jörg Hoppe via cctalk  
> wrote:
> 
> Several people asked to make UniBone PDP-10able, it should be not problem.
> 
> UNIBUS PA,PB are (like all other signals) just pins on a GPIO multiplier, no 
> interpretation is done in hardware.
> 
> On software side the PRU must sample 18bit instead of 16bit for DATA, then 
> lots of "uint16_t" must be changed to "uint32_t" in the whole software stack.
> 
> Not clear what to do with existing device emulators: did DEC construct 18bit 
> mutants for a few PDP-11 peripherals to run them in KS10?

As far as I know, only the (disk) RH11-C uses the extra two bits; The tape RH11 
and all other options are unmodified PDP-11 stuff.

In my case, I would need to emulate an RH11-C, a Chaosnet, and an IMP interface 
if possible.
Emulating DZ11s as TCP targets as well would be nice, but I have physical DZ11s 
if there’s not enough capacity left.

Re: UniBone: Linux-to-DEC-UNIBUS-bridge, year #1

[Daniel Seagraves via cctalk]

> On Nov 17, 2019, at 7:59 AM, Jörg Hoppe via cctech  
> wrote:
> 
> Yes, can (get a kit with SMT work done)

OK, that’s the answer I needed; If I want to put one of these in a KS10, can 
the parity lines be hacked from the software (the KS10 uses them as two extra 
data bits) or are they hard-wired to parity?

I apparently have Spacewar for Unix?

[Daniel Seagraves via cctalk]

While dumping lispm tapes, I found one with a label saying "Read it into DRAL" 
(may be "DRAC"?) "and sent a message to cap's bboard saying where it can be 
found. -Bob”. There was another paper label that had fallen off. What I think 
is the label in question was later found in the bottom of the box, a strip of 
masking tape saying “SPACEWAR FOR VAX (Unix?)”. The contents are a 136KB tar 
archive containing source to a program called “orbit”, all files are dated 
August 22nd, 1983.

The README file follows:
——
To install orbit:

1. Do a 'make all'.
2. Make sure the directories on the path /usr/games/lib/orbit/*
all exist and are writable by you (except /usr, of course).
3. Do a 'make install'.

This should work with no changes on Berkeley 4.2, unless the
structure for the console keyboard buffer has been changed.
The crock that reads the up-down codes here should be changed
to use the real ROM-table hooks, anyway.  Unfortunately, all
that nice stuff is in protected memory.

Enjoy!
- Bob Bane (bane.umcp-cs@UDel-Relay)
——

Does anyone know what this is? The (gzipped) tar file is at 
https://www.bogodyne.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/orbit.tar.gz 

Re: Restoring dull BOT markers?

[Daniel Seagraves via cctalk]

Went to the hardware store looking for the 3M tape, found some aluminum foil 
tape for HVAC duct work. It’s a hair thick, but works just fine. Worked on 5 
out of 5 tapes it was tried on so far.

Restoring dull BOT markers?

[Daniel Seagraves via cctalk]

What’s the best way to restore a dull BOT marker so I can get a good dump of a 
tape? I don’t need a long-term fix since tapes themselves are in exceedingly 
bad condition and are unlikely to survive more than one read.

Re: Shipping from Europe to USA

[Daniel Seagraves via cctalk]

> On Aug 22, 2019, at 2:09 PM, Paul Koning via cctalk  
> wrote:
> 
> 
> 
>> On Aug 22, 2019, at 2:57 PM, Peter Corlett via cctalk 
>>  wrote:
>> 
>> On Thu, Aug 22, 2019 at 06:30:10PM +, Henk Gooijen via cctalk wrote:
>> ...
>>> Only UPS did … and yes, the “horror” stories *are* true. They managed to 
>>> drop
>>> the package. Not from 4 inches above ground, but more, because a *steel
>>> corner* had a dent!
>> 
>> Hence that old joke: "If being air dropped out of a C-130 into a minefield
>> constitutes 'moderately rough handling', what constitutes 'very rough
>> handling'?" "Being shipped UPS".
> 
> I'm reminded of a legendary story from a long time ago, of a DEC disk being 
> air-shipped to a customer.  RP03?  Not sure, but something of that size class.
> 
> The story was that the shipping company hadn't strapped it down properly, so 
> when the plane applied takeoff power, the drive slid backwards in the cargo 
> hold.  Fast enough to exit the hold through the airplane skin, landing on the 
> runway with a nice bounce.
> 
> The drive was taken back to Maynard, where it was observed that the corner of 
> the frame was badly bent.  The techs propped it up on a cinder block and 
> turned the drive on; it worked fine.
> 
> Sure sounds like a fairy tale, but it's a fun one.

Friend who owned a larger regional ISP back in the day bought a new Ascend MAX. 
It shipped UPS and arrived with a perfect boot print on the side of the box. To 
this day we still make jokes about UPS playing soccer with the package.

(Semi-related side story; A few months after installation, the Max started 
dropping calls on one line card. Ascend refused to RMA it because it passed 
diagnostics. They went back and forth over for a week or so until one day their 
sysadmin had enough; He calmly removed the card from the chassis and, with an 
Ascend tech on speakerphone, smashed the thing to bits with a hammer. “Oh, it 
just failed. Won’t pass diagnostics anymore.” He got his RMA number. The 
replacement card worked without issue for the next several years.)

Re: I'm sharing a toy

[Daniel Seagraves via cctalk]

> On Aug 8, 2019, at 12:21 PM, Adam Thornton via cctalk  
> wrote:
> 
> Yeah, you might be able to DOS my Raspberry Pi.  Maybe you could break out
> of simh and start using the Pi itself to mine bitcoins.

I know you’re joking around, but IoT gadgets and other small devices are being 
exploited right now to great effectiveness as attack amplifiers or penetration 
aids. They won’t mine coins on your Pi, or attack you directly, but they _will_ 
use your Pi as a means to attack others - for which you can be held legally 
liable in some jurisdictions. And it won’t be a human who makes the call, it 
will be an automated attack bot that will slam every port it can attempting to 
find something its masters can abuse to make money. I ran public instances of 
TOPS-20 and ITS for years, and eventually had to give up due to lack of 
interest by anyone except chinese bots using up all the TCP connections with 
(usually Cisco) exploit attempts.

This is, after all, The Internet, and The Internet ruins all things as quickly 
as possible. This is why we can’t have nice things.

Re: Computer Reset shop, liquidation. (USA)

[Daniel Seagraves via cctalk]

> On Jul 17, 2019, at 11:26 AM, William Donzelli via cctalk 
>  wrote:
> 
> Oh, I did not mention how some of those misfits can throw their own
> wrenches in the works. Piss one of them off and he calls the Fire
> Marshall. Some dick did that when I was cleaning out Compass so many
> years ago (if you remember the Compass Teletype cleanout in NJ, you
> have been on this list too long!), and delayed things for a couple of
> weeks.

This. People on the internet are insane. I have gotten literal death threats 
for refusing to sell keyboards. People threatening to find my home address and 
do things about my “hoarding”. I should never have said a goddamn word on the 
internet. I regret ever releasing anything open source. For every one person 
who wants to contribute there are a dozen who just want to complain - or worse.

I’m so very tired of being screamed at. I almost want to just dump it all and 
walk away. This is not what I signed up for.

Re: Apollo Computer Article

[Daniel Seagraves via cctalk]

> On Jun 18, 2019, at 10:29 AM, Will Cooke via cctalk  
> wrote:
> 
> This site has TONS of stuff, including (links to) much original 
> documentation.  There are also copies of actual flight software that can be 
> run on the simulator.
> https://www.ibiblio.org/apollo/

There is also a spaceflight simulator add-on that has that emulator and the 
software embedded into it, so you can have the actual software do what it was 
intended to:
http://nassp.sourceforge.net/wiki/Main_Page 


(Full Disclosure: I am the maintainer-by-default)

Re: TI Explorer Lisp machine tapes

[Daniel Seagraves via cctalk]

> On Feb 20, 2019, at 5:47 PM, Al Kossow via cctalk  
> wrote:
> 
> has there been ANY posts about the Explorer simulator in the last decade?
> 

I haven’t posted about mine; When I left off, it was at a dead end. TI lost 
GENASYS, so there is no way to generate a new system, and no complete systems 
were available. Meroko never worked to an acceptable degree and other stuff 
came along.

The LMI stuff is more promising long-term and I’m busy with that; If someone 
else wants to take this stuff and make Meroko do something useful with it, be 
my guest.

Re: Original AGC restoration / was Re: Apollo 8 Mission Control printers, or not?

[Daniel Seagraves via cctalk]

> On Dec 30, 2018, at 7:16 PM, Nemo  wrote:
> 
> On 30/12/2018, Daniel Seagraves via cctalk  wrote:
>> 
>> New-era-internet term for illegally gaining access to someone's real world
>> “documents" (place of employment, home address, phone numbers, medical
>> records, family members’ info, etc) for harassment, stalking, or worse.
>> 
> 
> Interesting,  as the OED describes dox (n.) as an abbreviation for doxy (2.),
> which is an abbrevations for orthodoxy.  First reference to 1756: T. Amory J.
> Buncle (1825) III. 19 Orthodox and other dox.

Have those guys start a hashtag about it and maybe something will happen.

Re: Original AGC restoration / was Re: Apollo 8 Mission Control printers, or not?

[Daniel Seagraves via cctalk]

> On Dec 30, 2018, at 12:37 AM, Rod Smallwood via cctalk 
>  wrote:
> 
> What is dox?

New-era-internet term for illegally gaining access to someone's real world 
“documents" (place of employment, home address, phone numbers, medical records, 
family members’ info, etc) for harassment, stalking, or worse.

Re: Original AGC restoration / was Re: Apollo 8 Mission Control printers, or not?

[Daniel Seagraves via cctalk]

> On Dec 29, 2018, at 11:17 AM, Curious Marc via cctalk  
> wrote:
> 
> Yes that would be lucky us. Hotel was no fun but owner understandably did not 
> want to ship or even get separated from his AGC. We have been offered some 
> real lab space in Houston for next time, so hopefully we’ll be in better 
> shape. 

Considering that I have had more than one person threaten to dox me and show up 
at my house over KEYBOARDS, I don’t blame him at all.

Re: Selling keyboards without the terminal

[Daniel Seagraves via cctalk]

> On Oct 20, 2018, at 2:03 AM, Doc Shipley via cctalk  
> wrote:
> 
>  That's just nasty.  Your invective, that is.  There are idiots in any 
> enthusiast group, and predators.  Including this group, if we're honest.  You 
> want to talk conspicuous consumption?  How many on this list, myself 
> included, have spent a fortune on old computer hardware, and then another 
> fortune housing it?

That’s not consumption. The items involved are not “consumed” - they are not 
destroyed or used up. Taking a piece of equipment and turning it into a 
keyboard plus N pounds of scrap is consumption. The equipment is destroyed.

>  You guys want people to stop scavenging those irreplaceable treasures?  Ante 
> up, pure and simple.

Right, because availability of cash is the sole determining factor in a 
person’s worth. I guess someone should come pick up all this stuff then, I 
clearly don’t deserve any of it. I only spent ten years plus searching, called 
in major favors to get it here, and wrote two successful public projects to 
share the experience with other people - but very little money. What was I 
thinking? I’m sure whoever is able to shell out $8K from their trust fund to 
turn 1500 pounds of potentially working machines into a couple el33t h4x0r 
g4ming keyboards will be far more deserving than a filthy poor like me.

Re: Selling keyboards without the terminal

[Daniel Seagraves via cctalk]

> On Oct 19, 2018, at 10:34 AM, Bill Degnan via cctalk  
> wrote:
> 
> Here is a great example of why the keyboards and terminals are getting
> separated


Keyboard fetishists are vermin; They are destructive and have no redeeming 
qualities, and should be treated as such.

I had one of them spend the better part of an hour going on about how I had 
achieved “the holy grail of collecting” by having more than one “Space Cadet” 
keyboard, fawning about how superlatively perfect they’re supposed to be and 
everything else pales in comparison. They’re a status symbol in keyboard 
fetishist circles. According to him they auction north of $5000 for even 
non-working examples. I have no idea why. GNU Emacs can't use most of the 
“special” keys - The Lisp Machine itself doesn't even use most of them - and 
control is in the same relative place as modern keyboards instead of being 
where the caps lock key is which was the "mostest hacker-est” thing last I 
heard. I think it’s just conspicuous consumption - Having one proves you’ve got 
the dosh to waste things other people must work hard for a chance to get.

Re: SMD disk needed

[Daniel Seagraves via cctalk]

The controller is an Interphase 2181 and it should take any disk that works 
with that. LMI supported Eagles and smaller CDC drives at first, but later you 
could define drives of arbitrary geometry in setup and later directly in the 
ROM. I know that Super Eagles work at least at the software level because I’ve 
simulated one.

> On Sep 22, 2018, at 5:22 PM, Al Kossow via cctalk  
> wrote:
> 
> couple of problems..
> 
> The bit transfer rate went up as time went on, so the 8" >300mb drives have 
> higher bit rates
> They also changed the tags to be able to handle more cylinders
> 
> I think you're going to need to find an 11" Fujitsu Eagle or maybe a Super 
> Eagle

SMD disk needed

[Daniel Seagraves via cctalk]

Does anyone within driving distance of central Illinois have a SMD drive I can 
borrow for awhile until I can get some kind of SMD emulator working? Anything 
450 MB or bigger will do. I need one for the Lambda.

Further Lisp Machine Developments

[Daniel Seagraves via cctalk]

I spun up a blog for posting the ongoing status of things; It’s at 
https://www.orinrin.land/lispm/ 

I finally got to see a LMI Lambda in real life...

[Daniel Seagraves via cctalk]

Two of them in fact, and a CADR - In my garage, no less!

The Lambdas are in bad shape, and the CADR is in very bad shape and missing its 
console and disk. It’s going to take awhile to get them cleaned up and see how 
viable they are.

On the plus side, I got a some spares and debugging equipment, and I have a 
working PDP-11 to debug the CADR with if it gets that far, so there’s a good 
chance I should be able to get at least one working.

I’ll post more as things develop.

Re: Got a kidney!

[Daniel Seagraves via cctalk]

Status update:

They let me go home Thursday but I was too wiped out to post about it. Things 
are still pretty fluid, there were some complications, but they’re being 
managed. I was on the waitlist for 5 years and 4 months, they listed me 
immediately on diagnosis. I got the transplant through OSF, they are one of the 
better hospitals here in downstate Illinois. That they have maintained that 
status given the state’s extreme distress should say all that need be said. 

All the well-wishes are extremely appreciated. Friday the 13th now has a whole 
new meaning.

Got a kidney!

[Daniel Seagraves via cctalk]

Got the call yesterday. Transplant operation was a success. Still at the 
hospital recovering. Will update when able.

Re: AlphaServers

[Daniel Seagraves via cctalk]

> On Mar 13, 2018, at 7:44 AM, Kyle Owen via cctalk  
> wrote:
> 
> Several people have now mentioned they have dead Alphas. What is generally
> failing about them?
> 
> Kyle

When my 1000 started failing, the manual lead me to believe it was b-cache, but 
the jumper map wound up to be wrong, it was actually failed RAM. Even knowing 
that, I’m not sure I want to invest hundreds in new RAM for a machine whose 
b-cache is known to be a ticking time bomb. (1000s and 1000As have notoriously 
unreliable b-cache)

LCM MDE2 building/ordering

[Daniel Seagraves via cctalk]

So did anyone actually buy/make one of these yet?

Re: LMI Lambda Lispmachine Keyboard aka Space Cadet Keyboad

[Daniel Seagraves via cctalk]

> On Feb 17, 2018, at 9:29 AM, Marc Holz via cctech  
> wrote:
> 
> Hello,
> 
> 
> 
> I have the keyboard for a LMI Lambda Lispmachine but I'm missing the
> computer itself.

Where’d you get this from, and do you have any idea what happened to the 
machine it was once attached to?

> Is there a simulator or similar available?

I was going to post my LambdaDelta but someone already beat me to the punch…

The interface is serial and the protocol is semi-documented in the emulator 
source. If you get the physical gubbins worked out to talk to it from your 
host, getting bits to and from LambdaDelta should be trivial. I would be 
interested in seeing the actual bits to and from the keyboard; There’s a few 
things that don’t seem to work as the source implies they should, most notably 
the warm-boot/go-back-to-sdu chords.

If you need help, I’ll do what I can.

Re: Keyboard "enthusiasts"

[Daniel Seagraves via cctalk]

> On Jan 23, 2018, at 12:15 PM, Chuck Guzis via cctalk  
> wrote:
> 
> Really, is this any worse than the gold bugs scrapping whole systems for
> the prospective precious metal content?

It seems worse to me because the gold bugs are ignorant and greedy but the 
keyboardists are “computer people” and should know better.

Also as far as I know the gold bugs don’t deliberately target rare systems for 
their rarity.

Re: Keyboard "enthusiasts"

[Daniel Seagraves via cctalk]

> On Jan 23, 2018, at 11:35 AM, Guy Sotomayor via cctalk 
>  wrote:
> 
> …are the bane of my existence and should all rot in hell.
> 
> Sorry, I just received an email from a “keyboard enthusiast” who was looking 
> for
> various IBM 327x keyboards and wanted to know if I could help him and I needed
> to vent a little.
> 
> I sent him a polite “no way in hell” response but I’m still angry about it.  
> These 
> terminals are hard enough to find.  And more often than not, the keyboard is
> missing because some “enthusiast” thought it would be cool to convert it to a 
> PC
> keyboard.  ARG!  And of course the keyboards that they want are the 
> “typewriter”
> keyboards (all of my 3278 terminals have the “data entry keyboard”).

One of them scrapped a Symbolics XL for the keyswitches. That would be bad 
enough, but it gets worse - They did because they thought it was a CADR "Space 
Cadet” keyboard.

Re: Apollo Software

[Daniel Seagraves via cctalk]

> On Jan 23, 2018, at 9:33 AM, jim stephens via cctalk  
> wrote:

> The real work was done in the back rooms @ Mission control, with certain 
> features implemented on the systems onboard the rocket.
> 
> You couldn't carry out a mission w/o the ground supporting either system with 
> computations to the onboard systems.  You didn't punch in the address of the 
> moon on any system onboard the rocket, you got pre-computed parameters from 
> ground  computations that the flight computers carried out.

That’s exactly what I was trying to point out. What we have is a relatively 
small piece of the entire puzzle. People seem to think that just because a few 
versions of CM and LM software exist all is saved and done, but it’s really 
only the user interface to a much larger stack. You can't just fire up the AGC 
and push the “land on the moon” button. You can run it by itself and look at 
the idle loop or display the clock but getting it to actually DO anything close 
to its original tasks requires input from a lot of missing pieces. We aren’t 
trying to just run it in a box, that’s been done. We’re making it FLY.

> I'm not getting your "absolutely wrong" part.

He said "The Saturn IBM firmware is lost, but was under command of the LM and 
CM computers”. This is absolutely wrong. It was the other way around.

Re: Apollo Software

[Daniel Seagraves via cctalk]

> On Jan 23, 2018, at 9:14 AM, jim stephens via cctalk  
> wrote:
> 
> 
> 
> On 1/23/2018 6:30 AM, Daniel Seagraves via cctalk wrote:
>> The Saturn software, which is what actually flew from Earth to the moon,
> The navigation and guidance was in the CM and LM processors.  The Saturn IBM 
> firmware is lost, but was under command of the LM and CM computers, and is 
> running on simulators, as well as on some hardware replicas.

Absolutely wrong. The only time the CM computer flew the Saturn was in an abort 
scenario where the Saturn digital computer failed, and it happened via a data 
path from the FDAI needles to the Saturn’s analog control computer. At all 
other points prior to S4 staging the CM was strictly along for the ride. After 
S4 staging the CM and LM were on their own, but that was after the translunar 
burn.

> After I reread the thread, I think they were talking about saving the Apollo 
> computer software, not the spacecraft.

They were.

> AGC software here, FWIW.
> https://www.ibiblio.org/apollo/

I know. I am one of the NASSP maintainers. We took the yaAGC core and built a 
spacecraft around it so we could actually use it instead of just running it to 
look at the pretty flashing numbers in the idle loop. The project has been in 
work for more than 10 years now. Right now we have the most complete Apollo 
simulation ever built, exceeding the capabilities of even the NASA training 
simulators. See http://nassp.sourceforge.net/wiki/Main_Page 
<http://nassp.sourceforge.net/wiki/Main_Page>

Re: Apollo Software

[Daniel Seagraves via cctalk]

> On Jan 22, 2018, at 10:35 AM, Noel Chiappa via cctalk  
> wrote:
> 
>> From: Paul Koning
> 
>> I[t] just dawned on me that the subject is Apollo the company bought by
>> HP, not Apollo the spacecraft. Oh well...
> 
> Actually, that stuff has all been saved, and run under simulators

Not all, not by a long shot. Not even half.

The Apollo spacecraft had 4 computers aboard. One was in the Command Module, 
two were in the Lunar Module, and one was in the Saturn. Of those, we only have 
software for the CM and LM computers. The Saturn software, which is what 
actually flew from Earth to the moon, was lost. So you can claim we have “75%” 
at best, but that’s still not even close to true. There was a large complex of 
computers on the ground that calculated maneuvers and generated uplink data 
needed for the operation of the CM and LM computers, as well as the computers 
for the controllers, and none of that software survived. A lot of effort has 
gone into filling in those missing pieces, and it’s by no means complete.

Re: Lisa Source Code

[Daniel Seagraves via cctalk]

> On Dec 28, 2017, at 3:23 AM, Christian Corti via cctalk 
>  wrote:
> 
> What is a "Lisa Source Code" ?
> The schematics? The source code for the Lisa firmware and/or Lisa OS?

Whatever it is, it won’t be enough, someone will throw a fit about something 
being there or not there.

Re: Why women were the first computer programmers

[Daniel Seagraves via cctalk]

> On Aug 24, 2017, at 4:12 PM, Jay West via cctalk  
> wrote:
> 
> The world has gone mad with political correctness, and I will - at least in 
> the very tiny corner of it that I control - not allow it.

OK then, which opinion is safely politically incorrect? Are women biologically 
inferior to men or not? I don’t want to get in any trouble for having the wrong 
opinions.

LambdaDelta 0.98.1 released!

[Daniel Seagraves via cctalk]

Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, children of all ages - I present to
you LambdaDelta, my decidedly average LMI Lambda emulator.

See https://github.com/dseagrav/ld for the source repository and release
tarball. So far we have been able to run full-speed on a 2.3 GHz i7 and a
2.5 GHz i5, but the i5 was pushing it. The i7 gets a bit warm.

Bitsavers now has the LMI software, so there's no reason to hold off on a
release other than I would have liked to get fetch working properly at
least. I'm going to keep working at it in the meantime.

LMI Lambda - Software this time

[Daniel Seagraves via cctalk]

Great progress has been made in running the Lambda firmware and diagnostics. A 
way has been found to structure things such that the emulator is releasable 
without infringing on anyone’s copyrights. Now what we need is software tapes, 
specifically a Lisp distribution tape of any version.

If anyone has any tapes in any condition, or knows someone who might have 
something, please ask them to consider imaging their tapes, or having them 
imaged.

If you have images of anything that aren’t the images already on bitsavers, I 
would love to hear from you. Even partial or corrupt images are potentially 
useful.